Security Leftovers
-
Security updates for Tuesday [LWN.net]
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (java-11-openjdk-portable and rubygem-redcarpet), Red Hat (autotrace, bind, buildah, butane, conmon, containernetworking-plugins, curl, device-mapper-multipath, dhcp, edk2, emacs, fence-agents, freeradius, freerdp, frr, fwupd, gdk-pixbuf2, git, git-lfs, golang-github-cpuguy83-md2man, grafana, grafana-pcp, gstreamer1-plugins-good, Image Builder, jackson, kernel, kernel-rt, krb5, libarchive, libguestfs-winsupport, libreswan, libtiff, libtpms, lua, mysql, net-snmp, openssh, openssl, pcs, php:8.1, pki-core, podman, poppler, postgresql-jdbc, python-mako, qemu-kvm, samba, skopeo, sysstat, tigervnc, toolbox, unbound, webkit2gtk3, wireshark, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (cfengine, cfengine-masterfiles, go1.19, go1.20, libfastjson, python-cryptography, and python-ujson), and Ubuntu (mysql-5.7).
-
Security updates for Wednesday [LWN.net]
Security updates have been issued by Debian (emacs), Fedora (chromium, community-mysql, and LibRaw), Red Hat (nodejs nodejs-nodemon, nodejs:18, and webkit2gtk3), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, conmon, distribution, docker-distribution, google-cloud-sap-agent, ignition, kernel, ntp, prometheus-ha_cluster_exporter, protobuf-c, python-cryptography, runc, and shim), and Ubuntu (ceph, freetype, and node-css-what).
-
U.K. Citizen Extradited and Pleads Guilty to Cyber Crime Offenses
A U.K. citizen pleaded guilty today in New York to his role in cyberstalking and multiple schemes that involve computer hacking, including the July 2020 hack of Twitter.
Joseph James O’Connor, aka PlugwalkJoe, 23, was extradited from Spain on April 26.
“O’Connor’s criminal activities were flagrant and malicious, and his conduct impacted multiple people’s lives. He harassed, threatened, and extorted his victims, causing substantial emotional harm,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Like many criminal actors, O’Connor tried to stay anonymous by using a computer to hide behind stealth accounts and aliases from outside the United States. But this plea shows that our investigators and prosecutors will identify, locate, and bring to justice such criminals to ensure they face the consequences for their crimes.”
“O’Connor has left an impressive trail of destruction in the wake of his wave of criminality,” said U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey for the Northern District of California. “This case serves as a warning that the reach of the law is long, and criminals anywhere who use computers to commit crimes may end up facing the consequences of their actions in places they did not anticipate.”
-
Justice Department Announces Court-Authorized Disruption of Snake Malware Network Controlled by Russia’s Federal Security Service
The Justice Department today announced the completion of a court-authorized operation, code-named MEDUSA, to disrupt a global peer-to-peer network of computers compromised by sophisticated malware, called “Snake”, that the U.S. Government attributes to a unit within Center 16 of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). For nearly 20 years, this unit, referred to in court documents as “Turla,” has used versions of the Snake malware to steal sensitive documents from hundreds of computer systems in at least 50 countries, which have belonged to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member governments, journalists, and other targets of interest to the Russian Federation. After stealing these documents, Turla exfiltrated them through a covert network of unwitting Snake-compromised computers in the United States and around the world.