The U.S. is setting up a Joint Ransomware Task Force, headed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI, as well as two international initiatives, chaired by the Department of Justice, to tackle illegal cryptocurrency activities related to ransomware.
In this edition, Ari Redbord and Grant Schneider join ISMG editors to discuss the challenges ahead for the U.S. government as it plans to roll out EDR deployments at more than half of federal agencies this year, how stable the stablecoin economy really is and how to improve industry collaboration.
There has been a rise in crypto fraud, and a substantial portion of it can be attributed to stimulus funding and paycheck protection programs, says David Britton, vice president of strategy, global ID and fraud at Experian. He discusses new authentication methods and stricter regulations.
Criminals are doubling down on their use of information-stealing malware, such as Cryptobot, RedLine Stealer and QuilClipper, to steal private keys and siphon off cryptocurrency being stored in internet-connected hot wallets or to raid cryptocurrency holders' online exchange accounts.
If you were a nation with legions of hackers at your disposal, seeking to sidestep crippling international sanctions, would you look to ransomware to fund your regime? That question is posed by new research that finds state-sponsored North Korean hackers haven't stopped their ransomware experiments.
In the latest update, four editors at Information Security Media Group discuss the intriguing insights exposed by the leak of ransomware gang Conti's internal communications, the U.S. Treasury's first-ever sanctions on a cryptocurrency mixer and the latest cyber activity in Russia's hybrid war.
The United Kingdom has announced two proposed pieces of legislation - the Financial Services and Markets Bill and the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill - to regulate the digital assets industry and curb the use of virtual currency in illicit activity.
Virtual currency mixer Blender.io has been sanctioned by the U.S. for enabling North Korea to conduct "malicious cyber activities and money laundering of stolen virtual currency," the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control says in its first sanctioning of a currency mixer.
Two signs that the tide may finally, if slowly, be turning on ransomware: The number of victims who choose to pay continues to decline, while the amount they pay - when they choose to do so - recently dropped by one-third, reports ransomware incident response firm Coveware.
DeFi platform Fei Protocol has offered a $10 million "no questions asked" bounty to hackers in an attempt to recover some of the funds stolen from its recently merged DAO partner Rari Capital. Blockchain security firms BlockSec and CertiK say the amount of stolen funds totals about $80 million.
Don't stockpile cryptocurrency in case your organization falls victim to ransomware-wielding attackers and opts to pay a ransom. This might seem obvious to anyone aware of the volatility in Bitcoin's value, but some organizations reportedly used to employ this incident response strategy.
Almost all ransomware-wielding attackers accept Bitcoin for ransom payments, but many prefer Monero, thanks to the privacy-preserving coin being tougher for law enforcement officials to track. But advanced intelligence efforts to try and unmask criminal users of both Bitcoin and Monero are ongoing.
VMware's Tom Kellermann is out with Modern Bank Heists 5.0, his latest look at the attackers and attacks targeting financial services. Subtitled "The Escalation," this report looks at the increase in destructive attacks, ransomware and hits on cryptocurrency exchanges. Kellermann shares insights.
Hours after global cryptocurrency exchange Currency.com announced it was halting operations in Russia, it faced - and thwarted - a distributed denial-of-service attack. The company's founder, Viktor Prokopenya, says the firm's "servers, systems and client data remained intact and uncompromised."
Decentralized credit-based stablecoin protocol Beanstalk was the victim of "a theft of about $76 million in non-Beanstalk user assets." The Ethereum-based protocol did not specify what those assets included, but blockchain security firm PeckShield says the total losses are likely $182 million.
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