Category: NATO

A hacking collective that goes by the name “Hacktivist,” also known as SiegedSec, has recently claimed to be in possession of classified NATO documents. Their assertion comes after successfully infiltrating the North Atlantic Alliance’s servers earlier this year.

In response to this alarming development, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has promptly initiated an investigation into the incident. NATO authorities are diligently examining whether these cybercriminals have accessed sensitive strategic planning and research documents from their IT infrastructure. Details of the investigation’s findings will be disclosed soon, according to NATO officials.

To substantiate their claims, the hacktivist group, a subgroup of Alphv,  published a portion of the pilfered data on their Telegram channel. They emphasized that this information was obtained approximately three months ago from the organization’s website servers.

In a separate cybersecurity incident, Motel One, a budget hotel chain based in Germany, revealed that it had fallen victim to a ransomware attack. The attackers utilized encryption tools to compromise the hotel chain’s digital infrastructure, resulting in downtime. Motel One, one of Europe’s largest hotel chains with over 90 properties, disclosed that the perpetrators had accessed data linked to 169 customer credit cards and their corresponding addresses.

Although the scale of the impact was relatively small, the hotel chain is actively seeking expert guidance to bolster its defenses against future cyberattacks. Initial suspicions point to the ALPHV ransomware gang as the culprits. Preliminary assessments suggest that the gang managed to exfiltrate a substantial amount of data, exceeding 2 terabytes, including information related to both employees and customers.

It’s worth noting that both of these European-based victims find themselves in a region that supports Ukraine in its ongoing conflict with Russia. Additionally, both incidents were attributed to ALPHV, a notorious double-extortion gang that also targeted MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment Casinos back in August of this year. Notably, both MGM and Caesars, operating in the entertainment and hospitality sectors, made substantial financial contributions to secure the release of their encrypted databases.

The post Cyber Attack on NATO and Ransomware Attack on Motel One appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Pepsi Bottling Ventures PBV, a business unit of PepsiCo Beverages, suffered a malware attack leading to disruption of services in 18 of its bottling facilities spread across Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, South and North Carolina.

Unconfirmed sources state that the attack was caused by malware leading to data siphoning and encryption- hinting to us the attack was of ransomware variant.

Releasing a press statement to Montana’s Attorney General Office, the company stated that the incident occurred on December 23rd of last year. And was identified on January 10th,2023 or 18 days after occurrence.

Cybersecurity Insiders learnt that the beverage manufacturing firm lost details such as full names, home address of employees, their financial info, state and federal government IDs and cards along with social security numbers and Passport information along with digital signatures and employee related health insurance details n medical history.

The company is busy in reviewing the incident and news is out that all the recipients of the breach will be offered a free identity monitoring service through Kroll.

In the meantime, NATO websites were also targeted in the attack states a German news agency dpa and coincided with the digital invasion on Pepsi Cola Beverages. Suspicion finger is pointing towards Russian Hackers’ gang Killnet, as the alliance of the nation is strictly against the decision of Putin to wage war with Ukraine. The website belonging to NATO Special Operations Headquarters (NSHQ) is unavailable, and the incident is yet to make public on an official note.

 

The post Pepsi suffers a ransomware attack appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

We all know that a technology can never be at fault, as it is the mind that does most of the damage. And the same applies to the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that is now proving as a double-edged sword.

In this world of AI driven cyberwarfare, NATO is finding it extremely difficult to tame the threat. However, in the coming year, the peace-loving agency will defend networks from attacks in an automated way.

Already, a drill is being conducted at the CR14 NATO Cyber Range in Tallin, the capital of Estonia. And information is out that army commanders from over 30 countries took part in the drill to exhibit their skills of defending their country from adversary related digital threats. Yet, there is still a long way to go through!

NATO’s primary challenge at the event was to defend its networks to the ai generated attacks that are now emerging into a two-way street. Meaning, on one hand, security experts are trying their best to make the tech prove advantageous in attacks. While on the other, hackers are giving their best in making the full use of the tech in disrupting private and public networks.

Bernd Hansen, the head of Cyberspace at NATO, presented his viewpoints by stating the tech is proving beneficial in two ways. On one hand, it is helping in detecting the AI used by the opponents and on the other; it is helping break the ice on how AI can support own operations.

Alberto Domingo, the technical head of NATO Allied Command Transformation, predicted that attacks are going to become exponential in coming times. And the best to do is to draft more algorithm-based cybersecurity rules that can help tame the threats to the core!

 

The post NATO tames AI Driven Cyber Threats appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Portugal’s army was set on high alert as sensitive documents related to NATO were stolen and being sold on the dark web from the past two days. Information is out that The Armed Forces General Staff Agency of Portugal (EMGFA) suffered a cyber attack last month and since it failed to pay a ransom, the threat actors sold the details online.

Sources revealed EMGFA lost data related to control, planning and operations, Portugal armed forces and some sensitive files related to NATO.

Hackers posted a portion of data on the dark web to threat the victim to the core and a spy from US Intelligence posed as a customer to buy and analyze few data samples to confirm the information as true.

The spy immediately informed the US Embassy in Lisbon and the Portuguese government about the data breach prompted the government to initiate the National Security Office (GNS) and National Cybersecurity Centre of Portugal to investigate deeply.

News resource Diario De Noticias confirmed the validity of the information and added that the data was related to military alliance.

Details such as why the hackers were interested in Portugal’s army documents and NATO’s sensitive data are yet to be ascertained. Some sources state that the activity could have been triggered by Russian servers or a hacking group that was being funded by Russia.

 

The post NATO Classified documents stolen from Portugal Army database and sold on dark web appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

Microsoft released a report that cloud applications are acting as catalysts for cyber attacks as it detected over 1.5 million attack attempts on cloud environments in a time frame of just 60 months.

The technology giant mentioned in its Cyber Signals reports that most of the attempts were made by exploiting configuration errors by admins in corporate environments. And the only way to counter the situation is to apply patches as early as possible, audit configurations employed by admins and use sophisticated security tools that are proactive.

Second is the news related to NATO. From the past couple of days, some blueprints belonging to a missile system developer are doing rounds on the internet and hackers who released the data claim the blueprints belong to a European Missile Maker named MBDA Missile Systems and the information of about 80GB is up for sale for a meagre 15 Bitcoins.

Currently, the incident is under investigation and so MBDA is yet to react to the news that hackers had accessed to the company classified data. The Italian company based in France has admitted that a compromised hard drive might have leaked the details to hackers. But failed to divulge more details, as the probe is still on.

Since all the NATO aligned nations are supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, the attack is suspected to have been launched by a hackers group named Killnet funded by Kremlin.

Third is the news related to file encrypting malware. As per a report released by Barracuda Networks, the volume of ransomware attacks identified in between January to June 2022 is said to have reached 1.2 million per month on an average.

Researchers saw a rise in the attacks, as most of the targets were service providers whose impact was directly felt by customers.

Barracuda study also discovered that the industries that were affected were education, municipalities, healthcare, IT and finance.

Last is the news related to Montenegro, a nation that is in Southeastern Europe. Coming to the news, the government of Montenegrin has accused Russia of launching cyber attacks on its servers on August 22nd,2022.

The Agency for National Security, ANB, has also accused Russian federation of launching a hybrid war that is becoming inconclusive and is affecting innocent civilians.

 

The post Cyber Attack news headlines trending on Google appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.