Be careful if you want to play Call of Duty: WW2 through Game Pass on PC – some users have been reporting falling victim to RCE (Remote Command Execution) hacks. The earliest reports of this surfaced just a few hours ago, with players taking to social media to share some concerning stories, while others stressed this has been a problem ‘for years’ in COD WW2.
therecord.media - Cybercriminals are extorting the German humanitarian aid group Welthungerhilfe (WHH) for 20 bitcoin. The charity said it will not pay.
Deutsche Welthungerhilfe (WHH), the German charity that aims to develop sustainable food supplies in some of the world’s most impoverished countries, has been attacked by a ransomware gang.
The charity, whose name literally translates as World Hunger Help, reached 16.4 million people in 2023. It is currently providing emergency aid to people in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and other countries and regions where there is an urgent need for food, water, medicine and basic necessities.
A spokesperson confirmed to Recorded Future News that WHH had been targeted by a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group which recently listed the charity on its darknet leak site.
The cybercriminals are attempting to sell data stolen from the charity for 20 bitcoin, equivalent to around $2.1 million, although it is not clear whether WHH’s computer networks have also been encrypted. The charity said it would not be making an extortion payment to the criminals behind the attack.
“The affected systems were shut down immediately and external IT experts who specialise in such cases were called in. We have also further strengthened the security of our systems with additional technical protective measures,” said a WHH spokesperson.
“We have informed the relevant data protection authority, consulted our data protection officer and involved the police authorities. We continue to liaise closely with the authorities,” they added.
The charity stressed it was “continuing our work in our project countries unchanged. We continue to stand by the side of the people who need our support. In view of the many humanitarian crises worldwide, our work is more important than ever.”
The RaaS group that is extorting WHH was previously responsible for attacks on multiple hospitals — including The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and hospitals run by Prospect Medical Holdings — and last year also attempted to extort the disability nonprofit Easterseals.
The spyware operation's exposed customer email addresses and passwords were shared with data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.
A security vulnerability in a stealthy Android spyware operation called Catwatchful has exposed thousands of its customers, including its administrator.
The bug, which was discovered by security researcher Eric Daigle, spilled the spyware app’s full database of email addresses and plaintext passwords that Catwatchful customers use to access the data stolen from the phones of their victims.
Catwatchful is spyware masquerading as a child monitoring app that claims to be “invisible and cannot be detected,” all the while uploading the victim’s phone’s private contents to a dashboard viewable by the person who planted the app. The stolen data includes the victims’ photos, messages, and real-time location data. The app can also remotely tap into the live ambient audio from the phone’s microphone and access both front and rear phone cameras.
Spyware apps like Catwatchful are banned from the app stores and rely on being downloaded and planted by someone with physical access to a person’s phone. As such, these apps are commonly referred to as “stalkerware” (or spouseware) for their propensity to facilitate non-consensual surveillance of spouses and romantic partners, which is illegal.
Catwatchful is the latest example in a growing list of stalkerware operations that have been hacked, breached, or otherwise exposed the data they obtain, and is at least the fifth spyware operation this year to have experienced a data spill. The incident shows that consumer-grade spyware continues to proliferate, despite being prone to shoddy coding and security failings that expose both paying customers and unsuspecting victims to data breaches.
According to a copy of the database from early June, which TechCrunch has seen, Catwatchful had email addresses and passwords on more than 62,000 customers and the phone data from 26,000 victims’ devices.
Most of the compromised devices were located in Mexico, Colombia, India, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia (in order of the number of victims). Some of the records date back to 2018, the data shows.
The Catwatchful database also revealed the identity of the spyware operation’s administrator, Omar Soca Charcov, a developer based in Uruguay. Charcov opened our emails, but did not respond to our requests for comment sent in both English and Spanish. TechCrunch asked if he was aware of the Catwatchful data breach, and if he plans to disclose the incident to its customers.
Without any clear indication that Charcov will disclose the incident, TechCrunch provided a copy of the Catwatchful database to data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.
BRASILIA, July 2 (Reuters) - Brazil's central bank said on Wednesday that technology services provider C&M Software, which serves financial institutions lacking connectivity infrastructure, had reported a cyberattack on its systems.
The bank did not provide further details of the attack, but said in a statement that it ordered C&M to shut down financial institutions' access to the infrastructure it operates.
C&M Software commercial director Kamal Zogheib said the company was a direct victim of the cyberattack, which involved the fraudulent use of client credentials in an attempt to access its systems and services.
C&M said critical systems remain intact and fully operational, adding that all security protocol measures had been implemented. The company is cooperating with the central bank and the Sao Paulo state police in the ongoing investigation, added Zogheib.
Brazilian financial institution BMP told Reuters that it and five other institutions experienced unauthorized access to their reserve accounts during the attack, which took place on Monday.
BMP said the affected accounts are held directly at the central bank and used exclusively for interbank settlement, with no impact on client accounts or internal balances.
The Scattered Spider hacking group has caused chaos among retailers, insurers, and airlines in recent months. Researchers warn that its flexible structure poses challenges for defense.
Empty grocery store shelves and grounded planes tend to signal a crisis, whether it’s an extreme weather event, public health crisis, or geopolitical emergency. But these scenes of chaos in recent weeks in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada were caused instead by financially motivated cyberattacks—seemingly perpetrated by a collective of joyriding teens.
A notorious cybercriminal group often called Scattered Spider is known for using social engineering techniques to infiltrate target companies by tricking IT help desk workers into granting them system access. Researchers say that the group seems to gain expertise about the backend systems commonly used by businesses in a particular industry and then uses this knowledge to hit a cluster of targets before moving on to another sector. The group often deploys ransomware or conducts data extortion attacks once it has compromised its victims.
Amid increasing pressure from law enforcement last year, which culminated in charges and arrests of five suspects allegedly linked to Scattered Spider, researchers say that the group was less active in 2024 and seemed to be attempting to lay low. The group’s escalating attacks in recent weeks, though, have shown that, far from being defeated, Scattered Spider is emboldened once again.
“There are some uniquely skilled actors in Scattered Spider when it comes to social engineering, and they have identified a major gap in our security systems that they’re successfully taking advantage of,” says John Hultquist, chief analyst in Google’s threat intelligence group. “This group is carrying out serious attacks on our critical infrastructure, and I hope that we’re not missing the opportunity to address the most imminent threat.”
Though a number of incidents have not been publicly attributed, an overwhelming spree of recent attacks on UK grocery store chains, North American insurers, and international airlines has broadly been tied to Scattered Spider. In May, the UK’s National Crime Agency confirmed it was looking at Scattered Spider in connection to the attacks on British retailers. And the FBI warned in an alert on Friday that it has observed “the cybercriminal group Scattered Spider expanding its targeting to include the airline sector.” The warning came as North American airlines Westjet and Hawaii Airlines said they had been victims of cybercriminal hacks. On Wednesday, the Australian airline Qantas also said it had been hit with a cyberattack, though it was not immediately clear if this attack was part of the group’s campaign.
