Author: Asad Yaseen

A computer programmer from Ohio who lied to federal agents about his involvement with an illegal online marketplace has been sentenced to prison.  Michael R. Weigand, also known by his online pseudonyms “Shabang” and “~Shabang~,” concealed his work for illicit black marketplace Silk Road when questioned by an IRS special agent and an FBI agent in January 2019.  Silk Road was used by several thousand criminals around the world to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of…

When the topic of 2021 security predictions came up at a recent meeting of top cyberindustry executives, several leaders starting laughing. “Really? After we completely blew it last year?” said one chief strategist. “Wow! We’re not even out of the woods yet with COVID-19,” said a marketing expert. “How can we talk about the post-pandemic world with credibility?” “I doubt many cybersecurity companies will fully participate right now Dan. So many moving parts, industry disruptions,…

Multiple security researchers note the return of an email campaign attempting to spread the malware, which is often used to drop the Ryuk ransomware and Trickbot banking Trojan. In October, three surges of spam laden with the Emotet downloader worked to spread the malware to vulnerable users’ systems, starting a sequence that often results in a Ryuk ransomware infection or attempts to steal bank account credentials via the Trickbot banking Trojan. On Oct. 30, with…

A virtual private network (VPN) used by some of the world’s leading cyber-criminals has been shut down in an international law enforcement action led by German police. The Safe-Inet service was deactivated yesterday as part of Operation Nova, a coordinated effort that involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation and European law enforcement agencies acting through Europol.  Servers used by the service were taken down, and its infrastructure was seized in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the…

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) reported 17 serious data breaches during the last financial year, according to official figures analysed by the Parliament Street think tank. The UK government department responsible for running the country’s justice system revealed in its annual report 2019-20 that it informed the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of personal data loss incidents affecting a total of 121,355 people. In the largest of the incidents reported to the ICO, a technical error…