News in the Government category

European Parliament calls for ban on AI-powered mass surveillance

The EU Parliament has voted in favor of a resolution that bans the adoption of AI-powered biometric mass surveillance technologies such as facial recognition systems in the continent.
- Bill Toulas
- October 06, 2021
- 12:23 PM
- 0
RaidForums forced to use mirror after Brazilian govt contacts registrar

The RaidForums hacking forum has gone through a turbulent week, with its website now forced through a mirror domain after a government filed a legal request with their registrar.
- Bill Toulas
- October 04, 2021
- 01:00 PM
- 0
UK plans to invest £5 billion in retaliatory cyber-attacks

The United Kingdom has revealed plans to invest £5 billion in bolstering national cybersecurity that includes creating a "Cyber Force" unit to perform retaliatory attacks.
- Bill Toulas
- October 04, 2021
- 09:47 AM
- 3
U.S. to sanction crypto exchanges, wallets used by ransomware

The Biden administration is expected to issue sanctions against crypto exchanges, wallets, and traders used by ransomware gangs to convert ransom payments into fiat money.
- Lawrence Abrams
- September 17, 2021
- 05:49 PM
- 0
US govt sites showing porn, viagra ads share a common software vendor

Multiple U.S. government sites using .gov and .mil domains have been seen hosting porn and spam content, such as Viagra ads, in the last year. A security researcher noticed all of these sites share a common software vendor, Laserfiche.
- Ax Sharma
- September 17, 2021
- 06:11 AM
- 1
Canada accepted 7,300 more immigration applications due to technical bug

A bug in the Canadian immigration system led to the government accepting an additional 7,307 immigration applications, surpassing the imposed limit. This comprised files from international graduate stream applicants aspiring to change their temporary visa status to permanent residency.
- Ax Sharma
- August 31, 2021
- 12:02 AM
- 0
NSA: Russian GRU hackers use Kubernetes to run brute force attacks

The National Security Agency (NSA) warns that Russian nation-state hackers are conducting brute force attacks to access US networks and steal email and files.
- Lawrence Abrams
- July 01, 2021
- 11:00 AM
- 1
US Supreme Court restricts broad scope of CFAA law

Today, the US Supreme Court restricted the scope of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after overturning the conviction of a Georgia police officer who searched a police database for money.
- Lawrence Abrams
- June 03, 2021
- 06:44 PM
- 0
US seizes domains used by APT29 in recent USAID phishing attacks

The US Department of Justice has seized two Internet domains used in recent phishing attacks impersonating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to distribute malware and gain access to internal networks.
- Lawrence Abrams
- June 01, 2021
- 04:56 PM
- 1
Biden issues executive order to increase U.S. cybersecurity defenses

President Biden signed an executive order Wednesday to modernize the country's defenses against cyberattacks and give more timely access to information necessary for law enforcement to conduct investigations.
- Lawrence Abrams
- May 12, 2021
- 08:02 PM
- 0
Researchers hacked Indian govt sites via exposed git and env files

Researchers have now disclosed more information on how they were able to breach multiple websites of the Indian government. The full findings disclosed today shed light on the routes leveraged by the researchers, including finding exposed .git directories and .env files on some of these systems.
- Ax Sharma
- March 12, 2021
- 11:46 AM
- 0
Ryuk ransomware hits 700 Spanish government labor agency offices

The systems of SEPE, the Spanish government agency for labor, were taken down following a ransomware attack that hit more than 700 agency offices across Spain.
- Sergiu Gatlan
- March 10, 2021
- 08:35 AM
- 0
CISA takes over .GOV top-level domain (TLD) administration

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is taking over the administration of the .GOV top-level domain (TLD) as its new policy and management authority starting next month.
- Sergiu Gatlan
- March 08, 2021
- 09:56 AM
- 0
DHS orders agencies to urgently patch or disconnect Exchange servers

The Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity unit has ordered federal agencies to urgently update or disconnect Microsoft Exchange on-premises products on their networks.
- Sergiu Gatlan
- March 04, 2021
- 08:04 AM
- 1
NSW Transport agency extorted by ransomware gang after Accellion attack

The transport system for the Australian state of New South Wales has suffered a data breach after the Clop ransomware exploited a vulnerability to steal files.
- Lawrence Abrams
- March 01, 2021
- 11:43 AM
- 0
Over 8 million COVID-19 test results leaked online

Millions of COVID-19 test reports were found to be publicly accessible due to flawed online system implementation.
- Ax Sharma
- February 24, 2021
- 09:00 PM
- 0
Federal Reserve nationwide outage impacts US banking system

The US Federal Reserve suffered a massive IT systems outage today that prevented wire transfers, ACH transactions, and other services from operating.
- Lawrence Abrams
- February 24, 2021
- 02:06 PM
- 0
Pro-India hackers use Android spyware to spy on Pakistani military

This week a report has revealed details on the two spyware strains leveraged by state-sponsored threat actors during the India-Pakistan conflict. The malware strains named Hornbill and SunBird have been delivered as fake Android apps (APKs) by the Confucius advanced persistent threat group (APT), a state-sponsored operation.
- Ax Sharma
- February 14, 2021
- 12:12 PM
- 0
United Nations data breach exposed over 100k UNEP staff records

This week, researchers have responsibly disclosed a vulnerability by exploiting which they could access over 100K private records of United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). The data breach stemmed from exposed Git directories which let researchers clone Git repositories and gather PII of a large number of employees.
- Ax Sharma
- January 11, 2021
- 01:52 AM
- 5
Biden blasts Trump administration over SolarWinds attack response

U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden has criticized the Trump administration over the lack of response regarding the SolarWinds response and for failing to officially attribute the attacks.
- Sergiu Gatlan
- December 22, 2020
- 05:20 PM
- 2