Cyber Bites

A U.S. government website was vandalized late Saturday by hackers who posted images of a bloodied President Donald Trump being punched in the face and pro-Iran messages. The defaced website was the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) website, which makes U.S. federal government publications available to the public for free. The hackers, who struck as tensions between the U.S. and Iran heat up, claimed to be “Iran cyber security group hackers,” however, there’s no evidence to confirm any attribution to...

The communications app faces continued backlash after a New York Times report said it was used as a government spying tool. Mobile application ToTok has been reinstated to the Google Play app ecosystem, after it was removed last month due to claims that it was being used for government espionage. Source: Threat Post

Although it stressed there is no evidence of a specific credible threat to the U.S. after the killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the Department of Homeland Security Saturday issued a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin warning of retaliation, including cyberattacks. Source: SC Magazine

An ongoing and “serious cyberattack” at Austria’s foreign ministry could be the work of nation-state actors, the country’s government said. The ministry has set up a “coordination committee” to respond to the attack, which started as the country’s Greens party okayed an alliance with conservatives. Source: SC Magazine

Artificial intelligence programmers are developing bots that can identify digital bullying and sexual harassment. Known as “#MeTooBots” after the high-profile movement that arose after allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, the bots can monitor and flag communications between colleagues and are being introduced by companies around the world. Source: The Guardian

HappyHotel.jp is a website that operates similarly to Booking.com, but lets registered users search and book rooms in love hotels across Japan. In a message posted on its website, Almex, the company behind the service, said it detected unauthorized access to its servers on December 22, last year. The security incident is as bad as it gets, and hackers appear to have gotten their hands on a wealth of sensitive user information. Source: ZD Net

A London regimental association is on alert after email scammers posing as the group’s president tried to fool veterans into sending cash. The First Hussars Association, representing about 140 retired members of the London-based regiment, saw its members targeted by two fraudulent emails in a week, president Lt.-Col. Joe Murray said. Source: The Sudbury Star

The Poloniex cryptocurrency trading platform has reset some of their user's passwords after a list of alleged username and password combinations was found circulating on Twitter. On December 30th, 2019, users began receiving an email from Poloniex stating that their user name and password for the trading site may have been included in a data leak circulating on Twitter.

A U.S. district court issued an order enabling Microsoft to take over 50 domains used by a North Korea-based cybercrime gang to conduct spear phishing campaigns. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center took down the domains controlled by a group it named Thallium after researching the malicious actors activity and filing a report with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, said Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president,...

The U.S. Army this week has banned TikTok from government-owned devices as scrutiny over the platform’s relationship with China grows. With backlash swelling around TikTok’s relationship with China, the United States Army this week announced that U.S. soldiers can no longer have the social media app on government-owned phones. TikTok, a social media app used to create and share short form videos, is owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance. Despite its popularity with users and...