A quick Saturday digest of cybersecurity news articles from other sources.
Parody site ClownStrike refused to bow to CrowdStrike’s bogus DMCA takedown
Parody site ClownStrike defended the “obvious” fair use.
Doesn’t CrowdStrike have more important things to do right now than try to take down a parody site?
That’s what IT consultant David Senk wondered when CrowdStrike sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice targeting his parody site ClownStrike.
Senk created ClownStrike in the aftermath of the largest IT outage the world has ever seen—which CrowdStrike blamed on a buggy security update that shut down systems and incited prolonged chaos in airports, hospitals, and businesses worldwide.
Although Senk wasn’t personally impacted by the outage, he told Ars he is “a proponent of decentralization.” He seized the opportunity to mock “CrowdStrike’s ability to cause literal billions of dollars of damage” because he viewed this as “collateral from the incredible amount of ‘centralization’ in the tech industry.”
Prisoner Swap Includes Russian Hackers and KGB Assassin
Included among the U.S. prisoners being sent back to Russia in the swap are two prominent convicted hackers, both of whom were serving lengthy sentences, and a KGB assassin.
Because foreign hackers often operate from countries like Russia that lack extradition treaties with the U.S., they rarely face American courts, making their convictions significant wins for the Justice Department.
Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian national sentenced last year to nearly a decade in prison by a federal jury in Boston for hacking into corporate earnings databases to steal and trade on nonpublic information. U.S. officials noted Klyushin’s “extensive ties” to the Russian president’s office.
Roman Seleznev, the son of a Russian parliament member, was described by prosecutors as “one of the most prolific credit-card thieves in history.” In 2016, he was convicted by a federal jury in Seattle for hacking into hundreds of businesses and selling stolen data online, leading to more than $169 million in fraud losses.
Vadim Krasikov, (picture) the Russian at the center of Thursday’s high-profile prisoner swap, has been a top priority for the Kremlin in exchange negotiations for some time. Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin hinted at a desire for such a trade to secure the release of a “patriot” detained in Germany. Krasikov was serving a prison sentence for murder.
Blog post with links and picture:
https://blog.knowbe4.com/prisoner-swap-includes-russian-hackers-and-kgb-assassin
AUG
About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com