National Security Adviser Ajit Doval announced that the Union government is set to come up with National Cyber Security Strategy 2020 for guaranteeing a safe, secured, trusted, and resilient cyberspace. 

The proposed strategy toward uniting all cybersecurity agencies for making sure about, reinforcing, and synergizing the cybersecurity ecosystem by closely connecting with businesses, citizens, and beyond.

That endeavors were being made by adversaries to exploit the crisis in the wake of the pandemic through different misinformation, fake news, and social media campaigns. 

"For our adversaries, the huge data floating around in cyberspace is a goldmine for extracting information to undermine the privacy of our citizens and add to the vulnerability of protecting data of our critical information infrastructure, “Mr. Doval said.

He said that phishing campaigns utilizing the Coronavirus theme targeted banks, defence, and critical infrastructure during this period. 

Mr. Doval drew attention to how various conspicuous UPI IDs and web portals were produced while fake Arogya Setu applications propped up to misuse individuals' data only hours after the Prime Minister announced the launch of the PM Cares fund. 

He stated, "Malicious domains and websites to the tune of around 5,000 were registered in a short span of time. We have also witnessed an increase of 500% in cybercrime owing to people’s limited awareness and poor cyber hygiene. Financial frauds have also increased tremendously owing to the increased reliance on digital payment platforms...”

He regretted that absence of indigenous digital solutions like information-sharing facilities and social media platforms had antagonistically influenced the country's self-reliance and cybersecurity. 

He encouraged new start-ups to think of solutions linked with the nation's requirements and build-up ability to guarantee that the country's critical cyber assets were being monitored by skillful native professionals in resonance with the Prime Minister's take for Atmanirbhar.

The creation of the Russian cloud services will allow protecting confidential data of not only ministries or departments, but also of ordinary Internet users, said political analyst Yuri Samonkin.

MTS group of companies announced the launch of a cloud service with an increased level of protection. It is assumed that the new service will be in demand among government organizations, ministries, departments and private companies that carry out government orders, said Oleg Motivilov, Director of MTS cloud business. According to him, the new system meets all the requirements of the law on personal data protection.

Russia is one of the leaders in the development of Internet technologies, said Yuri Samonkin, President of the Eurasian Institute of Youth Initiatives. He believes that the current realities of the Internet dictate the need to create new digital solutions, such as cloud storage.

According to him, many Russians use Western social networks and other Internet resources. Therefore, the issue of protecting their personal data, which is often "leaked", is very relevant.

On the eve of the upcoming elections, the issue of cyber defense is becoming even more acute. It is necessary to protect from external interference not only the personal data of the voters themselves but also the servers of the relevant departments.

"State and municipal portals should be located not on Western servers, but on domestic ones. This will avoid information leakage and hacking", concluded Mr. Samonkin.

Earlier, E Hacking News reported that Russia has worsened its position in the ranking of countries with the most stable segments of the national Internet, dropping from 11th to 13th place. 

Microsoft reports breaching of email accounts belonging to individuals associated with the Biden and Trump election campaigns by Chinese, Iranian, and Russian state-sponsored hackers. 

Tom Burt, Corporate VP for Customer Security and Trust at Microsoft, revealed the occurrences in a detailed blog post after Reuters announced about a portion of the Russian attacks against the Biden camp. 

"Most of these assaults" were recognized and blocked, which is what he added later and revealed in the blog post with respect to the additional attacks and furthermore affirmed a DNI report from August that asserted that Chinese and Iranian hackers were likewise focusing on the US election process.

 As indicated by Microsoft, the attacks conducted by Russian hackers were connected back to a group that the organization has been tracking under the name of Strontium and the cybersecurity industry as APT28 or Fancy Bear. 

 While Strontium generally carried out the spear-phishing email attacks, as of late, the group has been utilizing 'brute-force' and password spraying techniques as an integral technique to breaching accounts. 

Then again, the attacks by Iranian hackers originated from a group tracked as Phosphorous (APT35, Charming Kitten, and the Ajax Security Group). 

These attacks are a continuation of a campaign that began a year ago, and which Microsoft recognized and cautioned about in October 2019. At that point, Microsoft cautioned that the hackers focused on "a 2020 US presidential campaign" yet didn't name which one. 

Through some open-source detective work, a few individuals from the security community later linked the attacks to the Trump campaign. 

What's more, only a couple of days back Microsoft affirmed that the attacks are indeed focused on the Trump campaign, yet in addition unveiled a new activity identified with the said group. The attacks were likewise identified by Chinese groups. 

While presently there are several hacking groups that are assumed to work under orders and the security of the Chinese government, Microsoft said that the attacks focusing on US campaigns originated from a group known as Zirconium (APT31), which is a similar group that Google spotted not long ago, in June. 

Microsoft says it detected thousands of attacks coordinated by this group between March 2020 and September 2020, with the hackers accessing almost some 150 accounts during that time period.

According to Qrator Labs, a company specializing in ensuring the availability of Internet resources and countering DDoS attacks, Russia has worsened its position in the ranking of countries with the most stable segments of the national Internet, dropping from 11th to 13th place. Experts attribute this to the continuing expansion of the market of Internet operators and the slow transition to the new IPv6 protocol, which allows using more IP addresses.

The rating of the stability of the national segments of the Internet has been calculated since 2016 among 249 countries of the world. According to the rating, Russia took the 13th place this year, the year before the Russian Federation took the 11th place.

Experts believe that the use of a more advanced version of IPv6 by network operators along with the IPv4 Protocol can increase the stability of Internet segments. Then in case of problems with one Protocol, the other will work.

According to Google, just over 30% of users in the world use the new Protocol, while in Russia this figure is slightly more than 5%.

The problem is that Russia does not have a universal program for switching to IPv6. "It is difficult to force current market participants to switch to a new Protocol, because they will have to upgrade equipment and hardware and software systems, and this is a serious expense," said Andrey Vorobyov, director of the Coordination Center for .ru / .РФ domains.

The global five countries are led by Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Next in the ranking are the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, France and Liechtenstein. Four newcomers, Liechtenstein, Japan, Indonesia and Argentina, entered the top 20 this year, while Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Ireland and Bulgaria left. Hong Kong dropped eight positions in a year.

Associate Professor of computer science at the Russian University of Economics, Alexander Timofeev said that hackers can use Bluetooth to break into an electronic device.

"The possibility of Bluetooth hacking can endanger any information stored on the device (photos, emails, texts). In addition, an attacker can gain control of the device and send unwanted data to it,” noted Timofeev.

According to him, at the hacker festival What The Hack, which takes place in the Netherlands, experts showed how using a laptop and a special program with a directional antenna people can eavesdrop on what the driver of a passing car is talking about through a Bluetooth headset.

The head of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. Sergey Zabula agreed that constantly enabled Bluetooth carries a significant threat to the security of the phone and its owner. Scammers are constantly improving their attack methods, and the small range of Bluetooth signal propagation is no longer a problem for them.

"Using amplifiers, hackers can get into a user's device without even asking for their permission and without knowing the secret key of the connection”, noted Mr. Zabula.

The consequences of attacks using Bluetooth can be varied. So, in just a few seconds, fraudsters can connect to a user's device, install malware, and eventually steal or delete valuable information. Moreover, via Bluetooth, hackers can listen to calls, set their forwarding, and send calls and text messages, which in turn leads to financial losses of the victim. Also, using a Bluetooth connection, fraudsters can carry out a DoS attack and completely disable the phone.

Experts recommend disabling Bluetooth as soon as it is no longer necessary, since this function, when activated, is a "godsend for scammers."

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Bashkortostan is ready to cooperate with white hackers and programmers to solve Internet crimes together with them. Law enforcement agencies want to attract volunteers-experts from among students-programmers to solve cybercrimes.

According to Major General of Justice, Deputy Minister, Head of the Main Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bashkortostan Oleg Oleinik, the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is working together with the Regional Center of the Volunteer Movement and the police already have experience in cooperation with young programmers.

Recall that in the last two years, the number of cybercrimes in Bashkortostan has grown by almost 2.5 times: if in 2018, 2,500 cybercrimes were recorded, in 2019 – 6,300, then in the seven months of 2020, 6,500 cases have already been opened. Fraudsters use social engineering methods and debit money from cards of victims without any special technical means.

The Bashkortostan police said that they are ready to cooperate with IT companies that are also interested in eliminating cyber fraud. 

The interim head of the Department for Disclosure of General Criminal Frauds and Theft Committed Using Information and Telecommunication Technologies of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Marat Guzairov said that the crime is especially developed in the DarkNet, where databases are uploaded, weapons, drugs are sold, and pornography is distributed. Violation of the law occurs with the help of messengers, as well as resources blocked by Roskomnadzor, which can be accessed using certain programs.

According to the police, many young people are aware of this and could transfer their knowledge to law enforcement agencies.

Alexey Malnev, head of the Jet CSIRT Information Security Monitoring and Incident Response Center of Jet Infosystems, spoke about how to detect a Keylogger.

According to the expert, this can be done by scanning the computer with antivirus software, as well as thanks to the built-in EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) system that analyzes the processes and their memory operation within the operating system.

In the case of corporate devices, a traffic inspection system will help, which can detect a connection over a suspicious Protocol or to a suspicious server on the Internet. The presence of an incident monitoring center in an organization can help detect an entire cyber operation of attackers on its infrastructure, or targeted attacks.

According to the expert, the presence of Keylogger can be considered a symptom of a complete hacking of the user's computer, and this is very bad news for the user. The fact is that modern malicious software most often uses Keylogger as one of many modules.

"There is a high probability that there is already a whole set of other potential problems: theft of confidential files from the hard disk, interception of account data, hidden audio and video recording (if there are a microphone and video camera), the potential destruction of data (if there is a malicious ransomware encryption module), full remote access,” said he.

In such cases, users should immediately disconnect the computer from the local network and the Internet, and then, without restarting it, hand it over to specialists in cybercriminalism. According to Malnev, it is more important to determine how the computer was attacked.

Video conferencing services attracted the attention of hackers because they gained huge popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. 

On Thursday, attackers disrupted a court hearing in the case of a Florida teenager accused of organizing the hijacking of a number of Twitter accounts. The hearing was held via the Zoom video conference service. The attackers disguised their names as CNN and the BBC and gained access to the conference, after which they began broadcasting pornographic videos and swearing. After that, the court session was postponed.

According to Artem Gavrichenkov, technical director of Qrator Labs, the phenomenon of Zoom-bombing, when attackers identify vulnerable conferences and enter them with the aim of espionage and hooliganism, became widespread in April, and by May-June it became widespread.

“To limit the access of attackers to sensitive content, all conferences should be password protected, and this password should be provided only to a limited number of people,” advised Gavrichenkov.

Denis Gavrilov, the consultant of the information security Center of Jet Infosystems, also recommends setting up a "waiting room" if there is such functionality in the platform, this will limit user access to the conference without the approval of the organizer.

Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity expert Dmitry Galov noted that it is necessary to download the program for a computer only from the official website, and for a smartphone - from official app stores.

"As our experts found out, in the spring of this year, the number of malicious files whose names contain references to popular services for online conferences (Webex, Zoom, etc.) has almost tripled compared to last year,” said he.

Anastasia Barinova, Deputy head of the Group-IB, advises using Zoom analogs at all. "To minimize the risks, I would recommend considering Zoom analogs: Google Meet, GoToMeeting, or Cisco's WebEx service," advised she.

Earlier E Hacking News reported that Russia will develop a similar Zoom platform for video communication by the beginning of the new school year.