QuoScient’s Weekly Intelligence Bulletin for the week of 22 November – 29 November 2018 is now available for download in the Media Center!
Find below a summary.
CYBER
Reported Incidents Industry Impacted: ANY
The United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against two people allegedly responsible for conducting a long running international computer hacking and extortion operation
involving the SamSam ransomware.
Collaborative efforts between law enforcement agencies and cyber security companies led to the coordinated takedown of infrastructure for a large digital ad fraud operation dubbed 3ve. Since at least 2014, the 3ve botnet controlled over 1 million unique IP addresses globally, causing online advertisers to suffer fraud resulting in millions of dollars. A popular third-party NodeJS module was compromised when a rogue developer contributed malicious code to the open-source project which is intended to steal funds stored in a specific Bitcoin wallet app.
Threat Actor Activity Industry Impacted: Financials
On 29 November, QuoINT publicly disclosed the results of its investigation on the Golden Chicken’s Malware-as-a-Service, and the details of three e-Crime threat actors using it.
CRYPTOCURRENCY
The total market capitalization rallied to EUR 123 billion on 29 November, after a drastic fall between 23 November to 25 November.
GEOPOLITICS
On 25 November, Russia shot at and seized three Ukrainian naval ships at the Kerch strait and detained 24 sailors, of which six were wounded. Cyberattacks will likely continue after this incident
and possibly extent to countries supporting Ukraine, in the form of sabotage and espionage attempts, as well as through disinformation campaigns and patriotic hacktivism.
The U.S. government reportedly advised allied states, including Germany, to not use products from China’s Huawei Technologies over cyber security fears.
OUTLOOK
05 December – Botconf 2018
06 December – OPEC Meeting in Vienna