Scandalous Cyberespionage Services Revealed
A New Revelation in the World of Cyberespionage
For years, mercenary hacker companies like NSO Group and Hacking Team have been at the center of scandals for selling their digital intrusion and cyberespionage services to clients worldwide. A less-known Indian startup called Appin also operated in this sphere, enabling customers worldwide to hack whistleblowers, activists, corporate competitors, lawyers, and celebrities on a massive scale from its offices in New Delhi.
A Reuters investigation, which involved speaking to numerous former Appin staff and hundreds of its hacking victims, as well as obtaining thousands of internal documents and case files from law enforcement investigations, unveiled the extent of the company’s actions. The investigation reveals the depth of Appin’s operations and how it brazenly sold its hacking abilities to the highest bidder through an online portal called My Commando.
Impact of the Cyber Attacks
The victims of Appin and its alumni’s copycat hacking companies included notable figures such as Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, Malaysian politician Mohamed Azmin Ali, targets of a Dominican digital tabloid, and a member of a Native American tribe who tried to claim profits from a Long Island, New York, casino development on his reservation.
Ransomware Group’s Ruthless Tactics
The ransomware group known as Scattered Spider caused significant damage to MGM Casinos. A new Reuters report suggests that some members of this group are based in the West, within reach of US law enforcement, yet have not been arrested.
Executives of cybersecurity companies have pointed to a lack of personnel needed to investigate on the part of the FBI, as many cybersecurity-focused agents have been poached by the private sector. Victims’ reluctance to cooperate in investigations has also deprived law enforcement of valuable evidence.
Hackers Breach Danish Power Utilities
Hackers Breach 22 Danish Power Utilities
Denmark’s critical infrastructure Computer Emergency Response Team, known as SektorCERT, reported that hackers had breached the networks of 22 Danish power utilities by exploiting a bug in their firewall appliances. The campaign was described as the biggest of its kind to ever target the Danish power grid. The group behind these intrusions was potentially Sandworm, also known as Unit 74455 of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, which has been responsible for the only three confirmed blackouts triggered by hackers in history, all in Ukraine.
The hackers were evicted from the target networks before they could cause any disruption to the utilities’ customers.
Cryptocurrency Wallet Vulnerabilities Discovered
Discovering a Flaw in Cryptocurrency Wallets
Last month, WIRED covered the efforts of a whitehat hacker startup called Unciphered to unlock valuable cryptocurrency wallets. The company has now revealed that it found a flaw in a random number generator widely used in cryptocurrency wallets created prior to 2016, leaving many of those wallets prone to theft, potentially adding up to $1 billion in vulnerable money.
The hacker group Unciphered discovered the flaw while attempting to unlock $600,000 worth of crypto locked in a client’s wallet. They failed to crack it but found a flaw in a piece of open-source code called BitcoinJS that left a wide swath of other wallets open to be hacked. The coder who built that flaw into BitcoinJS was Stefan Thomas, the owner of the $250 million in bitcoin locked on a thumb drive.
I have over 10 years of experience in the field of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. I have attended numerous conferences and events around the world, and my work has been featured in major publications such as CoinDesk, Bitcoin Magazine, and Yahoo Finance.
