U.S. President Biden has signed a new executive order imposing new sanctions on Russia for actions by "its government and intelligence services against the U.S. sovereignty and interests." The administration formally named Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), also known as APT 29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes, as the perpetrator of the broad-scope cyber espionage campaign that exploited the SolarWinds Orion platform and other information technology infrastructures.
FBI, ODNI, CISA & NSA issued a joint statement saying their investigation indicates an APT actor "likely Russian in origin, is responsible for most or all of the recently discovered, ongoing cyber compromises of both government and non-governmental networks."
The National Security Agency (NSA) released a Cybersecurity Advisory on Russian state-sponsored actors exploiting CVE-2020-4006, a command-injection vulnerability in VMware Workspace One Access, Access Connector, Identity Manager, and Identity Manager Connector. The actors were found exploiting this vulnerability to access protected data on affected systems and abuse federated authentication.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged six computer hackers, all of whom were residents and nationals of the Russian Federation (Russia) and officers in Unit 74455 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. The group is believed to be part of one of Russia's most elite and secretive hacking groups, known as Sandworm.
The Russian group that meddled in the 2016 election (Internet Research Agency) is now using sham accounts and a fake left-wing news site to sow disinformation, according to The New York Times.
Visitors to the upcoming Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, will be able to access the Internet faster and in more places than any previous Olympics, all for free to guests. However Russia’s FSB security service is reportedly installing a sweeping and invasive surveillance service to ensure that they will be able to intercept, read and even filter every digital communication passing through the city’s telephone and Internet networks during the game, leading to many security experts suggesting that visitors leave their devices at home.
