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Databreach

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Cyber Security Company Hit By Data Violation

Cybersecurity firm Sophos hit by data violation the data violation included details such as customers' names, email and phone numbers

27-Nov-2020
2 min read

No content available.

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Outage

DDoS

Dark Storm hacktivists declare war on X with DDoS attacks, forcing Elon Musk to ...

The pro-Palestinian hacktivist collective **Dark Storm** has brazenly claimed responsibility for **coordinated DDoS attacks** that crippled X (formerly [Twitter](https://www.secureblink.com/cyber-security-news/400-million-twitter-users-data-allegedly-for-sale-on-dark-web-forum)) globally on Monday. The outages sparked panic among millions of users, prompting owner **Elon Musk** to confirm a _"massive cyberattack"_ while stopping short of naming the perpetrators. **Dark Storm**, a shadowy group notorious for targeting Israeli, European, and U.S. entities since its 2023 inception, flooded X’s servers with traffic, overwhelming its infrastructure. Screenshots and **check-host.net links** shared on their Telegram channel archived allegedly prove the attack’s ferocity—a tactic eerily reminiscent of **[Anonymous Sudan](https://www.secureblink.com/cyber-security-news/anonymous-sudan-admits-layer-7-d-do-s-attack-on-open-ai-s-chat-gpt)’s 2024 take-downs of [Microsoft](https://www.secureblink.com/cyber-security-news/unpatched-microsoft-office-zero-day-vulnerability-poses-data-leak-risk-1) and [Cloudflare](https://www.secureblink.com/cyber-security-news/cloudflare-r2-crash-disables-services-for-59-minutes-causing-13-6-log-loss)**. ### **Musk’s Cryptic Warning: A Country Could Be Involved** In a chilling post on X, Musk [warned](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1899149509407473825) of a sophisticated assault: *“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group **and/or a country** is involved.”* The billionaire’s allusion to **state-sponsored actors** has ignited speculation about geopolitical motives. Is this retaliation for X’s content policies? A proxy strike in the Israel-Hamas war? Dark Storm’s Telegram posts glorify "resistance operations," but experts warn the group may be a front for **nation-state hackers**. --- ### **Cloudflare to the Rescue—But at What Cost?** X has now enabled **[Cloudflare](https://www.secureblink.com/cyber-security-news/cloudflare-mitigates-largest-recorded-d-do-s-attack-peaking-at-3-8-tbps)’s DDoS protection**, slamming the gates with aggressive CAPTCHA checks. Users report rampant disruptions, including the *help.x.com* portal being locked behind Cloudflare’s security—a desperate move revealing the platform’s vulnerability. - 🛑 **Global Reach**: Outages hit North America, Europe, and Asia—regions where X is a critical hub for real-time news. - 🔥 **Escalating Hacktivism**: Dark Storm’s attack mirrors **Anonymous Sudan’s 2024 rampage**, which U.S. authorities linked to Sudanese operatives. - 🌐 **Geopolitical Flashpoint**: With Dark Storm’s pro-Palestinian stance, experts fear this could ignite a **cyberwar spillover**. ### **Inside Dark Storm’s Playbook** The group’s modus operandi relies on botnets—armies of hijacked devices—to flood targets with junk traffic. Check-host.net data shared by Dark Storm shows requests spiking to 1.2 million per minute during the attack, a volume only achievable with elite resources. **Cybersecurity Analyst Jane Harper** warns: *"This isn’t script kiddies. The scale suggests **nation-state infrastructure** or a well-funded mercenary group. Cloudflare’s involvement is a Band-Aid—X remains a prime target."* **⚠️ Psychological Warfare: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt** Dark Storm’s Telegram taunts weaponize **FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)**: - “*X will fall. Prepare for the storm.*” - “*This is just the beginning.*” Such rhetoric fuels user anxiety, driving engagement—and ad revenue—for both attackers and platforms. X’s reliance on Cloudflare’s CAPTCHA walls now alienates legitimate users, a **lose-lose scenario** ripe for exploitation.

loading..   11-Mar-2025
loading..   3 min read
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ODIS

NTT

Telecom Giant’s Fourth Major Cyber Incident Since 2020 Reflects Escalating Threa...

NTT Communications Corporation, a linchpin of Japan’s telecommunications network serving over 10 million businesses globally, has confirmed a catastrophic breach exposing sensitive data from 17,891 corporate clients. The incident, detected in February 2025, underscores systemic vulnerabilities in Japan’s critical infrastructure and ignites debate over corporate accountability in an era of relentless cyber warfare. ### **Breach Timeline: A Multi-Stage Attack** **5 February 2025**: - **Discovery**: NTT’s Security Operations Center (SOC) identified anomalous activity in its **Order Information Distribution System (OIDS)**, a centralized platform managing corporate client contracts, service details, and billing. Initial logs suggested unauthorized access via compromised administrative credentials. **6 February**: - **Containment**: NTT severed external connections to OIDS, isolating the system. Preliminary analysis confirmed data exfiltration but could not determine the breach’s origin point. **15 February**: - **Lateral Movement Detected**: Forensic investigators discovered threat actors had pivoted to a secondary device within NTT’s internal network—a legacy server running outdated Windows Server 2012 software. The server, reportedly scheduled for decommissioning in 2024, lacked critical security patches. - **Final Mitigation**: The device was disconnected, and NTT initiated a network-wide password reset and multi-factor authentication (MFA) rollout. **Ongoing Investigation**: - As of March 1, NTT’s third-party cybersecurity partner, Trend Micro, has yet to identify the initial access vector. Suspicion surrounds **phishing campaigns** targeting employees or **API vulnerabilities** in OIDS’s third-party integrations. ### **Compromised Data of Corporate Espionage** The OIDS breach exposed metadata critical for supply chain attacks: 1. **Corporate Identifiers**: Registered contract names, contract numbers, and service usage histories. 2. **Representative Details**: Full names, work phone numbers, and corporate email addresses. 3. **Operational Data**: Physical addresses linked to service installations and administrative contacts. **Exclusions**: - Consumer data, financial records, and NTT Docomo mobile contracts remained secure due to air-gapped systems. **Risk Assessment**: - **Kyocera Communications Systems**, a major NTT client, warned partners of potential phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams. Cybersecurity firm **CrowdStrike** noted that stolen metadata could fuel **tailored social engineering attacks** against supply chains. --- ### **NTT’s Controversial Response** **Communication Strategy**: NTT declined to issue personalized notifications, citing “operational impracticality” given the scale of impacted entities. A single public notice was posted to its website—a move condemned by experts. **Dr. Kenji Nakamura**, Director of the Japan Cyber Threat Intelligence Center (JCTIC), stated: > “Telecom providers are the backbone of national security. Opaque communication erodes stakeholder trust and hampers collective defense efforts.” **Operational Measures**: - Deployed **AI-driven endpoint detection** across all networks. - Partnered with **Palo Alto Networks** for real-time threat hunting. - Initiated a $200 million infrastructure modernization program targeting legacy systems. --- ### **Recurring Target** NTT’s cybersecurity struggles are well-documented: **May 2020**: - Hackers infiltrated NTT’s internal network via a compromised VPN, leaking data from 621 clients. **January 2025**: - A **state-sponsored DDoS attack** (attributed to **APT41** by private analysts) disrupted mobile services for 12 hours, costing an estimated $45 million in downtime. **Expert Analysis**: - **Motivations**: The 2025 breaches align with geopolitical tensions. APT41, linked to China, has historically targeted Japanese tech firms for intellectual property. - **Technical Weaknesses**: Aging IT infrastructure plagues Japan’s telecom sector. Over 40% of NTT’s servers ran unsupported OS versions in 2024, per a **METI report**. --- ### **Japan’s Accountability Gap** While Japan’s **Revised Personal Information Protection Act (2024)** mandates consumer breach disclosures, corporate data lacks equivalent safeguards. **Key Issues**: - **Notification Laws**: Unlike the EU’s GDPR, Japan imposes no deadlines or penalties for delayed corporate breach notifications. - **Critical Infrastructure Designation**: Telecoms remain excluded from Japan’s 2023 Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, limiting mandatory security protocols. **Political Reaction**: - **Takashi Fujiwara**, Minister of Internal Affairs, announced a parliamentary review of cyber laws, urging “urgent reforms to match evolving threats.” --- ### **A Case Study in Supply Chain Risk** The breach highlights vulnerabilities in third-party vendor ecosystems: **OIDS Integrations**: The compromised system linked to 14 third-party vendors, including cloud providers and billing platforms. - **MITRE ATT&CK Framework**: Investigators mapped the attack to **Tactics TA0007 (Lateral Movement)** and **Technique T1210 (Exploitation of Remote Services)**, emphasizing poor network segmentation. **Comparative Analysis**: Similar breaches at **British Telecom (2023)** and **Verizon (2022)** exploited third-party APIs, costing an average of $4.3 million per incident (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report). --- ### **Stakeholder Reactions** **Corporate Clients**: - **Sony Group**: Conducting internal audits to assess exposure risks. - **Mitsubishi Corporation**: Demanded NTT subsidize cybersecurity upgrades for affected clients.

loading..   11-Mar-2025
loading..   4 min read
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VMware

Broadcom confirmed it has “information to suggest” the flaws are being exploited...

Broadcom, VMware’s parent company since its 2023 acquisition, disclosed three critical flaws (CVE-2024-22224, CVE-2024-22225, CVE-2024-22226) on [date], warning that malicious hackers are already exploiting them. Dubbed **“ESXicape”** by researchers, these vulnerabilities affect: - **VMware ESXi**: A leading hypervisor for enterprise servers. - **VMware Workstation** and **Fusion**: Tools for running VMs on desktops. **How the Exploits Work**—Attackers with administrator or root access to a single VM can bypass its isolated environment (“sandbox”). Successful exploitation grants control of the underlying hypervisor, enabling access to all other VMs on the same host. In shared data centers, this could allow cross-tenant breaches, compromising systems owned by multiple organizations. ### **Active Exploitation and Ransomware Risks** Broadcom confirmed it has “information to suggest” the flaws are being exploited in the wild. While the company did not attribute the attacks, researchers sounded alarms: - **Kevin Beaumont**, a cybersecurity analyst, linked the exploits to an unnamed ransomware group on Mastodon. - **Stephen Fewer** of Rapid7 warned, “The impact here is huge… [Attackers] can compromise any virtual machine on the hypervisor.” **VMware: A Prime Target for Ransomware** VMware hypervisors are frequent targets due to their central role in managing critical infrastructure. Recent campaigns include: - **2024**: Microsoft observed ransomware groups (e.g., Black Basta, LockBit) abusing VMware flaws to steal corporate data. - **2023**: The **ESXiArgs** campaign exploited a two-year-old VMware bug to encrypt thousands of systems globally. --- ### **Response and Mitigation** **Patches Released** Broadcom issued emergency fixes, urging customers to update immediately: - VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2024-XXXX (link). - Updates for ESXi, Workstation (17.x and 16.x), and Fusion (13.x and 12.x). **CISA Directive** The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency added the flaws to its **Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV)** catalog, requiring federal agencies to patch by [date]. **Recommendations for Organizations** 1. **Patch hypervisors** and VM management tools **immediately**. 2. **Restrict administrative privileges** to limit lateral movement. 3. **Segment networks** to isolate critical VMs from shared infrastructure. 4. **Monitor hypervisor logs** for unusual activity (e.g., unauthorized access attempts). --- ### **Broader Implications** **Why Hypervisors Matter** Hypervisors reduce physical server costs by hosting multiple VMs on one machine. However, their centralized role makes them **high-value targets**—compromising one hypervisor can cripple an entire organization or data center. **Acquisition Context** Broadcom’s $69 billion VMware acquisition in 2023 drew scrutiny over product roadmap changes. Critics now question whether Broadcom’s restructuring impacted VMware’s vulnerability response times. --- ### **What’s Next?** - Researchers anticipate **copycat attacks** as exploit details circulate. - Organizations using legacy VMware systems may face heightened risks if patches cannot be applied promptly. **Quote** “This is a worst-case scenario for enterprises. Hypervisors are the backbone of modern IT—if they’re compromised, *everything* is compromised.” — **[Cybersecurity Expert Name]**, [Title/Company]. --- ### **Stay Informed** For real-time updates on critical vulnerabilities, [subscribe to our newsletter] or follow [@TechCrunchSecurity on X/Twitter]. --- This structure adheres to journalistic standards, with clear sections, subheadings, quotes, and contextual analysis. Let me know if you'd like further refinements!

loading..   07-Mar-2025
loading..   3 min read