cyberattack

Officials believe the Olympics cyberattack was in retaliation to the International Olympic Committee's decision to ban Russia over the state-sponsored doping scandal.

BitFunder founder Jon Montroll repeatedly lied to the Securities Exchange Commission to cover up a hack that saw the theft of over 6,000 bitcoins.

"We believe this is the next team to watch," FireEye's director of intelligence analysis John Hultquist said.

Hackers have been found targeting several vulnerabilities in different servers to secretly install cryptomining software and generate digital currencies using victims' resources.

Hackers have targeted a slew of banks worldwide in recent years to gain illegal access to the Swift network and initiate fraudulent money transfers.

For their roles in what US prosecutors have called "one of the largest" known cybercrime schemes, two Russian nationals were handed lengthy prison terms this week.

Widely believed to be linked to the North Korean regime, Lazarus Group has been linked to the 2014 Sony hack and the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017 among others.

Over the past few months, researchers observed an uptick in phishing campaigns targeting several Olympics organisations by the Kremlin-linked hacking group Fancy Bear.

The incident comes as cybercriminals increasingly look to tap into the growing digital currency market with cryptojacking attacks, malware and more

"Best international practice says that you don't talk about an attack," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said.

"DNS is still often treated differently providing a golden opportunity to leak data," Forcepoint researchers said.

"I clicked on it and instantly knew that I had been had," one retired Air Force major general, who was sent a dubious phishing link, said.

Cybercriminals managed to infiltrate the site and install maliciously modified copies of the Firefox, OnyX and Deeper applications.

Similar to other ransomware, Scarabey demands a Bitcoin payment from victims after infecting their system and encrypting all files.

The malware includes a slightly modified Gh0st remote access trojan designed to act as a backdoor that researchers said is "very similar" to attacks linked to the Iron Tiger group.

"It is interesting to see a new ransomware being distributed via exploit kits in what so far seems to be a few ongoing campaigns," researchers said.

Car-sharing company GoGet's CEO, Tristan Sender, said they did not notify affected customers sooner based on the "strong advice" of NSW police.

"Timing is the only thing that links the two so far," a cybersecurity expert said.

"We have observed another instance where a threat actor looks to be using political events to target individuals or organizations within the Palestine region," researchers said.

Hacked cryptocurrency exchange pledges that most victims of $500m cyberattack will be repaid but regulatory officials not convinced.

"This should be treated as a call to action to take appropriate steps to protect their ATMs against these forms of attack and mitigate any consequences," ATM vendor NCR said.

Interestingly, researchers noted that their analysis of the Hide 'N Seek bot revealed it can be leveraged for far more nefarious activities than launching DDoS attacks.

The malicious malware is designed to find and harvest a slew of sensitive data including credentials, browser data and even cryptocurrency wallets

A major incident has reportedly been declared at a number of NHS hospitals across England and Wales after alleged IT failures hit data centres Wednesday (24 January).

The discovery comes as cybercriminals increasingly tap into cryptocurrency as lures, payment options or attacks.

"It is also possible for an attacker to take control over the profile pictures the user sees, swapping them for inappropriate content," researchers said.

"With a maximum child tax credit of $1,000 per child, that is a potentially significant return on investment," researchers said.

Hackers frequently look to target and exploit curious users by tapping into trending issues, events in the news or widely publicised ones in their attacks.

Clarke is the latest in a slew of US conservative political figures and reporters targeted by the Turkish hacking group.

"Since both the Chrome and Firefox extensions mostly add themselves through forced installs, it's not always possible to avoid getting them," researchers said.