Following the creation of the DOJ’s Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force in April 2021 and on the heels of the Biden administration’s characterization of ransomware as a national security threat, on June 7, 2021, the DOJ announced it has seized $2.3 million (63.7 bitcoin) in proceeds from a recent ransom paid to DarkSide in […]
National Security
Russia Sanctioned For Role In SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack
On April 15, 2021, the Biden Administration took a significant step in announcing sanctions against the Russian Government and private Russian entities for multiple internationally-destabilizing activities, including the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) supply chain attack of the SolarWinds Orion platform and other technology infrastructures. In addition to the sanctions, the Administration also provided practical […]
U.S. Takes Unprecedented Action to Disrupt State-Sponsored Exploitation of Microsoft Exchange Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
On April 13, 2021, a federal district court granted a motion to partially unseal an FBI application and search warrant following the successful conclusion of an FBI operation to eradicate malicious web shells placed on U.S.-based computers by Chinese state-sponsored actors. The FBI’s use of credentialed, remote access techniques to access, copy, and remove malware […]
President Biden Issues Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains
On February 24, 2021, President Biden announced a new Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains. The Order provides for two key initiatives, including a 100-day review of the supply chains for certain vital products and a long-term review of supply chains in six different sectors of the U.S. economy, including the information and communications technology […]
SolarWinds Hack: Unparalleled Supply Chain Attack Results in Potential Compromise of Private and Public Sector Organizations
On Sunday, December 13, 2020, SolarWinds announced that it had learned of a “highly sophisticated, manual supply chain attack” by a nation state affecting its Orion Platform, which is used by a wide variety of public and private sector organizations for IT infrastructure monitoring and management. In this attack, adversaries were able to compromise the […]