Tag Archive for: profit

DPRK hacking for profit. MedusaLocker warning. C2C market notes. Cyber conflict in the Middle East and in Russia’s war.

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Dateline Ashgabat, Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington: Russia restates its security objectives.

Ukraine at D+127: Strikes against civilians along the Black Sea coast. (The CyberWire) Having withdrawn from Snake Island (as a humanitarian gesture, says the Kremlin; because the Ukrainians drove them out, says basically everyone else) Russian forces struck an apartment building along the Black Sea coast with Kh-22 Kitchen missiles, killing at least nineteen noncombatants, Norway recovers from what looks like a deniable Russian state DDoS attack, and NATO plans its rapid cyber response capability.

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 128 of the invasion (the Guardian) At least 19 dead after Russian missile strikes multi-story apartment building in Odesa; Russian forces withdraw from Snake Island in Black Sea

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 128 (Al Jazeera) As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 128th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Russian missiles kill at least 19 in Ukraine’s Odesa region (AP NEWS) Russian missile attacks on residential areas in a coastal town near the Ukrainian port city of Odesa early Friday killed at least 19 people, authorities reported, a day after Russian forces withdrew from a strategic Black Sea island.

Russian forces withdraw from Ukraine’s Snake Island (Washington Post) Russian forces say they have withdrawn from Ukraine’s Snake Island, a highly contested speck of land in the Black Sea they captured shortly after the start of the war — presenting a small but strategic win for Ukraine on Thursday.

Ukraine “big victory” at Snake Island could be a turning point (Newsweek) Russian troops’ ejection from the Black Sea island is of major significance, Ukraine’s former defense minister told Newsweek.

Why Ukraine’s Snake Island victory could be a major blow for Putin (The Telegraph) In Ukrainian hands, the threat to Moscow’s Black Sea fleet will go up, and the risk of an amphibious assault on Odesa will go down

Snake Island: Why Ukraine just won’t let it go (The Telegraph) The rocky Black Sea outcrop where 13 Ukrainian border guards famously refused to surrender has taken on a new significance

Putin’s week: Facing NATO expansion, West’s unity…

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2 Cybersecurity Stocks To Profit From Russia’s War

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Cybersecurity Russia After Global Sanctions

Russia’s Crash Override Has Zero Cool

Great Ones, there are two wars going on right this very second.

The first one we all know about. How could we not? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is plastered all over every financial and regular news media site in the world right now.

This “hot” war is expected to drastically impact oil and natural gas prices, potentially impact semiconductor production, provide an influx of revenue for defense-contractor companies and generally cause mayhem for the U.S. Federal Reserve.

(Yes, I know there are political and humanitarian impacts as well. It’s war, after all. But this is a financial publication, and I’m not delving into those murky waters here … except to say that I stand firmly with Ukraine.)

What I'd miss keep Greatness flowing meme

But there is a second war that’s about to kick off, and it won’t be limited to Russia or Ukraine’s borders. This war will be a cyberwar, conducted in that “series of tubes” we call the internet.

We all know Russia has a considerable stable of very capable hackers who have hit everything from banks to oil pipelines to national power grids to elections … and everything in between.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Russian hackers are going to go on the offensive after the latest round of anti-war sanctions.

In fact, Wedbush Analyst Dan Ives had this to say over the weekend:

With the historical move by the U.S., Europe, and Canada to remove select Russia banks from the Swift global financial/messaging system and Russian central bank sanctions, we now expect, unfortunately, a significant ramp-up of cyber warfare by Russian nation-state backed organizations over the coming weeks.

U.S. banking institutions and utility companies are already preparing for the worst, with U.S. officials noting that preparations began back in November for “any potential disruptions to our critical infrastructure and possible impacts to individuals and communities.”

Unfortunately, Russia is only one of the cyberwarfare players in this game. Anonymous — remember them? — came out this weekend and declared war on Russia.

Now, if you’ve followed the decentralized, international hacking collective since its 2003 debut, you know Anonymous is just as…

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Russia’s MTS mobile operator posts profit rise, ups guidance, Telecom News, ET Telecom

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Russia's MTS mobile operator posts profit rise, ups guidanceMOSCOW: Russia’s biggest mobile operator MTS on Thursday reported a 46.5% net profit jump to 17.2 billion roubles ($232.06 million) in the second quarter and raised its full-year revenue guidance to high single-digit growth.

MTS is one of several Russian companies developing services beyond its core business. President and CEO Vyacheslav Nikolaev said non-core segments – fintech, retail, media, cloud and digital – contributed more than half of revenue growth year-on-year.

“MTS Bank in particular has now achieved sufficient scale to become an engine of profitability for the group as a whole,” Nikolaev said in a statement.

The bank added around 100,000 customers in the quarter and posted net profit of 3.4 billion roubles for the first half of 2021, versus a 0.9 billion rouble loss in the same period last year, MTS said.

Second-quarter revenue was up 10.6% to 128.6 billion roubles. The company said it expects adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortisation (OIBDA) to rise by at least 5% this year, up from a previous forecast of 4% growth.

Adjusted OIBDA was 10.2% higher at 57.2 billion roubles in the second quarter.

MTS confirmed its 2021 capex guidance of between 100-110 billion roubles. It said Russian legal requirements that telecom operators store certain data for up to six months meant it would need to spend around 50 billion roubles on data storage systems between H2 2018 and H1 2023.

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Hackers are targeting kindergartens for profit, warns government

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Kindergartens and elementary schools struggling to educate children amid sustained coronavirus-induced remote learning can officially add a new woe to their list: hackers. 



graphical user interface, application: Hackers are targeting kindergartens for profit, warns government

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Hackers are targeting kindergartens for profit, warns government

The U.S. government on Thursday issued a statement warning that criminals are specifically going after schools’ distance-learning programs. And while this fits a well-established pattern, the latest alert from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) makes it clear that it’s no longer just colleges and universities that need to be on their guard. 

“The FBI, CISA, and MS-ISAC assess malicious cyber actors are targeting kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) educational institutions, leading to ransomware attacks, the theft of data, and the disruption of distance-learning services,” reads the statement. “Cyber actors likely view schools as targets of opportunity, and these types of attacks are expected to continue through the 2020/2021 academic year.”

Ransomware, which over the course of the past several years has ground businesses and infrastructure to a halt across the globe, works by encrypting a target’s files and demanding some form of payment — often in the form of cryptocurrency — to decrypt those files. That hackers have now moved from corporations to kindergarten, elementary, and high schools likely reflects those organizations’ comparatively lax cybersecurity combined with educators’ increased dependence on digital tools. 

With so many working and learning from home thanks to the coronavirus, it follows that schools might be more willing to pay up should they lose access to the tools making remote learning possible. 

“In these attacks, malicious cyber actors target school computer systems, slowing access, and — in some instances — rendering the systems inaccessible for basic functions, including distance learning,” reads the CISA alert. 

Notably, in a twist reminiscent of the Maze ransomware crew, hackers are doing more than just encrypting target schools’ files. 

“Adopting tactics previously leveraged against business and industry, ransomware actors have also stolen…

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