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  • #AxisOfEasy 281: Hackers Unleash Chaos: Danish Central Bank And Leading Private Bank Websites Under Siege

#AxisOfEasy 281: Hackers Unleash Chaos: Danish Central Bank And Leading Private Bank Websites Under Siege

January 17, 2023January 17, 2023 Mark E. Jeftovic

Weekly Axis Of Easy #281


Last Week’s Quote was  “If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride – and never quit, you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards,”  was by Bear Bryant and no one got it.

This Week’s Quote:  “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”  By ???

THE RULES:  No searching up the answer, must be posted at the bottom of this post, in the comments section

The Prize: First person to post the correct answer gets their next domain or hosting renewal on us.


This is your easyDNS #AxisOfEasy Briefing for the week of January 16th, 2023 our Technology Correspondent Joann L Barnes and easyCEO Mark E. Jeftovic send out a short briefing on the state of the ‘net and how it affects your business, security and privacy.
 
In this issue:
  • Hackers unleash chaos: Danish central bank and leading private bank websites under siege
  • FAA’s Nationwide NOTAM System Outage Leaves Flights Across US Grounded
  • Stolen Slack Employee Tokens Lead to Christmas Github Repository
  • ChatGPT and the Potential for AI Tools to Democratize Cybercrime
  • Claims of Russian bots narrative


Elsewhere online:

  • What California’s COVID-19 Misinformation Law Has In Store
  • Several vulnerabilities in private taxonomies have been addressed in a Drupal security update
  • Reviver’s plate authentication flaw lets hackers track people
  • Facebook’s Ad Manager Service Spoofed in Latest Phishing Attempts
  • WhatsApp unveils revolutionary feature: users can now sidestep government blocks with new proxy support
  • Twitter Cuts Off Access To Third-Party Apps

 

Hackers unleash chaos: Danish central bank and leading private bank websites under siege

The websites of Denmark’s central bank and seven private banks were disrupted this week by hackers who used a technique called distributed denials of service (DDoS) attack. DDoS directs traffic toward targeted servers in an attempt to knock them offline. The central bank said that its website was functioning normally on Tuesday afternoon, and the attack did not impact the bank’s other systems or day-to-day operations. Access to the websites of seven private banks was briefly restricted on Tuesday after the DDoS attack on Bankdata, a company that develops IT solutions for the financial industry. The banks that were affected included two of Denmark’s largest, Jyske Bank and Sydbank.

Read: https://www.reuters.com/technology/denmarks-central-bank-website-hit-by-cyberattack-2023-01-10/

 

FAA’s Nationwide NOTAM System Outage Leaves Flights Across US Grounded

On January 11th, an outage with the Federal Aviation Administration’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system caused a mass grounding of flights all over the US. The White House has reported that it does not suspect a cyber attack or other foul play caused the matter.

As of 7.30 am ET on Wednesday, over 1200 flights had been delayed, but only around 100 had been cancelled. By 8.50 am, a statement from the FAA read, “Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the United States following an overnight outage to the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that provides safety information to flight crews.” It further declared that “the ground stop has been lifted.”

At 9.55 am ET, however, more than 4900 flights had been delayed, with 867 of those being cancelled. Among major US airway carriers, 40% of Southwest Airlines’ flights had been delayed versus 23% for both American Airlines and Delta.

As part of the National Airspace System (NAS), NOTAM gives pilots and flight crews last-minute alerts about all manner of last-minute hazards, including weather updates or runway closers, etc. “Basically, NOTAMs let pilots know if something is, for example, under repairs or closed at an airport. Anything from broken runway lights to taxiways closed due to construction,” explained former pilot Kathleen Bangs, now a spokesperson for the real-time flight tracker FlightAware.

The FAA has been undergoing a multibillion-dollar effort, known as the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), to modernize its aging infrastructure. Though the NOTAM system is not directly linked to NextGen, Rick Larsen, ranking member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, says, “The current disruption illustrates the need to modernize all corners of the aviation system, and hopefully NextGen will help with that.”

Read: https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2023/01/11/faa-us-flights-temporarily-grounded-due-to-systems-outage/

 

Stolen Slack Employee Tokens Lead to Christmas Github Repository

According to a security incident notice posted by Slack on Dec 31, 2022, various threat actors gained access to Slack’s externally hosted GitHub repositories over the holidays through a limited number of stolen Slack employee tokens. According to the security notice, “No downloaded repositories contained customer data, means to access customer data, or Slack’s primary codebase.” The stolen tokens have since been invalidated.

Slack’s security team reports that, “Based on currently available information, the unauthorized access did not result from a vulnerability inherent to Slack. We will continue to investigate and monitor for further exposure.”

BleepingComputer.com noticed, however, that this new security update was not posted to the company’s international news blog at the time of writing, despite the very same update claiming to take customer transparency “very seriously.” Additionally, this security update is marked with a ‘noindex’ tag—an HTML feature that excludes a webpage from search engine results, thus making it harder to discover the page.

Other techniques that companies often use to decrease the transparency of news that shines an unfavorable light on them include the use of geofencing and tailoring the robots.txt file. Such techniques, including the use of ‘noindex’ in important announcements, are typically frowned upon, though they may be accidentally applied while trying to generate ‘canonical’ links.

Read: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/slacks-private-github-code-repositories-stolen-over-holidays/

 

ChatGPT and the Potential for AI Tools to Democratize Cybercrime

Check Point Research (CPR) experts published new advisory findings last Friday concerning Open AI’s ChatGPT software. In an email to Infosecurity magazine, the former stated that various cyber criminals and threat actors were “creating infostealers, encryption tools and facilitating fraud activity” via ChatGPT.

The CPR findings were published in the wake of three cases in which ChatGPT was reportedly being used for nefarious reasons. In the first case, spotted on Dec 29 in a dark web forum, tutorials and techniques to recreate common malware strains were being posted. “These posts seemed to be demonstrating [to] less technically capable cyber-criminals how to utilize ChatGPT for malicious purposes, with real examples they can immediately use,” wrote CPR.

In last December’s second instance, security researchers had noticed how certain threat actors had been posting tutorials on how to make a multi-layered Python encryption tool, meaning that “cyber-criminals who have little to no development skills at all could leverage ChatGPT to develop malicious tools,” explained CPR.

In the final instance, the team spotted a cyber criminal write a tutorial on how to create dark web marketplace scripts using ChatGPT. “The marketplace’s main role in the underground illicit economy is to provide a platform for the automated trade of illegal or stolen goods like stolen accounts or payment cards, malware, or even drugs and ammunition, with all payments in cryptocurrencies,” reads the advisory.

The CPR report was published just a few weeks after cybersecurity experts had first warned about ChatGPT’s potential to democratize cybercrime. Indeed, Omer Dembinsky, data group manager at Check Point, predicts that AI tools like ChatGPT will continue to fuel cyber-attacks in 2023.

Read: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/chatgpt-develop-malicious-tools/

 

Claims of Russian bots narrative

In a revealing development, the latest Twitter Files report has exposed prominent Democrats who knowingly pushed an unsubstantiated narrative regarding Russian bots amplifying Rep. Nunes’ explosive memo that detailed efforts to spy on then-candidate Trump’s campaign — despite being assured by Twitter executives it was false information. This exposé is part of Matt Taibbi’s 14th installment series, highlighting government overreach and manipulation in today’s digital age.

Twitter was ablaze with #ReleaseTheMemo hashtags, reflecting the widespread call for public release of Nunes’s then-classified memo. Upon publication, the memo exposed how the FBI obtained a FISA warrant for Carter Page based on unverified opposition research.

Taibbi shared an email from Emily Horne, Twitter’s global policy communications director at the time. In the email shared internally on Jan. 23, Horne stated that it was impossible to identify whether or not an account was automated and Russian with any degree of certainty. Moreover, despite early speculation of potential Russian interference after the hashtag #releasethememo began to trend, Twitter’s trust and safety chief at the time explained that no accounts showed evidence of affiliating with Russia.

Despite their firm conviction that there was no Russian involvement present, Twitter still abided by the narrative of Russia’s interference without any resistance. As journalists from several major news outlets adopted and reinforced this line without reliable evidence, it became clear there was little incentive to stop pushing forward the unfounded angle.

“Russians weren’t just blamed for #ReleaseTheMemo but #SchumerShutdown, #ParklandShooting, even #GunControlNow—to ‘widen the divide,’ according to the New York Times,” Taibbi added.

Read: https://www.theepochtimes.com/claims-that-russian-bots-pushed-releasethememo-were-fake-latest-twitter-files-confirm_4982009.html

 

Elsewhere Online


What California’s COVID-19 Misinformation Law Has In Store

Read: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dystopian-roots-californias-covid-19-misinformation-law


Several vulnerabilities in private taxonomies have been addressed in a Drupal security update

Read: https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/current-activity/2023/01/12/drupal-releases-security-update-address-vulnerability-private


Reviver’s plate authentication flaw lets hackers track people

Read: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxn9vx/researchers-track-reviver-digital-license-plate-gps-location


Facebook’s Ad Manager Service Spoofed in Latest Phishing Attempts

Read: https://www.avanan.com/blog/facebook-termination-notices-leads-to-phishing


WhatsApp unveils revolutionary feature: users can now sidestep government blocks with new proxy support

Read: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/475699-whatsapp-launches-feature-to-bypass-censorship.html 


Twitter Cuts Off Access To Third-Party Apps
Read: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/twitter-cuts-off-access-to-third-party-apps/476532/



Previously on #AxisOfEasy

If you missed the previous issues, they can be read online here:

  • January 9th, 2023: New Quantum Cybersecurity Preparedness Act Aims To Protect Agencies Against Looming “Q-Day”
  • January 2nd, 2023: Malicious MasquerAds Lurks Under Top Google Search Results
  • December 16th, 2022: Twitter’s Latest Updates: Banned Profiles And Cross-Posting
  • December 19th, 2022: Fourth Installment Of Twitter Files Reveals Secret US Government Twitter Portal For Censoring COVID-19 Material
  • December 12th, 2022: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the Modern Political Machine (and His Arrest)

 

 

 

 

 
#AxisOfEasyTagged: ChatGPT, Danish, DDoS, Drupal, facebook, GitHub, Jyske Bank, NOTAM, phishing, Sydbank, T-Mobile DDoS, WhatsApp

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2 thoughts on “#AxisOfEasy 281: Hackers Unleash Chaos: Danish Central Bank And Leading Private Bank Websites Under Siege”

  1. Andy Konecny says:
    January 17, 2023 at 8:55 pm

    Sounds like an Aldous Huxley quote

    Reply
  2. Greg Siddall says:
    January 18, 2023 at 6:00 am

    This Week’s Quote: “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping …. is by Fyodor Dostoevsky?
    I hope I’m doing this correctly – my first time guessing.

    Reply

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