QuoScient’s Weekly Intelligence Bulletin for the week of 09 August – 16 August 2018 is now available for download in the Media Center! Find below a summary.
Cyber
Vulnerabilities Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday release includes security patches for 60 vulnerabilities across multiple products, of which 12 are remotely exploitable and 19 are rated as critical. Additionally, there are two vulnerabilities listed as being exploited in the wild, which were previously disclosed by researchers.
Reported Incidents The Finish online identity verification site Suomi.fi was hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on 12 August, which disrupted access to several government websites. Impacted websites include many government-run sites and several ministry sites, while the Defense Ministry was not affected.
India’s Cosmos Bank was reportedly hit with a malware attack resulting in nearly USD 13.5 million stolen through simultaneous ATM withdrawals across 28 countries. The unidentified attackers carried out the fraudulent transactions on 11 August and 13 August, with the malware attack originating in Canada. Earlier this month, the FBI released a confidential alert to banks warning of a planned global cash-out scheme in the coming days.
Cyber Threats This week, QuoINT observed a variant of the Tinynuke banking Trojan configured to target customer banking URLs of financial institutions in France, these are: Societe Generale, HSBC and BNP PARIBAS.
Cyber Threat Actor Activity In the last week QuoINT detected two different spear-phishing attacks that are likely attributable to Cobalt threat actor group. The first wave was sent on behalf of the fictitious company “SEPA Europa” and targeted English speakers, while the second wave impersonated Alfabank and targeted Russian speakers.
Cryptocurrency
Crypto asset prices continued falling over the last week as the total market capitalization reached a low of USD 189 billion on 14 August, a decline of 18 percent from the end of the previous week.
Thailand introduced a regulatory framework for crypto assets and began accepting applications for licences. This might incite more companies to move to Thailand.
AlphaBit Cryptocurrency (ABCC) Exchange will open an office in Malta. QuoINT previously reported on the trend of crypto asset companies moving to Malta due to its favourable legislation.
Geopolitics
The German government will reportedly set up an agency for state-funded research for the creation of cyber weapons, called Agentur für Innovationen in der Cybersicherheit.
The diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Turkey further worsened. As a result, the Turkish Lira temporarily dropped by 20 percent which also negatively impacted the currencies of other emerging economies.
Outlook
18 August – Chancellor Merkel to meet President Putin in Berlin
23 August – G20 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting