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InfoSec News Nuggets 02/03/2023

North Korean hackers stole research data in two-month-long breach 

A new cyber espionage campaign dubbed ‘No Pineapple!’ has been attributed to the North Korean Lazarus hacking group, allowing the threat actors to stealthily steal 100GB of data from the victim without causing any destruction. The campaign lasted between August and November 2022, targeting organizations in medical research, healthcare, chemical engineering, energy, defense, and a leading research university. The operation was discovered by Finnish cybersecurity firm WithSecure, whose analysts were called to investigate a potential ransomware incident on one of its customers. However, thanks to an operational mistake by Lazarus, they were able to link the campaign to the North Korean APT. 

 

Do I Need Security Software? 

When you bought a new computer years ago, you often had to install additional security software on your computer to help ensure it was secure against cyber attackers. However, most of today’s computers and devices have numerous security features already built into them, such as automatic-updating, firewalls, disk encryption, and file protection. In addition, Microsoft provides on Windows computers security functionality called Microsoft Defender, which includes additional features such as anti-virus. In many ways today’s systems by default are much more secure. In fact, YOU are most likely now the greatest weakness. This is why cyber attackers continually target people, attempting to trick you into doing things you should not do, such as give up your passwords, click on links, or open email attachments that install malware on your computers or share your credit card information. 

 

Hacker Group Releases 128GB Of Data Showing Russia’s ‘Wide-Ranging’ Illegal Surveillance Of Citizens 

Hacking collective Anonymous on Wednesday released over 100 gigabytes of documents that it claimed showed evidence that the Kremlin is illegally monitoring citizens across Russia. In a Twitter post, Anonymous dumped 128GB of documents that it said it acquired from the Russian internet service provider Convex. The hacker group claimed that the company launched a project called “Green Atom” that involves installing and maintaining surveillance equipment to monitor the online activity of Russian citizens and private corporations. 

 

ChatGPT already feared to be behind multiple cyberattacks 

IT leaders are fearful that ChatGPT, the instantly famous AI-powered chatbot, is already being used by state-sponsored threat actors when crafting cyberattacks. A report from BlackBerry, which polled 500 IT decision-makers in the UK on their views of the revolutionary tech, found over three-quarters (76%) believe foreign states are already using ChatGPT in their cyber-warfare campaigns against other nations. Almost half (48%) believe 2023 is the year when we’ll be able to credit the technology with a successful cyberattack. While this might sound like a standard case of rage against the machine, it’s far from it. Most respondents (60%) still see the tech as being put to use for “good” purposes, but at the same time 72% worry about potential misuse. 

 

GoodRx shared consumer health data with Facebook and Google, FTC says 

Digital health service GoodRx repeatedly shared sensitive customer information with Facebook, Google and other advertising platforms without its users’ knowledge or consent, the Federal Trade Commission alleged on Wednesday. In doing so, GoodRx allowed those services to tap into sensitive health details about those consumers, according to the complaint. In one case, GoodRx allegedly designed campaigns based on its users’ health information to run targeted ads on Facebook, relying on the social media network’s ad-targeting platform and making the information visible to Facebook, the complaint alleges. In that case, the campaigns featured ads focused on specific medications such as Viagra or conditions like erectile dysfunction that then ran on Facebook, the complaint claims. 

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