Europol shuts down FluBot
The European law enforcement agency announced that it coordinated with eleven different countries to take down the operation behind the pernicious Android malware. FluBot has been around since at least 2020, recently suspected of infecting at least 60,000 devices and used to harvest over 11 million phone numbers, the vast majority of which were in Spain. Law enforcement raids in Barcelona last year didn’t stop the spread of the malware to other countries, but now Dutch police disrupted the operation’s infrastructure.
Hive ransomware kicks Costa Rica when its down
The Costa Rican Social Security Fund, the public health service of the country, disclosed that it suffered a ransomware attack early on May 31st, forcing it to take its systems offline. Recovery time is unknown. Overall the ransomware was deployed on at least 2% of government servers. The country’s Unified Digital Health system and the Centralized Tax-Collection System were not impacted by the attacks. Some experts believe Hive could be working with Conti, which previously forced Costa Rica to declare a state of emergency, to help the group rebrand and avoid international sanctions.
CISA issues advisory on voting machine vulnerabilities
CISA sent an advisory to state election officials warning of potential software vulnerabilities in Dominion voting machines used in 16 states. These vulnerabilities come from a report from University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, who found no evidence that these flaws were exploited to alter election results. None of the exploits could seemingly be accomplished by someone off the street, but could be exploited by a sophisticated actor with access to the machine. Exploits range from a wormable remote code execution flaw to problems with easily tampered QR codes for vote tallies. CISA urged officials to take prompt mitigation measures and to implement “defensive measures to reduce the risk of exploitation” ahead of every election.
(AP News)
SCOTUS puts Texas social media law on hold
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of putting Texas’ HB20 law on hold while a constitutional challenge goes forward in a lower court. The court doesn’t release opinions with these emergency rulings, just how the court ruled, so we don’t know the specific rationale, although one can assume its on First Amendment grounds. After the law was initially passed, a federal judge granted an injunction on it from going into effect, but this was overturned by an appeals court panel. A group of tech industry trade groups filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to prevent it from going into effect. The law would ban social media platforms with over 50 million users from moderating content on the basis of viewpoint.
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Australia names first cyber security minister
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed Victorian MP Clare O’Neil into the newly created post. Previously cyber security belonged with the Home Affairs ministry, with cyber-related announcements often handled by the Australian Signals Directorate with the defense ministry. O’Neil was also named Minister for Home Affairs, so it remains to be seen how separate the two ministries will be. She previously served as the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work.
(IT News)
VPNs remain popular in Russia
We’ve covered on this show the rise in Russians turning to VPN services to try to get around government website blocks, with demand up almost 3000% since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Well it turns out the Russian government has the same idea. Samuel Woodhams of Top10VPN looked at Russia’s public procurement database from the Federal Treasury, and found that since February 24th, 236 official contracts for VPN technology were made public, worth roughly $9.8 million. VPNs remain legal in the country, though local providers still must block access to banned sites. The legislative sector accounted for most VPN spending, with 11 contracts worth $2.3 million.
(Top10VPN)
Connecticut passes consumer privacy law
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed the Connecticut Privacy Act into law. This provides consumers with the right to access and delete their personal data. It also allows for consumers to ask for a copy of their personal data in a “readily usable format.” It further provides consumers with the right to opt-out of using their data from being used for targeted advertising, sold, or profiled by automated systems. This makes Connecticut the fifth state to pass a comprehensive consumer privacy law, and the second this year, following Utah’s law back in March.
Follina vulnerability patched… but not by Microsoft
Microsoft released mitigations for the Follina vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool, but hasn’t come out with a patch yet. However the micropatching service 0patch released a free unofficial patch for the vulnerability for Windows 11, 10, 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2. This adds sanitization to the user-provided path to avoid rendering the Windows diagnostic inoperable across the OS. 0patch claims this will work regardless of which version of Office is installed. Users must register for a 0patch account and install its agent to get the patch.