1.) Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website which offers open-source intelligence and fact-finding tools has revealed that a recent cyberattack on its database has been sourced to Russian intelligence.
Eliot Higgins, who happens to be the founder of the British based Bellingcat website said on last Friday that Russia backed hackers have been consistently trying to hack its database which has been probing into the incidents such as Malaysia MH17, the Skripal Nerve attack and the GRU investigations on the bombings in Syria.
Higgins disclosed on Friday that the infiltration into their network was being done through ProtonMail- a Swiss-based email service provider which Journalism website used for internal communication.
2.) In the second news which is related to cyber attacks, security analysts have discovered that the San Mateo County’s election infrastructure was highly vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This includes the results declaring website and the official social media accounts of the San Mateo County’s Online Election Information Channels.
A report released by the Civil Grand Jury in the last weekend, says that foreign intervention might lead to two possibilities if in case the elections get rigged on a digital note. In the first case, the attack might discourage the populace from participating in the elections due to frustration that the results were already rigged. And secondly, misinformation spread might also lead to a situation where the general public might boycott their participation in the event on the whole.
The Grand Jury is encouraging the officials of San Mateo County to go for a free consultation being offered by US Department of Homeland Security to help the local government assess and enhance the security of their online systems.
3.) According to a news report published in ZDNET, ransomware spreading hackers have started to target Synology company NAS devices with Brute Force password attacks to deliver file-encrypting malware payloads.
As such devices are packed with data such as backups from primary systems, these systems become as goldmines to hackers.
Early this year, security researchers from LookOut found that NAS devices manufactured by Western Digital My Cloud were being targeted by StorageCrypt ransomware which can only be reversed on payment of 2BTC.
At the start of this month, news reports flew in that NAS device maker QNAP from Taiwan was being targeted by ransomware attackers with eCh0raix malware.
Synology is urging its NAS users to use Synology Network and Account Management settings to prevent the data from getting encrypted as this configuration allows engaging the firewall in the control panel by allowing public ports for essential services, as well as enables 2-factor authentication.
