Buyer demand typically centers on access to American, Canadian, or UK database access,” Levi Gundert, the company’s VP of Threat Intelligence pointed out. “North American and Western European databases contain information on customers or users that are historically valued at a premium in the underground economy. A wide variety of US government institutions at the city, state, and federal level (including the Oklahoma State Department of Education, District Columbia Office of the Chief Financial Officer, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development).Ten UK universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh – among others), and.Two dozen US universities (including Virginia Tech, Cornell University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Purdue University),.

The firm has dubbed the Russian-speaking hacker “Rasputin”, and has been following his exploits for a while now. A hacker tied to the November 2016 penetration of the US Election Assistance Commission and subsequent database sale has successfully targeted 60+ government agencies and universities by leveraging the same attack method: SQL injection.Īccording to a report by Recorded Future, whose researchers scour the dark web for threat intelligence, the hacker uses a proprietary SQLi tool to gain access to the targets’ databases and then sells access to them to other cyber crooks.

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