Latest news with #Trickbot
WIRED
3 days ago
- Politics
- WIRED
A Hacker May Have Deepfaked Trump's Chief of Staff in a Phishing Campaign
Andy Greenberg Matt Burgess Lily Hay Newman May 30, 2025 2:42 PM Plus: An Iranian man pleads guilty to a Baltimore ransomware attack, Russia's nuclear blueprints get leaked, a Texas sheriff uses license plate readers to track a woman who got an abortion, and more. Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff;For years, a mysterious figure who goes by the handle Stern led the Trickbot ransomware gang and evaded identification—even as other members of the group were outed in leaks and unmasked. This week German authorities revealed, without much fanfare, who they believe that enigmatic hacker kingpin to be: Vitaly Nikolaevich Kovalev, a 36-year-old Russian man who remains at large in his home country. Closer to home, WIRED revealed that Customs and Border Protection has mouth-swabbed 133,000 migrant children and teenagers to collect their DNA and uploaded their genetic data into a national criminal database used by local, state, and federal law enforcement. As the Trump administration's migrant crackdown continues, often justified through invocations of crime and terrorism, WIRED also uncovered evidence that ties a Swedish far-right mixed-martial-arts tournament to an American neo-Nazi 'fight club' based in California. For those seeking to evade the US government surveillance, we offered tips about more private alternatives to US-based web browsing, email, and search tools. And we assembled a more general guide to protecting yourself from surveillance and hacking, based on questions our senior writer Matt Burgess received in a Reddit Ask Me Anything. But that's not all. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn't cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there. The FBI is investigating who impersonated Susie Wiles, the Trump White House's chief of staff and one of the president's closest advisors, in a series of fraudulent messages and calls to high-profile Republican political figures and business executives, the Wall Street Journal reported. Government officials and authorities involved in the probe say the spear phishing messages and calls appear to have targeted individuals on Wiles' contact list, and Wiles has reportedly told colleagues that her personal phone was hacked to gain access to those contacts. Despite Wiles' reported claim of having her device hacked, it remains unconfirmed whether this was actually how attackers identified Wiles' associates. It would also be possible to assemble such a target list from a combination of publicly available information and data sold by gray market brokers. 'It's an embarrassing level of security awareness. You cannot convince me they actually did their security trainings,' says Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy. 'This is the type of garden variety social engineering that everyone can end up dealing with these days and certainly top government officials should be expecting it.' In some cases, the targets received not just text messages but phone calls that impersonated Wiles' voice, and some government officials believe the calls may have used artificial intelligence tools to fake Wiles' voice. If so, that would make the incident one of the most significant cases yet of so-called 'deepfake' software being used in a phishing attempt. It's not yet clear how Wiles' phone might have been hacked, but the FBI has ruled out that a foreign nation is involved in the impersonation campaign, the Bureau reportedly told White House officials. In fact, while some of the impersonation attempts appeared to have political goals—a member of Congress, for instance, was asked to assemble a list of people Trump might pardon—in at least one other case the impersonator tried to trick a target into setting up a cash transfer. That attempt at a money grab suggests that the spoofing campaign may be less of an espionage operation than a run-of-the-mill cybercriminal fraud scheme, albeit one with a very high-level target. 'There's an argument here for using something like Signal—yes, the irony—or another messaging platform that offers an independent form of authentication if users want to validate who they're talking to,' Hunter Strategy's Williams says. "The key thing as always is for government officials to be using vetted tools and following all federally mandated protocols rather than just winging it on their own devices." Iranian Man Behind Baltimore Ransomware Attack Pleads Guilty The 2019 ransomware attack against the city government of Baltimore represents one of the worst municipal cybersecurity disasters on record, paralyzing city services for months and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. Now the Department of Justice has unexpectedly revealed that it arrested one of the hackers behind that attack, 37-year-old Sina Gholinejad, in North Carolina last January, and that he's pleaded guilty in court. Gholinejad has admitted to being involved in the larger Robbinhood ransomware campaign that hit other targets including the cities of Greenville, North Carolina and Yonkers, New York. It's still far from clear how Gholinejad was identified or why he traveled from Iran to the US, given that most ransomware criminals are careful to remain in countries that don't have extradition agreements with the US government and are thus beyond US law enforcement's reach. Indeed, the indictment against him names several unnamed co-conspirators who may be still at large in Iran. Russia's Nuclear Blueprints Exposed in Huge Document Leak More than two million documents left exposed in a public database have revealed Russia's nuclear weapons facilities in unprecedented levels of detail, according to reporting this week by Danish media outlet Danwatch and Germany's Der Spiegel. Reporters examined the huge trove of documents relating to Russian military procurement—as Russian authorities slowly restricted access—and found blueprints for nuclear facilities across the country. Experts called the leak an unparalleled breach of Russia's nuclear security, with the data potentially being incredibly useful for foreign governments and intelligence services. The documents show how Russia's nuclear facilities have been rebuilt in recent years, where new facilities have been created, detailed site plans including the locations of barracks and watchtowers, and the locations of underground tunnels connecting buildings together. There are descriptions of IT systems and security systems, including information on surveillance cameras, electric fences being used, and the alarm systems in place. 'It's written explicitly where the control rooms are located, and which buildings are connected to each other via underground tunnels,' Danwatch reports. Cops Used License Plate Recognition Cameras in Search for Woman Who Got an Abortion License plate recognition cameras are creating huge databases of people's movements across America—capturing where and when cars are traveling. For years there have been concerns that the cameras could be weaponized by law enforcement officials or private investigators and turned against those seeking abortions or providing abortion related care. Officials from Johnson County Sheriff's Office in Texas—where nearly all abortions are illegal—searched 83,000 Flock license plate reader cameras at the start of this month while looking for a woman they claim had a self-administered abortion, 404 Media reported this week. Sheriff Adam King said that the officials weren't trying to 'block her from leaving the state' and were searching for the woman as her family were concerned about her safety. However, experts say that conducting a search across the entire United States shows the sprawling dragnet of license plate reader cameras and highlights how those seeking abortions can be tracked. 'The idea that the police are actively tracking the location of women they believe have had self administered abortions under the guise of 'safety' does not make me feel any better about this kind of surveillance,' Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told 404 Media. Investment Scam Company Linked to $200 Million in Losses Sanctioned by US Government Philippines-based company Funnull Technology Inc and its boss Liu Lizhi have been sanctioned by the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for their links to investment and romance scams, which are often referred to as 'pig butchering' scams. 'Funnull has directly facilitated several of these schemes, resulting in over $200 million in U.S. victim-reported losses,' OFAC said in a statement announcing the sanctions. The company purchases IP addresses from major cloud service providers and then sells them to cybercriminals who could use them to host scam websites—OFAC says Fullnull is 'linked to the majority' of investment scam websites reported to the FBI. In January independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs detailed how Fullnull was abusing Amazon and Microsoft's cloud services.
WIRED
3 days ago
- Politics
- 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.'
Business Mayor
23-05-2025
- Business Mayor
Russian-led cybercrime network dismantled in global operation
European and North American cybercrime investigators say they have dismantled the heart of a malware operation directed by Russian criminals after a global operation involving British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and US police. International arrest warrants have been issued for 20 suspects, most of them living in Russia, by European investigators while indictments were unsealed in the US against 16 individuals. Those charged include the alleged leaders of the Qakbot and Danabot malware operations, including Rustam Rafailevich Gallyamov, 48, who lives in Moscow and Aleksandr Stepanov, 39, AKA JimmBee and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin, 34, AKA Onix, both of Novosibirsk, Russia, the US Department of Justice said. Cyber-attacks aimed at destabilising governments or simple theft and blackmail are becoming increasingly pernicious. The high-street retailer Marks & Spencer is one of the most high-profile and recent victims in the UK this month. The Europeans led by the German crime agency, Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) released public appeals in its attempts to track down 18 suspects believed to be involved in the Qakbot malware family along with a third malware known as Trickbot. BKA and its international counterparts said the majority of the suspects were Russian citizens. The Russian national Vitalii Nikolayevich Kovalev, 36, already wanted in the US, is one of BKA's most wanted. He is allegedly behind Conti, considered to be the most professional and best-organised ransomware blackmail group in the world with Kovalev described as one of the 'most successful blackmailers in the history of cybercrime' by German investigators. Using the pseudonyms Stern and Ben, BKA allege he is claimed to have attacked hundreds of companies worldwide and extracted large ransom payments from them. Read More Judge given formal advice over rude interruptions Kovolev, 36, from Volgorod, is believed to be living in Moscow, where several firms are registered in his name. He was identified by US investigators in 2023 as having been a member of Trickbot. Investigators now also believe he was at the helm of Conti and other blackmail groups, such as Royal and Blacksuit (founded in 2022). His own cryptowallet is said to be worth about €1bn. BKA said, along with international partners, of the 37 perpetrators they identified they had enough evidence to issue 20 arrest warrants. The US attorney's office in California at the same time unsealed the details of charges against 16 defendants who allegedly 'developed and deployed the DanaBot malware'. The criminal infiltrations into victims' computers were 'controlled and deployed' by a Russia-based cybercrime organisation that has infected more than 300,000 computers around the world particularly in the US, Australia, Poland, India and Italy. It was advertised on Russian-language criminal forums and also had an 'espionage variant used to target military, diplomatic, government and non-governmental organisations' the indictment states. 'For this variant, separate servers were established, such that data stolen from these victims was ultimately stored in the Russian federation.' Also on the Europe most-wanted list as a result of the German operation is a 36-year-old Russian-speaking Ukrainian, Roman Mikhailovich Prokop, a suspected member of Qakbot, according to BKA. Operation Endgame was instigated by the German authorities in 2022. The BKA president, Holger Münch, said Germany was a particular focus of cybercriminals. BKA in particular is investigating the suspected perpetrators' involvement in gang-related activities and commercial extortion as well as membership of an overseas-based criminal organisation. Read More Society seeks conveyancers' views for climate risk practice note Between 2010 and 2022 the Conti group focused specifically on US hospitals, increasing its attacks during the Covid pandemic. US authorities had offered a $10m reward to anyone who would lead them to its figureheads. Most suspects are operating in Russia, some also in Dubai. Their extradition to Europe or the US was unlikely, Münch said, but their identification was significant and damaging to them. 'With Operation Endgame 2.0, we have once again demonstrated that our strategies work – even in the supposedly anonymous darknet.'
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Russian-led cybercrime network dismantled in global operation
European and North American cybercrime investigators say they have dismantled the heart of a malware operation directed by Russian criminals after a global operation involving British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and US police. International arrest warrants have been issued for 20 suspects, most of them living in Russia, by European investigators while indictments were unsealed in the US against 16 individuals. Those charged include the alleged leaders of the Qakbot and Danabot malware operations, including Rustam Rafailevich Gallyamov, 48, who lives in Moscow and Aleksandr Stepanov, 39, AKA JimmBee and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin, 34, AKA Onix, both of Novosibirsk, Russia, the US Department of Justice said. Cyber-attacks aimed at destabilising governments or simple theft and blackmail are becoming increasingly pernicious. The high-street retailer Marks & Spencer is one of the most high-profile and recent victims in the UK this month. The Europeans led by the German crime agency, Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) released public appeals in its attempts to track down 18 suspects believed to be involved in the Qakbot malware family along with a third malware known as Trickbot. BKA and its international counterparts said the majority of the suspects were Russian citizens. The Russian national Vitalii Nikolayevich Kovalev, 36, already wanted in the US, is one of BKA's most wanted. He is allegedly behind Conti, considered to be the most professional and best-organised ransomware blackmail group in the world with Kovalev described as one of the 'most successful blackmailers in the history of cybercrime' by German investigators. Using the pseudonyms Stern and Ben, BKA allege he is claimed to have attacked hundreds of companies worldwide and extracted large ransom payments from them. Kovolev, 36, from Volgorod, is believed to be living in Moscow, where several firms are registered in his name. He was identified by US investigators in 2023 as having been a member of Trickbot. Investigators now also believe he was at the helm of Conti and other blackmail groups, such as Royal and Blacksuit (founded in 2022). His own cryptowallet is said to be worth about €1bn. BKA said, along with international partners, of the 37 perpetrators they identified they had enough evidence to issue 20 arrest warrants. The US attorney's office in California at the same time unsealed the details of charges against 16 defendants who allegedly 'developed and deployed the DanaBot malware'. The criminal infiltrations into victims' computers were 'controlled and deployed' by a Russia-based cybercrime organisation that has infected more than 300,000 computers around the world particularly in the US, Australia, Poland, India and Italy. It was advertised on Russian-language criminal forums and also had an 'espionage variant used to target military, diplomatic, government and non-governmental organisations' the indictment states. 'For this variant, separate servers were established, such that data stolen from these victims was ultimately stored in the Russian federation.' Also on the Europe most-wanted list as a result of the German operation is a 36-year-old Russian-speaking Ukrainian, Roman Mikhailovich Prokop, a suspected member of Qakbot, according to BKA. Operation Endgame was instigated by the German authorities in 2022. The BKA president, Holger Münch, said Germany was a particular focus of cybercriminals. BKA in particular is investigating the suspected perpetrators' involvement in gang-related activities and commercial extortion as well as membership of an overseas-based criminal organisation. Between 2010 and 2022 the Conti group focused specifically on US hospitals, increasing its attacks during the Covid pandemic. US authorities had offered a $10m reward to anyone who would lead them to its figureheads. Most suspects are operating in Russia, some also in Dubai. Their extradition to Europe or the US was unlikely, Münch said, but their identification was significant and damaging to them. 'With Operation Endgame 2.0, we have once again demonstrated that our strategies work – even in the supposedly anonymous darknet.'
