Adversaries looking to ride the DeepSeek interest wave are taking advantage of developers in a rush to deploy the new technology, by using AI-generated malware against them.

Source: ifeelstock via Alamy Stock Photo

Researchers have found malicious DeepSeek-impersonating packages planted in the Python Package Index (PyPi); the code is actually loaded with infostealers. Experts warn that's probably not the only platform loaded with fake, malicious DeepSeek packages, and that developers should proceed with care.

Researchers with Positive Technologies discovered the malicious packages, labeled "deepseekai" and "deepseeek," trying to trick developers into thinking they were legit.

"The attack targeted developers, machine learning \[ML\] engineers, and ordinary AI enthusiasts who might be interested in integrating DeepSeek into their systems," the Positive Technologies researchers wrote in an analysis.

The account behind the attack, "bvk," was created in June 2023 and sat dormant until the campaign sprang to life on Jan. 29, according to the report. When executed, the researchers noted both "deepseeek" and "deepseekai" drop infostealers to steal sensitive data, including API keys, database credentials, and permissions.

The malicious PyPi packages have been deleted, but there's evidence they were downloaded 36 times using the pip package manager and the bandersnatch mirroring tool, and 186 times using the browser, the researchers reported.

"Sometimes API keys aren’t leaked, they’re just plain stolen," Tim Erlin, vice president of product at Wallarm says. "This incident is a good example of attackers taking advantage of the prevailing news cycle. Anytime you’re doing something popular, whether clicking on a link or installing a PyPi package, it’s best to approach the task with a healthy dose of skepticism."

Related:'Constitutional Classifiers' Technique Mitigates GenAI Jailbreaks

That mindset can help developers avoid making similar cybersecurity slip-ups, according to Mike McGuire, senior security solutions manager with Black Duck.

"In their eagerness to leverage DeepSeek in their tasks, many developers missed the 'red flag' that they were downloading packages from an account with a limited, poor reputation, and had their environment variables and secrets compromised as a result," McGuire says.

Ironically given how advanced DeepSeek's capabilities are touted to be, the attack itself was a fairly low-tech affair, Michael Lieberman, CTO at Kusari, notes.

"Typosquatting attacks are popular because they work," Kusari points out. "It's easy for a developer to mistype a word or use something with a similar-sounding name and suddenly their application is pulling in malicious code. Popular or trendy technologies are at particular risk since the pool of potential victims is larger."

Related:DeepSeek Jailbreak Reveals Its Entire System Prompt

**Adversaries Using AI to Write Code Faster Too**

In a novel twist, the researchers found evidence the threat actors used AI to write the malicious code.

"There are clear indications that the compromised code was written with AI assistance, providing a real-world example of AI being used for malicious intent," Wallarm's Erlin says.

Erlin adds that developers should expect similar malicious packages to be scattered among various platforms.

"Developers, with malintent or not, are heavily invested in using AI to be more efficient." he adds. "AI lets developers write more code, faster. We should expect to see the volume of malicious code expand at the same rate as code in general."

To protect their environments from these threats, Raj Mallempati, CEO of BlueFlag Security, says developers need to implement strong security practices throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). That means using software composition analysis (SCA) tools, as well as automated vulnerability scanning, limiting the use of unverified packages in developer environments, and threat intelligence monitoring.

"This recent incident underscores the need for developers to specifically protect against threats like OSS typosquatting," Mallempati explains. "Double checking package names and verifying package sources that come from DeepSeek will be key here. As well, developers should enable dependency scanning tools like Github dependabot to ensure they are not downloading malicious packages."

Related:Code-Scanning Tool's License at Heart of Security Breakup

**About the Author**

Dark Reading

Becky Bracken is a veteran multimedia journalist covering cybersecurity for Dark Reading.

AI Malware Dressed Up as DeepSeek Packages Lurk in PyPi

Cybercriminals posted nearly 6,000 breaches to data-leak sites last year — and despite significant takedowns, they continued to thrive in a record-breaking year for ransomware.

Source: VectorFusionArt via Shutterstock

A surge in ransomware groups in 2024 left companies facing increased attacks, even as law enforcement ramped up investigations against well-known groups such as LockBit, and dismantled popular cybercriminal services, such as phishing-as-a-service provider LabHost and the encrypted messaging platform Ghost.

A pair of new studies outlines the state of play. Overall, more than 75 ransomware groups were actively compromising targets in 2024, compared to only 43 the prior year, according to a recent Rapid7 analysis. As a result, more than half of organizations suffered a successful attack, and the majority of those impacted shut down some operations leading to significant revenue loss, according to a large survey of IT and cybersecurity practitioners conducted by the Ponemon Institute.

As long as extortion continues to be profitable, organizations will have to contend with significant threats, says Trevor Dearing, director of critical infrastructure solutions at Illumio, a zero-trust security firm and sponsor of the Ponemon report.

"When some of those gangs were taken down, there was a dip in activity, but they get very quickly replaced, and that's the challenge," he says. "It's a battle that is is worth fighting and it does slow them down, but this is only part of the response we have to have."

Related:1-Click Phishing Campaign Targets High-Profile X Accounts

The pace of compromises appears to be only accelerating, with about 15% more ransomware attacks in 2024, compared to the previous year, according to data collected by both NCC Group and Rapid7. Their tallies differed slightly, but trended in the same direction. And last month, the number of successful attacks claimed by ransomware groups averaged 18 per day, up from less than 15 in December, according to Rapid7's data.

RansomHub, LockBit, and Play were the most prolific ransomware groups in 2024, as measured by the number of breach posts. Source: Author based on Rapid7 data

Overall, cybercriminals compromised nearly 6,000 victims, posting their information to public data-leak sites, with well-known ransomware groups — such as RansomHub, LockBit, and Play — making tens of millions of dollars each in ransom payments from victims, even as fewer victims paid lower average ransoms, the company found.

**Laying Down the Law on Cybercrime**

The ransomware gains came despite increased law enforcement activity. In September, European law enforcement disrupted the Ghost encrypted communications platform used by organized crime groups. In November, Canadian authorities arrested the hacker behind the compromise of 165 firms' Snowflake instances, who had demanded ransoms ranging from $300,000 to $5 million. And, in December, Israeli law enforcement arrested a 51-year-old LockBit developer in Israel.

Related:Can AI & the Cyber Trust Mark Rebuild Endpoint Confidence?

While law enforcement efforts are having an impact on cybercriminal operations, their efforts appear to be fracturing the ecosystem, as more groups and a greater number of providers offer cybercriminal services, says Christiaan Beek, senior director of threat analytics for Rapid7.

"Law enforcement is really fighting hard to take on the biggest groups \[that are causing businesses\] a lot of problems, and we highly applaud those initiatives," he says. "But the money is really attracting people, and especially if you are in certain countries where you're hard to catch or protected by the government ... then \[becoming a ransomware operator\] almost feels like a safe option."

**Paying Ransoms Is No Guarantee of Cyber Safety**

Estimates of the ransom amounts paid by companies varied significantly, with ransomware specialist Coveware estimating that the victims paid a median of $200,000 in Q3 2024, while a survey of more than 2,500 companies conducted by the Ponemon Institute estimated the average ransom demanded to be $1.2 million.

And those figures do not include investigation and clean up costs, Illumio's Dearing says.

"There was almost a doubling in the \[share of companies\] that lost significant revenue, and that reflects something that we're seeing across the board — both from financially motivated ransomware attackers, nation-states, or hacktivists — they are just trying to disrupt things," he says, adding, "Organizations need to think a lot more about incident response, about containing attacks, about trying to make sure that they actually stay in business if there's an attack."

Related:PrintNightmare Aftermath: Windows Print Spooler Is Better. What's Next?

The survey also found that paying a ransom rarely solves the problem of lost data nor ends the targeting by attackers. Half of all companies (51%) suffered a ransomware attack in 2024, but less than half received a decryption key, and the attacker demanded more money in a third of cases. In the end, only 13% of companies eventually recovered all of their data, according the Ponemon Institute report.

**Plan for Alternate Operations for Business Continuity**

Early detection and a plan to continue operations in the face of disruption matter most when it comes to minimizing the impact of a cyberattack. Of the companies that did not pay a ransom, nearly half had backups from which they could recover data, while a similar number deemed the data not important enough to pay the ransom.

In the best case scenario, companies can quickly move to cloud operations — or another plan for business continuity — giving them the best chance of recovering without drastic impacts, Rapid7's Beek says.

"We saw one company flip the switch, and suddenly the whole business was running on cloud resources while they were restoring the day-to-day operations," he says. "So the ransomware incident hardly impacted the business."

Companies that have a lack of visibility into — and a lack of security controls protecting — their networks face the most damaging disruption, says Illumio's Dearing.

"Things that allow lateral movement within organizations — like unpatched systems and weak passwords and open RDP ports — help attackers," he says. "So there's an amount of basics that companies need to take."

**About the Author**

Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer. Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R. Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and annual vulnerability trends.

Ransomware Groups Weathered Raids, Profited in 2024

In an attack vector that's been used before, threat actors aim to commit crypto fraud by hijacking highly followed users, thus reaching a broad audience of secondary victims.

Source: Ronstik via Alamy Stock Photo

An active, one-click phishing campaign is targeting the X accounts of high-profile individuals — including journalists, political figures, and even an X employee — to hijack and exploit them to commit cryptocurrency fraud.

Researchers at SentinelLabs uncovered the campaign, which they said appears to be most prominent on X but is not limited to a single social media platform, they revealed in a recent blog post. The goal of attackers is ultimately to use the potential reach of the high-impact accounts — which also include technology and cryptocurrency organizations as well as owners of accounts with valuable, short usernames — to target people with crypto scams for financial gain, the researchers said.

"Once an account is taken over, the attacker swiftly locks out the legitimate owner and begins posting fraudulent cryptocurrency opportunities or links to external sites designed to lure additional targets, often with a crypto theft-related theme," SentinelLabs threat researchers Tom Hegel, Jim Walter, and Alex Delamotte wrote in the post.

Ultimately, this compromise of high-profile accounts — a tactic used before by cybercriminals, most notably in targeting celebrity Twitter accounts in 2020 — enables the attacker to reach a broader audience of potential secondary victims, maximizing their financial gains, the researchers noted.

Related:Can AI & the Cyber Trust Mark Rebuild Endpoint Confidence?

Indeed, the campaign is also similar to one uncovered last year that compromised the Linux Tech Tips X account along with other high-profile users. The researchers discovered related infrastructure and similar phishing messages used in both campaigns, evidence that suggests the same threat actor is behind both, they said. However, at this time it's not known from which region of the world the actor hails, or who might be behind the campaign.

**Classic Fake Crypto Lures & Adaptable Infrastructure**

SentinelLabs observed a variety of phishing lures being used in the campaign, including a "classic account login notice" that targets people with an email informing them that someone logged into their account from a new device. The email includes a link suggesting they "take steps to protect" their account which actually leads to a site that phishes X credentials, according to the post.

Other email-based lures use copyright-violation themes to get users to click on a phishing page that ask them to enter their X credentials. In recent cases, the phishing page to which victims were redirected abused Google’s “AMP Cache” domain cdn.ampproject\[.\]org to evade common email detections, according to SentinelLabs.

Related:PrintNightmare Aftermath: Windows Print Spooler Is Better. What's Next?

Infrastructure used in the account suggests that the actor behind the campaign is "highly adaptable, continuously exploring new techniques while maintaining a clear financial motive," the researchers wrote.

Recent activity used the domain securelogins-x\[.\]com to deliver emails and x-recoverysupport\[.\]com to host phishing pages. As "any of these domains can be considered email delivery or phishing-page hosting," the activity indicates "a level of informality and flexibility of infrastructure use," the researchers observed.

Attackers also hosted a flurry of recent activity on an IP associated with a Belize-based VPS service called Dataclub. The domains associated with the campaign have been predominantly registered through Turkish hosting provider Turkticaret, but this alone is not enough to confirm that the attackers are from Turkey, the researchers added.

**Protect Your Corporate Social Accounts**

High-profile X accounts are often targets for threat actors because controlling them can help them reach a wider audience with fraudulent activity. Often this activity involves crypto scams aimed at financial fraud, such as a case last year in which security firm Mandiant temporarily lost control of its X account to cryptocurrency drainer malware operators.

Related:Unpatched Zyxel CPE Zero-Day Pummeled by Cyberattackers

"The cryptocurrency landscape offers financially-motivated threat actors multiple opportunities for profit and fraud," the researchers noted in the post. "While marketing for coins and tokens has long been irreverent and meme-driven, recent developments have further blurred the line between legitimate projects and scams."

To protect an X account, the researchers recommended the obvious: users should maintain good password hygiene by using a unique password, enabling two-factor authentication (2FA), and avoiding credential sharing with third-party services.

People also should be especially wary of messages containing links to account alerts or security notices, and always verify URLs before clicking on them. If their accounts do need a password reset for security purposes, these should be initiated only directly through the official website or app rather than relying on unsolicited links, the researchers advised.

**About the Author**

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking.

1-Click Phishing Campaign Targets High-Profile X Accounts

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By integrating security into CI/CD, applying automated policies, and supporting developers with the right processes and tools, infosec teams can increase efficiency and build secure software.

Remi Yazigi, Information Security Engineer, Cisco Systems

February 3, 2025

4 Min Read

Source: Cagkan Sayin via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, organizations must prioritize secure software development practices. Vulnerability management is a critical aspect of this, but its success depends on clear ownership and collaboration between information security and engineering teams. By shifting left and embedding vulnerability management into the development life cycle, organizations can empower engineering teams to deliver secure code efficiently. Here's how infosec teams can drive this transformation.

**Shifting Left: The Key to Proactive Security**

Traditional vulnerability management approaches often focus on addressing issues post-deployment. This reactive strategy slows development and increases the risk of exposure. Shifting left means identifying and remediating vulnerabilities earlier in the development process, during the build phase, or even before code reaches the repository. This early action reduces cost and effort while improving the quality of the codebase.

By integrating vulnerability scanning tools like Trivy into continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, infosec teams can block builds that introduce known vulnerabilities. Tools like these, with seamless integration with GitHub Actions (GHA) and Jenkins, provide immediate feedback to developers. When vulnerabilities are identified, engineers can address them without disrupting the workflow. This approach not only enhances security but also fosters a culture of accountability and ownership among developers.

**Applying Policies for Image Promotion**

One of the most effective ways to enforce security practices is through automated policies for container image promotion. For example:

1.  Base images: Ensure that development teams use only approved base images vetted by information security. These images should be regularly updated to incorporate security patches and align with organizational standards.
    
2.  Docker registries: Restrict usage to trusted and approved registries, reducing the risk of introducing malicious or outdated images. Approved registries should provide regular scans and metadata to verify image integrity.
    
3.  Image scanning: Automate the scanning process for all container images before they are promoted to staging or production environments. By applying strict vulnerability gates, organizations can ensure only secure images progress through the pipeline. Coupled with regular rescanning of images in production, this practice maintains security over time.
    

**Handling Exceptions Transparently**

No vulnerability management strategy is complete without a robust mechanism for handling exceptions. infosec teams should provide engineering teams with a clear process to request and manage exceptions when immediate fixes are not feasible. This includes:

*   Time-bound exceptions: Set expiry dates for exceptions to ensure vulnerabilities are addressed within a reasonable time frame. Expired exceptions should trigger reminders and escalate unresolved issues.
    
*   Approval workflow: Establish an approval workflow that involves both engineering and infosec stakeholders. Collaboration ensures balanced decisions that consider security and business needs.
    
*   Documentation: Require detailed justifications for exceptions, including mitigation strategies, impact assessments, and follow-up plans. Documentation enables transparency and ensures accountability for all stakeholders.
    

By managing exceptions transparently, organizations can balance security requirements with operational realities while maintaining accountability. This process also offers an opportunity for continuous improvement by identifying recurring vulnerabilities or patterns requiring systemic fixes.

**Building a Collaborative Framework**

For vulnerability management to succeed, infosec and engineering teams must work in harmony. Information security teams can support engineering teams by:

1.  Providing tools and training: Offer developers access to easy-to-use security tools and training on secure coding practices. This training should emphasize real-world examples.
    
2.  Defining clear policies: Develop and document policies that align with engineering workflows, ensuring that security requirements are achievable without disrupting productivity. Regularly review these policies to adapt to evolving threats and technologies.
    
3.  Creating feedback loops: Establish feedback mechanisms to address false positives, improve tool configurations, and enhance the developer experience. Prompt feedback helps developers focus on genuine risks and encourages compliance with security measures.
    
4.  Encouraging shared metrics: Track shared security metrics that matter to both teams, such as vulnerability closure rates and build success rates. Shared goals foster collaboration and build a sense of collective responsibility.
    

**Leveraging Automation and Metrics**

Automation plays a pivotal role in ensuring the scalability and reliability of vulnerability management processes. Integrating tools for automated scanning, ticket generation, and remediation tracking saves time and reduces human error. Meanwhile, metrics such as mean time to resolution (MTTR) and the number of vulnerabilities detected per build provide valuable insights into program effectiveness and areas for improvement.

**The Path Forward**

Empowering engineering teams with ownership of vulnerability management is a cultural shift that requires effort and collaboration. By integrating security into the CI/CD pipeline, applying automated policies, and supporting developers with clear processes and tools, infosec teams can drive efficiency and foster a shared commitment to building secure software.

Organizations that embrace this approach will not only reduce risk but also enhance their ability to deliver secure and reliable applications at scale. The time to shift left is now. Success requires a proactive mindset, the right tools, and above all, a strong partnership between infosec and engineering teams.

**About the Author**

Information Security Engineer, Cisco Systems

Remi Yazigi is information security engineer for Cisco Systems. He has extensive experience in cloud and container vulnerability management, specializing in automation to enhance security workflows. He holds two master’s degrees in computer engineering and cybersecurity and forensics. He joined ThousandEyes in London in 2018 and moved to the US in 2022 after Cisco Systems acquired ThousandEyes in 2020. There, he lead efforts to improve vulnerability detection and remediation. Prior to that, he worked in France as a cybersecurity consultant, focusing on securing industrial systems, including projects such as Ariane 5 space rocket and SECOIA. He is passionate about empowering engineering teams to take ownership of security processes, ensuring resilient and secure infrastructures. His expertise lies in creating scalable, efficient solutions that address modern security challenges.

Proactive Vulnerability Management for Engineering Success

Now we know exactly how DeepSeek was designed to work, and we may even have a clue toward its highly publicized scandal with OpenAI.

Source: mundissima via Alamy Stock Photo

Researchers have tricked DeepSeek, the Chinese generative AI (GenAI) that debuted earlier this month to a whirlwind of publicity and user adoption, into revealing the instructions that define how it operates.

DeepSeek, the new "it girl" in GenAI, was trained at a fractional cost of existing offerings, and as such has sparked competitive alarm across Silicon Valley. This has led to claims of intellectual property theft from OpenAI, and the loss of billions in market cap for AI chipmaker Nvidia. Naturally, security researchers have begun scrutinizing DeepSeek as well, analyzing if what's under the hood is beneficent or evil, or a mix of both. And analysts at Wallarm just made significant progress on this front by jailbreaking it.

In the process, they revealed its entire system prompt, i.e., a hidden set of instructions, written in plain language, that dictates the behavior and limitations of an AI system. They also may have induced DeepSeek to admit to rumors that it was trained using technology developed by OpenAI.

**DeepSeek's System Prompt**

Wallarm informed DeepSeek about its jailbreak, and DeepSeek has since fixed the issue. For fear that the same tricks might work against other popular large language models (LLMs), however, the researchers have chosen to keep the technical details under wraps.

Related:Code-Scanning Tool's License at Heart of Security Breakup

"It definitely required some coding, but it's not like an exploit where you send a bunch of binary data \[in the form of a\] virus, and then it's hacked," explains Ivan Novikov, CEO of Wallarm. "Essentially, we kind of convinced the model to respond \[to prompts with certain biases\], and because of that, the model breaks some kinds of internal controls."

By breaking its controls, the researchers were able to extract DeepSeek's entire system prompt, word for word. And for a sense of how its character compares to other popular models, it fed that text into OpenAI's GPT-4o and asked it to do a comparison. Overall, GPT-4o claimed to be less restrictive and more creative when it comes to potentially sensitive content.

"OpenAI's prompt allows more critical thinking, open discussion, and nuanced debate while still ensuring user safety," the chatbot claimed, where "DeepSeek’s prompt is likely more rigid, avoids controversial discussions, and emphasizes neutrality to the point of censorship."

While the researchers were poking around in its kishkes, they also came across one other interesting discovery. In its jailbroken state, the model seemed to indicate that it may have received transferred knowledge from OpenAI models. The researchers made note of this finding, but stopped short of labeling it any kind of proof of IP theft.

Related:OAuth Flaw Exposed Millions of Airline Users to Account Takeovers

"\[We were\] not retraining or poisoning its answers — this is what we got from a very plain response after the jailbreak. However, the fact of the jailbreak itself doesn't definitely give us enough of an indication that it's ground truth," Novikov cautions. This subject has been particularly sensitive ever since Jan. 29, when OpenAI — which trained its models on unlicensed, copyrighted data from around the Web — made the aforementioned claim that DeepSeek used OpenAI technology to train its own models without permission.

Source: Wallarm

**DeepSeek's Week to Remember**

DeepSeek has had a whirlwind ride since its worldwide release on Jan. 15. In two weeks on the market, it reached 2 million downloads. Its popularity, capabilities, and low cost of development triggered a conniption in Silicon Valley, and panic on Wall Street. It contributed to a 3.4% drop in the Nasdaq Composite on Jan. 27, led by a $600 billion wipeout in Nvidia stock — the largest single-day decline for any company in market history.

Then, right on cue, given its suddenly high profile, DeepSeek suffered a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) traffic. Chinese cybersecurity firm XLab found that the attacks began back on Jan. 3, and originated from thousands of IP addresses spread across the US, Singapore, the Netherlands, Germany, and China itself. 

Related:Spectral Capital Files Quantum Cybersecurity Patent

An anonymous expert told the Global Times when they began that "at first, the attacks were SSDP and NTP reflection amplification attacks. On Tuesday, a large number of HTTP proxy attacks were added. Then early this morning, botnets were observed to have joined the fray. This means that the attacks on DeepSeek have been escalating, with an increasing variety of methods, making defense increasingly difficult and the security challenges faced by DeepSeek more severe."

To stem the tide, the company put a temporary hold on new accounts registered without a Chinese phone number.

On Jan. 28, while fending off cyberattacks, the company released an upgraded Pro version of its AI model. The following day, Wiz researchers discovered a DeepSeek database exposing chat histories, secret keys, application programming interface (API) secrets, and more on the open Web.

Elsewhere on Jan. 31, Enkyrpt AI published findings that reveal deeper, meaningful issues with DeepSeek's outputs. Following its testing, it deemed the Chinese chatbot three times more biased than Claud-3 Opus, four times more toxic than GPT-4o, and 11 times as likely to generate harmful outputs as OpenAI's O1. It's also more inclined than most to generate insecure code, and produce dangerous information pertaining to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear agents.

Yet despite its shortcomings, "It's an engineering marvel to me, personally," says Sahil Agarwal, CEO of Enkrypt AI. "I think the fact that it's open source also speaks highly. They want the community to contribute, and be able to utilize these innovations. I think that's why a lot of closed-source model providers are sort of scared."

He adds, too, that "there are other models that are worse than DeepSeek. It's just that DeepSeek is so much in the news, so it has a lot of eyes on it."

**About the Author**

Nate Nelson is a writer based in New York City. He formerly worked as a reporter at Threatpost, and wrote "Malicious Life," an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify. Outside of Dark Reading, he also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast."

DeepSeek Jailbreak Reveals Its Entire System Prompt

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Black Hat USA 2024 Highlights

The CHC remains operational, but a host of personal data is now in the hands of a "skilled cybercriminal," it said.

Source: Panther Media via Alamy Stock Photo

NEWS BRIEF

Nonprofit healthcare provider Community Health Center (CHC) has begun notifying more than a million patients of a breach that compromised its data.

This is the third healthcare institution to be targeted in the past week. Frederick Health and the New York Blood Center Enterprises were both targeted in separate ransomware attacks that it alerted the public to on Jan. 27 and Jan. 29, respectively. 

It remains unclear who is behind the heists, and whether there is any connection between the attacks.

In a letter to victims from CHC, it reports that it noticed unusual activity on its computer systems on Jan. 2. It then launched an investigation and bolstered its security systems alongside cybersecurity experts. The investigation determined that a "skilled criminal hacker" was able to gain access to its systems and steal data, including some of the personal information of its patients. That includes names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, emails, diagnoses, treatment details, test results, Social Security numbers, and health insurance information.

"Fortunately, the criminal hacker did not delete or lock any of our data, and the criminal's activity did not affect our daily operations," the CHC wrote in its letter. "We believe we stopped the criminal hacker's access within hours, and that there is no current threat to our systems."

"Incidents in this sector underscore the ongoing risks healthcare providers face, with attackers gaining access to sensitive data like names, medical diagnoses, and insurance details," Emily Phelps, director of Cyware, wrote in an emailed statement to Dark Reading. "This incident highlights the urgency of securing healthcare infrastructures — protecting not just patient data, but the broader ecosystem of communication, collaboration, and care delivery."

Though there is currently no sign that the information was misused, the CHC is offering free identity theft protection through IDX including two years of credit and CyberScan monitoring, $1,000,000 insurance reimbursement policy, and assistance recovering stolen identities. 

The letter provides additional information regarding how customers can sign up for IDX protection services, which the CHC urges individuals to take advantage of, even if there is no current sign of foul play regarding their stolen information, as it remains unclear what the threat actor intends to do with the stolen data.

**About the Author**

Skilled writer and editor covering cybersecurity for Dark Reading.

Community Health Center Data Breach Affects 1M Patients

The "Cracked" and "Nulled" Dark Web sites are now offline, along with the Pakistani "Saim Raza" network of underground forums (aka HeartSender).

Source: Britpix via Alamy Stock Photo

The US Department of Justice Department (DoJ) has partnered with international law enforcement to crack down on Dark Web cybercrime forums, with a pair of operations that disrupted underground markets linked to attacks on millions of victims globally. It's unclear what the long-term effects of the efforts will be, however.

In the first action, the DoJ, in coordination with the Dutch National Police, seized 39 domains operated by a Pakistani group known as Saim Raza (aka HeartSender).

According to a DoJ announcement on Jan. 31, Saim Raza has been operating since 2020, slinging phishing kits and fraud tools to the highest bidder across a network of underground sites. The cybercriminals buying the tools are responsible for global business email compromise (BEC) attacks and other nefarious scams, including against victims in the US who were collectively swindled out of $3 million.

"Not only did Saim Raza make these tools widely available on the open Internet, it also trained end users on how to use the tools against victims by linking to instructional YouTube videos on how to execute schemes using these malicious programs, making them accessible to criminal actors that lacked this technical criminal expertise," the agency said in its announcement. "The group also advertised its tools as 'fully undetectable' by antispam software."

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**"Cracked" & "Nulled" Dark Web Markets Are … Cracked & Nulled**

In a separate action, the DoJ participated in "Operation Talent," a Europol-backed international operation that disrupted the Cracked and Nulled Dark Web marketplaces. Together, the forums have been linked to cybercrimes against at least 17 million US victims.

According to the DoJ, the Cracked marketplace emerged in 2018, boasted 4 million users, made $4 million in revenue, and hosted more than 28 million cybercrime ads over the course of its reign.

Reflective of its name, one service on offer on the Cracked forum gave users a password search tool to find stolen credentials for millions of accounts and services. In one case, a stalker allegedly sextorted and harassed a woman in the Buffalo, NY, area after using the service to break into one of her accounts and access sensitive materials.

The Nulled website domain seizure meanwhile came in tandem with the unsealing of charges against one of its administrators, Lucas Sohn, an Argentinian national living in Spain. Nulled had been around since 2016, had 5 million users, raked in $1 million per year, and listed more than 43 million ads.

Nulled specialized in selling stolen login credentials, stolen identification documents, and hacking tools, according to the DoJ. If convicted, Sohn faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for conspiracy to traffic in passwords, 10 years in prison for access device fraud, and 15 years in prison for identity fraud.

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**Law Enforcement Takedowns: Do They Deter Cybercrime?**

The actions are just the latest in a flurry of efforts by US law enforcement to take down the infrastructure that powers cybercrime.

Just last week for example, the DoJ announced a partial disruption of North Korea's tech worker scam efforts. And in January, it wrapped up an eradication effort against the notorious PlugX malware. Other recent operations have included arresting actors behind the LockBit ransomware gang and teenaged members of Scattered Spider.

However, law-enforcement disruptions can be a game of whack-a-mole, with new threats popping up, or old ones re-emerging or taking a different shape, in the wake of takedowns. For instance, just two weeks after the DoJ shuttered the infamous BreachForums cybercrime forum last May, it sprang back to life with listings for Ticketmaster breach data. Fast forward several months, and the site is back to enjoying high-traffic status, with cybercriminals using it as a go-to for offering data breach information for sale.

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"Arrests can cause actors to move away from a code base or campaigns that were formerly a notable threat," explains Ken Dunham, cyber threat director at Qualys Threat Research Unit. "In other situations, actors adapt, like cockroaches that simply move to another room when you move the couch, when pressure is applied, taking on new codes and tactics to further nefarious means and motives."

It's important to offer a full-court press against the most virulent threats to have even a scintilla of hope to root them out entirely, according to Derek Manky, global vice president of threat intelligence at Fortinet.

"Turning the tide against cybercrime necessitates a culture of collaboration, transparency, and accountability on a larger scale," he explains. "No single organization can effectively stop cybercrime alone. Public-private partnerships can influence the disruption of large-scale cybercrime activities, leading to a safer, more resilient society. Every organization has a place in the chain of disruption against cyberthreats."

Taken on their own though, it's useful to think of the disruption efforts as an important thorn in cybercriminals' sides, at the very least.

"Historically attackers can more easily obtain information and tools than defenders, giving them a perpetual advantage," Evan Dornbush, former National Security Agency (NSA) cybersecurity expert, said in an emailed statement. "Actions like this make it more expensive for cyber criminals to operate, and ultimately this is a good thing. Lesser players who rely on purchasing tools and network access from these two marketplaces won't be able to get started, raising the barrier to entry for their criminal enterprise aspirations."

**About the Author**

Tara Seals has 20+ years of experience as a journalist, analyst and editor in the cybersecurity, communications and technology space. Prior to Dark Reading, Tara was Editor in Chief at Threatpost, and prior to that, the North American news lead for Infosecurity Magazine. She also spent 13 years working for Informa (formerly Virgo Publishing), as executive editor and editor-in-chief at publications focused on both the service provider and the enterprise arenas. A Texas native, she holds a B.A. from Columbia University, lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and is on a never-ending quest for good Mexican food in the Northeast.

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DARKReading