WEEK OF FEBRUARY 21, 2022

Ukrainian Defense Ministry, banks hit by suspected cyberattacks, officials say

• Incidents took down government websites and disrupted some banking services.
• The country’s defense ministry said in an English-language Facebook post that its web portal suffered a likely distributed denial of service attack, in which hackers flooded the website with traffic to overload its systems and take it offline.
• “Scheduled technical work is currently under way on the restoration of the regular functioning of the web portal of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine,” the ministry said, adding it would share updates through social media.

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Hackers leak names of ‘Freedom Convoy’ donors after GiveSendGo breach

• A leak site says it has received a cache of information, including about donors to the Ottawa truckers’ Freedom Convoy protest, after fundraising site GiveSendGo was targeted by hackers overnight.
• On Monday, GiveSendGo’s website said it was “under maintenance,” hours after the site was hijacked and redirected to a page believed to be controlled by the hackers, which no longer loads.
• The redirected page condemned the truckers who descended on Canada’s capital to oppose mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, causing widespread disruption to traffic and trade for more than a week.
• The page also contained a link to a file containing tens of thousands of records of what was described as “raw donation data” about those who donated to the Freedom Convoy.

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Meta’s Facebook to pay $90 million to settle privacy lawsuit over user tracking

• A proposed preliminary settlement was filed on Monday night with the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, and requires a judge’s approval. The accord also requires Facebook to delete data it collected improperly.
• Users accused the Meta Platforms Inc. unit of violating federal and state privacy and wiretapping laws by using plug-ins to store cookies that tracked when they visited outside websites containing Facebook “like” buttons.
• The case had been dismissed in June 2017, but was revived in April 2020 by a federal appeals court, which said users could try to prove that the Menlo Park, California-based company profited unjustly and violated their privacy.

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I&B Ministry warns officials on data security

• They have also been told not to use digital assistant devices such as Amazon’s Echo, Apple’s HomePod and Google Home in office and turn off digital assistants, including Alexa and Siri, in smartphones or watches.
• The officials are required to deposit their smart phones outside the meeting room during discussions on classified issues, said the order that has been issued in view of the finding that a large number of government officials use private messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram for communication of classified information.
• The Ministry said such a practice violated the Departmental Security instructions and the National Information Security Policy Guidelines.
• Accordingly, the Ministry has directed that top secret and secret documents be shared only in a closed network with the leased line connectivity where the Scientific Analysis Group (SAG) grade encryption mechanism is deployed. The SAG functions under the Defence Research & Development Organisation.

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Ukraine asks EU to send in cyber forces

• European civilian-military officials set to help Ukraine fight off Russian cyberattacks.
• Ukraine would “welcome deployment to Kyiv of the EU cyber rapid response team” to evaluate “vulnerabilities of our key computer networks and systems,” the country’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote to EU leaders. Kuleba also requested “additional technical equipment and software for strengthening the cybersecurity infrastructure” from the EU, citing “the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
• Kyiv’s plea for cyber reinforcements followed two major attacks on Ukrainian government networks in recent weeks. In mid-January, hackers posted messages on government websites and spread malware to wipe out data. Government websites were also taken down by an avalanche of traffic targeted at them last week, which Ukrainian security services called the “largest-ever” attack of its kind in the country.

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Red Cross attackers exploited Zoho bug used by China

• A major data breach at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in January began with the exploitation of a Zoho vulnerability previously used by Chinese state-backed hackers in attacks.
• The ICRC released more details of the attack yesterday in the interests of transparency and responsibility to its stakeholders.
• It claimed that the breach was highly targeted and sophisticated, beginning with the exploitation of CVE-2021-40539 in password management system Zoho ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus.
• Data was stolen on 515,000 “highly vulnerable” people worldwide, including names, locations and contact information. The Restoring Family Links service, which reunites separated families, was impacted.

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