US sanctions Chinese cybersecurity firm for firewall hacks targeting critical infrastructure

Date:

Share post:


The U.S. sanctioned a Chinese cybersecurity company and one of its employees for exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Sophos firewalls to target U.S. organizations.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department said Guan Tianfeng, an employee of Sichuan Silence, used the vulnerability to compromise approximately 81,000 firewalls in April 2020. The hacking campaign, detailed by Sophos in November, led to the compromise of more than 23,000 firewalls in the U.S., dozens of which were used at a government agency, and critical infrastructure companies. 

One of these was an energy company involved in drilling operations. The Treasury noted that the incident could have caused “significant loss in human life” if the attack had been successful. 

“The purpose of the exploit was to use the compromised firewalls to steal data,” the Treasury said. “However, Guan also attempted to infect the victims’ systems with the Ragnarok ransomware variant.”



Source link

Lisa Holden
Lisa Holden
Lisa Holden is a news writer for LinkDaddy News. She writes health, sport, tech, and more. Some of her favorite topics include the latest trends in fitness and wellness, the best ways to use technology to improve your life, and the latest developments in medical research.

Recent posts

Related articles

Google says it removed cultural events from its calender last year

Google has removed events such as Black History Month and Pride Month from being listed on the...

Klarna and Deel eye IPOs, and Stripe embraces crypto

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech!  This week we’re looking at how fintech heavyweights such as Klarna and Stripe are...

Apple brings heart rate monitoring to Powerbeats Pro 2

Apple Tuesday announced the long-awaited debut of Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds. The new headphones arrive nearly six...

Another person targeted by Paragon spyware comes forward

Another person who was allegedly targeted on WhatsApp with spyware made by Israeli company Paragon has come...

Apple reportedly partners with Alibaba after rejecting DeepSeek for China AI launch

According to a report published Tuesday by The Information, Apple is partnering Alibaba to bring its Apple...

Pinkfish helps enterprises build AI agents through natural language processing

As the chief product officer for AI customer service startup TalkDesk, Charayna “CK” Kannan said that enterprises...

3D mood board and marketplace Mattoboard picks up $2M to launch AI visual search

Mattoboard, the makers of web-based software designed to simplify the creative process for interior designers and architects,...

Australian health tech startup Harrison.ai scores $112M Series C

Medical imaging is crucial for the timely identification of serious diseases like cancer. However, manual interpretation of...