Cyber Bites

The worlds largest digital newspaper and magazine distributor has been hit with a cyberattack, leaving users without access to more than 7000 publications. PressReader is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, but has offices in both Dublin, Ireland and Manila, Philippines. The organisation began experiencing network outages on Thursday, affecting its Branded Editions website and apps, alongside the PressReader site. PressReader's local, regional and international newspapers and magazines online, on mobile devices and in print have all...

Coinbase has announced its full support of Russian sanctions, revealing the extent to which it has worked with governments. The organisation has also revealed that they have blocked 25,000 accounts linked to Russians suspected of illicit activity. "Many of which we have identified through our own proactive investigations," the company said. "Once we identified these addresses, we shared them with the government to further support sanctions enforcement." They cryptocurrency exchange platform announced in a blog...

Ukraine is set to join the NATO cyber-defence centre following a vote confirming its admission. The move is expected to anger Russia and bring Ukraine closer to NATO. The Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) announced that Ukraine and several other non-NATO countries will become a "contributing participant". “Capability and knowledge comes from experience, and Ukraine definitely has valuable experience from previous cyber-attacks to provide significant value to the NATO CCDCOE,” said Estonia’s minister...

As Russia invaded Ukraine, the besieged country asked  the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to take away Russia's top-level domains (TLD), such as .ru, .рф, and .su be revoked, as well as the nation's associated Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. Andrii Nabok, ICANN's Ukrainian representative, and Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister of digital information made the request. ICANN has rejected the request, attempting to soften the blow in a...

As the conflict in Ukraine progresses, Telegram messaging has emerged as a favourite tool for both hacktivists and cybercriminals alike. Research from the cybersecurity company Check Point suggests that there are six times as many groups on the messaging apps  since February 24. Some topic-specific groups have grown significantly, some even reaching more than 250,000 members. The categories that have grown the most as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are as follows: Volunteer...

Several Ukrainian cities are experiencing power outages as the Russian invasion rages on. NetBlocks, a Global internet access tracker, has shared data highlighting widespread internet outages across Mariupol, Sumy and other regions of the country. This comes alongside an increase in bombing campaigns and rocket fire from Russian units. Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, told ZDnet: "Mariupol and Sumy are the main outage incidents we're tracking today. Overall, at national level, observable connectivity is down...

A threat actor in support of Russia has compromised at least 30 Ukrainian universities as vulnerability exploit attempts have surged, according to Wordfence. The security firm has generated useful intelligence on the the attacks campaign as it protects over 8300 Ukrainian WordPress sites, including those of private businesses, government, military and police. The attack campaign spiked on February 25th as the invasion began. According to Mark Maunder., CEO of Wordfence parent company Defiant, total attempts...

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have collected data from 200,000 medical infusion pumps used to administer medicines and fluids to patients, finding that 75% of them are running with known security issues. Research has revealed that tens of thousands of devices are vulnerable to six critical severity flaws (9.8 out of 10) reported in 2019 and 2020, leaving them open to attack. Following analysis of 200,000 medical infusion pumps, researchers discovered that between 30,000 and...

While the majority of cyberattacks in Ukraine are planned and highly targeted, there are signs that things are set to change. A new Trojan dubbed "FoxBlade" was discovered by Microsoft researchers on Ukrainian government systems that would allow attackers to use infected PCs in DDoS attacks. Experts are concerned that malware operators will try to infect as many systems as possible with it, inside and outside of Ukraine, to make the attacks more powerful. There has...

TeaBot malware has been spotted on the Google Play Store posing as a QR code app, already spreading to more than 10,000 devices. Its distributors used this trick in January, and while Google ousted those entries the malware has found its way back onto the Android repository. Cleafy, an online fraud management and prevention company, reports that the applications act as droppers, submitted without malicious code and with minimal permissions, making it difficult for Google...