North Korea's Lazarus Group Was Responsible for Half of Cryptocurrency Thefts in 2020

Microsoft issues 56 fixes on Patch Tuesday, Authorities bust eight people for high-profile SIM swapping attacks on celebrities, Researcher breached over 35 major companies in supply chain attack, more

Feb 10

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Research firm Chainanalysis says that North Korean hacking team the Lazarus Group carried out the biggest cryptocurrency theft of last year, absconding with at least $265 worth of cryptocurrency from exchange KuCoin, representing half of all cryptocurrency stolen in 2020.

Chainanalysis says it could trace the thefts back to the Lazarus Group by following how the money was laundered. (Thomas Brewster / Forbes)

Microsoft issued at least 56 fixes for security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, with one of the bugs actively exploited in the wild and six of them made public before the Patch Tuesday release.

The flaw being exploited in the wild, CVE-2021-1732, affects Windows 10, Server 2016, and later editions and is slightly less urgent because it requires the attacker to have physical access to vulnerable devices. (Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security)

Europol announced eight criminals were arrested following an international investigation into a series of sim swapping attacks against high-profile celebrity and musician victims in the United States.

The attacks resulted in the theft of $100 million in cryptocurrencies. Eight men were arrested in England and Scotland in an investigation that included U.K., U.S., Canadian, Belgian and Maltese police. (Associated Press)

A researcher breached over 35 major companies' internal systems, including Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, and Uber, in a novel software supply chain attack that leverages a unique design flaw of the open-source ecosystems called dependency confusion.

Alex Birsan was awarded $130,000 in bug bounties for his efforts. (Ax Sharma / Bleeping Computer)

Related: ZDNet

Embattled Chinese telecom tech giant Huawei filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circut disputing its designation as a national security threat by the Federal Communications Commission.

Huawei argues that the designation is a violation of the agency’s independent regulatory powers because it is“arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion, and not supported by substantial evidence.” (Dan Strumpf / Wall Street Journal)

Google has published new data on who is targeted by email attacks based on the 100 million phishing emails it seeks each week, saying that most phishing campaigns last around three days and are usually localized.

Google and researchers at Stanford University studied five months' worth of phishing and malware campaigns and concluded the US and the UK were the most popular targets, although Australians faced double the odds per capita. (Richard Speed / The Register)

Related: Google, Computing.co.uk

Catalin Cimpanu @campuscodi

Google has published a report today about its view into email attacks Says most phishing campaigns last around three days and are usually localized Google also revealed it sees around 100m phishing and malware emails/week cloud.google.com/blog/products/…

AI-powered endpoint protection cybersecurity company SentinelOne has acquired Scalyr, log management, server monitoring, and event data analytics service founded by former Google engineers in 2011, for an undisclosed amount.

SentinelOne says after the acquisition closes, before the end of Q1 2021, it will be able to ingest and monitor data from any source, extending SentinelOne’s reach beyond endpoint protection and “across the entire enterprise and cloud attack surface.” (Paul Sawers / Venture Beat)

Related: TechCrunch, Business Wire, SC Magazine

Enterprise IoT security start-up Armis announced that it had raised a $125 million funding round led by Brookfield Technology Partners with meaningful participation from existing investors, including Insight Partners, CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth fund Georgian.

Armis says the funding will create new opportunities for Armis to sell its agentless device security platform into more than 100 Brookfield-owned businesses located across more than 30 countries. (Dylan Martin / CRN)

Related: Bloomberg, Silicon Angle, Geektime

The UK Government has established the UK Cyber Security Council, which will provide a single governing voice for the industry to establish the knowledge, skills, and experience required for a range of cybersecurity jobs.

The Council, which will be funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport, will also work with training providers to accredit courses and qualifications. (James Warrington / City A.M.)

Related: TechTarget, Gov.UK, E&T Magazine

Photo by Micha Brändli on Unsplash