Latest coverage for America

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against six officials associated with the Iranian intelligence agency for attacking critical infrastructure entities in the U.S. and other countries

Sanctions Follow Iranian Cyberattacks Targeting US Critical Infrastructure SectorsThe United States sanctioned senior leaders of the Iranian government cyber unit responsible for carrying out malicious cyber campaigns against American critical infrastructure sectors. The sanctions are a direct response to hacks against water system operators that use Israeli systems and software.

CISA Says Agencies Must Disconnect and Reset Ivanti VPN Devices by Midnight FridayU.S. federal agencies have until midnight Friday to disconnect Ivanti VPN devices and perform a factory reset before reconnecting them to the network. Fifteen agencies use the gateways, which were hit by likely Chinese hackers in an espionage campaign and are riddled with zero-day vulnerabilities.

Aliaksandr Klimenka, a Belarusian and Cypriot national, has been indicted in the U.S. for his involvement in an international cybercrime money laundering operation. [...]

A former software engineer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) for transmitting classified documents to WikiLeaks and for possessing child pornographic material

Top Lobbyist Says Regulators Should Do More to Combat Caller ID SpoofingA top U.S. banking lobbyist told a Senate panel Thursday there are limits to what financial institutions can do to stop scammers from draining individual banking accounts and called on regulators such as the Federal Communications Commission to do more to combat caller ID spoofing.

What Will 2024 Be Like If the Healthcare Sector Doesn't Step Up?Thanks to the massive Anthem hack, for nearly a decade 2015 has been the record year for U.S. health data breaches - with 112.5 million people affected. But 2023 shattered that record, big-time. Will 2024 be another banner year for health data compromises?

Threat actors linked to the People's Republic of China, such as Volt Typhoon, continue to "pre-position" themselves in the critical infrastructure of the United States, according to military and law enforcement officials.

Also: US Courts Announce Guilty Pleas and Hand Out Sentences in Crypto-Linked CasesThis week, a Ripple co-founder and a karaoke platform were hacked, Mexican crypto banks were targeted, authorities seized crypto in the U.S. and Germany, the DOJ made charges in crypto cases, people pleaded guilty to money laundering and SIM swapping, monero was traced, and FTX will not restart.

Three Americans were charged this week with stealing more than $400 million in a November 2022 SIM-swapping attack. The U.S. government did not name the victim organization, but there is every indication that the money was stolen from the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which had just filed for bankruptcy on that same day.

Senate, House can try but won't make it past the Prez, says White House The Biden administration has expressed to congressional representatives its strong opposition to undoing the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) strict data breach reporting rule.…

Volume of Poorly Secured, Legacy IoT That Can Be Turned Against Us Keeps GrowingThe FBI announcing that it has forcibly removed "KV Botnet" Chinese nation-state malware from "hundreds" of poorly secured SOHO routers across America highlights the risk posed by the growing volume of outdated IoT devices. The FBI's fix is temporary, and we need a more permanent solution.

A GAO report found that federal agencies are not assessing whether critical infrastructure sectors are implementing NIST ransomware protection guidance

CISA has ordered U.S. federal agencies to disconnect all Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure VPN appliances vulnerable to multiple actively exploited bugs before Saturday. [...]

The U.S. government on Wednesday said it took steps to neutralize a botnet comprising hundreds of U.S.-based small office and home office (SOHO) routers hijacked by a China-linked state-sponsored threat actor called Volt Typhoon and blunt the impact posed by the hacking campaign

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added a high-severity flaw impacting iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation

American public is way ahead of them Chinese attackers are preparing to "wreak havoc" on American infrastructure and "cause societal chaos" in the US, infosec, and law enforcement bosses told a US House committee on Wednesday.…

The Water and Wastewater Sector Faces Growing Cybersecurity Risks, Officials WarnLeaders from the U.S. water sector testified to the House subcommittee on environment, manufacturing and critical materials that entities across the country face funding and resource disparities as the increasingly vulnerable industry faces emerging threats from domestic and foreign cyber actors.

Information-Sharing Groups Call Reporting Requirements 'Too Costly, Overreaching'Multiple Information Sharing and Analysis Centers decried a proposed incident reporting measure for vendors selling to the U.S. federal government as being costly and ineffective. The proposal will affect three of every four contracts in which the government is a contracting party.

FBI and CISA Detail Operation to Prevent Chinese Attacks on Critical InfrastructureThe FBI launched a court-authorized sting operation against a Chinese hacking group known as Volt Typhoon, partnering with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a cohort of U.S. cyber agencies to prevent a major attack on the nation’s critical infrastructure sectors.