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A Swiss Hacker Uncovered Confidential FBI Terrorism Screening Center File

Personal information of civilians who were on an outdated version of the US Government's No Fly List and Terrorist Screening Database was found on an open server by a 23-year-old Swiss hacker.

On January 12, Maia Arson Crimew, an influential hacker noted by the Department of Justice in a separate indictment, discovered the highly sensitive documents while browsing through a search engine full of unsecured servers. 

The text file "NoFly.csv," which refers to the subset of people in the Terrorist Screening Database who have been prohibited from flying because of suspected or known ties to terrorist organizations, was found after server analysis.

According to crimew, there were reportedly more than 1.5 million entries on the list overall. The data includes names and birthdates. The number of distinct people was significantly fewer than 1.5 million because it also contained many aliases.

According to the hacker, CommuteAir, an Ohio-based minor airline, maintained the insecure Amazon Web Services cloud server that contained the No Fly List as well as confidential data on roughly 1,000 of the airline's employees. Their passport numbers, addresses, and phone numbers were apparently included in this data.

Many of the names on the list appeared to be of Arabic or Middle Eastern ancestry, however, there were also Hispanic and Anglican-sounding names. The uncovered No-Fly list had several well-known names, including Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who was recently released from a US prison in exchange for US basketball player Brittney Griner. Also included on the list were alleged IRA members, an Irish paramilitary group. Another person was listed as being 8 years old by crimew based on their birth year.

While those on the smaller No-fly list are known or suspected terrorists who are prohibited from traveling to or inside the US, those on the Terrorist Screening Database may be subject to enhanced security checks and inspections when traveling.

According to the FBI, a list of people shared among government agencies is the Terrorism Screening Database, which is intended to prevent the kind of intelligence failures that took place before 9/11. The more constrained, smaller No Fly List is contained within it. People who have been screened for terrorism may be subject to further security checks and limitations. No one from the No Fly List is allowed to board an airplane in the United States.

 US Reclaimed $15 Million From an Ad Fraud Operation

 

The US government has recovered more than $15 million in earnings from the 3ve digital advertising fraud enterprise, which cost firms more than $29 million in unviewed ads. 

Sergey Ovsyannikov, Yevgeniy Timchenko, and Aleksandr Isaev, according to the Justice Department, accessed more than 1.7 million infected computers between December 2015 and October 2018, using tens of command and control (C&C) servers as the Kovter botnet, a click-fraud malware would quietly run in the background while connecting to sites to consume advertisements. 

A forfeiture order, according to the Justice Department, resulted in the transfer of $15,111,453.84 from Swiss bank accounts to the US government. The technique resulted in the falsification of billions of ad views and the spoofing of over 86,000 domains. According to the US Department of Justice, groups paid over $29 million for advertising never seen by real people. 

Ovsyannikov and Timchenko were arrested in 2018, pleaded guilty, and sentenced to jail terms in the United States. For this role in 3ve (pronounced "Eve"), Isaev and five others are accused of money laundering, wire fraud, computer intrusion, and identity theft, yet they stay free. 

The US also charged Aleksandr Zhukov, Boris Timokhin, Mikhail Andreev, Denis Avdeev, and Dmitry Novikov, five Russian citizens, with running the Methbot ad fraud scheme, which is thought to have netted the fraudsters more than $7 million in illegal gains. 

"This forfeiture is the greatest international cybercrime recovery in the Eastern District of New York's history," said United States Attorney Peace in a press statement.

Switzerland Based MCH Group Hit by a Cyber Attack

 

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, the international live marketing company - MCH Group was hit by a criminal cyber-attack deploying malware on Wednesday, 20th of October 2021. The Swiss event organizer and marketing firm announced that it has been striving to restore system functionality as soon as possible. 

The multinational marketing and events organization is well-known for its trade shows Baselworld and Art Basel. 

The MCH firm announced in a statement released on Thursday 21st of October that it had been the target of a malware assault the day before. 

Also with the assistance of external experts and federal officials, company IT specialists sought to reduce the damage. An inquiry has been conducted to establish whether or not any information was taken. 

According to the firm, the occurrence doesn't jeopardize present events, and therefore future trade shows may go as scheduled. Neither any ransom was asked. the MCH organization has stated that it would pursue criminal proceedings against the criminals.

“The internal ICT specialists, together with other external experts and the federal authorities, immediately took measures to limit the damage as far as possible,” it said in a statement. “As part of this process, it will be investigated if any data have been siphoned.” 

The MCH group was formed in 2001 by the merging of two firms that administered fairs in Basel and Zurich, respectively. It is listed on the stock exchange, although major shares are owned by public authorities. 

It employed 710 individuals at the end of December, 355 of them were based in Switzerland. The coronavirus epidemic drove the corporation into the red in 2020, but it is looking for a comeback with fresh finance and initiatives. 

Cyber-attacks on official bodies and commercial enterprises are also on the rise in Switzerland, albeit not all occurrences are made public. 

On Thursday, it was also revealed that cybercriminals had hacked into the official Easygov system and taken the identities of around 130,000 businesses that had requested urgent financial credit during the epidemic. Authorities claim that no critical information was compromised. 

The municipal authority of the Swiss town of Montreux, Stadler Rail, and the price comparison website Comparis have also been attacked, and the personal data of the whole inhabitants of Rolle was purportedly published online in August.