BlackCat Ransomware group hacks explosives company / Dutch hacker steals data of almost all Austrian citizens / Hacking campaign in West Africa scams victims by impersonating U.S. investors

Plus: Share ID raises $2.1M Seed to detect the authenticity of government-issued documents

Inside.com Part of   Network January 27, 2023

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The BlackCat Ransomware group claims to have stolen 2TB of sensitive information from an Indian explosives company named Solar Industries India. The threat actor claims the company has conducted industrial spying in other countries. More: The Russia-based hacker group has stolen information such as: Personal information belonging to employees and customers, Weapon engineering documentation, Information about the company's partnership deals, Government documents, Records from all cameras, Backups and databases, Details of warhead composition, Security audits and reports on security laws and vulnerabilities found in the company's digital infrastructure, etc. BlackCat published images of the stolen documents and pictures taken from the company's security cameras as proof that it could hack the company. The group has stated that it is putting this data up for sale on the dark web for the next 24 hours. Zoom Out: The FBI first tracked the BlackCat Ransomware Group in late 2021. In a short period, the threat actor has managed to breach dozens of organizations.  BlackCat's ransomware is written in Rust, making it adaptable and more deceptive. It operates as a Ransomware-as-a-Service, allowing its operators to take as much as 70% of the stolen amount.

An arrested Dutch hacker claims to have stolen the data of almost all Austrian citizens in a 2022 breach. Law authorities believe he held information about tens of millions of people worldwide. More: Law authorities in the Netherlands and the U.K. believe that the 25-year-old hacker stole information about millions of people in the Netherlands, Thailand, Colombia, China, and the United Kingdom. He is being trialed on four offenses: possession or making non-public data available, possession of phishing software and hacker tools, computer trespass, and regular money laundering. The hacker was tracked by the Austrian Federal Crime Investigation Service, which contacted Dutch law authorities to inform them of the illegal activities the Dutch citizen was conducting. After his arrest and the seizure of proof, law authorities claimed that the hacker was using phishing tools and other software that enabled him to breach millions of victims to sell that information on cybercrime internet forums. Law authorities found proof that ties the hacker to money laundering activity, specifically laundering $489,000 worth of cryptocurrency.

A message from LACEWORK Discover cloud insights and harden your security posture In the latest installment of the Cloud Threat Report series, Lacework Labs covers the significant increase in efficiencies used by cybercriminals. Get insights into these trends that cover how: Attackers are automating key discovery and exploits, taking advantage of momentary mistakes Simple mistakes turn into misconfigurations that attackers use to compromise your cloud identity infrastructure Vulnerabilities continue to stick around for months (sometimes even years) and attackers quickly exploit any new vulnerabilities Cryptojacking continues to be a staple in cybercriminal tool belts Discover detailed intelligence about ongoing infrastructure compromise activities and best practices for hardening your cloud security posture. Read the Lacework Labs Cloud Threat Report, Vol. 4 today. get the report

A new hacking campaign is scamming internet users in West Africa by convincing them that they're being contacted by American investors and financial advisors. Researchers have been unable to track the hacker group behind the campaign. More: Hackers target their victims by first selecting financial advisor targets from the United States government's publicly available advisor certification records. Then they find biographical data on employer websites, professional histories on LinkedIn, and social media accounts. Some of the websites where hackers have stolen this information are FINRA's BrokerCheck and the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure.  After creating fake profiles, they target victims on social media with video ads, emails, and other forms of communication to convince them to invest in schemes that promise to return large profits to them in a short period of time. Some campaigns have led their targets to impersonation websites that have live chat, allowing them to interact with what they believe is an investor. Researchers have found that many of these websites are being hosted by a company named SpeedHost247. While this company claims to be based in Canada, researchers have tied it with cellphone numbers used in Florida and Nigeria.

Share ID has raised a $2.1M Seed round to detect the authenticity of government-issued documents that are uploaded online. More: Share ID uses artificial intelligence to detect if there are any irregularities with government-issued documents that are uploaded online. The company claims its product is 99% accurate in detecting authenticity levels in these documents. Newfund led the Seed round with participation from 212 Founders. The company is based in Paris, France. Founded in 2020, this is the company's first significant funding round. In addition to its headquarters in Paris, the company has an office in San Francisco.

Hadrian has raised a growth round to help companies identify weaknesses in their system and prioritize them based on their risk rating. The company is based in Amsterdam. More: Hadrian provides automated security insights through its AI-driven SaaS platform. This platform tests the digital infrastructure of its users until it finds weaknesses that need to be patched. ABN AMRO Ventures led the funding round. The investment firm has backed companies such as: BehavioSec (exit in 2022), OpenInvest (exit in 2021), Penta (exit in 2022), Tink (exit in 2021), Trifacta (exit in 2022), DFNS, Doconomy, Oper, Quantexa, Solaris, and Upvest. Hadrian also has an office in London.

Quick Hits: We know that talent development is a major challenge. So we made a planner to lend a helping hand!* The Coast Guard has released a new cybersecurity guide named The Maritime Cybersecurity Assessment & Annex Guide. The Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, a public-private cybersecurity group headed by CISA, will focus on the risks that the energy and water industry face during 2023. Security researchers have tracked a PlugX malware variant that can automatically infect any attached USB device. Microsoft has stated that a five-hour-long Microsoft 365 worldwide outage that happened this week was caused by a router IP address change. Looking for the right learning and development tools in 2023? Don't decide until you've read this comprehensive checklist.* *This is sponsored content.

Upcoming events at Inside: January 29 - Inside Interview with Lacework - 4 Common Attack Paths in Cloud Security (Register Here) January 30 - Inside Coffee Break (Register Here) January 31 - Inside Startups Coffee Break (Register Here) April 18 - Human Resources Summit'23 (Register Here)

Arbër is an Inside writer who also has experience in entrepreneurship. He has experience covering Consumer Tech, Venture Capital, NFTs, Crypto, etc. Arbër holds a Bachelor's degree in Business from XAMK University in Finland. When he is not reading(and writing) business news, he chooses to watch sports or anime...and then read news about sports or anime. Editor Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords.

Get cloud security intel and best practices with the Lacework Labs Cloud Threat Report, Vol. 4.

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Adani firms lose $50B in market cap / Chevron reports largest profit ever / Salesforce appoints new directors

Plus, consumer spending fell 0.2% in December.

Inside.com Part of   Network January 27, 2023

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Gautam Adani’s seven listed companies have lost a combined ~$50B in market value since the release of Hindenburg Research’s report on Tuesday alleging widespread fraud. Adani Enterprises was down almost 20% on Friday, its largest decline since 2017. Adani Green Energy and Adani Total Gas declined by the daily 20% limit. More: Trading volumes in Adani stocks are three times their three-month average. India’s NSE Nifty 50 Index was down 1.6%, with bank stocks leading the losses as investors worried about their exposure to the Adani Group. According to sources, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said it would review the Hindenburg Research report and add it to its ongoing investigation into Adani Group’s foreign portfolio investors. Gautam Adani’s net worth has dropped to $96.6B in the last few days from ~$113.4B. Adani Group has dismissed the report, calling it maliciously mischievous and unresearched, and said it is exploring legal action.

Chevron released its Q4 and full-year 2022 earnings on Friday, reporting a record annual profit of $35.5B. The oil giant generated $56.47B in total revenues in Q4 and $246.25B for the entire year. Q4 net income came in at $6.35B, or $3.34 a share, up from $5B reported in the same period last year. More: FY 2022 net income was $35.5B, or $18.36 a share, more than double the $15.6B reported in FY 2021 and a record for the oil company. On Wednesday, Chevron announced a $75B stock repurchase program effective April 1 and over five years. The move follows a $25B stock buyback plan enacted in 2019 that is set to expire at the end of March. The White House objected to Chevron’s plan to triple its spending on share repurchases, wanting the company to lower the price at the pump. The average price for a gallon of gasoline crossed the $5 mark for the first time in the U.S. in 2022. Chevron also increased its dividend payout from $1.42 to $1.51 per share and will distribute the payment on March 10. Chevron shares rose more than 50% in 2022.

A message from HONE Discover a new approach to balancing personalization, scalability, and cost In this report, The Josh Bersin Company unpacks how the definition of leadership has evolved, the leadership capabilities that matter most, and how cohort-based leadership development can support today’s leaders. More: More than 80% of businesses today operate as highly interconnected and empowered networks of teams, which expands the definition of leaders to include everyone in the organization. High-performing organizations are 7x more likely to develop leaders at all levels and 2x as likely to be great places to work because of their investments in leadership development. Leadership development should exist as an end-to-end continuum and make the shift from episodic to continuous and ongoing experiential journeys. Building a new breed of leaders requires a new, rigorous approach to hone capabilities inside the organization by leveraging expertise from outside the organization. Get the report

Boston Metal, a clean steel technology company spun out of MIT, announced it has raised $120M in new funding led by global steel giant ArcelorMittal and with involvement from Microsoft. Boston Metal developed a new way of making clean steel. More: In 2013, MIT professors Donald Sadoway and Antoine Allanore published a paper with lab results showing that it is possible to produce steel without releasing carbon dioxide emissions. Later that year, they launched the Boston Electrometallurgical Corp. to scale and commercialize the technology. Other investors in Boston Metal include Bill Gates through his climate venture firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Prelude Ventures, Piva Capital, and SiteGround Capital. In 2018, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and the National Science Foundation led Boston Metal’s $20M Series A funding round. According to the World Steel Association, the steel industry generates about $1.6T in revenue annually and accounts for 7% to 9% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Salesforce has appointed three new directors to its board as activist investor Elliott Management prepares to nominate new directors. According to sources, the investment firm has made a multibillion-dollar investment in Salesforce.   More: Salesforce has appointed Arnold Donald, former CEO of Carnival Corporation; Sachin Mehra, CFO of Mastercard; and Mason Morfit, CEO of ValueAct Capital. Salesforce chair and CEO Marc Benioff said the new directors bring valuable experience to further enhance and balance the diverse skills on the company’s board and advance its value-creation initiatives. Current Salesforce board members Sanford Robertson, co-founder of buyout group Francisco Partners, and Hasbro chair emeritus Alan Hassenfeld will step down. Benioff has been under pressure to improve the company’s performance after several activist investors disclosed they had built positions in the company. In October, Starboard Value, run by Jeff Smith, disclosed it had taken a stake in Salesforce.

Intel released its Q4 and full-year 2022 earnings on Thursday, missing expectations across the board. The chipmaker posted Q4 revenue of $14B, down 32% YoY and a net loss of $664M, 16 cents a share, compared to a net income of $4.62B reported during the same period a year ago. Full-year revenue was $63.1B, down 20% YoY. More: This was Intel’s fourth straight quarter of declining sales. The company’s Client Computing unit, which includes its PC chips, generated $6.63B in revenue, down 36% YoY. CEO Pat Gelsinger said the company faces persistent economic headwinds. The company expects Q1 FY 2023 revenue between $10.5B and $11.5B and an adjusted net loss of 15 cents per share. The company announced a $0.365 per share dividend payable on March 1. Intel shares fell more than 8% in extended trading on Thursday; it closed at $28.16 on Friday, down ~6.4% for the day.

BuzzFeed said it plans to use OpenAI to enhance its quizzes and personalize some content for its audience. In a memo sent to employees, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said AI would play a significant role in the company’s editorial and business operations this year. The company is the latest digital publisher to embrace AI. More: BuzzFeed said it plans to incorporate AI to create personalized quiz results. Peretti said in 15 years, AI and data would help create, personalize, and animate content. On Wednesday, WSJ reported that Facebook parent Meta is paying BuzzFeed about $10M to help generate creator content for its various social platforms. Last year Meta announced it would stop paying news publishers to feature their content in its News tab. The company said it would reallocate resources to grow its creator business. BuzzFeed went public in late 2021 through a SPAC merger. The company is down more than 60% since its debut.

Quick Hits We know that talent development is a major challenge. So we made a planner to lend a helping hand!* Israeli jets bombed Gaza overnight in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian coastal territory amid a sharp escalation in tensions after a deadly Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank. U.S. consumer spending fell 0.2% in December from November, its second consecutive monthly decline. Consumer spending fell 0.3% in November. Recently unsealed FTX bankruptcy documents showed that the defunct crypto exchange has thousands of creditors, including Netflix, Apple, Meta, American Airlines, United Airlines, JPMorgan, the New York Times, and the WSJ. Airbus plans to hire more than 13,000 new employees this year. The airplane maker hired roughly the same amount in 2022 to help boost its commercial aircraft production.  Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon received a 29% pay cut to $25M for 2022. Solomon's package includes a $2M base salary and variable compensation of $23M. Looking for the right learning and development tools in 2023? Don't decide until you've read this comprehensive checklist.* *This is a sponsored post.

Upcoming Events January 29 - Inside Interview with Lacework - 4 Common Attack Paths in Cloud Security (Register Here) January 30 - Inside Coffee Break (Register Here) January 31 - Inside Startups Coffee Break (Register Here) April 18 - Human Resources Summit'23 (Register Here)

Vanessa Omeokachie is a writer for Inside.com; she writes the daily Inside Business newsletter. Her interests include finance, technology, and entrepreneurship. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, attending concerts and music festivals, traveling, and exploring.  Connect with her on Twitter @VanessaOmeo or on LinkedIn. Editor Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords.

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