In today's exploration of cyber security tech news.
The war in Ukraine is heating up, and so are the battles in cyberspace, in this video I'll
be covering everything that's happened in the last day or two in the world of cyber
warfare when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine.
Firstly, Anonymous has hacked the Russian ministry of defence and leaked some data.
The leak contains a database of phone numbers, emails and passwords belonging to Russian
military officials.
Many of the hacked emails end in "mil.ru" or "gov.ru" - in other words these can only
belong to the Russian military and government.
I'm not showing any of the leaked data in this video, because I'm pretty sure that's
against youtube's community guidelines - in fact shortly after an Anonymous related account
tweeted it, Twitter pulled it down, and the mega download link was taken completely offline.
But despite that, the leak will have already done its job.
The Russian ministry of defence will have locked down accounts - and whilst it won't
take them long to recover from this, the whole idea will have been to create as much disruption
as possible to the Russian military's operations.
But Anonymous did not stop there, things got a whole lot more interesting in a different
operation which also happened in the last day or so.
A group calling themselves "Anonymous Liberland" teamed up with a hacking group going by the
name "Pwn-Bar Hack team".
They hacked in to the Belarussian weapons manufacturer "Tetraedr" - or, however it's
pronounced.
Anyway - this company makes weapons for the Russian military, and they're said to have
been instrumental in providing logistical support for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Now the hackers released a statement in which they mock Russian threat groups, saying "Our
Russian APT friends seem kinda out of shape, don't they?
Defacements?
DDoS attacks?
What year is this?
2012?", "We thought maybe they needed a little reminder of what real hacking is like".
And so, after hacking the weapons manufacturer they leaked 200GB of emails, they claim "included
are the schematics for some of those SAMs" - here they're referring to surface to air
missile systems, like this one, made by "tetraedr".
But how did this duo gain access?
Apparently through a Microsoft exchange vulnerability - ProxyLogon - this allows an attacker to
bypass authentication to a microsoft exchange email server and gain admin privileges.
A patch for this was released a year ago, but it seems "Tetraedr" just never bothered
to update their systems...
The defence company's website is now offline, and the leak is being disseminated through
"distributed denial of secrets" - an organisation which hosts data leaks.
It's too soon to say the effect this leak will have, as 200GB is a lot of emails, so
it'll take a while for people to go through it all.
And as I mentioned in my previous video the Ukrainian military is openly reaching out
to Ukrainian cybercriminals, encouraging them to put their skills to good use and volunteer
for the military's cyber units.
They have a google forms page for people to apply through, that shows they're looking
for people with skills such as "social engineering", "red teaming" and "threat intelligence".
And Ukraine could use greater defensive cyber capabilities, for example, the Belarusian
state hacking group "UNC1151" has been targeting Ukrainian military personnel with phishing
campaigns.
Soldiers have been receiving emails saying "click the link below and verify your contact
information.
Otherwise, your account will be irretrievably deleted."
- the emails then link to a page for people to type in their username and password.
This is obvious bs, merely an attempt to scoop up email credentials of people in the military.
Why?
Well, the Belarusians won't be looking for anything in particular, but rather to see
what they can learn from soldiers' messages, such as insights into Ukrainian military strategy,
and how or where they're being deployed.
Speaking of spam - and this is kinda shocking, but I suppose not really surprising - scammers
have been exploiting the invasion and setting up fake donation websites, attempting to trick
people into sending them money, with the cover story that the money will go to help people
in Ukraine.
So if you are looking to donate money, be careful.
The official Ukraine twitter account tweeted that they are now accepting donations in bitcoin
and ethereum - and at first people assumed that the account had just been hacked, but
no - this is legit.
So far millions have been donated.
So this is what we know so far when it comes to the Ukrainian cyber warfare situation.
Also, several hacktivist groups have contacted me - both pro Russians and pro Ukrainians,
and it looks like I'm actually going to be doing interviews with them.
I'm taking suggestions for questions to ask them over on my instagram story, which I will
link in the video description.
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Thanks for watching, you know the drill, make sure to tickle the notification bell and follow
me on the instagrams for behind the scenes content.
And I'll see you in the next video, have a good one.