#UK#CyberSecurity#StateHacking: "Data breaches from the Ministry of Defence have increased nearly five times in the past five years, or nearly 400 per cent, fuelling fears about the UK’s resilience against cyber attacks from Russia and China.
Analysis of MoD figures reveals that there were 550 data incidents last year, compared to 117 in 2017-18.
At the same time, ministers have revealed that the Information Commissioner’s Office has three open investigations into personal data incidents at the MoD.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have put national security at the heart of their election campaigns, amid growing signs of global instability and the potential threat from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
It follows warnings, revealed by i last week, that the UK general election could be undermined by cyber attacks and AI deep fakes emanating from those hostile states."
#CyberSecurity#Russia#StateHacking#USA#Microsoft: "U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has confirmed that Russian government-backed hackers stole emails from several U.S. federal agencies as a result of an ongoing cyberattack at Microsoft.
In a statement published Thursday, the U.S. cyber agency said the cyberattack, which Microsoft initially disclosed in January, allowed the hackers to steal federal government emails “through a successful compromise of Microsoft corporate email accounts.”
The hackers, which Microsoft calls “Midnight Blizzard,” also known as APT29, are widely believed to work for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR.
#India#Cybersecurity#Apple#StateHacking#PressFreedom#News#Journalism: "A day after Apple warned independent Indian journalists and opposition party politicians in October that government hackers may have tried to break into their iPhones, officials under Prime Minister Narendra Modi promptly took action — against Apple.
Officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publicly questioned whether the Silicon Valley company’s internal threat algorithms were faulty and announced an investigation into the security of Apple devices.
In private, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, senior Modi administration officials called Apple’s India representatives to demand that the company help soften the political impact of the warnings. They also summoned an Apple security expert from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi, where government representatives pressed the Apple official to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters."
#Ukraine#Russia#Cybersecurity#StateHacking#GRU#Hacking: "Over nearly a decade, the hacker group within Russia's GRU military intelligence agency known as Sandworm has launched some of the most disruptive cyberattacks in history against Ukraine's power grids, financial system, media, and government agencies. Signs now point to that same usual suspect being responsible for sabotaging a major mobile provider for the country, cutting off communications for millions and even temporarily sabotaging the air raid warning system in the capital of Kyiv.
On Tuesday, a cyberattack hit Kyivstar, one of Ukraine's largest mobile and internet providers. The details of how that attack was carried out remain far from clear. But it “resulted in essential services of the company’s technology network being blocked,” according to a statement posted by Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-UA.
Kyivstar's CEO, Oleksandr Komarov, told Ukrainian national television on Tuesday, according to Reuters, that the hacking incident “significantly damaged [Kyivstar's] infrastructure [and] limited access.”"
#CyberSecurity#Russia#Sandworm#PowerGrids#Ukraine#StateHacking: "Cybersecurity firm Mandiant today revealed that Sandworm, a cybersecurity industry name for Unit 74455 of Russia's GRU spy agency, carried out a third successful power grid attack targeting a Ukrainian electric utility in October of last year, causing a blackout for an unknown number of Ukrainian civilians. In this case, unlike any previous hacker-induced blackouts, Mandiant says the cyberattack coincided with the start of a series of missile strikes targeting Ukrainian critical infrastructure across the country, which included victims in the same city as the utility where Sandworm triggered its power outage. Two days after the blackout, the hackers also used a piece of data-destroying "wiper" malware to erase the contents of computers across the utility's network, perhaps in an attempt to destroy evidence that could be used to analyze their intrusion."
#Cybersecurity#USA#Hacking#StateHacking: "A federal counterintelligence agency tracking hackers has bought data harvested from the backbone of the internet by a private company because it was easier and took less time than getting similar data from the NSA, according to internal U.S. government documents. According to the documents, going through an agency like the NSA could take “days,” whereas a private contractor could provide the same data instantly.
The news is yet another example of a government agency turning to the private sector for novel datasets that the public is likely unaware are being collected and then sold.
404 Media obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Defense Security Service (DSS)—now known as the Defence Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). According to procurement records, the agency has spent millions of dollars over several years on technology from cyber threat intelligence company Team Cymru."