Tag: disrupted
Feds Allege China Disrupted and Spied on Dissidents’ Zoom Calls
On Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York alleged that the Chinese government used all sorts of techniques to harass and spy on Chinese dissidents living in the United States. This included a massive bot farm on Twitter, harassing dissidents on Zoom calls, and even physically setting…
Blocked Traffic, Disrupted Firefighters: Why San Francisco Wants to Slow Robotaxi Rollout
The city’s transportation officials sent letters this week to California regulators asking them to halt or scale back the expansion plans of two companies, Cruise and Waymo, which are competing head-to-head to be the first to offer 24-hour robotaxi service in the country’s best-known tech hub.
The outcome will determine how quickly San Francisco and possibly other cities forge ahead with driverless technology that could remake the world’s cities and potentially save some of the 40,000 people killed each year in American traffic crashes…. Neither vehicles from Cruise or Waymo have killed anyone on the streets of San Francisco, but the companies need to overcome their sometimes comical errors, including one episode last year in which a Cruise car with nobody in it slowly tried to flee from a police officer.
In one recent instance documented on social media and noted by city officials, five disabled Cruise vehicles in San Francisco’s Mission District blocked a street so completely that a city bus with 45 riders couldn’t get through and was delayed for at least 13 minutes. Cruise’s autonomous cars have also interfered with active firefighting, and firefighters once shattered a car’s window to prevent it from driving over their firehoses, the city said….
“A series of limited deployments with incremental expansions — rather than unlimited authorizations — offer the best path toward public confidence in driving automation and industry success in San Francisco and beyond,” three city officials wrote Thursday in a letter to the utilities commission, the state agency that decides if a company gets a robotaxi license. A second letter expressed concerns about Waymo….
Cruise has argued that its service is safer than the status quo.
A Cruise spokesperson also provided letters of support “written by local San Francisco merchants associations, disability advocates and community groups.” And U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Quartz last year that “it would be hard to do worse than human drivers when it comes to what we could get to theoretically with the right kind of safe autonomous driving.”
But in 2021 CBS reported that dozens and dozens of Waymo’s robo-taxis kept mistakenly driving down the same dead-end street. And in 2018 a self-driving Uber test vehicle struck and killed a woman in Arizona.
More stories from the Verge:
In July, a group of driverless Cruise vehicles blocked traffic for hours after the cars inexplicably stopped working, and a similar incident occurred in September. Meanwhile, a driverless Waymo vehicle created a traffic jam in San Francisco after it stopped in the middle of an intersection earlier this month. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Cruise last December over concerns about the vehicles blocking traffic and causing rear-end collisions with hard braking… [San Francisco] city officials also express concern over the way driverless vehicles deal with emergency vehicles. Last April, officials say an autonomous Cruise vehicle stopped in a travel lane and “created an obstruction for a San Francisco Fire Department vehicle on its way to a 3 alarm fire….”
Other incidents involve Cruise calling 911 about “unresponsive” passengers on three separate occasions, only for emergency services to arrive and find that the rider just fell asleep…. Officials say companies should be required to collect more data about the performance of the vehicles, including how often and how long their driverless vehicles block traffic.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DOJ says it disrupted a major global ransomware group
The US Department of Justice has spent months infiltrating and disrupting the Hive ransomware group, the agency announced on Thursday. The DOJ says Hive has targeted over 1,500 victims in more than 80 countries, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments.
Working with German and Netherlands law enforcement, the FBI seized Hive’s servers and websites, allegedly slowing the group’s ability to attack and extort new victims. It first infiltrated Hive’s network in July 2022, providing over 300 decryption keys to Hive’s current victims and more than 1,000 keys to previous victims — preventing over $130 million in ransom payments. The agency hasn’t announced any arrests. However, it’s still investigating the group, according toNBC News.
Hive used a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, where administrators (essentially the ringleaders) create ransomware strains with easy-to-use interfaces. The administrators then recruit affiliates who use the ransomware software to carry out the theft — and likely much of the risk.
For example, Hive would steal a victim’s data and encrypt their system. The affiliate would then demand a ransom in exchange for the decryption key and a promise not to publish the data. (Of course, it would frequently target the most sensitive data to apply maximum pressure.) If the victims pay, affiliates and administrators would split the ransom 80 / 20. Those unwilling to pay would find their data leaked on the web.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) says Hive gained access through single-factor logins via Remote Desktop, VPNs, exploiting FortiToken (software-based access key) vulnerabilities and phishing emails with malicious attachments.
“Last night, the Justice Department dismantled an international ransomware network responsible for extorting and attempting to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland today. “We will continue to work both to prevent these attacks and to provide support to victims who have been targeted. And together with our international partners, we will continue to disrupt the criminal networks that deploy these attacks.” The FBI recommends victims contact their local FBI field office.
Ice, heavy rain and potential flooding for parts of UK as warning issued for disrupted power supplies
: World Cup semi final coverage disrupted by cyber attack on streaming service FuboTV
Rail services disrupted by latest ScotRail 24-hour strike
Pro-Russian ‘Hacktivists’ Temporarily Disrupted Some US State Government Web Sites
The Kentucky Board of Elections’ website, which posts information on how to register to vote, was also temporarily offline on Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear what caused that outage. The board of elections’ website is also managed by the Kentucky government, though the hackers did not specifically list the board as a target…. Websites like that of the Kentucky Board of Elections are not directly involved in the casting or counting of votes, but they can provide useful information for voters….
The hacking group claiming responsibility for Wednesday’s website outage is known as Killnet and stepped up their activity after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine to target organizations in NATO countries. They are a loose band of so-called “hacktivists” — politically motivated hackers who support the Kremlin but whose ties to that government are unknown. The group also claimed responsibility for briefly downing a US Congress website in July, and for cyberattacks on organizations in Lithuania after the Baltic country blocked the shipment of some goods to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in June….
Officials at the FBI and CISA reiterated this week that any efforts by hackers to breach election infrastructure are “unlikely to result in largescale disruptions or prevent voting.”
Government Technology supplies some context:
Amsterdam-based threat intelligence technology and services provider EclecticIQ’s Threat Research team said in a blog post that Killnet appears to only have the capacity to launch DDoS attacks with short-term impact, and falls short of dealing lasting damage to victims’ network infrastructure. “Analysts believe that Killnet supporters are novice users with zero or limited experience with DDoS attacks, based on an analysis of Telegram messaging data and open-source reporting,” EclecticIQ wrote.
CNN described Killnet’s typical attacks as “crude hacks that temporarily knock websites offline but don’t do further damage to infrastructure.
“Killnet thrives off of public attention and bravado, and cybersecurity experts have to strike a balance between being mindful of Killnet’s online antics and not hyping a low-level threat.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Warzone meta could be disrupted by “bit P2W” CoD: Modern Warfare SMG
The Warzone meta could face some disruption owing to a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare SMG which, combined with a blueprint, possibly makes the Raven Software and Activision battle royale FPS “a bit P2W”.
RELATED LINKS: Warzone loadouts, Best AR in Warzone , The best guns in Warzone
Call of Duty: Warzone meta potentially disrupted by new STG loadout
The Call of Duty: Warzone meta has recently been dominated by weapons like the KG-M40 and H4 Blixen, but as we await the multiplayer beta for Modern Warfare 2, a new STG-44 loadout could invade the FPS battle royale’s S-tier.
RELATED LINKS: Warzone loadouts, Best AR in Warzone , The best guns in Warzone