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Cyber Daily: FBI Probe Finds Errors in Surveillance Warrants Didn’t Undermine Cases | Europe Sanctions Alleged Hackers Linked to China, North Korea and Russia
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Hello. An internal review at the FBI of mistakes in applications for surveillance warrants found that the errors didn’t undermine the cases, The Wall Street Journal reports. In June, the FBI sought an independent audit firm to review procedures, as it continues to grapple with fallout from errors related to requests to surveil Carter Page, a former aide to President Trump.
Other news: Europe sanctions alleged hackers linked to China, North Korea and Russia; North Korea-sponsored campaign targets job seekers in defense industry, researchers say; and cloud misconfigurations exploited in 20% of data breaches last year.
Also today: Your Weekend Reading roundup.
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Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December. PHOTO: RON SACHS/ZUMA PRESS
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FBI internal probe finds errors in FISA warrants didn’t undermine cases. The FBI said Thursday that errors found in the files of dozens of applications to monitor Americans suspected of having links to foreign intelligence or terrorism didn’t ultimately undermine those applications.
In March, the Justice Department’s inspector general said his office found “apparent errors or inadequately supported facts” in files meant to provide factual support for the information cited in more than two dozen FBI applications. The requests sought wiretapping authority from a special court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
The inspector general had chosen several dozen applications to review as a sample, and found errors in the files of all of them. These results pointed to possible widespread problems at the FBI and suggested that shortcomings previously found in requests to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page weren’t limited to that case.
The FBI and the Justice Department then reviewed those additional applications identified by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. In a statement Thursday, the FBI said it told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Wednesday that “in its judgment, none of the errors that had been identified…undermined or otherwise impacted the validity” of the court’s orders granting the surveillance.
Read the full article.
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20%
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Portion of data breaches last year traced to problems in cloud-computing configurations, according to a report this week from IBM and the Ponemon Institute, which analyzed breaches at 500 companies globally.
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A screenshot shows a WannaCry ransomware demand in 2017. PHOTO: SYMANTEC CORP./REUTERS
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Europe sanctions alleged Russian, Chinese, North Korean hackers. The European Union issued travel bans, asset freezes and other sanctions against individuals it says were involved in cyberattacks in the bloc, MIT Technology Review reports. A prime target of the move is a group within Russian’s military intelligence unit known as Sandworm, believed to have launched the NotPetya attack in 2017 and an attack on Ukraine’s power grid in 2015. Hackers in North Korea received sanctions for their alleged part in the WannaCry attack. Two Chinese nationals and a Chinese company were sanctioned for alleged corporate espionage activities in several continents.
First time: The moves, disclosed Thursday, are a first for the EU, according to the European Council. The legal framework for issuing sanctions connected to cybercrime was put in place in May 2019.
North Korea-sponsored campaign targets job seekers in defense industry, researchers say. Hackers posing as recruiters are targeting employees in the U.S. and European defense and aerospace sectors, CyberScoop reports. Individuals receive Microsoft Word documents through email that describe jobs—sometimes real ones, copied from industry websites—and contain malicious code, according to research from McAfee LLC. The cybersecurity vendor attributed the activity to North Korean hackers. The campaign is an effort to gather sensitive information
and credentials, perhaps to plan future cyberattacks, McAfee said.
Repeat scam: McAfee uncovered similar campaigns in 2017 and 2019 that sought information about military technologies and data useful in the theft of cryptocurrency.
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