Login
If you live in the United States, the data broker Radaris likely knows a great deal about you, and they are happy to sell what they know to anyone. But how much do we know about Radaris? Publicly available data indicates that in addition to running a dizzying array of people-search websites, the co-founders of Radaris operate multiple Russian-language dating services and affiliate programs. It also appears many of their businesses have ties to a California marketing firm that works with a Russian state-run media conglomerate currently sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Formed in 2009, Radaris is a vast people-search network for finding data on individuals, properties, phone numbers, businesses and addresses. Search for any American’s name in Google and the chances are excellent that a listing for them at Radaris.com will show up prominently in the results.
Radaris reports typically bundle a substantial amount of data scraped from public and court documents, including any current or previous addresses and phone numbers, known email addresses and registered domain names. The reports also list address and phone records for the target’s known relatives and associates. Such information could be useful if you were trying to determine the maiden name of someone’s mother, or successfully answer a range of other knowledge-based authentication questions.
Currently, consumer reports advertised for sale at Radaris.com are being fulfilled by a different people-search company called TruthFinder. But Radaris also operates a number of other people-search properties — like Centeda.com — that sell consumer reports directly and behave almost identically to TruthFinder: That is, reel the visitor in with promises of detailed background reports on people, and then charge a $34.99 monthly subscription fee just to view the results.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) assigns Radaris a rating of “F” for consistently ignoring consumers seeking to have their information removed from Radaris’ various online properties. Of the 159 complaints detailed there in the last year, several were from people who had used third-party identity protection services to have their information removed from Radaris, only to receive a notice a few months later that their Radaris record had been restored.
What’s more, Radaris’ automated process for requesting the removal of your information requires signing up for an account, potentially providing more information about yourself that the company didn’t already have (see screenshot above).
Radaris has not responded to requests for comment.
Radaris, TruthFinder and others like them all force users to agree that their reports will not be used to evaluate someone’s eligibility for credit, or a new apartment or job. This language is so prominent in people-search reports because selling reports for those purposes would classify these firms as consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) and expose them to regulations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
These data brokers do not want to be treated as CRAs, and for this reason their people search reports typically do not include detailed credit histories, financial information, or full Social Security Numbers (Radaris reports include the first six digits of one’s SSN).
But in September 2023, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission found that TruthFinder and another people-search service Instant Checkmate were trying to have it both ways. The FTC levied a $5.8 million penalty against the companies for allegedly acting as CRAs because they assembled and compiled information on consumers into background reports that were marketed and sold for employment and tenant screening purposes.
An excerpt from the FTC’s complaint against TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate.
The FTC also found TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate deceived users about background report accuracy. The FTC alleges these companies made millions from their monthly subscriptions using push notifications and marketing emails that claimed that the subject of a background report had a criminal or arrest record, when the record was merely a traffic ticket.
“All the while, the companies touted the accuracy of their reports in online ads and other promotional materials, claiming that their reports contain “the MOST ACCURATE information available to the public,” the FTC noted. The FTC says, however, that all the information used in their background reports is obtained from third parties that expressly disclaim that the information is accurate, and that TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate take no steps to verify the accuracy of the information.
The FTC said both companies deceived customers by providing “Remove” and “Flag as Inaccurate” buttons that did not work as advertised. Rather, the “Remove” button removed the disputed information only from the report as displayed to that customer; however, the same item of information remained visible to other customers who searched for the same person.
The FTC also said that when a customer flagged an item in the background report as inaccurate, the companies never took any steps to investigate those claims, to modify the reports, or to flag to other customers that the information had been disputed.
According to Radaris’ profile at the investor website Pitchbook.com, the company’s founder and “co-chief executive officer” is a Massachusetts resident named Gary Norden, also known as Gary Nard.
An analysis of email addresses known to have been used by Mr. Norden shows he is a native Russian man whose real name is Igor Lybarsky (also spelled Lubarsky). Igor’s brother Dmitry, who goes by “Dan,” appears to be the other co-CEO of Radaris. Dmitry Lybarsky’s Facebook/Meta account says he was born in March 1963.
The Lybarsky brothers Dmitry or “Dan” (left) and Igor a.k.a. “Gary,” in an undated photo.
Indirectly or directly, the Lybarskys own multiple properties in both Sherborn and Wellesley, Mass. However, the Radaris website is operated by an offshore entity called Bitseller Expert Ltd, which is incorporated in Cyprus. Neither Lybarsky brother responded to requests for comment.
A review of the domain names registered by Gary Norden shows that beginning in the early 2000s, he and Dan built an e-commerce empire by marketing prepaid calling cards and VOIP services to Russian expatriates who are living in the United States and seeking an affordable way to stay in touch with loved ones back home.
A Sherborn, Mass. property owned by Barsky Real Estate Trust and Dmitry Lybarsky.
In 2012, the main company in charge of providing those calling services — Wellesley Hills, Mass-based Unipoint Technology Inc. — was fined $179,000 by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which said Unipoint never applied for a license to provide international telecommunications services.
DomainTools.com shows the email address gnard@unipointtech.com is tied to 137 domains, including radaris.com. DomainTools also shows that the email addresses used by Gary Norden for more than two decades — epop@comby.com, gary@barksy.com and gary1@eprofit.com, among others — appear in WHOIS registration records for an entire fleet of people-search websites, including: centeda.com, virtory.com, clubset.com, kworld.com, newenglandfacts.com, and pub360.com.
Still more people-search platforms tied to Gary Norden– like publicreports.com and arrestfacts.com — currently funnel interested customers to third-party search companies, such as TruthFinder and PersonTrust.com.
The email addresses used by Gary Nard/Gary Norden are also connected to a slew of data broker websites that sell reports on businesses, real estate holdings, and professionals, including bizstanding.com, homemetry.com, trustoria.com, homeflock.com, rehold.com, difive.com and projectlab.com.
Domain records indicate that Gary and Dan for many years operated a now-defunct pay-per-click affiliate advertising network called affiliate.ru. That entity used domain name servers tied to the aforementioned domains comby.com and eprofit.com, as did radaris.ru.
A machine-translated version of Affiliate.ru, a Russian-language site that advertised hundreds of money making affiliate programs, including the Comfi.com prepaid calling card affiliate.
Comby.com used to be a Russian language social media network that looked a great deal like Facebook. The domain now forwards visitors to Privet.ru (“hello” in Russian), a dating site that claims to have 5 million users. Privet.ru says it belongs to a company called Dating Factory, which lists offices in Switzerland. Privet.ru uses the Gary Norden domain eprofit.com for its domain name servers.
Dating Factory’s website says it sells “powerful dating technology” to help customers create unique or niche dating websites. A review of the sample images available on the Dating Factory homepage suggests the term “dating” in this context refers to adult websites. Dating Factory also operates a community called FacebookOfSex, as well as the domain analslappers.com.
Email addresses for the Comby and Eprofit domains indicate Gary Norden operates an entity in Wellesley Hills, Mass. called RussianAmerican Holding Inc. (russianamerica.com). This organization is listed as the owner of the domain newyork.ru, which is a site dedicated to orienting newcomers from Russia to the Big Apple.
Newyork.ru’s terms of service refer to an international calling card company called ComFi Inc. (comfi.com) and list an address as PO Box 81362 Wellesley Hills, Ma. Other sites that include this address are russianamerica.com, russianboston.com, russianchicago.com, russianla.com, russiansanfran.com, russianmiami.com, russiancleveland.com and russianseattle.com (currently offline).
ComFi is tied to Comfibook.com, which was a search aggregator website that collected and published data from many online and offline sources, including phone directories, social networks, online photo albums, and public records.
The current website for russianamerica.com. Note the ad in the bottom left corner of this image for Channel One, a Russian state-owned media firm that is currently sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Many of the U.S. city-specific online properties apparently tied to Gary Norden include phone numbers on their contact pages for a pair of Russian media and advertising firms based in southern California. The phone number 323-874-8211 appears on the websites russianla.com, russiasanfran.com, and rosconcert.com, which sells tickets to theater events performed in Russian.
Historic domain registration records from DomainTools show rosconcert.com was registered in 2003 to Unipoint Technologies — the same company fined by the FCC for not having a license. Rosconcert.com also lists the phone number 818-377-2101.
A phone number just a few digits away — 323-874-8205 — appears as a point of contact on newyork.ru, russianmiami.com, russiancleveland.com, and russianchicago.com. A search in Google shows this 82xx number range — and the 818-377-2101 number — belong to two different entities at the same UPS Store mailbox in Tarzana, Calif: American Russian Media Inc. (armediacorp.com), and Lamedia.biz.
Armediacorp.com is the home of FACT Magazine, a glossy Russian-language publication put out jointly by the American-Russian Business Council, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Lamedia.biz says it is an international media organization with more than 25 years of experience within the Russian-speaking community on the West Coast. The site advertises FACT Magazine and the Russian state-owned media outlet Channel One. Clicking the Channel One link on the homepage shows Lamedia.biz offers to submit advertising spots that can be shown to Channel One viewers. The price for a basic ad is listed at $500.
In May 2022, the U.S. government levied financial sanctions against Channel One that bar US companies or citizens from doing business with the company.
The website of lamedia.biz offers to sell advertising on two Russian state-owned media firms currently sanctioned by the U.S. government.
In 2014, a group of people sued Radaris in a class-action lawsuit claiming the company’s practices violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Court records indicate the defendants never showed up in court to dispute the claims, and as a result the judge eventually awarded the plaintiffs a default judgement and ordered the company to pay $7.5 million.
But the plaintiffs in that civil case had a difficult time collecting on the court’s ruling. In response, the court ordered the radaris.com domain name (~9.4M monthly visitors) to be handed over to the plaintiffs.
However, in 2018 Radaris was able to reclaim their domain on a technicality. Attorneys for the company argued that their clients were never named as defendants in the original lawsuit, and so their domain could not legally be taken away from them in a civil judgment.
“Because our clients were never named as parties to the litigation, and were never served in the litigation, the taking of their property without due process is a violation of their rights,” Radaris’ attorneys argued.
In October 2023, an Illinois resident filed a class-action lawsuit against Radaris for allegedly using people’s names for commercial purposes, in violation of the Illinois Right of Publicity Act.
On Feb. 8, 2024, a company called Atlas Data Privacy Corp. sued Radaris LLC for allegedly violating “Daniel’s Law,” a statute that allows New Jersey law enforcement, government personnel, judges and their families to have their information completely removed from people-search services and commercial data brokers. Atlas has filed at least 140 similar Daniel’s Law complaints against data brokers recently.
Daniel’s Law was enacted in response to the death of 20-year-old Daniel Anderl, who was killed in a violent attack targeting a federal judge (his mother). In July 2020, a disgruntled attorney who had appeared before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas disguised himself as a Fedex driver, went to her home and shot and killed her son (the judge was unharmed and the assailant killed himself).
Earlier this month, The Record reported on Atlas Data Privacy’s lawsuit against LexisNexis Risk Data Management, in which the plaintiffs representing thousands of law enforcement personnel in New Jersey alleged that after they asked for their information to remain private, the data broker retaliated against them by freezing their credit and falsely reporting them as identity theft victims.
Another data broker sued by Atlas Data Privacy — pogodata.com — announced on Mar. 1 that it was likely shutting down because of the lawsuit.
“The matter is far from resolved but your response motivates us to try to bring back most of the names while preserving redaction of the 17,000 or so clients of the redaction company,” the company wrote. “While little consolation, we are not alone in the suit – the privacy company sued 140 property-data sites at the same time as PogoData.”
Atlas says their goal is convince more states to pass similar laws, and to extend those protections to other groups such as teachers, healthcare personnel and social workers. Meanwhile, media law experts say they’re concerned that enacting Daniel’s Law in other states would limit the ability of journalists to hold public officials accountable, and allow authorities to pursue criminals charges against media outlets that publish the same type of public and governments records that fuel the people-search industry.
There are some pending changes to the US legal and regulatory landscape that could soon reshape large swaths of the data broker industry. But experts say it is unlikely that any of these changes will affect people-search companies like Radaris.
On Feb. 28, 2024, the White House issued an executive order that directs the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to create regulations that would prevent data brokers from selling or transferring abroad certain data types deemed too sensitive, including genomic and biometric data, geolocation and financial data, as well as other as-yet unspecified personal identifiers. The DOJ this week published a list of more than 100 questions it is seeking answers to regarding the data broker industry.
In August 2023, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced it was undertaking new rulemaking related to data brokers.
Justin Sherman, an adjunct professor at Duke University, said neither the CFPB nor White House rulemaking will likely address people-search brokers because these companies typically get their information by scouring federal, state and local government records. Those government files include voting registries, property filings, marriage certificates, motor vehicle records, criminal records, court documents, death records, professional licenses, bankruptcy filings, and more.
“These dossiers contain everything from individuals’ names, addresses, and family information to data about finances, criminal justice system history, and home and vehicle purchases,” Sherman wrote in an October 2023 article for Lawfare. “People search websites’ business pitch boils down to the fact that they have done the work of compiling data, digitizing it, and linking it to specific people so that it can be searched online.”
Sherman said while there are ongoing debates about whether people search data brokers have legal responsibilities to the people about whom they gather and sell data, the sources of this information — public records — are completely carved out from every single state consumer privacy law.
“Consumer privacy laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia all contain highly similar or completely identical carve-outs for ‘publicly available information’ or government records,” Sherman wrote. “Tennessee’s consumer data privacy law, for example, stipulates that “personal information,” a cornerstone of the legislation, does not include ‘publicly available information,’ defined as:
“…information that is lawfully made available through federal, state, or local government records, or information that a business has a reasonable basis to believe is lawfully made available to the general public through widely distributed media, by the consumer, or by a person to whom the consumer has disclosed the information, unless the consumer has restricted the information to a specific audience.”
Sherman said this is the same language as the carve-out in the California privacy regime, which is often held up as the national leader in state privacy regulations. He said with a limited set of exceptions for survivors of stalking and domestic violence, even under California’s newly passed Delete Act — which creates a centralized mechanism for consumers to ask some third-party data brokers to delete their information — consumers across the board cannot exercise these rights when it comes to data scraped from property filings, marriage certificates, and public court documents, for example.
“With some very narrow exceptions, it’s either extremely difficult or impossible to compel these companies to remove your information from their sites,” Sherman told KrebsOnSecurity. “Even in states like California, every single consumer privacy law in the country completely exempts publicly available information.”
Below is a mind map that helped KrebsOnSecurity track relationships between and among the various organizations named in the story above:
A mind map of various entities apparently tied to Radaris and the company’s co-founders. Click to enlarge.
Related tags
There are indications that U.S. healthcare giant Change Healthcare has made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous BlackCat ransomware group (a.k.a. “ALPHV“) as the company struggles to bring services back online amid a cyberattack that has disrupted prescription drug services nationwide for weeks. However, the cybercriminal who claims to have given BlackCat access to Change’s network says the crime gang cheated them out of their share of the ransom, and that they still have the sensitive data Change reportedly paid the group to destroy. Meanwhile, the affiliate’s disclosure appears to have prompted BlackCat to cease operations entirely.
Image: Varonis.
In the third week of February, a cyber intrusion at Change Healthcare began shutting down important healthcare services as company systems were taken offline. It soon emerged that BlackCat was behind the attack, which has disrupted the delivery of prescription drugs for hospitals and pharmacies nationwide for nearly two weeks.
On March 1, a cryptocurrency address that security researchers had already mapped to BlackCat received a single transaction worth approximately $22 million. On March 3, a BlackCat affiliate posted a complaint to the exclusive Russian-language ransomware forum Ramp saying that Change Healthcare had paid a $22 million ransom for a decryption key, and to prevent four terabytes of stolen data from being published online.
The affiliate claimed BlackCat/ALPHV took the $22 million payment but never paid him his percentage of the ransom. BlackCat is known as a “ransomware-as-service” collective, meaning they rely on freelancers or affiliates to infect new networks with their ransomware. And those affiliates in turn earn commissions ranging from 60 to 90 percent of any ransom amount paid.
“But after receiving the payment ALPHV team decide to suspend our account and keep lying and delaying when we contacted ALPHV admin,” the affiliate “Notchy” wrote. “Sadly for Change Healthcare, their data [is] still with us.”
Change Healthcare has neither confirmed nor denied paying, and has responded to multiple media outlets with a similar non-denial statement — that the company is focused on its investigation and on restoring services.
Assuming Change Healthcare did pay to keep their data from being published, that strategy seems to have gone awry: Notchy said the list of affected Change Healthcare partners they’d stolen sensitive data from included Medicare and a host of other major insurance and pharmacy networks.
On the bright side, Notchy’s complaint seems to have been the final nail in the coffin for the BlackCat ransomware group, which was infiltrated by the FBI and foreign law enforcement partners in late December 2023. As part of that action, the government seized the BlackCat website and released a decryption tool to help victims recover their systems.
BlackCat responded by re-forming, and increasing affiliate commissions to as much as 90 percent. The ransomware group also declared it was formally removing any restrictions or discouragement against targeting hospitals and healthcare providers.
However, instead of responding that they would compensate and placate Notchy, a representative for BlackCat said today the group was shutting down and that it had already found a buyer for its ransomware source code.
The seizure notice now displayed on the BlackCat darknet website.
“There’s no sense in making excuses,” wrote the RAMP member “Ransom.” “Yes, we knew about the problem, and we were trying to solve it. We told the affiliate to wait. We could send you our private chat logs where we are shocked by everything that’s happening and are trying to solve the issue with the transactions by using a higher fee, but there’s no sense in doing that because we decided to fully close the project. We can officially state that we got screwed by the feds.”
BlackCat’s website now features a seizure notice from the FBI, but several researchers noted that this image seems to have been merely cut and pasted from the notice the FBI left in its December raid of BlackCat’s network. The FBI has not responded to requests for comment.
Fabian Wosar, head of ransomware research at the security firm Emsisoft, said it appears BlackCat leaders are trying to pull an “exit scam” on affiliates by withholding many ransomware payment commissions at once and shutting down the service.
“ALPHV/BlackCat did not get seized,” Wosar wrote on Twitter/X today. “They are exit scamming their affiliates. It is blatantly obvious when you check the source code of their new takedown notice.”
Dmitry Smilyanets, a researcher for the security firm Recorded Future, said BlackCat’s exit scam was especially dangerous because the affiliate still has all the stolen data, and could still demand additional payment or leak the information on his own.
“The affiliates still have this data, and they’re mad they didn’t receive this money, Smilyanets told Wired.com. “It’s a good lesson for everyone. You cannot trust criminals; their word is worth nothing.”
BlackCat’s apparent demise comes closely on the heels of the implosion of another major ransomware group — LockBit, a ransomware gang estimated to have extorted over $120 million in payments from more than 2,000 victims worldwide. On Feb. 20, LockBit’s website was seized by the FBI and the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) following a months-long infiltration of the group.
LockBit also tried to restore its reputation on the cybercrime forums by resurrecting itself at a new darknet website, and by threatening to release data from a number of major companies that were hacked by the group in the weeks and days prior to the FBI takedown.
But LockBit appears to have since lost any credibility the group may have once had. After a much-promoted attack on the government of Fulton County, Ga., for example, LockBit threatened to release Fulton County’s data unless paid a ransom by Feb. 29. But when Feb. 29 rolled around, LockBit simply deleted the entry for Fulton County from its site, along with those of several financial organizations that had previously been extorted by the group.
Fulton County held a press conference to say that it had not paid a ransom to LockBit, nor had anyone done so on their behalf, and that they were just as mystified as everyone else as to why LockBit never followed through on its threat to publish the county’s data. Experts told KrebsOnSecurity LockBit likely balked because it was bluffing, and that the FBI likely relieved them of that data in their raid.
Smilyanets’ comments are driven home in revelations first published last month by Recorded Future, which quoted an NCA official as saying LockBit never deleted the data after being paid a ransom, even though that is the only reason many of its victims paid.
“If we do not give you decrypters, or we do not delete your data after payment, then nobody will pay us in the future,” LockBit’s extortion notes typically read.
Hopefully, more companies are starting to get the memo that paying cybercrooks to delete stolen data is a losing proposition all around.
Today, the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report was released by DNIB.com, showing the fourth quarter of 2023 closed with 359.8 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 0.6 million domain name registrations, or 0.2%, compared to the third quarter of 2023. Domain name registrations also increased by 8.9 million, or 2.5%, year over year.
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report to see domain name stats from the fourth quarter of 2023, including:
DNIB.com and The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report are sponsored by Verisign. To see past issues of the quarterly report, interactive dashboards and learn about DNIB.com’s statistical methodology, please visit DNIB.com.
The post Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report: DNIB.com Announces 359.8 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Fourth Quarter of 2023 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Today, the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report was released by DNIB.com, showing the third quarter of 2023 closed with 359.3 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 2.7 million domain name registrations, or 0.8%, compared to the second quarter of 2023. Domain name registrations also increased by 8.5 million, or 2.4%, year over year.
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report to see domain name stats from the third quarter of 2023, including:
DNIB.com and The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report are sponsored by Verisign. To see past issues of the quarterly report, interactive dashboards, and learn about DNIB.com’s statistical methodology, please visit DNIB.com.
The post Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report: DNIB.com Announces 359.3 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Third Quarter of 2023 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Amir Golestan, the 40-year-old CEO of the Charleston, S.C. based technology company Micfo LLC, has been sentenced to five years in prison for wire fraud. Golestan’s sentencing comes nearly two years after he pleaded guilty to using an elaborate network of phony companies to secure more than 735,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the nonprofit which oversees IP addresses assigned to entities in the U.S., Canada, and parts of the Caribbean.
Amir Golestan, the former CEO of Micfo.
In 2018, ARIN sued Golestan and Micfo, alleging they had obtained hundreds of thousands of IP addresses under false pretenses. ARIN and Micfo settled that dispute in arbitration, with Micfo returning most of the addresses that it hadn’t already sold.
ARIN’s civil case caught the attention of federal prosecutors in South Carolina, who in May 2019 filed criminal wire fraud charges against Golestan, alleging he’d orchestrated a network of shell companies and fake identities to prevent ARIN from knowing the addresses were all going to the same buyer.
Prosecutors showed that each of those shell companies involved the production of notarized affidavits in the names of people who didn’t exist. As a result, the government was able to charge Golestan with 20 counts of wire fraud — one for each payment made by the phony companies that bought the IP addresses from ARIN.
Golestan initially sought to fight those charges. But on just the second day of his trial in November 2021, Golestan changed his mind and pleaded guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud in connection with the phantom companies he used to secure the IP addresses. Prosecutors estimated those addresses were valued at between $10 million and $14 million.
ARIN says the 5-year sentence handed down by the South Carolina judge “sends an important message of deterrence to other parties contemplating fraudulent schemes to obtain or transfer Internet resources.”
“Those who seek to defraud ARIN (or other Regional Internet Registries) are subject to costly and serious civil litigation, criminal charges, and, ultimately, a lengthy term of incarceration,” reads a statement from ARIN on Golestan’s sentencing.
By 2013, a number of Micfo’s customers had landed on the radar of Spamhaus, a group that many network operators rely upon to stem the tide of junk email. Shortly after Spamhaus started blocking Micfo’s IP address ranges, Micfo shifted gears and began reselling IP addresses mainly to companies marketing “virtual private networking” or VPN services that help customers hide their real IP addresses online.
Golestan did not respond to a request for comment. But in a 2020 interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Golestan claimed that Micfo was at one point responsible for brokering roughly 40 percent of the IP addresses used by the world’s largest VPN providers. Throughout that conversation, Golestan maintained his innocence, even as he explained that the creation of the phony companies was necessary to prevent entities like Spamhaus from interfering with his business going forward.
There are fewer than four billion so-called “Internet Protocol version 4” or IPv4 addresses available for use, but the vast majority of them have already been allocated. The global dearth of available IP addresses has turned them into a commodity wherein each IPv4 address can fetch between $15-$25 on the open market.
This has led to boom times for those engaged in the acquisition and sale of IP address blocks, but it has likewise emboldened those who specialize in absconding with and spamming from dormant IP address blocks without permission from the rightful owners.
The U.S Department of Justice says Golestan will serve 60 months in prison, followed by a 2-year term of court-ordered supervision. The Micfo CEO also was ordered to pay nearly $77,000 in restitution to ARIN for its work in assisting federal prosecutors.
Today, the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report was released by DNIB.com, showing the second quarter of 2023 closed with 356.6 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 1.7 million domain name registrations, or 0.5%, compared to the first quarter of 2023. Domain name registrations also increased by 4.3 million, or 1.2%, year over year.
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report to see domain name stats from the second quarter of 2023, including:
With the launch of the DNIB.com dashboards, 16 additional TLDs have been included in applicable calculations. The applicable current and historical data presented in this edition of the quarterly report have been adjusted accordingly, and applicable quarterly and year-over-year trends have been calculated using those adjusted figures. More information is available at DNIB.com.
DNIB.com and the Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report are sponsored by Verisign. To see past issues of the quarterly report, interactive dashboards, and learn about DNIB.com’s statistical methodology, please visit DNIB.com.
The post Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report: DNIB.com announces 356.6 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Second Quarter of 2023 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Nikita Kislitsin, formerly the head of network security for one of Russia’s top cybersecurity firms, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan in response to 10-year-old hacking charges from the U.S. Department of Justice. Experts say Kislitsin’s prosecution could soon put the Kazakhstan government in a sticky diplomatic position, as the Kremlin is already signaling that it intends to block his extradition to the United States.
Nikita Kislitsin, at a security conference in Russia.
Kislitsin is accused of hacking into the now-defunct social networking site Formspring in 2012, and conspiring with another Russian man convicted of stealing tens of millions of usernames and passwords from LinkedIn and Dropbox that same year.
In March 2020, the DOJ unsealed two criminal hacking indictments against Kislitsin, who was then head of security at Group-IB, a cybersecurity company that was founded in Russia in 2003 and operated there for more than a decade before relocating to Singapore.
Prosecutors in Northern California indicted Kislitsin in 2014 for his alleged role in stealing account data from Formspring. Kislitsin also was indicted in Nevada in 2013, but the Nevada indictment does not name his alleged victim(s) in that case.
However, documents unsealed in the California case indicate Kislitsin allegedly conspired with Yevgeniy Nikulin, a Russian man convicted in 2020 of stealing 117 million usernames and passwords from Dropbox, Formspring and LinkedIn in 2012. Nikulin is currently serving a seven-year sentence in the U.S. prison system.
As first reported by Cyberscoop in 2020, a trial brief in the California investigation identified Nikulin, Kislitsin and two alleged cybercriminals — Oleg Tolstikh and Oleksandr Vitalyevich Ieremenko — as being present during a 2012 meeting at a Moscow hotel, where participants allegedly discussed starting an internet café business.
A 2010 indictment out of New Jersey accuses Ieremenko and six others with siphoning nonpublic information from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and public relations firms, and making $30 million in illegal stock trades based on the proprietary information they stole.
[The U.S. Secret Service has an outstanding $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Ieremenko (Александр Витальевич Еременко), who allegedly went by the hacker handles “Zl0m” and “Lamarez.”]
Kislitsin was hired by Group-IB in January 2013, nearly six months after the Formspring hack. Group-IB has since moved its headquarters to Singapore, and in April 2023 the company announced it had fully exited the Russian market.
In a statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity, Group-IB said Mr. Kislitsin is no longer an employee, and that he now works for a Russian organization called FACCT, which stands for “Fight Against Cybercrime Technologies.”
“Dmitry Volkov, co-founder and CEO, sold his stake in Group-IB’s Russia-based business to the company’s local management,” the statement reads. “The stand-alone business in Russia has been operating under the new brand FACCT ever since and will continue to operate as a separate company with no connection to Group-IB.”
FACCT says on its website that it is a “Russian developer of technologies for combating cybercrime,” and that it works with clients to fight targeted attacks, data leaks, fraud, phishing and brand abuse. In a statement published online, FACCT said Kislitsin is responsible for developing its network security business, and that he remains under temporary detention in Kazakhstan “to study the basis for extradition arrest at the request of the United States.”
“According to the information we have, the claims against Kislitsin are not related to his work at FACCT, but are related to a case more than 10 years ago when Nikita worked as a journalist and independent researcher,” FACCT wrote.
From 2006 to 2012, Kislitsin was editor-in-chief of “Hacker,” a popular Russian-language monthly magazine that includes articles on information and network security, programming, and frequently features interviews with and articles penned by notable or wanted Russian hackers.
“We are convinced that there are no legal grounds for detention on the territory of Kazakhstan,” the FACCT statement continued. “The company has hired lawyers who have been providing Nikita with all the necessary assistance since last week, and we have also sent an appeal to the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Kazakhstan to assist in protecting our employee.”
FACCT indicated that the Kremlin has already intervened in the case, and the Russian government claims Kislitsin is wanted on criminal charges in Russia and must instead be repatriated to his homeland.
“The FACCT emphasizes that the announcement of Nikita Kislitsin on the wanted list in the territory of the Russian Federation became known only today, June 28, 6 days after the arrest in Kazakhstan,” FACCT wrote. “The company is monitoring developments.”
The Kremlin followed a similar playbook in the case of Aleksei Burkov, a cybercriminal who long operated two of Russia’s most exclusive underground hacking forums. Burkov was arrested in 2015 by Israeli authorities, and the Russian government fought Burkov’s extradition to the U.S. for four years — even arresting and jailing an Israeli woman on phony drug charges to force a prisoner swap.
That effort ultimately failed: Burkov was sent to America, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Alexei Burkov, seated second from right, attends a hearing in Jerusalem in 2015. Image: Andrei Shirokov / Tass via Getty Images.
Arkady Bukh is a U.S. attorney who has represented dozens of accused hackers from Russia and Eastern Europe who were extradited to the United States over the years. Bukh said Moscow is likely to turn the Kislitsin case into a diplomatic time bomb for Kazakhstan, which shares an enormous border and a great deal of cultural ties with Russia. A 2009 census found that Russians make up about 24 percent of the population of Kazakhstan.
“That would put Kazakhstan at a crossroads to choose between unity with Russia or going with the West,” Bukh said. “If that happens, Kazakhstan may have to make some very unpleasant decisions.”
Group-IB’s exodus from Russia comes as its former founder and CEO Ilya Sachkov remains languishing in a Russian prison, awaiting a farcical trial and an inevitable conviction on charges of treason. In September 2021, the Kremlin issued treason charges against Sachkov, although it has so far refused to disclose any details about the allegations.
Sachkov’s pending treason trial has been the subject of much speculation among denizens of Russian cybercrime forums, and the consensus seems to be that Sachkov and Group-IB were seen as a little too helpful to the DOJ in its various investigations involving top Russian hackers.
Indeed, since its inception in 2003, Group-IB’s researchers have helped to identify, disrupt and even catch a number of high-profile Russian hackers, most of whom got busted after years of criminal hacking because they made the unforgivable mistake of stealing from their own citizens.
When the indictments against Kislitsin were unsealed in 2020, Group-IB issued a lengthy statement attesting to his character and saying they would help him with his legal defense. As part of that statement, Group-IB noted that “representatives of the Group-IB company and, in particular, Kislitsin, in 2013, on their own initiative, met with employees of the US Department of Justice to inform them about the research work related to the underground, which was carried out by Kislitsin in 2012.”
Verisign today announced the launch of DNIB.com, the new Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB) website.
Sponsored by Verisign, DNIB.com is a source for insights and analysis from subject-matter experts on key topics relevant to the global Domain Name System (DNS). DNIB.com will offer insight on policy, governance, technology, security, and business trends relevant to analysts, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and anyone with an interest in the DNS. The website features a collection of new, searchable, and interactive dashboards tracking relevant DNS data and trends, that is designed to be a valuable day-to-day resource for industry stakeholders, and anyone interested in learning more about global domain name operations.
DNIB.com is also the new home of the DNIB quarterly report, which Verisign has published for more than a decade, providing a trusted and valued resource for stakeholders across the globe seeking to understand the dynamism and trends of the domain name industry.
The report will be published each quarter at DNIB.com, summarizing the state of the domain name industry through a variety of statistical and analytical research. The new and expanded DNIB.com dashboards take that statistical data to the next level, enabling exploration of trend data across the industry, providing additional history and depth, and offering expert insights and commentary.
The post Announcing the Launch of DNIB.com, a New Source for DNS News, Information, Research, and Analysis appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the first quarter of 2023 closed with 354.0 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 3.5 million domain name registrations, or 1.0%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2022.1,2 Domain name registrations also increased by 3.5 million, or 1.0%, year over year.1,2
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief to see domain name stats from the first quarter of 2023, including:
This issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief includes a correction to the March 2023 issue, which incorrectly reported the number of domain name registrations in the .eu ccTLD.2 This was the result of a one-time error in the .eu domain name registration data, provided by ZookNIC, which has since been resolved.
To see past issues of The Domain Name Industry Brief, please visit https://verisign.com/dnibarchives.
The post Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief: 354.0 Million Domain Name Registrations in the First Quarter of 2023 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
The U.S. government this week put a $10 million bounty on a Russian man who for the past 18 years operated Try2Check, one of the cybercrime underground’s most trusted services for checking the validity of stolen credit card data. U.S. authorities say 43-year-old Denis Kulkov‘s card-checking service made him at least $18 million, which he used to buy a Ferrari, Land Rover, and other luxury items.
Denis Kulkov, a.k.a. “Nordex,” in his Ferrari. Image: USDOJ.
Launched in 2005, Try2Check soon was processing more than a million card-checking transactions per month — charging 20 cents per transaction. Cybercriminals turned to services like this after purchasing stolen credit card data from an underground shop, with an eye toward minimizing the number of cards that are inactive by the time they are put to criminal use.
Try2Check was so reliable that it eventually became the official card-checking service for some of the underground’s most bustling crime bazaars, including Vault Market, Unicc, and Joker’s Stash. Customers of these carding shops who chose to use the shop’s built-in (but a-la-carte) card checking service from Try2Check could expect automatic refunds on any cards that were found to be inactive or canceled at the time of purchase.
Many established stolen card shops will allow customers to request refunds on dead cards based on official reports from trusted third-party checking services. But in general, the bigger shops have steered customers toward using their own white-labeled version of the Try2Check service — primarily to help minimize disputes over canceled cards.
On Wednesday, May 3, Try2Check’s websites were replaced with a domain seizure notice from the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Justice, as prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unsealed an indictment and search warrant naming Denis Gennadievich Kulkov of Samara, Russia as the proprietor.
Try2Check’s login pages have been replaced with a seizure notice from U.S. law enforcement.
At the same time, the U.S. Department of State issued a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Kulkov. In November 2021, the State Department began offering up to to $10 million for the name or location of any key leaders of REvil, a major Russian ransomware gang.
As noted in the Secret Service’s criminal complaint (PDF), the Try2Check service was first advertised on the closely-guarded Russian cybercrime forum Mazafaka, by someone using the handle “KreenJo.” That handle used the same ICQ instant messenger account number (555724) as a Mazafaka denizen named “Nordex.”
In February 2005, Nordex posted to Mazafaka that he was in the market for hacked bank accounts, and offered 50 percent of the take. He asked interested partners to contact him at the ICQ number 228427661 or at the email address polkas@bk.ru. As the government noted in its search warrant, Nordex exchanged messages with forum users at the time identifying himself as a then-24-year-old “Denis” from Samara, RU.
In 2017, U.S. law enforcement seized the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, and the Secret Service said those records show that a Denis Kulkov from Samara supplied the username “Nordexin,” email address nordexin@ya.ru, and an address in Samara.
Investigators had already found Instagram accounts where Kulkov posted pictures of his Ferrari and his family. Authorities were able to identify that Kulkov had an iCloud account tied to the address nordexin@icloud.com, and upon subpoenaing that found passport photos of Kulkov, and well as more photos of his family and pricey cars.
Like many other top cybercriminals based in Russia or in countries with favorable relations to the Kremlin, the proprietor of Try2Check was not particularly difficult to link to a real-life identity. In Kulkov’s case, it no doubt was critical to U.S. investigators that they had access to a wealth of personal information tied to a cryptocurrency exchange Kulkov had used.
However, the link between Kulkov and Try2Check can be made — ironically — based on records that have been plundered by hackers and published online over the years — including Russian email services, Russian government records, and hacked cybercrime forums.
Kulkov posing with his passport, in a photo authorities obtained by subpoenaing his iCloud account.
According to cybersecurity firm Constella Intelligence, the address polkas@bk.ru was used to register an account with the username “Nordex” at bankir[.]com, a now defunct news website that was almost standard reading for Russian speakers interested in news about various Russian financial markets.
Nordex appears to have been a finance nerd. In his early days on the forums, Nordex posted several long threads on his views about the Russian stock market and mutual fund investments.
That Bankir account was registered from the Internet address 193.27.237.66 in Samara, Russia, and included Nordex’s date of birth as April 8, 1980, as well as their ICQ number (228427661).
Cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 found that Internet address also was used to register the account “Nordex” on the Russian hacking forum Exploit back in 2006.
Constella tracked another Bankir[.]com account created from that same Internet address under the username “Polkas.” This account had the same date of birth as Nordex, but a different email address: nordia@yandex.ru. This and other “nordia@” emails shared a password: “anna59.”
Nordia@yandex.ru shares several passwords with nordia@list.ru, which Constella says was used to create an account at a religious website for an Anna Kulikova from Samara. At the Russian home furnishing store Westwing.ru, Ms. Kulikova listed her full name as Anna Vnrhoturkina Kulikova, and her address as 29 Kommunistrecheskya St., Apt. 110.
A search on that address in Constella brings up a record for an Anna Denis Vnrhoturkina Kulkov, and the phone number 879608229389.
Russian vehicle registration records have also been hacked and leaked online over the years. Those records show that Anna’s Apt 110 address is tied to a Denis Gennadyvich Kulkov, born April 8, 1980.
The vehicle Kolkov registered in 2015 at that address was a 2010 Ferrari Italia, with the license plate number K022YB190. The phone number associated with this record — 79608229389 — is exactly like Anna’s, only minus the (mis?)leading “8”. That number also is tied to a now-defunct Facebook account, and to the email addresses nordexin@ya.ru and nordexin@icloud.com.
Kulkov’s Ferrari has been photographed numerous times over the years by Russian car aficionados, including this one with the driver’s face redacted by the photographer:
The Ferrari owned by Denis Kulkov, spotted in Moscow in 2016. Image: Migalki.net.
As the title of this story suggests, the hard part for Western law enforcement isn’t identifying the Russian cybercriminals who are major players in the scene. Rather, it’s finding creative ways to capture high-value suspects if and when they do leave the protection that Russia generally extends to domestic cybercriminals within its borders who do not also harm Russian companies or consumers, or interfere with state interests.
But Russia’s war against Ukraine has caused major fault lines to appear in the cybercrime underground: Cybercriminal syndicates that previously straddled Russia and Ukraine with ease were forced to reevaluate many comrades who were suddenly working for The Other Side.
Many cybercriminals who operated with impunity from Russia and Ukraine prior to the war chose to flee those countries following the invasion, presenting international law enforcement agencies with rare opportunities to catch most-wanted cybercrooks. One of those was Mark Sokolovsky, a 26-year-old Ukrainian man who operated the popular “Raccoon” malware-as-a-service offering; Sokolovsky was apprehended in March 2022 after fleeing Ukraine’s mandatory military service orders.
Also nabbed on the lam last year was Vyacheslav “Tank” Penchukov, a senior Ukrainian member of a transnational cybercrime group that stole tens of millions of dollars over nearly a decade from countless hacked businesses. Penchukov was arrested after leaving Ukraine to meet up with his wife in Switzerland.
Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the fourth quarter of 2022 closed with 350.4 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 0.5 million domain name registrations, or 0.1%, compared to the third quarter of 2022.1,2 Domain name registrations have increased by 8.7 million, or 2.6%, year over year.1,2
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief to see domain name stats from the fourth quarter of 2022, including:
• Top 10 Largest TLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• Top 10 Largest ccTLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• ngTLDs as Percentage of Total TLDs
• Geographical ngTLDs as Percentage of Total Corresponding Geographical TLDs
To see past issues of The Domain Name Industry Brief, please visit https://verisign.com/dnibarchives.
The post Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief: 350.4 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Fourth Quarter of 2022 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the third quarter of 2022 closed with 349.9 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains, a decrease of 1.6 million domain name registrations, or 0.4%, compared to the second quarter of 2022.1,2 Domain name registrations have increased by 11.5 million, or 3.4%, year over year.1,2
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief to see domain name stats from the third quarter of 2022, including:
• Top 10 Largest TLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• Top 10 Largest ccTLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• ngTLDs as Percentage of Total TLDs
• Geographical ngTLDs as Percentage of Total Corresponding Geographical TLDs
To see past issues of The Domain Name Industry Brief, please visit verisign.com/dnibarchives.
The post Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief: 349.9 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Third Quarter of 2022 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
In December 2021, Google filed a civil lawsuit against two Russian men thought to be responsible for operating Glupteba, one of the Internet’s largest and oldest botnets. The defendants, who initially pursued a strategy of counter suing Google for interfering in their sprawling cybercrime business, later brazenly offered to dismantle the botnet in exchange for payment from Google. The judge in the case was not amused, found for the plaintiff, and ordered the defendants and their U.S. attorney to pay Google’s legal fees.
A slide from a talk given in Sept. 2022 by Google researcher Luca Nagy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gz6_I-wl0E&t=6s
Glupteba is a rootkit that steals passwords and other access credentials, disables security software, and tries to compromise other devices on the victim network — such as Internet routers and media storage servers — for use in relaying spam or other malicious traffic.
Collectively, the tens of thousands of systems infected with Glupteba on any given day feed into a number of major cybercriminal businesses: The botnet’s proprietors sell the credential data they steal, use the botnet to place disruptive ads on the infected computers, and mine cryptocurrencies. Glupteba also rents out infected systems as “proxies,” directing third-party traffic through the infected devices to disguise the origin of the traffic.
In June 2022, KrebsOnSecurity showed how the malware proxy services RSOCKS and AWMProxy were entirely dependent on the Glupteba botnet for fresh proxies, and that the founder of AWMProxy was Dmitry Starovikov — one of the Russian men named in Google’s lawsuit.
Google sued Starovikov and 15 other “John Doe” defendants, alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark and unfair competition law, and unjust enrichment.
In June, Google and the named defendants agreed that the case would proceed as a nonjury action because Google had withdrawn its claim for damages — seeking only injunctive relief to halt the operations of the botnet.
The defendants, who worked for a Russian firm called “Valtron” that was also named in the lawsuit, told Google that they were interested in settling. The defendants said they could potentially help Google by taking the botnet offline.
Another slide from Google researcher Luca Nagy’s September 2022 talk on Glupteba.
But the court expressed frustration that the defendants were unwilling to consent to a permanent injunction, and at the same time were unable to articulate why an injunction forbidding them from engaging in unlawful activities would pose a problem.
“The Defendants insisted that they were not engaged in criminal activity, and that any alleged activity in which they were engaged was legitimate,” U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote wrote. “Nevertheless, the Defendants resisted entry of a permanent injunction, asserting that Google’s use of the preliminary injunction had disrupted their normal business operations.”
While the defendants represented that they had the ability to dismantle the Glupteba botnet, when it came time for discovery — the stage in a lawsuit where both parties can compel the production of documents and other information pertinent to their case — the attorney for the defendants told the court his clients had been fired by Valtron in late 2021, and thus no longer had access to their work laptops or the botnet.
The lawyer for the defendants — New York-based cybercrime defense attorney Igor Litvak — told the court he first learned about his clients’ termination from Valtron on May 20, a fact Judge Cote said she found “troubling” given statements he made to the court after that date representing that his clients still had access to the botnet.
The court ultimately suspended the discovery process against Google, saying there was reason to believe the defendants sought discovery only “to learn whether they could circumvent the steps Google has taken to block the malware.”
On September 6, Litvak emailed Google that his clients were willing to discuss settlement.
“The parties held a call on September 8, at which Litvak explained that the Defendants would be willing to provide Google with the private keys for Bitcoin addresses associated with the Glupteba botnet, and that they would promise not to engage in their alleged criminal activity in the future (without any admission of wrongdoing),” the judge wrote.
“In exchange, the Defendants would receive Google’s agreement not to report them to law enforcement, and a payment of $1 million per defendant, plus $110,000 in attorney’s fees,” Judge Cote continued. “The Defendants stated that, although they do not currently have access to the private keys, Valtron would be willing to provide them with the private keys if the case were settled. The Defendants also stated that they believe these keys would help Google shut down the Glupteba botnet.”
Google rejected the defendants’ offer as extortionate, and reported it to law enforcement. Judge Cote also found Litvak was complicit in the defendants’ efforts to mislead the court, and ordered him to join his clients in paying Google’s legal fees.
“It is now clear that the Defendants appeared in this Court not to proceed in good faith to defend against Google’s claims but with the intent to abuse the court system and discovery rules to reap a profit from Google,” Judge Cote wrote.
Litvak has filed a motion to reconsider (PDF), asking the court to vacate the sanctions against him. He said his goal is to get the case back into court.
“The judge was completely wrong to issue sanctions,” Litvak said in an interview with KrebsOnSecurity. “From the beginning of the case, she acted as if she needed to protect Google from something. If the court does not decide to vacate the sanctions, we will have to go to the Second Circuit (Court of Appeals) and get justice there.”
In a statement on the court’s decision, Google said it will have significant ramifications for online crime, and that since its technical and legal attacks on the botnet last year, Google has observed a 78 percent reduction in the number of hosts infected by Glupteba.
“While Glupteba operators have resumed activity on some non-Google platforms and IoT devices, shining a legal spotlight on the group makes it less appealing for other criminal operations to work with them,” reads a blog post from Google’s General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado and vice president of engineering Royal Hansen. “And the steps [Google] took last year to disrupt their operations have already had significant impact.”
A report from the Polish computer emergency response team (CERT Orange Polksa) found Glupteba was the biggest malware threat in 2021.
Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the second quarter of 2022 closed with 351.5 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains, an increase of 1.0 million domain name registrations, or 0.3%, compared to the first quarter of 2022.1,2 Domain name registrations have increased by 10.4 million, or 3.0%, year over year.1,2
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief to see domain name stats from the second quarter of 2022, including:
• Top 10 Largest TLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• Top 10 Largest ccTLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• ngTLDs as Percentage of Total TLDs
• Geographical ngTLDs as Percentage of Total Corresponding Geographical TLDs
To see past issues of The Domain Name Industry Brief, please visit verisign.com/dnibarchives.
The post Verisign Q2 2022 Domain Name Industry Brief: 351.5 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Second Quarter of 2022 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the first quarter of 2022 closed with 350.5 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains, an increase of 8.8 million domain name registrations, or 2.6%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2021.1,2 Domain name registrations have increased by 13.2 million, or 3.9%, year over year.1,2
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief to see domain name stats from the first quarter of 2022, including:
• Top 10 Largest TLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• Top 10 Largest ccTLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• ngTLDs as Percentage of Total TLDs
• Geographical ngTLDs as Percentage of Total Corresponding Geographical TLDs
To see past issues of The Domain Name Industry Brief, please visit verisign.com/dnibarchives.
The post Verisign Q1 2022 Domain Name Industry Brief: 350.5 Million Domain Name Registrations in the First Quarter of 2022 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
On December 7, 2021, Google announced it was suing two Russian men allegedly responsible for operating the Glupteba botnet, a global malware menace that has infected millions of computers over the past decade. That same day, AWM Proxy — a 14-year-old anonymity service that rents hacked PCs to cybercriminals — suddenly went offline. Security experts had long seen a link between Glupteba and AWM Proxy, but new research shows AWM Proxy’s founder is one of the men being sued by Google.
AWMproxy, the storefront for renting access to infected PCs, circa 2011.
Launched in March 2008, AWM Proxy quickly became the largest service for crooks seeking to route their malicious Web traffic through compromised devices. In 2011, researchers at Kaspersky Lab showed that virtually all of the hacked systems for rent at AWM Proxy had been compromised by TDSS (a.k.a TDL-4 and Alureon), a stealthy “rootkit” that installs deep within infected PCs and loads even before the underlying Windows operating system boots up.
In March 2011, security researchers at ESET found TDSS was being used to deploy Glupteba, another rootkit that steals passwords and other access credentials, disables security software, and tries to compromise other devices on the victim’s network — such as Internet routers and media storage servers — for use in relaying spam or other malicious traffic.
A report from the Polish computer emergency response team (CERT Orange Polksa) found Glupteba was by far the biggest malware threat in 2021.
Like its predecessor TDSS, Glupteba is primarily distributed through “pay-per-install” or PPI networks, and via traffic purchased from traffic distribution systems (TDS). Pay-per-install networks try to match cybercriminals who already have access to large numbers of hacked PCs with other crooks seeking broader distribution of their malware.
In a typical PPI network, clients will submit their malware—a spambot or password-stealing Trojan, for example —to the service, which in turn charges per thousand successful installations, with the price depending on the requested geographic location of the desired victims. One of the most common ways PPI affiliates generate revenue is by secretly bundling the PPI network’s installer with pirated software titles that are widely available for download via the web or from file-sharing networks.
An example of a cracked software download site distributing Glupteba. Image: Google.com.
Over the past decade, both Glupteba and AWM Proxy have grown substantially. When KrebsOnSecurity first covered AWM Proxy in 2011, the service was selling access to roughly 24,000 infected PCs scattered across dozens of countries. Ten years later, AWM Proxy was offering 10 times that number of hacked systems on any given day, and Glupteba had grown to more than one million infected devices worldwide.
There is also ample evidence to suggest that Glupteba may have spawned Meris, a massive botnet of hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices that surfaced in September 2021 and was responsible for some of the largest and most disruptive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks the Internet has ever seen.
But on Dec. 7, 2021, Google announced it had taken technical measures to dismantle the Glupteba botnet, and filed a civil lawsuit (PDF) against two Russian men thought to be responsible for operating the vast crime machine. AWM Proxy’s online storefront disappeared that same day.
AWM Proxy quickly alerted its customers that the service had moved to a new domain, with all customer balances, passwords and purchase histories seamlessly ported over to the new home. However, subsequent takedowns targeting AWM Proxy’s domains and other infrastructure have conspired to keep the service on the ropes and frequently switching domains ever since.
Earlier this month, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. dismantled the “RSOCKS” botnet, a competing proxy service that had been in operation since 2014. KrebsOnSecurity has identified the owner of RSOCKS as a 35-year-old from Omsk, Russia who runs the world’s largest forum catering to spammers.
The employees who kept things running for RSOCKS, circa 2016.
Shortly after last week’s story on the RSOCKS founder, I heard from Riley Kilmer, co-founder of Spur.us, a startup that tracks criminal proxy services. Kilmer said RSOCKS was similarly disabled after Google’s combined legal sneak attack and technical takedown targeting Glupteba.
“The RSOCKS website gave you the estimated number of proxies in each of their subscription packages, and that number went down to zero on Dec. 7,” Kilmer said. “It’s not clear if that means the services were operated by the same people, or if they were just using the same sources (i.e., PPI programs) to generate new installations of their malware.”
Kilmer said each time his company tried to determine how many systems RSOCKS had for sale, they found each Internet address being sold by RSOCKS was also present in AWM Proxy’s network. In addition, Kilmer said, the application programming interfaces (APIs) used by both services to keep track of infected systems were virtually identical, once again suggesting strong collaboration.
“One hundred percent of the IPs we got back from RSOCKS we’d already identified in AWM,” Kilmer said. “And the IP port combinations they give you when you access an individual IP were the same as from AWM.”
In 2011, KrebsOnSecurity published an investigation that identified one of the founders of AWM Proxy, but Kilmer’s revelation prompted me to take a fresh look at the origins of this sprawling cybercriminal enterprise to determine if there were additional clues showing more concrete links between RSOCKS, AWM Proxy and Glupteba.
Supporting Kilmer’s theory that AWM Proxy and RSOCKS may simply be using the same PPI networks to spread, further research shows the RSOCKS owner also had an ownership stake in AD1[.]ru, an extremely popular Russian-language pay-per-install network that has been in operation for at least a decade.
Google took aim at Glupteba in part because its owners were using the botnet to divert and steal vast sums in online advertising revenue. So it’s more than a little ironic that the critical piece of evidence linking all of these operations begins with a Google Analytics code included in the HTML code for the original AWM Proxy back in 2008 (UA-3816536).
That analytics code also was present on a handful of other sites over the years, including the now-defunct Russian domain name registrar Domenadom[.]ru, and the website web-site[.]ru, which curiously was a Russian company operating a global real estate appraisal business called American Appraisal.
Two other domains connected to that Google Analytics code — Russian plastics manufacturers techplast[.]ru and tekhplast.ru — also shared a different Google Analytics code (UA-1838317) with web-site[.]ru and with the domain “starovikov[.]ru.”
The name on the WHOIS registration records for the plastics domains is an “Alexander I. Ukraincki,” whose personal information also is included in the domains tpos[.]ru and alphadisplay[.]ru, both apparently manufacturers of point-of-sale payment terminals in Russia.
Constella Intelligence, a security firm that indexes passwords and other personal information exposed in past data breaches, revealed dozens of variations on email addresses used by Alexander I. Ukraincki over the years. Most of those email addresses start with some variation of “uai@” followed by a domain from one of the many Russian email providers (e.g., yandex.ru, mail.ru). [Full disclosure: Constella is currently an advertiser on this website].
But Constella also shows those different email addresses all relied on a handful of passwords — most commonly “2222den” and “2222DEN.” Both of those passwords have been used almost exclusively in the past decade by the person who registered more than a dozen email addresses with the username “dennstr.”
The dennstr identity leads to several variations on the same name — Denis Strelinikov, or Denis Stranatka, from Ukraine, but those clues ultimately led nowhere promising. And maybe that was the point.
Things began looking brighter after I ran a search in DomainTools for web-site[.]ru’s original WHOIS records, which shows it was assigned in 2005 to a “private person” who used the email address lycefer@gmail.com. A search in Constella on that email address says it was used to register nearly two dozen domains, including starovikov.ru and starovikov[.]com.
A cached copy of the contact page for Starovikov[.]com shows that in 2008 it displayed the personal information for a Dmitry Starovikov, who listed his Skype username as “lycefer.”
Finally, Russian incorporation documents show the company LLC Website (web-site[.]ru)was registered in 2005 to two men, one of whom was named Dmitry Sergeevich Starovikov.
Bringing this full circle, Google says Starovikov is one of the two operators of the Glupteba botnet:
The cover page for Google’s lawsuit against the alleged Glupteba botnet operators.
Mr. Starovikov did not respond to requests for comment. But attorneys for Starovikov and his co-defendant last month filed a response to Google’s complaint in the Southern District of New York, denying (PDF) their clients had any knowledge of the scheme.
Despite all of the disruption caused by Google’s legal and technical meddling, AWM is still around and nearly as healthy as ever, although the service has been branded with a new name and there are dubious claims of new owners. Advertising customer plans ranging from $50 a day to nearly $700 for “VIP access,” AWM Proxy says its malware has been running on approximately 175,000 systems worldwide over the last 24 hours, and that roughly 65,000 of these systems are currently online.
AWM Proxy, as it exists today.
Meanwhile, the administrators of RSOCKS recently alerted customers that the service and any unspent balances will soon be migrated over to a new location.
Many people seem to equate spending time, money and effort to investigate and prosecute cybercriminals with the largely failed war on drugs, meaning there is an endless supply of up-and-coming crooks who will always fill in any gaps in the workforce whenever cybercriminals face justice.
While that may be true for many low-level cyber thieves today, investigations like these show once again how small the cybercriminal underground really is. It also shows how it makes a great deal of sense to focus efforts on targeting and disrupting the relatively small number of established hackers who remain the real force multipliers of cybercrime.
Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the fourth quarter of 2021 closed with 341.7 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains, an increase of 3.3 million domain name registrations, or 1.0%, compared to the third quarter of 2021.1,2 Domain name registrations have increased by 1.6 million, or 0.5%, year over year.1,2
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief to see domain name stats from the fourth quarter of 2021, including:
• Top 10 Largest TLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• Top 10 Largest ccTLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names
• ngTLDs as Percentage of Total TLDs
• Geographical ngTLDs as Percentage of Total Corresponding Geographical TLDs
To see past issues of The Domain Name Industry Brief, please visit verisign.com/dnibarchives.
The post Verisign Q4 2021 The Domain Name Industry Brief: 341.7 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Fourth Quarter of 2021 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the third quarter of 2021 closed with 364.6 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains, a decrease of 2.7 million domain name registrations, or 0.7%, compared to the second quarter of 2021.1,2 Domain name registrations have decreased by 6.1 million, or 1.6%, year over year.1,2
Check out the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief to see domain name stats from the third quarter of 2021, including:
The Domain Name Industry Brief this quarter also includes an overview of the ongoing community work to mitigate DNS security threats.
To see past issues of The Domain Name Industry Brief, please visit verisign.com/dnibarchives.
The post Verisign Q3 2021 The Domain Name Industry Brief: 364.6 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Third Quarter of 2021 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
Of all the pastimes that took off during the pandemic, it’s not surprising that online gaming was one of them. After all, gaming offers excitement, new experiences, and social interaction, all from the comfort of home. It’s no wonder then that the gaming industry saw a 20% increase in revenue in 2020, as new and previously-retired gamers returned to this pastime.
But while the gaming industry was finding a lot of new allies, the players themselves faced growing exposure to malware and threats. Our 2020 Mobile Threat Report found that gamers are being targeted with phishing attacks and malicious apps, aimed at stealing usernames and passwords. With this information, hackers could potentially steal hard-earned in-game collectibles, as well as real-world money and personal information. And PC gamers face similar threats, from viruses and spyware to network attacks that could potentially put their personal information and property at risk.
While 75% of gamers surveyed worry about their security while gaming in the future, some worry they’ll have to compromise performance to be protected. That’s why McAfee® Gamer Security offers robust protection to PC gamers with one of the lowest impacts on system performance in the industry.
To protect the growing number of gamers against increasing threats, we are offering one free year of McAfee Gamer Security for one gaming PC to multi-device McAfee ® Total Protection and McAfee® Live Safe users in the U.S. This powerful software was built from the ground up to address the challenges gamers face, with speedy performance, system optimization, uninterrupted gaming, and no pop-up apps.
But don’t just take it from me. This is what one of our users have to say: “I believe [McAfee Gamer Security] had a positive impact … because it increased the speed of my game as well as gave me peace of mind that I was protected during my gameplay.”
We know that gamers are some of the most tech-savvy and connected users out there, so it’s important that we meet them where they are by giving them the performance and security they need to play at full throttle. After all, many users are seeking stress relief through gaming, not the extra worry over their online security.
With McAfee Gamer Security we made security for players more fun, by including a gamer-centric interface that was inspired by familiar apps like game launchers — you can check the current status of your system and key resources that impact in-game performance, like GPU, CPU, and memory, as well as perform real-time optimization. And of course, we’ve also included monitoring for your all-important FPS (frames per second). You can even access past performance data to better understand your game-by-game trends.
Let’s keep the excitement of gaming while adding the extra confidence of knowing that your digital life is protected. Whether you are new to McAfee or already enjoying our personal protection, you can download McAfee Gamer Security for free in under one minute with a qualifying subscription! In our mission to provide users with personal protection, we are welcoming PC gamers with open arms.
The post PC Gamers (and Parents of Gamers) Rejoice! appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about a ransomware group that walked away with 2,200 Bitcoin: More than $33 million based on the current Bitcoin exchange rate. Also, read about this month’s Patch Tuesday security updates from Microsoft, including patches for 112 vulnerabilities.
Read on:
Microsoft Patch Tuesday Update Fixes 17 Critical Bugs
Microsoft’s November Patch Tuesday roundup of security fixes tackled an unusually large crop of remote code execution (RCE) bugs. Twelve of Microsoft’s 17 critical patches were tied to RCE bugs. In all, 112 vulnerabilities were patched by Microsoft, with 93 rated important, and two rated low in severity. In this article, ZDI’s Dustin Childs shares his thoughts on Microsoft’s removal of descriptions from CVE overviews.
An Old Joker’s New Tricks: Using Github to Hide Its Payload
Trend Micro detected a new Joker malware version on a sample on Google Play, which utilizes Github pages and repositories in an attempt to evade detection. The app promised wallpapers in HD and 4K quality and was downloaded over a thousand times before it was removed from the Play Store by Google after being reported as malicious.
NETGEAR Router, WD NAS Device Hacked on First Day of Pwn2Own Tokyo 2020
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s Pwn2Own Tokyo was turned into a virtual event coordinated by ZDI from Toronto, Canada. On the first day of the event, the NETGEAR Nighthawk R7800 router, Western Digital My Cloud Pro series PR4100 NSA device and Samsung Smart TV were targeted and $50,000 was awarded among teams STARLabs, Trapa Security and Team Flashback.
Developing Story: COVID-19 Used in Malicious Campaigns
As the number of those afflicted with COVID-19 continues to surge by thousands, malicious campaigns that use the disease as a lure likewise increase. In this report, Trend Micro researchers share samples on COVID-19 related malicious campaigns. The report also includes detections from other researchers.
IoT Security is a Mess. These Guidelines Could Help Fix That
The supply chain around the Internet of Things (IoT) has become the weak link in cybersecurity, potentially leaving organizations open to cyberattacks via vulnerabilities they’re not aware of. However, new guidelines from the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) aims to ensure that security forms part of the entire lifespan of IoT product development.
US Department of Energy Launches New Program for Technology Security Managers
The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently launched the Operational Technology (OT) Defender Fellowship. Another milestone from the Department in enhancing the US’s critical infrastructure. In collaboration with DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Center for Cyber and Technology Innovation (CTTI), the OT Defender Fellowship hopes to expand the knowledge of primary US front-line critical infrastructure defenders.
Ransomware Gang is Raking in Tens of Millions of Dollars
A ransomware organization has raked in tens of millions of dollars, according to a new report. The organization, identified as group “One,” walked away with 2,200 Bitcoin, according to a report by Advanced Intelligence. That’s more than $33 million based on the current Bitcoin exchange rate.
CISA Braces for 5G with New Strategy, Initiatives
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its 5G Strategy, ensuring the federal government and its many states, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector partners are secure as when the 5G technology arrives. The agency’s document hoped to expand on how the US government would secure 5G infrastructure both in the country and abroad.
Hacker-for-Hire Group Targeting South Asian Organizations
There’s a new cyber mercenary group on the block, and they’re going after targets in more than a dozen countries globally, according to a BlackBerry research report. The hack-for-hire shop, which BlackBerry is calling “CostaRicto,” has largely gone after targets in South Asia, especially in India, Bangladesh and Singapore. Some of its targeting was also located in Africa, the Americas, Australia and Europe.
Defense in Depth, Layered Security in the Cloud
In this blog, Trend Micro’s vice president of cybersecurity, Greg Young, discusses the evolution of network security into how it manifests itself today, how network security has looked up until now, how the future of network security looks and why security teams need layered protection in the cloud.
Surprised by Microsoft’s decision to remove the description section from Patch Tuesday bulletins? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Ransomware Gang is Raking in Tens of Millions of Dollars and Microsoft Patch Tuesday Update Fixes 17 Critical Bugs appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about eight new malware samples that were developed and deployed by Russian hackers in recent attacks. Also, read about how the operators of the REvil ransomware strain have “acquired” the source code of the KPOT trojan in an auction held on a hacker forum last month.
Read on:
Beware a New Google Drive Scam Landing in Inboxes
Scammers just found a new phishing lure to play with: Google Drive. A flaw in Drive is being exploited to send out seemingly legitimate emails and push notifications from Google that, if opened, could land people on malicious websites. The smartest part of the scam is that the emails and notifications it generates come directly from Google.
What Are the Best Options for Cybersecurity Protection for Small Businesses?
For Workplace IT, providing the best cybersecurity protection for their company’s hundreds of small business clients is critical. Workplace IT relies exclusively on Trend Micro to ensure that its customers have the best cybersecurity protection available. Partnering with one security vendor makes it easy for the company to focus on other issues, knowing that security is handled comprehensively and consistently.
REvil Ransomware Gang ‘Acquires’ KPOT Malware
The operators of the REvil ransomware strain have “acquired” the source code of the KPOT trojan in an auction held on a hacker forum last month. The sale took place after the KPOT malware author decided to auction off the code, desiring to move off to other projects, and was organized as a public auction on a private underground hacking forum for Russian-speaking cyber-criminals.
Encouraging the Next Generation of Cybersecurity Stars to Join the Industry
At its core, Trend Micro has a passion for education and a desire to grow the cybersecurity industry with talented, dedicated professionals. The two are closely linked: If we can introduce cyber skills into schools at an earlier age, then more young people will be encouraged to start a career in cybersecurity. That’s why Trend Micro is running a new virtual event for university students in November, during NIST NICE Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week.
Cybersecurity Threats to Corporate America are Present Now ‘More Than Ever,’ SEC Chair Says
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton is telling corporate America it needs to be more vigilant on security. In an interview with CNBC, Clayton stressed that significant cybersecurity threats remain, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and election season. In October alone, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) put out 30 cyber alerts across various industries and business sizes, as well as consumers.
US Cyber Command Exposes New Russian Malware
US Cyber Command has exposed eight new malware samples that were developed and deployed by Russian hackers in recent attacks. Six of the eight samples are for the ComRAT malware (used by the Turla hacking group), while the other two are samples for the Zebrocy malware (used by the APT28 hacking group).
SaltStack Discloses Critical Vulnerabilities, Urges Patching
SaltStack disclosed three new vulnerabilities, two of which are assessed to be critical, and is urging users to patch immediately. In an advisory, the organization announced it released a security update to address the vulnerabilities. While two vulnerabilities were discovered and submitted by “KPC” of Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), the advisory does not say how CVE-2020-25592 was found. Dustin Childs, ZDI communications manager, said they reported it to SaltStack privately in late August.
New Data Shows Just How Badly Home Users Overestimate IoT Security
A new survey from the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) shows adult workers vastly overestimate the security of the internet devices in their homes. The survey polled 1,000 adults – 500 aged 18-34 and 500 aged 50-75 – and found that the overwhelming majority of both believed the internet of things (IoT) devices they owned were secure.
Over 23,000 Hacked Databases Shared Over Telegram and Discord
It was reported that over 50GB of data from 23,000 hacked databases have been shared by hackers across Telegram channels and two hacking forums. A total of 23,618 databases were able to be downloaded through the Mega file hosting service, amounting to a dataset of around 13 billion personal files. The link was later taken down following abuse reports but there are fears that the data has entered the public domain.
A website created for global consultancy Deloitte to quiz people on knowledge of hacking tactics has proven itself vulnerable to hacking. The site, found at the insecure non-HTTPS URL http://deloittehackeriq.com/, makes its YAML configuration file publicly accessible. And within the file, in cleartext, is the username and password for the site’s mySQL database.
Toymaker Mattel Hit by Ransomware Attack
Top toymaker Mattel revealed it was a victim of a ransomware attack that successfully encrypted some data and temporarily crippled a limited number of business functions. The disclosure was part of a U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure filed in late October. Mattel reported the attack occurred on July 28, 2020 and that, for the most part, it was mitigated quickly and had a minimal impact on the company.
Spike in Emotet Activity Could Mean Big Payday for Ransomware Gangs
There’s been a massive increase in Emotet attacks and cyber criminals are taking advantage of machines compromised by the malware to launch more malware infections as well as ransomware campaigns. The October 2020 HP-Bromium Threat Insights Report reports a 1,200% increase in Emotet detections from July to September compared to the previous three months.
How do you secure your IoT devices at home? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: US Cyber Command Exposes New Russian Malware and REvil Ransomware Gang ‘Acquires’ KPOT Malware appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about how Trend Micro researchers uncovered two new espionage backdoors associated with the ‘Operation Earth Kitsune’ campaign. Also, read about how U.S. healthcare providers have been put on high alert over Trickbot malware and ransomware targeting the sector.
Read on:
Operation Earth Kitsune: A Dance of Two New Backdoors
Trend Micro recently published a research paper on Operation Earth Kitsune, a watering hole campaign aiming to steal information by compromising websites. Besides its heavy use of SLUB malware, Trend Micro researchers also uncovered two new espionage backdoors associated with the campaign: agfSpy and dneSpy, dubbed as such following the attackers’ three-letter naming scheme.
FBI Warning: Trickbot and Ransomware Attackers Plan Big Hit on U.S. Hospitals
U.S. healthcare providers, already under pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic, are on high alert over Trickbot malware and ransomware targeting the sector. Trickbot is one of the largest botnets in the world, against which Microsoft took U.S. legal action earlier this month in effort to gain control of its servers. Within a day of the seizure, Trickbot C&C servers and domains were replaced with new infrastructure.
Trend Micro HouseCall for Home Networks
While a home network provides numerous benefits, it can also expose its users to safety and privacy risks. Checking for those risks doesn’t need to be costly: Trend Micro’s Housecall for Home Networks (HCHN) solution scans the connected devices in home networks and detects those that pose security risks and is available for free.
Bug-Bounty Awards Spike 26% in 2020
According to a list of top 10 vulnerabilities by HackerOne, cross-site scripting (XSS) remained the most impactful vulnerability and reaped the highest rewards for ethical hackers in 2020 for the second year in a row, earning hackers $4.2 million in total bug-bounty awards in the last year, a 26-percent increase from what was paid out in 2019 for finding XSS flaws. Following XSS on the list: Improper access control, information disclosure, server-side request forgery (SSRF) and more.
Security is an aspect that every enterprise needs to consider as they use and migrate to cloud-based technologies. On top of the list of resources that enterprises need to secure are networks, endpoints, and applications. However, another critical asset that enterprises should give careful security consideration to is their back-end infrastructure which, if compromised, could lead to supply chain attacks.
U.S. Shares Information on North Korean Threat Actor ‘Kimsuky’
An alert released this week by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, and the Cyber Command Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) provides information on Kimsuky, a threat actor focused on gathering intelligence on “foreign policy and national security issues related to the Korean peninsula, nuclear policy, and sanctions” on behalf of the North Korean government. The advisory says the adversary has been active since 2012, engaging in social engineering, spear-phishing, and watering hole attacks.
76% of Applications Have at Least One Security Flaw
Most applications contain at least one security flaw and fixing those flaws typically takes months, a new Veracode report reveals. This year’s analysis of 130,000 applications found that it takes about six months for teams to close half the security flaws they find. The report also uncovered some best practices to significantly improve these fix rates.
Apps Infected with Adware Found on Google Play Store
Some 21 malicious Android apps containing intrusive adware were discovered on the Google Play Store, but most have now been removed, according to a report from Avast. These fraudulent mobile applications, disguised as Android gaming apps, had been downloaded more than 8 million times since they were made available in the store.
Patients in Finland Blackmailed After Therapy Records Were Stolen by Hackers
The confidential records of thousands of psychotherapy patients in Finland have been hacked and some are now facing the threat of blackmail. Attackers were able to steal records related to therapy sessions, as well as patients’ personal information including social security numbers and addresses, according to Vastaamo, the country’s largest private psychotherapy center.
Surprised by the Vastaamo hack and subsequent blackmail of patients? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Trend Micro Researcher Uncover Two Espionage Backdoors Associated with Operation Earth Kitsune and Trickbot and Ransomware Attackers Plan Big Hit on U.S. Hospitals appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about a watering hole campaign Trend Micro dubbed ‘Operation Earth Kitsune’ that is spying on users’ systems through compromised websites. Also, read about how APT groups are threatening DDoS attacks against victims if they don’t send them bitcoin.
Read on:
Fancy Bear Imposters Are on a Hacking Extortion Spree
Radware recently published extortion notes that were sent to a variety of companies globally. The senders purport to be from the North Korean government hackers Lazarus Group, or APT38, and Russian state-backed hackers Fancy Bear, or APT28. The notes threaten that if the target doesn’t send bitcoin, powerful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks will be launched against the victim. Robert McArdle, Trend Micro’s director of our Forward-Looking Threat Research (FTR) team, comments on DDoS as an extortion method.
A Ride on Taiwan’s Self-Driving Bus
The self-driving bus is now being tested on the streets of downtown Taipei and more autonomous buses are being deployed in other places, including Germany, Japan and Canada. Since connected cars are still a relatively new technology, the dangers of these vehicles are unknown and mostly speculated. In this article, Trend Micro discusses potential security implications of these connected vehicles.
U.S. Charges Russian Intelligence Officers in Major Cyberattacks
This week, the Justice Department unsealed charges accusing six Russian military intelligence officers of an aggressive worldwide hacking campaign that caused mass disruption and cost billions of dollars by attacking targets like a French presidential election, the electricity grid in Ukraine and the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Operation Earth Kitsune: Tracking SLUB’s Current Operations
A watering hole campaign that Trend Micro has dubbed as Operation Earth Kitsune is spying on users’ systems through compromised websites. Using SLUB and two new malware variants, the attacks exploit vulnerabilities including those of Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
Cybersecurity Company Finds Hacker Selling Info on 186 Million U.S. Voters
Trustwave says it found a hacker selling personally identifying information of more than 200 million Americans, including the voter registration data of 186 million. The revelation underscored how vulnerable Americans are to email targeting by criminals and foreign adversaries, even as U.S. officials announced that Iran and Russia had obtained voter registration data and email addresses with an eye toward interfering in the 2020 election.
In 2012, Trend Micro, the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA) and Europol’s European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3) collaborated on a white paper that imagined the technological advances of the coming 8 years, the societal and behavioral changes they may bring and the opportunities for malfeasance they could present. As we enter the 2020s, we now have the opportunity to objectively review the project against a number of success factors.
WordPress Deploys Forced Security Update for Dangerous Bug in Popular Plugin
WordPress sites running Loginizer, one of today’s most popular WordPress plugins with an install base of over one million sites, were forcibly updated this week to Loginizer version 1.6.4. This version contained a security fix for a dangerous SQL injection bug that could have allowed hackers to take over WordPress sites running older versions of the Loginizer plugin.
Just Leave That Docker API on the Front Porch, No One Will Steal It
Recently, a new type of Linux malware named “DOKI” has been discovered exploiting publicly accessible Docker API’s hosted in all major cloud providers. The manner in which threat actors are gaining access to container environments is a previously discovered technique, but the DOKI malware is something that has not been documented until now.
Adobe Fixes 16 Critical Code-Execution Bugs Across Portfolio
Adobe has released 18 out-of-band security patches in 10 different software packages, including fixes for critical vulnerabilities that stretch across its product suite. Two of the issues are out-of-bounds read flaws, (CVE-2020-24409, CVE-2020-24410); one is an out-of-bounds write bug (CVE-2020-24411). Tran Van Khang, working with Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative, is credited for the discoveries.
US Treasury Department Ban on Ransomware Payments Puts Victims in Tough Position
This month, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) warned organizations making ransomware payments that they risk violating economic sanctions imposed by the government against cybercriminal groups or state-sponsored hackers. The advisory has the potential to disrupt the ransomware monetization model, but also puts victims, their insurers and incident response providers in a tough situation.
What are your thoughts on the sanctions imposed by the government against cybercriminal groups or state-sponsored hackers? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Watering Hole Campaign Operation Earth Kitsune Spying on Users’ Systems and Fancy Bear Imposters Are on a Hacking Extortion Spree appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about how cybercriminals are passing the time during the COVID-19 pandemic with online poker games, where the prizes include stolen data. Also, read about how VirusTotal now supports Trend Micro ELF Hash (aka telfhash).
Read on:
Cybercriminals Use Stolen Data and Hacking Tools as Prizes in Poker Games and Rap Battles
Cybercriminals have put their own spin on passing time during the COVID-19 lockdown with online rap battles, poker tournaments, poem contests, and in-person sport tournaments. The twist is that the prize for winning these competitions is sometimes stolen data and tools to make cybercrime easier, according to new research from Trend Micro.
Becoming an Advocate for Gender Diversity: Five Steps that Could Shape Your Journey
Sanjay Mehta, senior vice president at Trend Micro, was recently named a new board member at Girls In Tech—a noted non-profit and Trend Micro partner working tirelessly to enhance the engagement, education, and empowerment of women in technology. In this blog, Sanjay shares five steps that you can use to become an ally for diversity in the workplace.
October Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Patches Critical, Wormable RCE Bug
In this month’s Patch Tuesday update, Microsoft pushed out fixes for 87 security vulnerabilities – 11 of them critical – and one of those is potentially wormable. There are also six bugs that were previously unpatched but publicly disclosed, which could give cybercriminals a leg up — and in fact at least one public exploit is already circulating for this group.
VirusTotal Now Supports Trend Micro ELF Hash
To help IoT and Linux malware researchers investigate attacks containing Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) files, Trend Micro created telfhash, an open-source clustering algorithm that helps cluster Linux IoT malware samples. VirusTotal has always been a valuable tool for threat research and now, with telfhash, users of the VirusTotal Intelligence platform can pivot from one ELF file to others.
New Emotet Attacks Use Fake Windows Update Lures
File attachments sent in recent Emotet campaigns show a message claiming to be from the Windows Update service, telling users that the Office app needs to be updated. Naturally, this must be done by clicking the Enable Editing button. According to the Cryptolaemus group, since yesterday, these Emotet lures have been spammed in massive numbers to users located all over the world.
Metasploit Shellcodes Attack Exposed Docker APIs
Trend Micro recently observed an interesting payload deployment using the Metasploit Framework (MSF) against exposed Docker APIs. The attack involves the deployment of Metasploit’s shellcode as a payload, and researchers said this is the first attack they’ve seen using MSF against Docker. It also uses a small, vulnerability-free base image in order for the attack to proceed in a fast and stealthy manner.
Barnes & Noble Warns Customers It Has Been Hacked, Customer Data May Have Been Accessed
American bookselling giant Barnes & Noble is contacting customers via email, warning them that its network was breached by hackers, and that sensitive information about shoppers may have been accessed. In the email to customers, Barnes & Noble says that it became aware that it had fallen victim to a cybersecurity attack on Saturday, October 10th.
ContentProvider Path Traversal Flaw on ESC App Reveals Info
Trend Micro researchers found ContentProvider path traversal vulnerabilities in three apps on the Google Play store, one of which had more than 5 million installs. The three applications include a keyboard customization app, a shopping app from a popular department store, and the app for the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Fortunately, the keyboard and department store apps have both been patched by developers. However, as of writing this blog, the ESC app is still active.
Carnival Corp. Ransomware Attack Affects Three Cruise Lines
Hackers accessed personal information of guests, employees and crew of three cruise line brands and the casino operations of Carnival Corp. in a ransomware attack the company suffered on Aug. 15, officials have confirmed. Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line and Seabourn were the brands affected by the attack, which Carnival said they’re still investigating in an update on the situation this week.
Docker Content Trust: What It Is and How It Secures Container Images
Docker Content Trust allows users to deploy images to a cluster or swarm confidently and verify that they are the images you expect them to be. In this blog from Trend Micro, learn how Docker Content Trust works, how to enable it, steps that can be taken to automate trust validation in the continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline and limitations of the system.
Twitter Hackers Posed as IT Workers to Trick Employees, NY Probe Finds
A simple phone scam was the key first step in the Twitter hack that took over dozens of high-profile accounts this summer, New York regulators say. The hackers responsible for the July 15 attack called Twitter employees posing as company IT workers and tricked them into giving up their login credentials for the social network’s internal tools, the state’s Department of Financial Services said.
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack sees an attacker flooding the network or servers of the victim with a wave of internet traffic so big that their infrastructure is overwhelmed by the number of requests for access, slowing down services or taking them fully offline and preventing legitimate users from accessing the service at all. DDoS attacks are one of the crudest forms of cyberattacks, but they’re also one of the most powerful and can be difficult to stop.
Cyberattack on London Council Still Having ‘Significant Impact’
Hackney Council in London has said that a cyberattack earlier this week is continuing to have a “significant impact” on its services. Earlier this week, the north London council said it had been the target of a serious cyberattack, which was affecting many of its services and IT systems.
Surprised by the new Emotet attack? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Cybercriminals Use Stolen Data and Hacking Tools as Prizes in Poker Games and Rap Battles and VirusTotal Now Supports Trend Micro ELF Hash appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about how cybercriminals secure their assets and survive in the business in a new Trend Micro report. Also, read about a how cybercriminals are tapping into Amazon’s Prime Day with phishing and malicious websites that are fraudulently using the Amazon brand.
Read on:
French Companies Under Attack from Clever BEC Scam
Trend Micro researchers observed a new modus operandi involving a clever BEC campaign that uses social engineering to target French companies. Malicious actors impersonated a French company in the metal fabrication industry that provides services to several organizations. They then registered a domain very similar to the legitimate one used by the business and used it to send emails to their targets.
Amazon Prime Day Spurs Spike in Phishing, Fraud Attacks
Cybercriminals are tapping into Amazon’s annual Prime Day with researchers warning of a recent spike in phishing and malicious websites that are fraudulently using the Amazon brand. There has been a spike in the number of new monthly phishing and fraudulent sites created using the Amazon brand since August, the most significant since the COVID-19 pandemic forced people indoors in March.
CSO Insights: DataBank’s Mark Houpt on Looking Beyond Securing Infrastructures in the New Normal
The big move to working remotely wasn’t completely difficult for Mark Houpt, CISO at DataBank. After all, he has been doing so since before COVID-19. However, when the pandemic hit, DataBank, like many other companies across the globe, had to help most of their employees transition securely and smoothly to virtual work. Read up on the several important security considerations this experience highlighted.
240+ Android Apps Caught Showing Out-of-Context Ads
This summer, Google removed more than 240 Android applications from the Play Store for showing out-of-context ads and breaking a newly introduced Google policy against this type of intrusive advertising. Out-of-context ads are mobile ads that are shown outside an app’s normal container and appear as pop-ups or as full-screen ads.
Safe and Smart Connections: Securing IoT Networks for Remote Setups
As a result of our work-from-home (WFH) arrangements, there is an increased demand on networks as remote operations have created greater dependence on the IoT. Subsequently, now is a good time to re-examine the security of your network. Rather than only focusing on securing individual devices that can compromise a network, users should also secure the network to minimize threats across several devices.
Inside the Bulletproof Hosting Business
The use of underground infrastructure is inherent to the modus operandi of a cybercriminal. In Trend Micro’s Underground Hosting series, it differentiates how cybercrime goods are sold in marketplaces and what kinds of services are offered. In this final part of the Underground Hosting report series, Trend Micro explores the methods criminals employ to secure their assets and survive in the business.
Comcast Voice Remote Control Could be Turned into Spying Tool
The Comcast XR11 voice remote controller was recently found to be vulnerable and could be turned into a spying tool that eavesdrops on users. Discovered by researchers at Guardicore, the attack has been named WarezTheRemote and is said to be a very serious threat, considering that the remote is used for over 18 million devices across the U.S.
Transforming IoT Monitoring Data into Threat Defense
In the first half of 2020, there was a 70% increase in inbound attacks on devices and routers compared to the second half of 2019, which included attacks on IoT systems. To protect customers effectively by continuously monitoring trends in IoT attacks, Trend Micro examined Mirai and Bashlite (aka Qbot), two notorious IoT botnet malware types, and shares the figures relating to these botnets’ command and control (C&C) servers, IP addresses, and C&C commands.
Russia’s Fancy Bear Hackers Likely Penetrated a Federal Agency
Last week the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published an advisory that hackers had penetrated a US federal agency. Now, clues uncovered by a researcher at cybersecurity firm Dragos and an FBI notification to hacking victims obtained by WIRED in July suggest that it was Fancy Bear, a team of hackers working for Russia’s GRU also known as APT28.
Threat Research & XDR Combine to Stop Cybercrime
Like legitimate businesses across the globe seeking to improve their information security and protect their network infrastructure, cybercriminal businesses take similar precautions. Trend Micro Research released the final report in a series focused on this part of cybercriminal business: Underground hosting providers. Based on the report, it’s clear that understanding both the criminal business and the attacks themselves better prepares defenders and investigators to identify and eliminate threats.
Researchers Find Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure Cloud Service
As businesses are increasingly migrating to the cloud, securing the infrastructure has never been more important. According to research by Paul Litvak of Intezer Labs, two security flaws in Microsoft’s Azure App Services could have enabled a bad actor to carry out server-side request forgery (SSRF) attacks or execute arbitrary code and take over the administration server.
Cyber Security Awareness: A Critical Checklist
October 2020 marks the 17th year of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, where users and organizations are encouraged to increase awareness of cybersecurity issues. To help raise awareness, Trend Micro’s Consumer Division breaks down of the security issues you should be aware of and shares tips about how you can protect yourself and your family while working, learning, or gaming at home.
The Basics of Keeping Kubernetes Cluster Secure: Worker Nodes and Related Components
In part one of this blog series, Trend Micro talked about the different ways developers can protect control plane components, including Kube API server configurations, RBAC authorization, and limitations in the communication between pods through network policies. In this second part, Trend Micro focuses on best practices that developers can implement to protect worker nodes and their components.
Are you surprised that Comcast voice activated remote controllers could be turned into a spying tool? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: A Look Inside the Bulletproof Hosting Business and Amazon Prime Day Spurs Spike in Phishing, Fraud Attacks appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about how an adware family known primarily for distributing browser hijackers, Linkury, has been caught distributing malware. Also, read about a newly uncovered strain of the Glupteba trojan.
Read on:
Cross-Platform Modular Glupteba Malware Uses ManageX
Trend Micro recently encountered a variant of the Glupteba trojan and reported its attacks on MikroTik routers and updates on its command and control (C&C) servers. The use of ManageX, a type of modular adware that Trend Micro has recently analyzed, is notable in this newly uncovered strain as it aims to emphasize the modularity and the cross-platform features of Glupteba as seen through its code analysis.
Phishing Attack Targets Microsoft 365 Users with Netflix & Amazon Lures
Security researchers have been tracking a phishing campaign that abuses Microsoft Office 365 third-party application access to obtain specific resources from victims’ accounts. The attacker, dubbed TA2552, mostly uses Spanish-language lures and a narrow range of themes and brands. These attacks have targeted organizations with a global presence but seem to choose victims who likely speak Spanish, according to a report from Proofpoint researchers.
New Report Suggests the Bug Bounty Business is Recession-Proof
A new report from HackerOne presents data suggesting that the bug bounty business might be recession-proof, citing increases in hacker registrations, monthly vulnerability disclosures and payouts during a pandemic-induced economic downturn. Brian Gorenc, senior director of vulnerability research and director of Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative program, shared that he’s seen bug bounty activity increase with ZDI publishing 1,045 vulnerability advisories in all of 2019 and 1,235 already in 2020.
Identity Fraud: How to Protect Your Identity Data, Accounts and Money During the Coronavirus Crisis
We’ve all been spending more time online since the pandemic hit, and as a result we’re sharing more personal and financial information online with each other and with organizations. Unfortunately, as ever, there are bad guys around every digital corner looking for this. Personally identifiable information (PII) is the currency of internet crime, and cyber-criminals will do whatever they can to get it.
Linkury Adware Caught Distributing Full-Blown Malware
An adware family known primarily for distributing browser hijackers has been caught distributing malware, security researchers said at the Virus Bulletin 2020 security conference. Its main method of distribution is the SafeFinder widget, a browser extension ironically advertised as a way to perform safe searches on the internet. K7 researchers say that in recent cases they analyzed, the SafeFinder widget has now also begun installing legitimate malware, such as the Socelars and Kpot infostealer trojans.
Chinese APT Group Targets Media, Finance, and Electronics Sectors
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new espionage campaign targeting media, construction, engineering, electronics, and finance sectors in Japan, Taiwan, the U.S. and China. Linking the attacks to Palmerworm (aka BlackTech), likely a China-based advanced persistent threat (APT), the first wave of activity associated with this campaign began last year in August 2019.
InterPlanetary Storm Botnet Infects 13K Mac, Android Devices
A new variant of the InterPlanetary Storm malware has been discovered, which comes with fresh detection-evasion tactics and now targets Mac and Android devices (in addition to Windows and Linux, which were targeted by previous variants of the malware). Researchers say the malware is building a botnet with a current estimated 13,500 infected machines across 84 countries worldwide – and that number continues to grow.
More Americans Share Social Security, Financial and Medical Information than Before the Pandemic
A new survey has shown that consumer willingness to share more sensitive data – social security numbers, financial information and medical information – is greater in 2020 than in both 2018 and 2019. According to the NYC-based scientific research foundation ARF’s (Advertising Research Foundation) third annual privacy study, contact tracing is considered a key weapon in the fight against COVID-19.
Do you feel like you are more willing to share sensitive information online since the pandemic began? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Linkury Adware Caught Distributing Full-Blown Malware and Cross-Platform Modular Glupteba Malware Uses ManageX appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about how threat actors are bundling Windscribe VPN installers with backdoors. Also, read about a new strain of Android malware that comes with a wide array of features allowing it to steal credentials from 226 applications.
Read on:
Windows Backdoor Masquerading as VPN App Installer
This article discusses findings covered in a recent blog from Trend Micro where company researchers warn that Windows users looking to install a VPN app are in danger of downloading one that’s been bundled with a backdoor. The trojanized package in this specific case is the Windows installer for Windscribe VPN and contains the Bladabindi backdoor.
The Evolution of Malicious Shell Scripts
The Unix-programming community commonly uses shell scripts as a simple way to execute multiple Linux commands within a single file. Many users do this as part of a regular operational workload manipulating files, executing programs and printing text. However, as a shell interpreter is available in every Unix machine, it is also an interesting and dynamic tool abused by malicious actors.
Microsoft Says It Detected Active Attacks Leveraging Zerologon Vulnerability
Hackers are actively exploiting the Zerologon vulnerability in real-world attacks, Microsoft’s security intelligence team said on Thursday morning. The attacks were expected to happen, according to security industry experts. Multiple versions of weaponized proof-of-concept exploit code have been published online in freely downloadable form since details about the Zerologon vulnerability were revealed on September 14 by Dutch security firm Secura BV.
Stretched and Stressed: Best Practices for Protecting Security Workers’ Mental Health
Security work is stressful under the best of circumstances, but remote work presents its own challenges. In this article, learn how savvy security leaders can best support their teams today — wherever they’re working. Trend Micro’s senior director of HR for the Americas, Bob Kedrosky, weighs in on how Trend Micro is supporting its remote workers.
Exploitable Flaws Found in Facial Recognition Devices
To gain a more nuanced understanding of the security issues present in facial recognition devices, Trend Micro analyzed the security of four different models: ZKTeco FaceDepot-7B, Hikvision DS-K1T606MF, Telpo TPS980 and Megvii Koala. Trend Micro’s case studies show how these devices can be misused by malicious attackers.
New ‘Alien’ Malware Can Steal Passwords from 226 Android Apps
Security researchers have discovered and analyzed a new strain of Android malware that comes with a wide array of features allowing it to steal credentials from 226 applications. Named Alien, this new trojan has been active since the start of the year and has been offered as a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) offering on underground hacking forums.
Government Software Provider Tyler Technologies Hit by Possible Ransomware Attack
Tyler Technologies, a Texas-based provider of software and services for the U.S. government, started informing customers this week of a security incident that is believed to have involved a piece of ransomware. Tyler’s website is currently unavailable and in emails sent out to customers the company said its internal phone and IT systems were accessed without authorization by an “unknown third party.”
U.S. Justice Department Charges APT41 Hackers Over Global Cyberattacks
On September 16, 2020, the United States Justice Department announced that it was charging five Chinese citizens with hacking crimes committed against over 100 institutions in the United States and abroad. The global hacking campaign went after a diverse range of targets, from video game companies and telecommunications enterprises to universities and non-profit organizations. The five individuals were reportedly connected to the hacking group known as APT41.
Phishers are Targeting Employees with Fake GDPR Compliance Reminders
Phishers are using a bogus GDPR compliance reminder to trick recipients – employees of businesses across several industry verticals – into handing over their email login credentials. In this evolving campaign, the attackers targeted mostly email addresses they could glean from company websites and, to a lesser extent, emails of people who are high in the organization’s hierarchy.
Mispadu Banking Trojan Resurfaces
Recent spam campaigns leading to the URSA/Mispadu banking trojan have been uncovered, as reported by malware analyst Pedro Tavares in a Twitter post and by Seguranca Informatica in a blog post. Mispadu malware steals credentials from users’ systems. This attack targets systems with Spanish and Portuguese as system languages.
A Blind Spot in ICS Security: The Protocol Gateway Part 3: What ICS Security Administrators Can Do
In this blog series, Trend Micro analyzes the impacts of the serious vulnerabilities detected in the protocol gateways that are essential when shifting to smart factories and discusses the security countermeasures that security administrators in those factories must take. In the final part of this series, Trend Micro describes a stealth attack method that abuses a vulnerability as well as informs readers of a vital point of security measures required for the future ICS environment.
Major Instagram App Bug Could’ve Given Hackers Remote Access to Your Phone
Check Point researchers disclosed details about a critical vulnerability in Instagram’s Android app that could have allowed remote attackers to take control over a targeted device just by sending victims a specially crafted image. The flaw lets attackers perform actions on behalf of the user within the Instagram app, including spying on victim’s private messages and deleting or posting photos from their accounts, as well as execute arbitrary code on the device.
Addressing Threats Like Ryuk via Trend Micro XDR
Ryuk has recently been one of the most noteworthy ransomware families and is perhaps the best representation of the new paradigm in ransomware attacks where malicious actors go for quality over sheer quantity. In 2019, the Trend Micro Managed XDR and Incident Response teams investigated an incident concerning a Trend Micro customer that was infected with the Ryuk ransomware.
What are your thoughts on the Android Instagram app bug that could allow remote access to user’s phones? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Cybercriminals Distribute Backdoor with VPN Installer and New ‘Alien’ Malware can Steal Passwords from 226 Android Apps appeared first on .
When we published our 2020 Predictions report in December, we didn’t realize there was a global pandemic brewing that would give cybercriminals an almost daily news cycle to take advantage of in their attacks against people and organizations around the world. Malicious actors have always taken advantage of big news to use as lures for socially engineered threats, but these events tend to be fairly short news cycles.
When Covid-19 started making headlines in early 2020, we started seeing new threats using this in the attacks. As you see below, April was the peak month for email-based Covid-19 related threats.
The same was true for phishing URLs related to Covid-19, but for files using Covid-19 in their naming convention, the peak month in the first half was June.
Impact on Cybercrime
The constant 24×7 news around cases, cures and vaccines makes this pandemic unique for cybercriminals. Also, the shift to remote working and the challenges posed to supply chains all gave cybercriminals new content they could use as lures to entice victims into infecting themselves.
As we’ve seen for many years now, email-based threats were the most used threat vector by malicious actors, which makes sense as the number one infection vector to penetrate an organization’s network is to use a socially engineered email against an employee.
We even saw malicious mobile apps being developed using Covid-19 as a lure, as you see below.
In this case it was supporting potential cures for the virus, which many people would have wanted.
Other Highlights in 1H 2020
While Covid-19 dominated the threat landscape in the 1H 2020, it wasn’t the only thing that defined it. Ransomware actors continued their attacks against organizations, but as we’ve been seeing over the past year, they’ve become much more selective in their victims. The spray and pray model using spam has been shifted to a more targeted approach, similar to how nation-state actors and APT groups perform their attacks. Two things showcase this trend:
2. The ransom amounts have increased significantly over the years, showing ransomware actors are selecting their victims around how much they feel they can extort them for and whether they are more likely to pay a ransom.
Home network attacks are another interesting aspect of the threat landscape in the first half of this year. We have millions of home routers around the world that give us threat data on events coming into and out of home networks.
Threat actors are taking advantage of more remote workers by launching more attacks against these home networks. As you see below, the first half of 2020 saw a marked increase in attacks.
Many of these attacks are brute force login attempts as actors try to obtain login credentials for routers and devices within the home network, which can allow them to do further damage.
The above are only a small number of security events and trends we saw in just six months of 2020. Our full roundup of the security landscape so far this year is detailed out in our security roundup report – Securing the Pandemic-Disrupted Workplace. You can read about all we found to help prepare for many of the threats we will continue to see for the rest of the year.
The post 1H 2020 Cyber Security Defined by Covid-19 Pandemic appeared first on .
At Black Hat USA 2020, Trend Micro presented two important talks on vulnerabilities in Industrial IoT (IIoT). The first discussed weaknesses in proprietary languages used by industrial robots, and the second talked about vulnerabilities in protocol gateways. Any organization using robots, and any organization running a multi-vendor OT environment, should be aware of these attack surfaces. Here is a summary of the key points from each talk.
Rogue Automation
Presented at Black Hat, Wednesday, August 5. https://www.blackhat.com/us-20/briefings/schedule/index.html#otrazor-static-code-analysis-for-vulnerability-discovery-in-industrial-automation-scripts-19523 and the corresponding research paper is available at https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-of-things/unveiling-the-hidden-risks-of-industrial-automation-programming
Industrial robots contain powerful, fully capable computers. Unlike most contemporary computers, though, industrial robots lack basic information security capabilities. First, at the architectural level, they lack any mechanism to isolate certain instructions or memory. That is, any program can alter any piece of storage, or run any instruction. In traditional mainframes, no application could access, change, or run any code in another application or in the operating system. Even smartphone operating systems have privilege separation. An application cannot access a smartphone’s camera, for instance, without being specifically permitted to do so. Industrial robots allow any code to read, access, modify, or run any device connected to the system, including the clock. That eliminates data integrity in industrial robots and invalidates any audit of malfunctions; debugging becomes exceptionally difficult.
Industrial robots do not use conventional programming languages, like C or Python. Instead, each manufacturer provides its own proprietary programming language. That means a specialist using one industrial robot cannot use another vendor’s machine without training. There are no common information security tools for code validation, since vendors do not develop products for fragmented markets. These languages describe programs telling the robot how to move. They also support reading and writing data, analyzing and modifying files, opening and closing input/output devices, getting and sending information over a network, and accessing and changing status indicators on connected sensors. Once a program starts to run on an industrial robot, it can do anything any fully functional computer can do, without any security controls at all. Contemporary industrial robots do not have any countermeasures against this threat.
Most industrial robot owners do not write their own programs. The supply chain for industrial robot programs involves many third-party actors. See Figure 1 below for a simplified diagram. In each community, users of a particular vendor’s languages share code informally, and rely on user’s groups for hints and tips to solve common tasks. These forums rarely discuss security measures. Many organizations hire third-party contractors to implement particular processes, but there are no security certifications relevant to these proprietary languages. Most programmers learned their trade in an air-gapped world, and still rely on a perimeter which separates the safe users and code inside from the untrusted users and code outside. The languages offer no code scanners to identify potential weaknesses, such as not validating inputs, modifying system services, altering device state, or replacing system functions. The machines do not have a software asset management capability, so knowing where the components of a running program originated from is uncertain.
Figure 1: The Supply Chain for Industrial Robot Programming
All is not lost – not quite. In the short term, Trend Micro Research has developed a static code analysis tool called OTRazor, which examines robotic code for unsafe code patterns. This was demonstrated during our session at Black Hat.
Over time, vendors will have to introduce basic security checks, such as authentication, authorization, data integrity, and data confidentiality. The vendors will also have to introduce architectural restrictions – for instance, an application should be able to read the clock but not change it.. Applications should not be able to modify system files, programs, or data, nor should they be able to modify other applications. These changes will take years to arrive in the market, however. Until then, CISOs should audit industrial robot programs for vulnerabilities, and segment networks including industrial robots, and apply baseline security programs, as they do now, for both internally developed and procured software.
Protocol Gateway Vulnerabilities
Presented at Black Hat, Wednesday, August 5, https://www.blackhat.com/us-20/briefings/schedule/index.html#industrial-protocol-gateways-under-analysis-20632, with the corresponding research paper available here: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-of-things/lost-in-translation-when-industrial-protocol-translation-goes-wrong.
Industry 4.0 leverages the power of automation alongside the rich layer of software process control tools, particularly Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and its bigger cousin, Supply Chain Management (SCM). By bringing together dynamic industrial process control with hyper-efficient “just-in-time” resource scheduling, manufacturers can achieve minimum cost, minimum delay, and optimal production. But these integration projects require that IIoT devices speak with other technology, including IIoT from other manufacturers and legacy equipment. Since each equipment or device may have their own communication protocol, Industry 4.0 relies heavily on protocol converters.
Protocol converters are simple, highly efficient, low-cost devices that translate one protocol into another. Protocol converters are ubiquitous, but they lack any basic security capabilities – authentication, authorization, data integrity or data confidentiality – and they sit right in the middle of the OT network. Attackers can subvert protocol converters to hijack the communication or change configuration. An attacker can disable a safety thresholds, generate a denial of service attack, and misdirect an attached piece of equipment.
In the course of this research, we found nine vulnerabilities and are working with vendors to remediate the issues. Through our TXOne subsidiary, we are developing rules and intelligence specifically for IIoT message traffic, which are then embedded in our current network security offerings, providing administrators with better visibility and the ability to enforce security policies in their OT networks.
Protocol converters present a broad attack surface, as they have limited native information security capabilities. They don’t validate senders or receivers, nor do they scan or verify message contents. Due to their crucial position in the middle of the OT network, they are an exceptionally appealing target for malicious actors. Organizations using protocol converters – especially those on the way to Industry 4.0 – must address these weak but critical components of their evolving infrastructure.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below or @WilliamMalikTM
The post Black Hat Trip Report – Trend Micro appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about two recently detected variants of existing Linux botnet malware types targeting exposed Docker servers. Also, read about a group of vulnerabilities dubbed Ripple20 that have the potential to critically impact millions of IoT devices across many different industries.
Read on:
The Fear of Vendor Lock-in Leads to Cloud Failures
Vendor lock-in, the fear that by investing too much with one vendor an organization reduces their options in the future, has been an often-quoted risk since the mid-1990s. Organizations continue to walk a fine line with their technology vendors. Ideally, you select a set of technologies that not only meet your current needs but that align with your future vision as well.
How Do I Select a Mobile Security Solution for My Business?
The percentage of companies admitting to suffering a mobile-related compromise has grown, despite a higher percentage of organizations deciding not to sacrifice the security of mobile devices to meet business targets. To make things worse, the C-suite is the most likely group within an organization to ask for relaxed mobile security protocols – despite also being highly targeted by cyberattacks.
Knowing Your Shared Security Responsibility in Microsoft Azure and Avoiding Misconfigurations
Trend Micro is excited to launch new Trend Micro Cloud One – Conformity capabilities that will strengthen protection for Azure resources. As with any launch, there is a lot of new information, so we held a Q&A with one of the founders of Conformity, Mike Rahmati. In the interview, Mike shares how these new capabilities can help customers prevent or easily remediate misconfigurations on Azure.
FBI Warns K-12 Schools of Ransomware Attacks via RDP
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week sent out a security alert to K-12 schools about the increase in ransomware attacks during the coronavirus pandemic, and especially about ransomware gangs that abuse RDP connections to break into school systems.
XORDDoS, Kaiji Botnet Malware Variants Target Exposed Docker Servers
Trend Micro recently detected variants of two existing Linux botnet malware types targeting exposed Docker servers: XORDDoS malware and Kaiji DDoS malware. Having Docker servers as their target is a new development for both XORDDoS and Kaiji; XORDDoS was known for targeting Linux hosts on cloud systems, while recently discovered Kaiji was first reported to affect internet of things (IoT) devices.
Frost & Sullivan Employee, Customer Data for Sale on Dark Web
A group is hawking records of more than 12,000 Frost & Sullivan employees and customers on a hacker folder. According to Cyble CEO Beenu Arora the breach was a result of a misconfigured backup directory on one of Frost & Sullivan’s public-facing servers. The KelvinSecurity Team said they put the information – which includes names, email addresses, company contacts, login names and hashed passwords – for sale in a hacking forum to sound the “alarm” after Frost & Sullivan didn’t respond to the group’s attempt to alert it to the exposed database.
Millions of IoT Devices Affected by Ripple20 Vulnerabilities
Israeli cybersecurity firm JSOF has released information on a group of vulnerabilities dubbed Ripple20. These vulnerabilities have the potential to critically impact millions of internet of things (IoT) devices across many different industries — crucial machines in the medical, oil and gas, transportation, power, and manufacturing industries can be affected by these bugs.
Nvidia Warns Windows Gamers of Serious Graphics Driver Bugs
Graphics chipmaker Nvidia has fixed two high-severity flaws in its graphics drivers. Attackers can exploit the vulnerabilities to view sensitive data, gain escalated privileges or launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks in impacted Windows gaming devices.
Cyberattacks from the Frontlines: Incident Response Playbook for Beginners
For enterprises, staying competitive in an ever-changing market involves keeping up with the latest technological trends. However, without the parallel development of security infrastructure and robust response, new technology could be used as a conduit for cyberthreats that result in losses. Organizations should aim to prevent these breaches from happening — but having protocols for reducing a breach lifecycle is an essential and realistic approach for dealing with current threats.
OneClass Unsecured S3 Bucket Exposes PII on More than One Million Students, Instructors
An unsecured database belonging to remote learning platform OneClass has exposed information associated with more than a million students in North America who use the platform to access study guides and educational assistance. Data exposed includes full names, email addresses (some masked), schools and universities attended, phone numbers, school and university course enrollment details and OneClass account details.
During the past decade, various countries and industries have actively developed guidelines and frameworks for OT security. Recently, multiple guidelines have been integrated, and two standards as global standards are IEC62443 and the NIST CSF, SP800 series, from the viewpoint of security in smart factories. In this series, Trend Miro explains the overviews of IEC62443 and NIST CSF, in order to understand their concepts required for security in smart factories.
Many businesses have misperceptions about cloud environments, providers, and how to secure it all. In order to help separate fact from fiction when it comes to your cloud environment, Trend Micro debunks 8 myths to help you confidently take the next steps in the cloud.
Does your organization have an incident response playbook for potential breaches? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: XORDDoS and Kaiji Botnet Malware Variants Target Exposed Docker Servers and Ripple20 Vulnerabilities Could Impact Millions of IoT Devices appeared first on .
“Alexa, turn on the TV.”
”Get it yourself.”
This nightmare scenario could play out millions of times unless people take steps to protect their IoT devices. The situation is even worse in industrial settings. Smart manufacturing, that is, Industry 4.0, relies on tight integration between IT systems and OT systems. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has evolved into supply chain management (SCM) systems, reaching across organizational and national boundaries to gather all forms of inputs, parting out subcomponent development and production, and delivering finished products, payments, and capabilities across a global canvas.
Each of these synergies fulfills a rational business goal: optimize scarce resources across diverse sources; minimize manufacturing, shipping, and warehousing expense across regions; preserve continuity of operations by diversifying suppliers; maximize sales among multiple delivery channels. The supply chain includes not only raw materials for manufacturing, but also third party suppliers of components, outsourced staff for non-core business functions, open source software to optimize development costs, and subcontractors to fulfill specialized design, assembly, testing, and distribution tasks. Each element of the supply chain is an attack surface.
Software development has long been a team effort. Not since the 1970s have companies sought out the exceptional talented solo developer whose code was exquisite, flawless, ineffable, undocumented, and impossible to maintain. Now designs must be clear across the team, and testing requires close collaboration between architects, designers, developers, and production. Teams identify business requirements, then compose a solution from components sourced from publically shared libraries. These libraries may contain further dependencies on yet other third-party code of unknown provenance. Simplified testing relies on the quality of the shared libraries, but shared library routines may have latent (or intentionally hidden) defects that do not come to life until in a vulnerable production environment. Who tests GitHub? The scope of these vulnerabilities is daunting. Trend Micro just published a report, “Attacks on Smart Manufacturing Systems: A Forward-looking Security Analysis,” that surveys the Industry 4.0 attack surface.
Within the manufacturing operation, the blending of IT and OT exposes additional attack surfaces. Industrial robots provide a clear example. Industrial robots are tireless, precision machines programmed to perform exacting tasks rapidly and flawlessly. What did industry do before robots? Factories either relied on hand-built products or on non-programmable machines that had to be retooled for any change in product specifications. Hand-built technology required highly skilled machinists, who are expensive and require time to deliver. See Figure 1 for an example.
Figure 1: The cost of precision
Non-programmable robots require factory down time for retooling, a process that can take weeks. Before programmable industrial robots, automobile factories would deliver a single body style across multiple years of production. Programmable robots can produce different configurations of materials with no down time. They are used everywhere in manufacturing, warehousing, distribution centers, farming, mining, and soon guiding delivery vehicles. The supply chain is automated.
However, the supply chain is not secure. The protocols industrial robots depend on assumed the environment was isolated. One controller would govern the machines in one location. Since the connection between the controller and the managed robots was hard-wired, there was no need for operator identification or message verification. My controller would never see your robot. My controller would only connect to my robot, so the messages they exchanged needed no authentication. Each device assumed all its connections were externally verified. Even the safety systems assumed the network was untainted and trustworthy. No protocols included any security or privacy controls. Then Industry 4.0 adopted wireless communications.
The move, which saved the cost of laying cable in the factory, opened those networks to eavesdropping and attacks. Every possible attack against industrial robots is happening now. Bad guys are forging commands, altering specifications, changing or suppressing error alerts, modifying output statistics, and rewriting logs. The consequences can be vast yet nearly undetectable. In the current report on Rogue Robots, our Forward-looking Threat Research team, collaborating with the Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI), analyzes the range of specific attacks today’s robots face, and the potential consequences those attacks may have.
Owners and operators of programmable robots should heed the warnings of this research, and consider various suggested remedies. Forewarned is forearmed.
The Rogue Robots research is here: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-of-things/rogue-robots-testing-industrial-robot-security.
The new report, Attacks on Smart Manufacturing Systems: A Forward-looking Security Analysis, is here: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/threat-intelligence-center/internet-of-things/threats-and-consequences-a-security-analysis-of-smart-manufacturing-systems.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below, or @WilliamMalikTM.
The post Securing Smart Manufacturing appeared first on .
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about the more than 140 February Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft and Adobe. Also, read about how an unsecured and unencrypted Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket was found leaking 36,077 inmate records in several U.S. states.
Read on:
February 2020 Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Fixes 99 Vulnerabilities, Adobe 42
This week, patches from Microsoft and Adobe for February were announced. Microsoft released fixes for 99 vulnerabilities – 12 critical, one of which is being exploited in the wild – and Adobe released fixes for 42, most of which are critical, and none actively exploited.
How to Manage Your Privacy On and Off Facebook
Where on Facebook is your privacy most at risk and what can you do to mange these risks? Although Facebook has taken steps to offer users tools to manage their data, such as their recent broad launch of their Off-Facebook Activity tool, they are not always easy to find. This blog from Trend Micro serves as a guide on how to protect your privacy on Facebook.
Emotet Malware Now Hacks Nearby Wi-Fi Networks to Infect New Victims
Emotet, the notorious trojan behind several botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks, has found a new attack vector: using already-infected devices to identify new victims that are connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks. According to researchers at Binary Defense, the newly discovered Emotet sample leverages a “Wi-Fi spreader” module to scan Wi-Fi networks, and then attempts to infect devices that are connected to them.
Outlaw Updates Kit to Kill Older Miner Versions, Targets More Systems
Trend Micro discovered that the hacking group Outlaw has been busy developing their toolkit for illicit income sources. While they had been quiet since Trend Micro’s analysis in June, there was an increase in the group’s activities in December, with updates on the kits’ capabilities reminiscent of their previous attacks.
Irving Security Company Spun Out of Trend Micro Lands $26M in Funding
Cysiv announced this week the close of a $26 million Series A financing led by ForgePoint Capital, a top tier venture capital firm that invests in transformative cybersecurity companies. Trend Forward Capital has been actively backing Cysiv and is also participating in this financing. Proceeds will be used to scale business operations and fuel further platform enhancements.
Trickbot, Emotet Use Text About Trump to Evade Detection
Threat actors have been using text from news articles about U.S. President Donald Trump to make malware undetectable. Trickbot samples employing this technique were recently found, while Trend Micro researchers detected Emotet samples using the same method.
Puerto Rico Gov Hit By $2.6M Phishing Scam
According to reports, an email-based phishing scam hit Puerto Rico’s Industrial Development Company, which is a government-owned corporation aimed at driving economic development to the island along with local and foreign investors. The scam email alleged a change to a banking account tied to remittance payments, which is a transfer of money (often by a foreign worker) to an individual in their home country.
Malicious Spam Campaign Targets South Korean Users
The spam campaign, detected by Trend Micro researchers, utilizes attachments compressed through ALZip, an archive and compression tool widely used in South Korea. When decompressed, the attachment is revealed to contain two executable (.EXE) files that carry the information stealer TrojanSpy.
Google Removes 500+ Malicious Chrome Extensions from the Web Store
Google has removed more than 500 malicious Chrome extensions from its official Web Store following a two-month long investigation conducted by security researcher Jamila Kaya and Cisco’s Duo Security team. The removed extensions operated by injecting malicious ads (malvertising) inside users’ browsing sessions.
Dynamic Challenges to Threat Detection and Endpoint Security — and How to Overcome Them
As a result of great technological advancements, our environments are steadily changing. Now more than ever, individuals and organizations rely on technology to make life more dynamic. This reliance on technology and the consequent expanding attack surface are what cybercriminals bank on as they create threats that are meant to trick users and organizations. In this blog, learn how to step up your threat detection and endpoint security.
YouTube, Twitter Hunt Down Deepfakes
YouTube and Twitter have taken measures to clamp down on synthetic and manipulated media, including deepfakes. Deepfakes are media (images, audio, video, etc.) synthetically generated through artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), which have been exploited in adult videos and propaganda using the faces and voices of unwitting celebrities, politicians, and other well-known figures.
Misconfigured AWS S3 Bucket Leaks 36,000 Inmate Records
An unsecured and unencrypted Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket was found leaking 36,077 records belonging to inmates of correctional facilities in several U.S. states. The leak, which was discovered by vpnMentor, exposed personally identifiable information (PII), prescription records and details of inmates’ daily activities.
An In-Depth Technical Analysis of CurveBall (CVE-2020-0601)
CVE-2020-0601 is a vulnerability that was discovered by the National Security Agency (NSA) and affects how cryptographic certificates are verified by one of the core cryptography libraries in Windows that make up part of the CryptoAPI system. Dubbed CurveBall or “Chain of Fools,” an attacker exploiting this vulnerability could create their own cryptographic certificates that appear to originate from a legitimate certificate that is trusted by Windows by default.
In your opinion, what was the most noteworthy patch from this month’s update? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: February 2020 Patch Tuesday Update and Misconfigured AWS S3 Bucket Leaks 36,000 Inmate Records appeared first on .
Whether you’re trying to inform purchasing decisions or just want to better understand the cybersecurity market and its players, industry analyst reports can be very helpful. Following our recent accolades by Forrester and IDC in their respective cloud security reports, we want to help customers understand how to use this information.
Our VP of cybersecurity, Greg Young, taps into his past experience at Gartner to explain how to discern the most value from industry analyst reports.
The post How To Get The Most Out Of Industry Analyst Reports appeared first on .
FreshRSS