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Crimephones are back in the news after a legal challenge against the UK's National Crime Agency's Encrochat operation failed and it emerged that the Calabrian mafia have embraced a secure communications device from a company named No. 1 Business Communication.

The recent news is a good excuse to look back on the recent history of crimephones and the law enforcement operations that have rendered them worse than useless to criminals.

If you're not au fait, "crimephone" is the Risky Business HQ term for dedicated encrypted devices that are marketed in criminal networks to help facilitate illegal activity. Typically these devices offer a hardened (in theory) OS, a pre-loaded encrypted messaging app, can only communicate with other similar devices in a closed network, and are sometimes stripped of extraneous functionality such as GPS, camera and microphone.

The US Justice Department has charged a Russian national named Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev for a series of ransomware attacks across the US, including two attacks against police departments.

Matveev is widely known in infosec circles under his hacker pseudonym of WazaWaka. He has also gone on underground forums under many other nicknames, such as Boriselcin, KAJIT, M1x, Orange, and Uhodiransomwar.

He is a known initial access broker and a former affiliate for ransomware gangs such as Babuk, Conti, Darkside, Hive, and LockBit. He is also one of the founders of RAMP, a notorious dark web cybercrime forum that launched in the spring of 2021.

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ABB ransomware attack: Electrification and automation company ABB confirmed last week that it fell victim to a ransomware attack. The incident allegedly took place on May 7 and was the work of the Black Basta gang. The attackers gained access to the company's Windows Active Directory and spread through its internal network. ABB allegedly had to terminate VPN connections with customer networks to prevent the ransomware from spreading further. The attack impacted ABB operations at some of its factories. ABB is one of the world's largest companies and has been a member of the Fortune 500 for more than 25 years.

Discord breach: VoIP and instant messaging service Discord is notifying users of a security breach after a threat actor gained access to the account of a third-party customer support agent. The company says the attacker gained access to the support agent's ticketing queue. This exposed the information for some users with active support requests. Exposed information included email addresses, support messages, and attachments added to any ticket.

The same dark web scanning feature is also one of the security systems that powers a Chrome feature that warns users to change passwords that have appeared in data leak packages.

While the feature will initially roll out to the US market only, Google says it plans to make this available to all users.

The new feature is part of a series of security upgrades [1, 2] announced by the company at its annual I/O developer conference this week. The list also includes:

The joint cybersecurity advisory on Snake, co-authored by the US government and Five Eyes cyber security authorities, is tremendous. It manages to cover the big picture while also drilling in to provide detailed technical information in a very readable way.

Per the report:

The report describes Snake as sophisticated because it is stealthy, modular, runs on different operating systems and is also well built, "with the implant containing surprisingly few bugs given its complexity". Initial versions were called "Uroburos" and included part of the historical illustration of an Uroburos (above) by German philosopher Jakob Böhme.

Officials also formally attributed Snake to Centre 16 of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB)—marking the first time any foreign government has linked the highly advanced Turla APT to the Russian government.

At the technical level, officials called Snake the FSB's "most sophisticated cyber espionage tool."

Five Eyes agencies say the FSB typically used Snake to collect sensitive intelligence from high-priority targets, such as government networks, research facilities, and journalists.

New York crypto-legislation: New York Attorney General Letitia James submitted a bill last week that would introduce a slew of regulations for cryptocurrency platforms active in the state. If approved, James says the bill will introduce the strongest and most comprehensive set of regulations on cryptocurrency companies across any US state. Among the bill's most interesting points are mandatory know-your-customer (KYC) provisions for cryptocurrency platforms and a ban on cryptocurrency exchanges from issuing and trading in their own tokens. Cryptocurrency companies would also be banned from using terms like "stablecoins" unless such digital assets are backed 1:1 with US currency. The bill also mandates that crypto exchanges reimburse customers who were victims of fraud, the same rules that have been active in the banking sector for years.

RTF anniversary: On the two-year anniversary of its launch, the Ransomware Task Force says its efforts to get governments and the private sector to act against ransomware attacks are finally coming to fruition. The non-profit says that 92% of the 48 recommendations the organization made in 2021 have seen some action, with more than half seeing significant progress, "including through legislation and policy adoption." More in the organization's overview report and press conference (embedded below). [Additional coverage in Decipher]

Material Security co-founder Ryan Noon demos Material Security's email security solution to Risky Business podcast host Patrick Gray.

FTC proposes ban on Facebook monetizing youth data: The US Federal Trade Commission has proposed barring Meta from monetizing children's data. FTC officials say the company violated a 2020 privacy order in regard to its Facebook Messenger for Kids service. The agency says Meta misled parents about their ability to control with whom their children communicated through the Messenger Kids app and misrepresented the access some app developers had to children's data.

40+ orgs sign open letter: More than 40 leading pro-privacy organizations have signed an open letter to urge governments around the globe "not to follow the path of authoritarian governments like Russia and Iran" and defend encryption, privacy, and press freedom. Organizations that have signed the letter include the Tor Project, Mozilla, Proton, Threema, Tutanota, the Document Foundation, and Mullvad, among many others.

Discord changes username format: Instant messaging service Discord plans to change the format of its user accounts and move away from the "username#code" format to the classic @username system typically used by Twitch and Twitter. The company plans to prompt users over the coming weeks to choose a unique username. The move is expected to lead to a rise in the prices of Discord accounts sold on hacking forums, where OG accounts are highly-valued.

Some interesting research has been published lately on cyber-enabled influence operations. Unsurprisingly, different countries — Iran, China, and even the UK — are taking different approaches here.

Firstly, Iran is taking a "fake it till you make it" approach. A Microsoft Threat Intelligence report this week describes how the new standard practice for Iranian state actors is to combine cyber operations with influence operations in what it calls "cyber-enabled influence operations".

Microsoft defines these types of operations as ones that combine "computer network operations with messaging and amplification in a coordinated and manipulative fashion to shift perceptions, behaviours, or decisions by target audiences to further a group or a nation’s interests and objectives". An operation might include, say, a website defacement coupled with publication and amplification on social media such as Telegram and Twitter.

Nine money laundering sites seized: US and Ukrainian authorities have seized nine cryptocurrency exchanges. Officials said the websites were advertised on private hacker forums and had been used to launder the profits of online scams and cybercrime operations. Officials say they seized servers in the US, Ukraine, and across Europe that helped host the portals. The nine exchanges are 24xbtc.com, 100btc.pro, pridechange.com, 101crypta.com, uxbtc.com, trust-exchange.org, bitcoin24.exchange, paybtc.pro, and owl.gold.

Operation SpecTor: Europol has confirmed that the sudden shutdown of the Monopoly dark web marketplace in December 2021 was the result of a law enforcement takedown orchestrated by German police. Almost 16 months after the initial takedown, Europol says intelligence gathered by German authorities allowed law enforcement agencies across nine countries to detain 288 of the market's vendors and seize more than €50 million in cash and virtual currencies, more than 850 kg of drugs, and 117 firearms. Europol says the arrests are part of Operation SpecTor, the agency's most successful operation against dark web markets to date.

KEV update: CISA has updated its KEV database with three new vulnerabilities that are currently being actively exploited. The first is a vulnerability in TP-Link routers (CVE-2023-1389) that was discovered at last year's Pwn2Own hacking content and is now exploited by a Mirai botnet. The second is a variation (CVE-2021-45046) of the Log4Shell vulnerability in the Apache Log4j2 component. And the last is a security flaw (CVE-2023-21839) in Oracle WebLogic servers that was patched in January and is now abused for initial access.