More alleged cybercrooks arrested in Ukraine, a warning to law and accounting firms, and the latest phone scam.
Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Friday, January 14th. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing writer on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com.
Police in Ukraine continue to crack down on cyber crooks. With the help of law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Britain, a group believed to be affiliated with a ransomware gang was arrested this week. Police allege this group was responsible for attacks on more than 50 companies in Europe and the United States that pulled in more than $1 million. In addition to hacking, the group allegedly changed victims’ IP addresses so other threat actors could compromise systems. The group also stole bank card numbers from victims to buy and resell products. Ukrainian authorities also arrested ransomware gang suspects last October.
Law and accounting firms are being warned that a hacker group is targeting them. The alert comes from researchers at eSentire, who said the GootLoader gang has been caught trying to get into three law firms and an accounting firm. The GootLoader malware is spread by setting up content pages on legitimate sites running WordPress that they have compromised. The content includes references to things business people might search the web for, like free legal and financial contract templates. Using search engine optimization tricks, the gang make sure the results of searches for these agreements appear…
