UK Taps Ukraine Lessons to Plow £1 Billion Into Warfare Systems
The UK will invest more than £1 billion ($1.4 billion) in a new digital targeting system to allow the country's armed forces to pinpoint and eliminate enemy targets more swiftly as part of a forthcoming revamp of Britain's defensive capabilities.
In its strategic defense review, expected to be published in full next week, the UK will also set up a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command to protect military networks against tens of thousands of cyber attacks a year and help coordinate Britain's own cyber operations, the Ministry of Defence said Thursday in a statement. The command will also lead operations to jam enemy signals to drones and missiles and help intercept military communications.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
WIRED
an hour ago
- WIRED
Cops in Germany Claim They've ID'd the Mysterious Trickbot Ransomware Kingpin
Matt Burgess Lily Hay Newman May 30, 2025 9:22 AM The elusive boss of the Trickbot and Conti cybercriminal groups has been known only as 'Stern.' Now, German law enforcement has published his alleged identity—and it's a familiar face. Photograph:For years, members of the Russian cybercrime cartel Trickbot unleashed a relentless hacking spree on the world. The group attacked thousands of victims, including businesses, schools, and hospitals. 'Fuck clinics in the usa this week,' one member wrote in internal Trickbot messages in 2020 about a list of 428 hospitals to target. Orchestrated by an enigmatic leader using the online moniker 'Stern,' the group of around 100 cybercriminals stole hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of roughly six years. Despite a wave of law enforcement disruptions and a damaging leak of more than 60,000 internal chat messages from Trickbot and the closely associated counterpart group Conti, the identity of Stern has remained a mystery. Last week, though, Germany's federal police agency, the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA, and local prosecutors alleged that Stern's real-world name is Vitaly Nikolaevich Kovalev, a 36-year-old, 5'11' Russian man who cops believe is in his home country and thus shielded from potential extradition. A recently issued Interpol red notice says that Kovalev is wanted by Germany for allegedly being the 'ringleader' of a 'criminal organisation.' 'Stern's naming is a significant event that bridges gaps in our understanding of Trickbot—one of the most notorious transnational cybercriminal groups to ever exist,' says Alexander Leslie, a threat intelligence analyst at the security firm Recorded Future. 'As Trickbot's 'big boss' and one of the most noteworthy figures in the Russian cybercriminal underground, Stern remained an elusive character, and his real name was taboo for years.' Stern has notably seemed to be absent from multiple rounds of Western sanctions and indictments in recent years calling out alleged Trickbot and Conti members. Leslie and other researchers have long speculated to WIRED that global law enforcement may have strategically withheld Stern's alleged identity as part of ongoing investigations. Kovalev is suspected of being the 'founder' of Trickbot and allegedly used the Stern moniker, the BKA said in an online announcement. 'It has long been assumed, based on numerous indications, that 'stern' is in fact 'Kovalev',' a BKA spokesperson says in written responses to questions from WIRED. They add that, 'The investigating authorities involved in Operation Endgame were only able to identify the actor stern as 'Kovalev' during their investigation this year,' referring to a multi-year international effort to identify and disrupt cybercriminal infrastructure, known as Operation Endgame. The BKA spokesperson also notes in written statements to WIRED that information obtained through a 2023 investigation into the Qakbot malware as well as analysis of the leaked Trickbot and Conti chats from 2022 were 'helpful' in making the attribution. They added, too, that the 'assessment is also shared by international partners.' The German announcement is the first time that officials from any government have publicly alleged an identity for a suspect behind the Stern moniker. As part of Operation Endgame, BKA's Stern attribution inherently comes in the context of a multinational law enforcement collaboration. But unlike in other Trickbot and Conti-related attributions, other countries have not publicly concurred with BKA's Stern identification thus far. Europol, the US Department of Justice, the US Treasury, and the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office did not immediately respond to WIRED's requests for comment. Several cybersecurity researchers who have tracked Trickbot extensively tell WIRED they were unaware of the announcement. An anonymous account on the social media platform X recently claimed that Kovalev used the Stern handle and published alleged details about him. WIRED messaged multiple accounts that supposedly belong to Kovalev, according to the X account and a database of hacked and leaked records compiled by District 4 Labs but received no response. Meanwhile, Kovalev's name and face may already be surprisingly familiar to those who have been following recent Trickbot revelations. This is because Kovalev was jointly sanctioned by the United States and United Kingdom in early 2023 for his alleged involvement as a senior member in Trickbot. He was also charged in the US at the time with hacking linked to bank fraud allegedly committed in 2010. The US added him to its most wanted list. In all of this activity, though, the US and UK linked Kovalev to the online handles 'ben' and 'Bentley.' The 2023 sanctions did not mention a connection to the Stern handle. And, in fact, Kovalev's 2023 indictment was mainly noteworthy because his use of 'Bentley' as a handle was determined to be 'historic' and distinct from that of another key Trickbot member who also went by 'Bentley.' The Trickbot ransomware group first emerged around 2016, after its members moved from the Dyre malware that was disrupted by Russian authorities. Over the course of its lifespan, the Trickbot group—which used its namesake malware, alongside other ransomware variants such as Ryuk, IcedID, and Diavol—increasingly overlapped in operations and personnel with the Conti gang. In early 2022, Conti published a statement backing Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and a cybersecurity researcher who had infiltrated the groups leaked more than 60,000 messages from Trickbot and Conti members, revealing a huge trove of information about their day-to-day operations and structure. Stern acted like a 'CEO' of the Trickbot and Conti groups and ran them like a legitimate company, leaked chat messages analyzed by WIRED and security researchers show. 'Trickbot set the mold for the modern 'as-a-service' cybercriminal business model that was adopted by countless groups that followed,' Recorded Future's Leslie says. 'While there were certainly organized groups that preceded Trickbot, Stern oversaw a period of Russian cybercrime that was characterized by a high level of professionalization. This trend continues today, is reproduced worldwide, and is visible in most active groups on the dark web.' Stern's eminence within Russian cybercrime has been widely documented. The cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis does not publicly name cybercriminal actors and declined to comment on BKA's identification, but the company emphasized that the Stern persona alone is one of the all-time most profitable ransomware actors it tracks. 'The investigation revealed that stern generated significant revenues from illegal activities, in particular in connection with ransomware,' the BKA spokesperson tells WIRED. Stern 'surrounds himself with very technical people, many of which he claims to have sometimes decades of experience, and he's willing to delegate substantial tasks to these experienced people whom he trusts,' says Keith Jarvis, a senior security researcher at cybersecurity firm Sophos' Counter Threat Unit. 'I think he's always probably lived in that organizational role.' Increasing evidence in recent years has indicated that Stern has at least some loose connections to Russia's intelligence apparatus, including its main security agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB). The Stern handle mentioned setting up an office for 'government topics' in July 2020, while researchers have seen other members of the Trickbot group say that Stern is likely the 'the link between us and the ranks/head of department type at FSB.' Stern's consistent presence was a significant contributor to Trickbot and Conti's effectiveness—as was the entity's ability to maintain strong operational security and remain hidden. As Sophos' Jarvis put it, 'I have no thoughts on the attribution as I've never heard a compelling story about Stern's identity from anyone prior to this announcement.'
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Airbus Seeks Middle East Comeback After Boeing's Major May Haul
By , Siddharth Vikram Philip, and Julie Johnsson Save Airbus SE is looking to stage a comeback in June with a flurry of fresh orders after arch-rival Boeing Co. logged its biggest-ever deal this month that left the European planemaker empty-handed. The aircraft manufacturer is turning its focus to the Paris Air Show taking place in the middle of the month, where some carriers from the Middle East are poised to order more widebody aircraft.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
New Attack Steals Your Windows Email, Passwords, 2FA Codes And More
The latest Katz malware version can steal most everything. Infostealers are the new black. When it comes to hacking fashion, malware that steals user credentials has been in vogue for a while now. We've seen the evidence in the 19 billion compromised passwords that are already available online, or the 94 billion browser cookies published to the Dark Web and Telegram channels. Microsoft has been spearheading the fight against the credential-stealing criminals, leading the recent global takedown of large parts of the Lumma Stealer network infrastructure, for example. Yet, the danger still persists; in fact, it is evolving. New research has revealed that a notorious threat to Windows users has emerged in the form of a new variant that can steal most anything and everything. Here's what you need to know about Katz. There is nothing particularly unusual about the way that the Katz Stealer malware is distributed. Victims are targeted through the usual cybercriminal methods, including phishing emails, malicious advertisements, dangerous search results, and dodgy downloads. Once installed, however, Katz looks to see if you are using Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or the Brave web browser and goes into what is known as headless mode. This is pretty much as it sounds, a browser with no visible interface, running 'headless' in the background but with the body able to render pages and interact with the web as normal. Katz can also bypass Google's app-bound encryption protections for Chrome, according to security researchers, which would aid in the credential-stealing payload. And it's the payload that has us shaking our collective heads in disbelief. A May 23 analysis of the latest Katz Stealer malware, by the Nextron threat research team, has revealed the true extent of this steal-everything threat to Windows users. According to the full analysis, which I would recommend you go and read, after you finish here, of course, the range of Katz when it comes to data that can be stolen is, well, extensive. As well as the usual mitigation advice for consumers to deploy two-factor authentication and passkeys on all accounts where available, apply all operating system and browser security updates as soon as possible and be alert to all the usual phishing tricks, the Nextron threat research team recommended the following for enterprise users: Nextron also suggested watching out for the scanning of Windows registry keys and files associated with popular browsers and wallet applications, as this is indicative of Katz Stealer activity. As Sergeant Phil Esterhaus used to say, if you know you know, 'be careful out there.'
