The 20th of May, Cyber News

Ukraine

Ukraine has received $ 1 million to fight russian hackers

ICANN has allocated $ 1 million. These funds, according to Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov, will be spent on maintaining the stable operation of our country’s domain system. Fedorov said that the smooth functioning of the domain name system is critical to the work of the Internet as a whole, because domain names allow people to freely access any sites that interest them, and such important web resources as, for example, google.com. The official noted that after the invasion of russian troops into the territory of Ukraine, the domain system of our country was repeatedly attacked by russian hackers. To stop the attackers’ attempts to «shake up the system», it is necessary to invest in its cybersecurity [1].

russia

Hackers have created a site for telephone pranks on russian security forces

A group of hackers Obfuscated Dreams of Scheherazade has created the site WasterussianTime.today, which allows each visitor to become a prankster and play russian officials. Automation calls have become a big problem for the modern world. The hackers decided to use these weapons against russian officials. All you need to do is go to the site, click on the button and go through the captcha, after which the site will randomly select a couple of numbers from the merged databases of russian deputies, propagandists, military, intelligence and officials to «call» each other. All you have to do is lean back in your chair and enjoy the misunderstanding of the russians, who called someone and what is happening. The hackers used a bunch of merged information, gathering in their database about 5,000 numbers of various russian officials, military and media workers. The site independently dials 40 random phone numbers and creates a three-way call with the first two phones of racists who connect to the call and the user. However, visitors will not be able to speak —  in an interview with Wired hackers explained that the site is a kind of art installation, allowing users to silently eavesdrop on the conversation. The idea to create something similar for hackers from the group Obfuscated Dreams of Scheherazade arose the day after the beginning of the war. It took them three months to develop a site that would be ready for a potential response from russia – for example, a DDoS attack that could temporarily disable the resource [2].

Russia has admitted that it has not yet been able to restore rutube after the cyber attack on May 9

russian video hosting rutube 10 days after the large-scale cyberattack has not been able to resume its work in full. «Ten days after the cyber attack on Victory Day, rutube is still under recovery, the exact date of the full restoration of the video service is unknown,» —  said in a statement TASS. russian media reported, citing sources, that the hackers managed to completely remove the site’s code, because of which he will not be able to resume work. rutube itself denied this information and claimed that it would soon be able to restore access to the resource. On May 12, the service started working, but with serious failures. Experts say that the hacking of rutube is the biggest victory since the beginning of the cyber war with russia, according to the telegram channel «IT ARMY of Ukraine» Both content and all internal and external video hosting infrastructure have been removed. It cannot be restored. The Ukrainian cyber army said that the «russian response to YouTube» had been broken by two Ukrainian IT specialists in just a couple of days [3].

World

Dangerous vulnerability. British experts were able to hack Tesla with a smartphone

The Bluetooth Low Energy technology used to control the device with the program in a number of electric cars, including Tesla, proved to be dangerous. Experts from the British NCC Group, which is engaged in security research, have developed a way to conduct a relay attack on BLE at the channel level. The technique allows you to unlock someone else’s electric car and drive it. «Our research shows that the systems people rely on to protect their cars, homes and personal data use Bluetooth authentication mechanisms that can be easily hacked with cheap ready-made equipment,» —  said Sultan Qasim Khan, Senior Security Consultant. He also said that the method he had invented works not only on electric cars of the Tesla brand. Any device that uses Bluetooth Low Energy technology is dangerous, he said in the Bluetooth Special Interest Group [4].

Costa Rica’s newly elected president, Rodrigo Chavez, has said the country is at war with the cybercrime group Conti

The group has shut down at least 27 government agencies —  hackers demand a ransom of $ 20 million. Conti is one of the most active extortionist groups working on the Ransomware-as-a-Service scheme (RaaS). Experts link it to the russian group Wizard Spider. Costa Rica was one of Conti’s latest victims. In May 2022, newly elected President Rodrigo Chavez was forced to declare a state of emergency in the country due to Conti’s attack on a number of government agencies. In particular, we are talking about 27 institutions, including municipalities and state utilities. Among them is the Ministry of Finance of Costa Rica: services in the field have not been working since April. The tax system also failed —  the country is temporarily unable to collect taxes, as it was before. The attackers posted a call on the citizens of Costa Rica to put pressure on their government to pay a ransom, which doubled from the initial $ 10 million to $ 20 million. In a statement, President Chavez also said that the criminals were being helped by collaborators inside the country, and called on international allies to help. According to him, Conti’s goal is to defeat the newly elected government with cyber attacks [5].