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Your weekly dose of Seriously Risky Business news is written by Tom Uren, edited by Patrick Gray, and supported by the Cyber Initiative at the Hewlett Foundation, AustCyber, and founding corporate sponsors CyberCX and Proofpoint.

Hacked documents released last week have shed light on the extent, brutality, and official government support for the PRC's oppression of its Uyghur population. Given the long history of states pretending to be hacktivists, we thought we'd examine the incident to see if there are any red flags a state might be behind the hack.

The documents, released as the Xinjiang Police Files, contain a range of different file types, including transcripts of not-for-publication speeches from Chinese officials, operational directives for police, detainee photos and personal records, and also internal police PowerPoint files. These files were provided to Dr. Adrian Zenz, Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a leading researcher of China's Xinjiang re-education camps. Zenz stated on Twitter that the files were provided by an individual who got access "by hacking into Xinjiang police/re-education camp computers" in two separate counties. In a journal article, Zenz expands on how he acquired the files:

Mirror Protocol hack #2: ...and then the same person who found the first attack found a second one.

Portland falls to BEC: The US city of Portland, Oregon, said it lost $1.4 million to a BEC scammer last month, in April 2022. In a press release last week, city officials said they identified that they sent city funds to the wrong bank account after the threat actor attempted to scam the city a second time.

Hackers-for-hire: Reuters is reporting on a court case where independent journalist Scott Stedman testified that Israeli jailed private detective Aviram Azari worked to hire Indian hackers to carry out espionage operations on behalf of several Russian oligarchs. Azari pleaded guilty last month to working for BellTroX, a New Delhi-based hacker-for-hire company.

Infraud sentence: A 37-year-old named John "Peterelliot" Telusma was sentenced last week to four years in prison. Telusma was a member of the Infraud cyber crime ring, which dabbled in the sale of stolen credit card data.

DOJ goes after BEC actor's funds: The US Department of Justice moved last month to seize almost $4.5 million (151.85 BTC) in funds that are owned by a suspect accused of BEC schemes. Olalkan Jacob Ponle, who went online as "Mr. Woodbery," was charged and arrested in June 2020. As cybersecurity veteran Gary Warner pointed out on Friday, the DOJ intervened to seize the funds after a mysterious entity moved the Bitcoin to a new address.

FBI alert: The FBI said in a PIN alert last week that credentials for US colleges and universities are being widely advertised across Russian cybercrime forums. The agency is now warning organizations about a possible rise in attacks targeting their institutions. The full alert is here: PDF.

Verizon employee breach: A hacker has obtained a database that includes the full name, email address, corporate ID numbers, and phone numbers of hundreds of Verizon employees. Motherboard reported that the threat actor got their hands on the data after tricking a Verizon employee into giving them remote access to their computer.

SpiceJet: Indian low-cost airline SpiceJet said it was hit by an "attempted" ransomware attack on Wednesday that disrupted some of its operations and delayed some flights.

MGM Resorts data dumped: The data of more than 142 million guests who stayed at MGM hotels in the past was released for free on a Telegram channel earlier this week. The data comes from a 2019 security breach, which came to light in early 2020 after a data broker began advertising the data on cybercrime forums.

Your weekly dose of Seriously Risky Business news is written by Tom Uren, edited by Patrick Gray and supported by the Cyber Initiative at the Hewlett Foundation, AustCyber and founding corporate sponsors CyberCX and Proofpoint.

Adversary states are promoting state-sponsored disinformation and manipulating social media, but some Western liberal democracies — particularly the United States — are poorly placed to respond.

There is evidence that some countries are actively building the infrastructure that's required to launch and sustain disinformation operations. Last week the security company Nisos released a report on the Fronton IoT botnet, which it describes as "a botnet for [the] creation, command, and control of coordinated inauthentic behaviour".

RansomHouse: Threat intelligence company CyberInt has published a report on a new data extortion group that was first seen earlier this year and calling itself RansomHouse. The group has one of the longest and more detailed terms of service of any extortion group that was seen operating over the past few years.

DeFi hacks: Threat intel firm BishopFox has a report out reviewing all the DeFi blockchain platform hacks from last year and the main methods used to breach their networks and exfiltrate funds.

jQuery scans: A threat actor is scanning the internet for websites that use the jQuery File Upload plugin, per ISC SANS. The organization believes the threat actor is attempting to fingerprint vulnerable systems in order to exploit security flaws in the plugin and upload malicious files (such as web shells) on web apps still using older versions of the plugin.

The researchers who made up STAR Labs' Pwn2Own line-up this year included Daniel Lim Wee Soong (@daniellimws), Poh Jia Hao (@Chocologicall), Li Jiantao (@CurseRed) Ngo Wei Lin (@Creastery), Billy Jheng Bing-Jhong (@st424204), Muhammad Alifa Ramdhan (@n0psledbyte), Nguyễn Hoàng Thạch (@hi_im_d4rkn3ss), Phan Thanh Duy (@PTDuy), and Lê Hữu Quang Linh (@linhlhq).

Although several Pwn2Own hacking contests usually take place throughout the year, the Pwn2Own CanSecWest edition, typically held in Vancouver, Canada, in the spring, is considered the world's premiere hacking competition today—where most top vulnerability researchers come to compete against each other. During CanSecWest, participants can select from a list of desktop and server products that they can hack during 15-minute sessions on stage.

Other Pwn2Own editions also take place throughout the year with a focus on smart devices and smartphones (Tokyo, in the fall), and in recent years even ICS/SCADA industrial equipment (Miami, in the winter).

New Deadbolt ransomware attacks: Taiwanese IoT maker QNAP published a security alert on Thursday warning of a new wave of attacks using the Deadbolt ransomware against its network-attached storage (NAS) devices. The company said the attack targeted NAS devices using QTS 4.3.6 and QTS 4.4.1, and the affected models were mainly the TS-x51 series and TS-x53 series.

Ransomware academic study: A recent academic study on the landscape of ransomware payments has found that the operators of RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) portals are better at laundering their funds than the smaller commodity ransomware crews. According to researchers, RaaS operators are more strict in their laundering patterns and prefer bitcoin mixers or (now-sanctioned) cryptocurrency exchanges over exchanges that adhere to KYC/AML regulations, typically used by the smaller commodity ransomware crews.

Ransomware initial access trends: A recent report published by cybersecurity firm Group-IB has found that many ransomware gangs prefer to use vulnerabilities in unpatched network devices as the preferred way to gain access to victim networks. In addition, the same report found that the average ransom demand grew by 45% to reach $247,000/attack last year in 2021. [Coverage of the report in Bleeping Computer]

Your weekly dose of Seriously Risky Business news is written by Tom Uren, edited by Patrick Gray and supported by the Cyber Initiative at the Hewlett Foundation, AustCyber and founding corporate sponsors CyberCX and Proofpoint.

The Biden administration is in the process of drafting an executive order to restrain data transfers to foreign adversaries like China. According to Reuters, the order as drafted would give Attorney General Merrick Garland the authority to review and potentially block transactions involving the sale or transfer of data.

An effective executive order would be a good first step, but what comes next?

Crypto-hack #1: Users of the SpiritSwap and QuickSwap cryptocurrency platforms were redirected to phishing sites over the weekend when trying to access the platforms' legitimate domains. Both companies confirmed that the incidents took place after threat actors socially-engineered GoDaddy employees into transferring ownership of the domains. The hijacks lasted for a few hours before both companies managed to regain control over their official websites. While the platforms tried to warn users via social media and other channels, several users had their accounts hacked and emptied by the attackers.

Crypto-hack #2: However, this wasn't the only incident that took place over the weekend. About the same time as the SpiritSwap and QuickSwap incidents, a threat actor also deployed a malicious ad via the CoinZilla advertising platform. The script appeared on sites like CoinGecko, DEXTools, and Etherscan and prompted users to grant the attacker access to their Metamask wallets. CoinZilla confirmed the incident shortly after and said that the malicious ad was only live for "less than an hour" before they took it down.

Report on Real-Time Bidding: The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has published a report on Real-Time Bidding (RTB), the process at the heart of the modern online advertising industry. The report called RTB "the biggest data breach ever recorded" because it tracks and shares what people view online and their real-world location. The report discovered that a regular US citizen has their data and location tracked 747 times per day, on average, while in the EU, where there are stricter privacy regulations, users get their data tracked only 376 times per day. Some good coverage from Natasha Lomas in TechCrunch.