Pandora's Box

 CYBER ATTACKS:

By Barbara Thomas

I think this could come under: Pandora’s Box.

The God Prometheus stole fire from heaven to give to the human race, which originally consisted of men,

To punish him the other Gods created the 1^st woman:

The beautiful PANDORA.

As a gift Zeus gave her a box, which she was told never to open.

However, as soon as he was out of sight, she took the lid off and out swarmed all the troubles of the world, never to be recaptured.

Only “Hope” was left in the box, stuck under the lid.

So: anything that looks ordinary but may produce UNPREDICTABLE HARMFUL” results can thus be called a "PANDORA’S BOX"!

Whilst I was scrolling through the news on Sunday 18^th on my iPad I came across this snippet which might interest readers.

Joe Tidy interacted with hackers who claimed to have targeted Marks and Spencer’s and the Cooperatives (also known as the Co-op).

Joe Tidy has been reporting Cyber Security for more than a decade and knew some who liked to boast about their hacks,

Although he noted that 99% of conversations stay firmly locked in his chat logs, but a recent ping was impossible to ignore.

This is how the conversation went   the hacker:

Is this Joe Tidy from the BBC reporting about the latest news concerning the Co-op, he the tracker had a message in the Telegram newspaper.

“We have some news for you,” the hacker teased.

They gave no name or profile picture, but it gave me an inside track on what they, the hackers, claimed to have done to M&S and the Co-op cyber attacks that caused mass disruption.

They message Joe back and forth for the next 5 hours.

It became clear to him that these apparent hackers were fluent

English speakers although they kept claiming just to be the messengers it was obvious they were closely linked to – if not intimately involved in both the M&S/Co-op’s hacks.

They even shared evidence proving that they had stolen a huge amount of customer's and employee's information.

It seems that the hackers were clearly frustrated that the Co-op wasn’t giving in to the hackers demands, but wouldn’t say how much money in BITCOM that they were demanding from the retailer in exchange for the promise that the hackers would not sell or give away the DATA stolen from the Co-op.

The press were contacted for comment and within minutes the firm had initially downplayed the Hack.

Admitted to employees, and customers and the stock market about the significant DATA breach.

Joe said much later, the hacker sent him a long and angry-offensive letter regarding Co-ops response to their hack and subsequent extortion, revealed that the retailer narrowly dodged a more severe hack by intervening in the chaotic minutes after its computer systems were infiltrated.

The letter and conversation with the hackers confirmed what experts in the Cyber Security world had been saying ever since the wave of attacks on M&S and Co-op had begun that the hackers were from a Cyber crime service called DRAGON FORCE

Who are these DRAGON FORCE people you may ask.

Based on the conversations with the original hackers and wider knowledge, there are some clues. DRAGON FORCE offer cyber criminal affiliates, various services on their DARKNET site, in exchange for a 20% cut of any ransom collected

Anyone can sign and use their malicious software to scramble a victim’s data or is their DARKNET website for their public extortion.

This has become the norm in organised cyber crime, it's known as RANSOMEWARE-AS-A-SERVICE.

The most infamous of recent times is a service cad LOCKBIT,

But this is all but defunct now partly because it was cracked by the police last year.

DRAGONFORCE latest...

Copyright Barbara Thomas