When the Russian president Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked war against Ukraine this week, he did so with the warning that any intervention from the West would be met with a response “unprecedented” in history. The The implied nuclear threat has little if any precedent over the past few decades, and while the Kremlin is more likely to launch cyberattacks, it’s a chilling sign of just how far Putin may be willing to escalate.
Meanwhile, the notorious Russian Sandworm hacker did not stand still when researchers exposed their VPNFilter malware in 2018. Intelligence agencies in the US and UK this week detailed Cyclops Blink, a hacking tool that Sandworm developed as soon as VPNFilter is no longer useful. Cyclops Blink targets network devices, brings them into a botnet and exposes them to further infections. While UK officials say the disclosure is not directly related to the situation in Ukraine, it happened at a time Cyber attacks are getting more and more serious against the country.
We also reviewed inside Intel’s iStare labwhere corporate researchers work to hack chips in an attempt to get started Specter and Meltdown or Rowhammer attack. And we talked to security researchers who found a way eavesdrop on which room has shiny objects in it on sight.
If you’re looking to lock down your Chrome browsing experience, you might want to offer Try Advanced Safe Browsing; We talked to you about how to set it up. And we chose best personal safety devices, apps and alarms even if you need a little extra protection in the real world.
And so much more! We’ve rounded up all the news here that we didn’t break or cover in depth this week. Click on the title to read the full story. And it’s safe out there.
Before and during the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s cyber strategy included a combination of denial of service attacks and data erasure. This week has seen several attempts to DDoS Russia in return, with mixed results. Russian government, military and bank websites were all affected by the traffic tsunami, though for the most part they appear to be stable. Mil. A more successful DDoS took Russia’s state news site RT offline Thursday and into Friday; hacktivist collective Anonymous seems to have taken responsibility.
Reuters reported exclusively this week that Ukraine has taken to underground forums in search of a few good hackers. While the country does not have a permanent cyber force, the country’s Defense Ministry has turned to recruiting people to spy on Russian forces and help protect critical infrastructure against cyberattacks. Entrants are submitting their information to a Google Docs form — including professional references — and will be checked before being formally asked to participate.
The NFT space is rife with hacks and scams, but the size of this space is remarkable. It looks like a phishing campaign has cut off 17 NFT collectors from their digital tchotchkes. All victims received emails that appeared to come from OpenSea Marketplace, when in reality it was a scammer who soon tipped off their ill-fated tokens for almost $3 million. In an unrelated incident, a Texas man is suing OpenSea for $1 million because someone stole his Bored Ape NFT and he can’t get it.
Security researchers from Pangu Labs say they have compiled the origins of a hacking tool for nearly a decade, and that it originated with the Equation Group, widely believed to be the US National Security Agency. They say they were able to make the link partly thanks to the leak of Shadow Brokers, a mysterious group reveal a bunch of obvious secrets of the NSA In 2016. What’s more interesting than the tool itself, however, is public attribution to the NSA — which, while not unheard of, is extremely rare. Or at least, it was.
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