Tech

Russian ransomware gang attack destabilizes British Royal Mail


A WIRED investigation discovered this week that the SweepWizard application, which some US law enforcement agencies use to coordinate attacks, is publicly disclosed sensitive data about hundreds of police activities until WIRED revealed the vulnerability. The exposed data included personally identifiable information on hundreds of officers and thousands of suspects, including the geographic coordinates of the suspects’ homes, the times and locations of raids, information demographics and contacts, as well as the Social Security numbers of some of the suspects.

Meanwhile, police in the Indian state of Telangana are use grassroots education initiatives to help people avoid digital scams and other online mining. And the giant controls the industry Siemens has disclosed a major vulnerability in one of its most popular series of programmable logic controllers this week. The company has no plans to fix the vulnerability because it itself can only be exploited through physical access. However, the researchers say that it creates exposure to industrial control and critical infrastructure environments that incorporate any of the 120 models of the vulnerable S7-1500 PLC.

And there’s much more. Each week, we highlight security news that we don’t cover in depth ourselves. Click on the titles below to read the full stories.

The UK’s Royal Mail service said on Wednesday that it had been hit by a ransomware attack and was therefore unable to process packages and mail for international outgoings. The company has asked customers not to attempt to send mail internationally until the attack is fixed. Royal Mail officials blamed cybercriminal ransomware group LockBit, believed to be based in Russia, for the attack. Royal Mail did not publicly comment on the situation but called it a “cyber incident” and warned that there would be “severe disruption” as a result of the attack.

In November, aides to President Joe Biden found classified documents from his time as vice president in the office he used before starting his 2020 presidential campaign and at his home. in Wilmington, Deleware. Now, after scouring the president’s papers and offices, they’ve found more classified documents in another location. NBC News, which first reported the new details on Wednesday, wrote, “The exact classification, amount, and location of the additional materials were not immediately clear. It is also unclear when the additional documents were discovered and whether the search for any other classified documents Biden may have from the Obama administration has been completed.

Microsoft said in March 2019 that it would stop offering Windows 7 and that customers should migrate to newer versions of the operating system. Starting January 2020, the company continues to only provide security updates to enterprise customers who have paid for extended support. Microsoft says this will also be out by the end of 2022. The company confirmed on Tuesday that security updates for Windows 7 have ended and that all users should upgrade if they haven’t already. Computers that continue to run Windows 7 will not receive updates and are vulnerable. This operating system first launched in 2009 and was ubiquitous in its heyday. As with many versions of Windows, it will likely have a long tail. TechCrunch reports that some market share data analysts estimate that 10% of Windows PCs worldwide are still running Windows 10. It appears that due to lower adoption rates, Microsoft ended support for Windows 8 on January 2016 and also ending support for Windows 8.1 on Tuesday. And the company will not provide extended support for Windows 8.1.

Cybercriminals looking to commit identity theft exploited a very basic security weakness on the Experian credit bureau’s website. Experian has designed its systems so that people who want a copy of their credit report need to correctly answer several multiple-choice questions about their financial history to verify their identity. However, until the end of 2022, Experian’s website will still allow people to make this request by simply entering a person’s name, date of birth, Social Security number, and address. This collection of information is often easily accessible to cybercriminals due to past data breaches and pooled repositories of multiple breaches.

An investigation in September 2022 of The New York Times includes candid commentary by Russian soldiers on their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war in the country. But the story appears to have inadvertently exposed phone numbers and other identifying metadata about some of the sources, and the information persisted in the story’s publicly available source code until Motherboard notified the publication on Thursday. January. Although unintentional, this error has real potential implications for the physical safety of the sources, who could face consequences from the Russian government or other entities.

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