Friday, February 11, 2022 // (IG): BB //Weekly Sponsor: BLKTRIANGLE
Rogue Employee or Goldman Scapegoat? Ex-Banker's 1MDB Corruption Trial to Kick Off
FROM THE MEDIA: A former Goldman Sachs banker charged with helping to embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars from Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund will go on trial in the United States next week, in a case that could shed light on how the bank responded to warnings of corruption. Roger Ng, Goldman's former investment banking chief in Malaysia, will be the first - and likely only - person to stand trial in the United States over one of the biggest financial scandals in Wall Street history. Ng's former boss, Timothy Leissner, pleaded guilty in 2018 to money laundering and corruption charges, while a Goldman subsidiary in 2020 pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate an anti-bribery law. Ng has pleaded not guilty to three counts of conspiring to launder money and violate an anti-bribery law. Opening statements are scheduled for Monday in federal court in Brooklyn. Prosecutors say Ng and Leissner evaded Goldman's internal compliance protocols. But Ng's lawyers say he had no role in the crimes and that Leissner falsely implicated him in an effort to reduce his punishment. Leissner, Goldman's former Southeast Asia chairman, has not yet been sentenced.
READ THE STORY: Money U.S.News
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North Korean Cyberwarfare Officer Arrested in Vladivostok While Seeking Asylum
FROM THE MEDIA: A ranking officer in one of North Korea’s elite military cyberwarfare units is being held in an undisclosed location in far eastern Russia after Moscow’s agents thwarted his attempt to defect, according to sources familiar with the matter and documents obtained by VOA’s Korean Service. Major Choe Kum Chol, a top information technology (IT) specialist in the North Korean People’s Army (KPA), has been held by North Korea’s consulate general in Vladivostok since September after being arrested by Russian police in Razdolnoe, a city about an hour by car from the Pacific Ocean port city. Choe, 33, had been hiding in Razdolnoe to avoid North Korean authorities who had been hunting for him since July when he left his post in Vladivostok after deciding to seek asylum from the Moscow office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), according to multiple sources in Russia who knew Choe. VOA’s Korean Service has verified the credibility of sources who provided information on Choe and has been in touch with them for several months. To protect their identities, the service cannot provide further information about them. The sources approached VOA hoping to generate international interest in Choe’s case. They provided a copy of Choe’s passport, screenshots of text messages Choe exchanged with several of them, and other documents.
READ THE STORY: VOA News
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Russian Govt. Continues Carding Shop Crackdown
FROM THE MEDIA: On Feb. 7 and 8, the domains for the carding shops Trump’s Dumps, Ferum Shop, Sky-Fraud and UAS were seized by Department K, a division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation that focuses on computer crimes. The websites for the carding stores were retrofitted with a message from Dept. K asking, “Which one of you is next?” According to cyber intelligence analysts at Flashpoint, that same message was included in the website for UniCC, another major and venerated carding shop that was seized by Dept. K in January. Around the same time Trump’s Dumps and the other three shops began displaying the Dept. K message, the Russian state-owned news outlet TASS moved a story naming six Russian men who were being charged with “the illegal circulation of means of payment.” TASS reports the six detained include Denis Pachevsky, general director of Saratovfilm Film Company LLC; Alexander Kovalev, an individual entrepreneur; Artem Bystrykh, an employee of Transtekhkom LLC; Artem Zaitsev; an employee of Get-net LLC; and two unemployed workers, Vladislav Gilev and Yaroslav Solovyov.
READ THE STORY: Krebson Security
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Globe calls for stronger cybercrime law, ‘rational’ enforcement of SIM registration
FROM THE MEDIA: Ayala-led Globe Telecom Inc. has called for a stronger cybercrime law and the rational enforcement of the SIM Card Registration Act upon its enactment in a bid to safeguard Filipinos from rampant fraudulent activities using mobile phones and the internet. In a statement on Friday, Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu said the telco prioritizes keeping its customers safe from phishing, one of the ways attackers use to steal important personal data. These unscrupulous groups or individuals often masquerade as a trusted organization to lure victims into opening malicious links from an email, instant message, or text message, Cu said. However, he said that despite the proliferation of phishing scams, current laws are lacking in terms of enabling the prosecution of cybercriminals. “We would like a strengthening of the law, particularly with regards to phishing and phishing site creation. We also have to help law enforcement and help our Justice Department prosecute these individuals and put them behind bars. Not only them but also those who allow their financial accounts to be used as mule accounts for the flow of transactions that phish from unknowing customers,” the Globe chief said.
READ THE STORY: GMA News Online // Comparitech // Privacy International
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Crypto Cyber Crime Incidents climb as PāYu Escrow prepares for the platform launch.
FROM THE MEDIA: With news of a $320M USD Crypto Hack sending the DIFI world into a frenzy, the need for smaller scale solutions are more than ever required. “The decentralized world is open to a plethora of attacks at any time, and the bigger the wallet the juicer the target for malicious individuals” says PāYu Crypto’s COS Joseph London. “We are anticipating seeing an increase in smaller cross-chain wallets and solutions limiting the exposure for these larger attacks” PāYu Crypto, launching in March of this year, is a solution to the ever growing small and large scale crime in this arena. Focusing on smaller DIFI industry freelancers, and larger projects the secret to the security is multiple wallets through multiple scripts and smart contracts. “We are limiting our clients’ exposure through multiple locations of their funds. Every code has a weak spot, and there is always a back-door. We are giving confidence to our users that if there is an attack, the damage will be limited, and within our insurance policies”. The $320m attack isn’t the first in the headlines this year. The fourth largest crypto company, Crypto.com recently lost $34.65 to a 2Fa (Two-Factor Authentication) error. The company indicated that the incident permitted unauthorized withdrawals of almost 5,000 ETH tokens valuing around $15M USD.
READ THE STORY: Digital Journal
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Is it possible to reduce or eradicate fraud in Africa?
FROM THE MEDIA: The rate at which Africans use the Internet for cybercrime is alarming and rapidly increasing. Cybercrime affects all countries, but Africa is particularly vulnerable due to inadequate network and security. An estimate shows that cybercrime costs the global economy $500 billion, as of 2016. A 2021 study by Techshielder, a technology and online security platform, describes Nigeria as the second most notorious country in the world for romance scams, after the Philippines. If I continue with the types of fraud and the countries that top each list, it won’t be surprising to see an African country on every list, which is very worrisome. For instance, South Africa, after Kenya, is the African country most affected by fraud, draining millions of dollars from the mobile accounts of cellular users worldwide on a daily basis, according to research.
READ THE STORY: Techpoint
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Nearly $700 million spent on ransomware payments in 2020 alone
FROM THE MEDIA: Victims of ransomware spent nearly $700 million paying off their attackers in 2020, according to a new report from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. A roundup of the best software and apps for Windows and Mac computers, as well as iOS and Android devices, to keep yourself safe from malware and viruses. In the company's last report, they pegged the figure at around $350 million, but increased the figure "due to both underreporting by ransomware victims and our continuing identification of ransomware addresses that have received previous victim payments." Right now, the latest figures show more than $692 million was spent on ransomware payments in 2020. For 2021, they have already tracked over $602 million worth of ransomware payments but noted that like 2020, it is an underestimate. "In fact, despite these numbers, anecdotal evidence, plus the fact that ransomware revenue in the first half of 2021 exceeded that of the first half of 2020, suggests to us that 2021 will eventually be revealed to have been an even bigger year for ransomware," Chainalysis said.
READ THE STORY: ZDnet
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China's Metaverse plans: Decentralization not required
FROM THE MEDIA: Experts say that China’s corner of the Metaverse is likely to evolve very differently to other international markets and that decentralized infrastructure may not be part of the game plan. The Sino Metaverse seems likely to repeat what happened with the web. When the internet first went mainstream in the 1990s, many people theorized that it might accelerate democracy in China. NewZoo’s 2021 trend report “Intro to the Metaverse” claimed that the Communist nation’s distaste for decentralization won’t necessarily deter it from participating in the Metaverse, but the experience may be very different, similar to the way the internet looks different behind the Great Firewall. China filters politically sensitive content by stringently managing its local internet and blocking overseas websites. Nina Xiang, journalist and founder of Asian tech intelligence and data company China Money Network, added that the divide will be particularly noticeable between China’s metaverse and the U.S. In an announcement for her new book, Parallel Metaverses: How the US, China and the Rest of the World Are Shaping Different Virtual Worlds, she wrote that “the materialization of the Metaverse will take place amid persistent US-China geopolitical and technological rivalry.”
READ THE STORY: Coin Telegraph
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World's top chipmaking equipment maker claims Chinese rival may infringe IP
FROM THE MEDIA: The world's top manufacturer of lithography equipment, Dutch company Advanced Semiconductor Materials International (ASML), has warned that it believes a Chinese company may be selling chipmaking equipment that infringes its intellectual property rights. News of the possible Chinese imitation emerged in ASML's 2021 annual report [PDF] in a section on intellectual property protection: Early in 2021, we became aware of reports that a company associated with XTAL Inc, against which ASML had obtained a damage award for trade secret misappropriation in 2019 in the USA, was actively marketing products in China that could potentially infringe on ASML's IP rights. The annual report, dated this week, names the possibly infringing company as DongFang JingYuan Electron. The Chinese company is certainly in the chipmaking business and promotes itself as a source of offering electron beam inspection products that improve the yield of chipmaking processes, as well as critical dimension-scanning electron microscopes that improve quality during the same processes. ASML's annual report doesn't specify what IP it thinks DongFang JingYuan Electron might be abusing, but states Chinese authorities have been informed. China is widely suspected of using espionage – some of it state-sponsored – to secure information about technologies it feels are necessary for the nation's security and prosperity. FBI director Christopher Wray last week said the agency he leads is currently investigating over 2,000 attacks on US targets alone.
READ THE STORY: The Register
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Inside the wild life of bitcoin bandits Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein accused of laundering $4.5B
FROM THE MEDIA: At the height of the pandemic in 2020, when she wasn’t teaching herself Russian, creating Salvador Dali-inspired art or recording rap songs about the excesses of Wall Street, Heather Morgan was very concerned about cybersecurity. “Cybercriminals and fraudsters are taking advantage of this unexpected disruption, leading to a spike in scams and cybercrimes,” Morgan, an “entrepreneur,” wrote in a June 2020 column for Forbes. She added that she was particularly concerned about elderly victims being vulnerable to online scams. “People are not always as they appear online,” she wrote. Oh, the irony. Morgan, 31, and her Russian-born husband, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, 34, now stand charged by the DOJ with trying to launder an astounding $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency. And the self-described “crocodile of Wall Street” is the gold-bomber-jacket-wearing poster child for cybercrime.
READ THE STORY: NY Post
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About this Product
These open source products are reviewed from analysts at InfoDom Securities and provide possible context about current media trends in regard to the realm of cyber security. The stories selected cover a broad array of cyber threats and are intended to aid readers in framing key publicly discussed threats and overall situational awareness. InfoDom Securities does not specifically endorse any third-party claims made in their original material or related links on their sites, and the opinions expressed by third parties are theirs alone. Contact InfoDom Securities at dominanceinformation@gmail.com