Last week BeyondTrust announced the acquisition of Entitle, the just-in-time permissions access management vendor. Appian signed a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to make generative AI more accessible to business processes. Nord vLEI became the first European-based GLEIF Qualified vLEI (QVI) Issuer.
Bugcrowd
Bugcrowd announced the availability of AI Bias Assessments as part of its AI Safety and Security Solutions portfolio on the Bugcrowd Platform. AI Bias Assessment taps the power of the crowd to help enterprises and government agencies adopt Large Language Model (LLM) applications safely, efficiently, and confidently.
Dave Gerry, CEO of Bugcrowd commented, “Bugcrowd’s work with customers like the US DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), along with our partner ConductorAI, has become a crucial proving ground for AI detection by unleashing the crowd for identifying data bias flaws. We’re eager to share the lessons we’ve learned with other customers facing similar challenges.”
Egress
Egress launched its third Phishing Threat Trends Report 2024 (April 2024). The report details key trends, new data, and threat intelligence insights surrounding phishing attacks. Key findings include:
- Quishing has risen from 0.8% in 2021 to 10.8% in 2024. Whereas attachment-based payloads halved from 72.7% to 35.7% in the same timeframe.
- 77% of impersonation attacks imitated well-known brands. DocuSign is the most impersonated brand, followed by Microsoft.
- 8% of phishing attacks rely solely on social engineering methods.
- Microsoft Teams was the most popular second step in multi-channel attacks, accounting for 30.8%, followed by Slack (19.2%), and SMS (18.6%).
- AI is being used for nearly every aspect of cyberattacks.
- From Jan-Mar 2024, 52.2% more attacks got through SEG detection.
- Millennials are the key target for cybercriminals.
Jack Chapman, SVP of Threat Intelligence at Egress, commented, “The third edition of the Egress Phishing Threat Trends Report is jam packed with crucial themes and predictions for the threat landscape for 2024. Utilizing data from Egress Defend and exclusive intel from the Egress team, we look at hot topics that have dominated headlines, including the rise of QR phishing and AI-powered attacks, plus we analyze the ways cybercriminals are engineering attacks to get through detection by secure email gateways.
“The one thing that won’t change in 2024 is cybercriminals investing heavily in attacks that give them the highest rewards. Some tactics will stay the same, but where returns diminish or disappear entirely, new tactics will emerge. Looking at the trends explored in the latest report, we can say with certainty that AI-powered attacks are here to stay, and our Threat Intelligence team predicts AI will be used in some way in every phishing attack in the next 12 months, leading to lucrative paydays for cybercriminals.”
Europol
Europol announced the arrest of 20 members of an intercontinental criminal network. They were engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering in Spain and Portugal. The suspects laundered more than EUR 10 million using stolen identities of Colombian, Portuguese, Spanish and Venezuelan nationals.
Law enforcement from 19 countries severely disrupted one of the world’s largest phishing-as-a-service platform, known as LabHost. This year-long operation, co-ordinated at the international level by Europol, resulted in the compromise of LabHost’s infrastructure. The international investigation was led by the UK’s London Metropolitan Police. With the support of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) hosted at its headquarters. The investigation uncovered at least 40,000 phishing domains linked to LabHost, which had some 10,000 users worldwide.
European Police Chiefs including the UK’s NCA are calling for industry and governments to take urgent action to ensure public safety across social media platforms. Privacy measures are currently being rolled out, such as end-to-end encryption. These will stop tech companies from seeing any offending that occurs on their platforms. It will also stop law enforcement’s ability to obtain and use this evidence in investigations. To prevent and prosecute the most serious crimes. Crimes such as child sexual abuse, human trafficking, drug smuggling, homicides, economic crime and terrorism offences.
The declaration, published today and supported by Europol and the European Police Chiefs, comes as end-to-end encryption has started to be rolled out across Meta’s messenger platform.
Department of Justice
The Justice Department announced today the seizure of four domains. These were used by the administrators and customers of a domain spoofing service. The domain seizures were authorized pursuant to seizure warrants issued in the Western District of Pennsylvania. They were executed in co-ordination with the arrest of dozens of administrators and customers of the illicit service by foreign law enforcement agencies.
In New Jersey, 3 individuals were indicted for their roles in fraudulently obtaining approximately $5 million of federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. And Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and for laundering the loan proceeds.
In the Western District of New York US Attorney Trini E. Ross announced that Buffalo Transportation Inc., Ontario Bus Inc., and several other businesses owned by Igor Finkelshtein, have agreed to pay $91,838. This was to resolve allegations arising under the False Claims Act. The defendants obtained grants and loans under the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program (EIDL). Administered by the Small Business Administration. This was after submitting applications that falsely certified their eligibility to receive the grants and loans.
In New York a federal jury convicted a man residing in Puerto Rico today. He was convicted of commodities fraud, commodities market manipulation, and wire fraud. This was in connection with the manipulation on the Mango Markets decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.
In the Western District of Pennsylvania a Moldovan national has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh. He was indicted for computer fraud crimes, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Lefterov and his co-conspirators operated and controlled a botnet comprising thousands of infected computers throughout the United States. Including in the Western District of Pennsylvania.
FBI
The FBI published a report that details scammers stole $187,621,731 from 11,475 Colorado victims in 2023. This is $9 million more than the previous year. It puts Colorado as the 7th highest for complaints per capita. The top three schemes with the largest dollar amount losses in 2023 in Colorado were investment fraud ($60 million); business email compromise ($57 million); and tech support ($23 million).
FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge Mark Michalek, commented, “Sadly, we routinely see victims from all walks of life whose livelihoods and life savings have been wiped out by scammers. Criminals continue to develop new tricks to defraud people, so think twice before clicking on a link and report suspicious activity to law enforcement.”
Forescout
Forescout announced the appointment of Clarissa Horowitz to Chief Marketing Officer and Craig Weimer to Vice President of Sales, Americas. Horowitz and Weimer join recently appointed Duncan MacMurdy, Chief People Officer, and Edward Brown, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary, on the leadership team.
ManageEngine
ManageEngine announced the results of its recent study, The State of Cybersecurity in Latin America 2024. Which was carried out with cybersecurity professionals and decision-makers from companies in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. The findings revealed some key security trends. And sheds light on significant challenges that cybersecurity professionals are facing in the country.
Key findings included:
- 53% noted that generative AI played a significant role in cyberattacks against their companies.
- 86% stated AI was critical for defending against cyberattacks in 2024.
- 85% of the respondents admitted that their organizations trust AI technologies to implement appropriate changes and respond to attacks without manual intervention. Indicating a growing reliance on automated solutions.
Andres Mendoza, Technical Director for LATAM and Southern Europe at ManageEngine, commented, “Despite this trust, there remains a prevailing possibility for oversight, with 89% of respondents advocating for an independent body to ensure the reliability of AI in cybersecurity applications. It is equally striking that a significant majority, as per the survey, anticipates the adoption of AI in over half of their company’s security solutions in 2024. It is evident that AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, albeit amidst calls for assurance and oversight.”
NCSC
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has today announced that Richard Horne will become its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in the autumn this year. Horne will join the NCSC from PwC UK, where he currently chairs the Cyber Security Practice.
The National Cyber Security Centre announces new partnership to deliver the Protective Domain Name System (PDNS) service. A three-year contract has been awarded to Cloudflare Inc. (NYSE: NET). The connectivity cloud company which will implement the NCSC’s PDNS service from September 2024 in collaboration with the services provider Accenture.
NOYB
NOYB published its opinion on the EDPB’s first decision on ‘Pay or Okay’ in relation to large online platforms. Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, as first reported by Politico. Max Schrems, Chairman of NOYB said, “Overall, Meta is out of options in the EU. It must now give users a genuine yes/no option for personalised advertising. It can still charge sites for reach, engage in contextual advertising and the like – but tracking people for ads needs a clear ‘yes’ from users.”
“We welcome that the EDPB has started a more nuanced discussion on ‘pay or okay’ and at least clarified that large platforms cannot use ‘pay or okay’. However, we are concerned that today’s first opinion is rather cautious and was based on limited facts. Once all the facts are on the table, we are confident that ‘Pay or Okay’ will be declared unlawful across the board.
“We know that ‘Pay or Okay’ shifts consent rates from about 3% to more than 99% – so it is as far from ‘freely given’ consent as North Korea is from a democracy. It is crucial to get all the relevant numbers for further decisions beyond Meta and larger platforms.”
Qualys
Qualys announced it is offering free 30-day access to the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform. This is to aid organizations in efficiently discovering and classifying internet-facing and internal-facing assets. And prioritizing vulnerabilities for swift and safe remediation, aligning with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) 5-7 days guidance.
Sumedh Thakar, President and CEO of Qualys, said, “Adversaries are weaponizing vulnerabilities more quickly than ever, which accounts for the NCSC’s focus on swift remediation of vulnerabilities. For most organizations, with their complex infrastructures and patch workflows, it’s almost impossible to meet the 5-7 day update time.
“To aid organizations in adhering to the NCSC guidelines, we’re offering the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform free for 30 days. This allows organizations to streamline asset discovery, takes the guesswork out of understanding which vulnerabilities are the riskiest and helps with prioritization, so organizations can mitigate risks quickly and efficiently to safeguard their businesses.”
