Security News for the Week Ending March 15, 2024

No Honor Among Crooks – Darknet Site Extorts Vendors, Buyers

I guess we should not be surprised, but darknet narcotics bazaar Incognito Market has posted a threat on its homepage that if its vendors and buyers don’t pay an extortion of between $100 and $20,000, they will publish all of their transaction and chat records. This is after they froze all of the assets on the platform, stopping anyone from cashing out. After all, who are they going to call – the cops? On the other hand, if the big vendors can figure out who runs the site, don’t be surprised if they put out a hit on them. They better watch their backs for the rest of their lives. Credit: Brian Krebs

Hacktivist Group Anonymous Sudan Attacking French Gov Networks

While this attack will likely not cause permanent damage, it will shut down the digital world in France until it is over. The French government’s network connects a million people to 14,000 state websites. The attack has been going on since Sunday. These attacks usually don’t compromise websites, they just overwhelm them so that users can’t get any work done and customers can’t get government services. The government is working to block the attacks, but it is a cat and mouse game. Credit: Cybernews

Insider Threat: Ex-Meta VP Steals Proprietary Information

An ex-Meta VP is being sued by Meta for stealing confidential documents. Dipinder Singh Khurana worked for Meta for 12 years, but after he told the company he was leaving to work for a stealth startup he used his remaining time at the company to steal “a trove of proprietary, highly sensitive, confidential and non-public documents”. The data stolen included, for example, supplier contracts including pricing. Likely a company like Meta has a very sophisticated event logging system which allowed them to figure out what he took. Credit: The Register

FCC Sets New Standard for Broadband – 100 Megabits

The FCC continues to increase the minimum requirements for Internet providers to call what they are delivering “broadband Internet”. 24 million Americans, including almost 28 percent of Americans living in rural areas do not have fixed terrestrial broadband Internet and mobile Internet is not much better. The current standard is 25 meg down/ 3meg up for service to be classified as broadband. It was set 9 years ago. Each year the FCC releases a report on broadband Internet and this year, for the first time, they are using a more reliable measure of who has and does not have it. The report says that 45 million Americans lack access to 100 meg down/20 meg up fixed Internet and 35 meg down/3 meg up mobile Internet (that would include me). The new standard is 100 megabits down, 20 megabits up with a long term goal of 1 gigabit down/500 megabits up. America is in the top 10 countries for average fixed Internet speed (Below Thailand), but not in the top 10 for mobile Internet speed. This ups the game. At least if Internet providers want Federal subsidies. Credit FCC

How Much Does It Cost to Hijack Someone’s Cell Number

A former telecom manager for an unnamed telecommunications company in New Jersey (Verizon is headquartered in New Jersey) pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for swapping target’s phone SIMs for his accomplice to use the stolen SIM to receive one time passwords for hacked accounts. He also got a percentage of the take. The manager was paid $1,000 in Bitcoin per SIM swap (see, there is a valid use for bitcoin – committing a crime). He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 or more fine. Credit: Bleeping Computer

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