News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Mississippi Officials Confirm Cyber Attack on State Election Websites on Election Day

“Yesterday, our offices confirmed an abnormally large increase in traffic volume due to DDoS activity, which caused the public-facing side of our websites to be periodically inaccessible,” Secretary of State Michael Watson said in a press release on Wednesday. “At this time, we do not have confirmation as to where the DDoS activity originated, and more evidence would be required to attribute to any person or group.”

Watson added that his office can “confidently say our election system was not compromised.”
...
When voters logged on to the Secretary of State’s website to find voting locations and access to other information, they were faced with a “This site can’t be reached” page.

In an interview with WAPT16, Watson said the hackers were generating multiple addresses to attack the system to slow it down, preventing Mississippians from being able to access the website.

When asked if he knew who is behind it, he said, “We saw some reports initially that a pro-Russian group was claiming credit for this attack. I’m not exactly sure if that was them or not.”

Watson reaffirmed that voting itself wasn’t impacted by the attack.
...
In October, there were media reports of an alleged pro-Russian computer hacking cell calling itself Killnet posting a list of several government websites on Telegram that it will take down ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Mississippi was included in the list, along with governmental websites in Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, and Kentucky, as well as an alleged attack on the website of the Internal Revenue Service.

Thousands of bogus Twitter accounts push NFT scams to steal cryptocurrency

A fraud network made up of thousands of bogus Twitter accounts has been impersonating legitimate NFT stores to swindle users out of cryptocurrency, according to research published Thursday.
...
Researchers at the threat intelligence firm Nisos found that between July 26 and Oct. 11 more than 3,000 Twitter accounts produced nearly 6,000 tweets linking to sham storefronts that offered to mint new NFTs — non-fungible token — for free. Thousands of other bogus accounts amplified those tweets, according to researchers.

The fake NFT stores prompted victims to share access to their wallets under the guise of minting a new NFT, allowing scammers to deplete the owner’s collection of NFTs along with other virtual currency funds.

NFTs, like bitcoin, are virtual assets that exist only on the blockchain. Because NFTs are unique and unable to be recreated, they’ve gained value among collectors.

Researchers were unable to assess how much scammers bilked from their victims. Wallet addresses tied to scammers have “received hundreds of transactions ranging from tens to hundreds of dollars” since the scam begin, according to an analysis researchers did with the assistance of cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis.
...
Researchers couldn’t definitively say where the network originated, but all the accounts that produced the original tweets followed three Indonesia-based accounts.

LockBit ransomware suspect arrested in Canada, faces charges in US

Canadian law enforcement officials arrested a dual Russian and Canadian national in October accused of participating in LockBit ransomware attacks against targets across the world, costing victims millions of dollars.

The Justice Department identified the suspect as Mikhail Vasiliev who, according to court documents unsealed Thursday, faces charges related to conspiracy to damage computers and transmitting ransom demands. Vasiliev faces up to five years in prison and is awaiting extradition to the U.S.
...
Europol called Vasiliev one of its most “high-value targets due to his involvement in numerous high-profile ransomware cases,” the agency said in a statement obtained by CyberScoop.

Investigators from the French Gendarmerie, the FBI and Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre were deployed to Ontario as part of the operation, according to the Europol statement.

Police seized two firearms, eight computers and 32 external hard drives, along with roughly $405,000 in cryptocurrencies in the Oct. 26 arrest, Europol said in its statement.