Category: Crime

UK fines 123 offshore companies for transparency law breach

Britain has issued more than 120 financial penalties to offshore companies that have failed to comply with transparency legislation designed to uncover illicit wealth hidden in the UK property market. The Register of Overseas Entities was created after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to help the UK government crack down on oligarchs and other kleptocrats. Individuals that own British property through…

23andMe says hackers accessed ‘significant number’ of files about users’ ancestry

Genetic testing company 23andMe announced on Friday that hackers accessed around 14,000 customer accounts in the company’s recent data breach. In a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published Friday, the company said that, based on its investigation into the incident, it had determined that hackers had accessed 0.1% of its customer base. According to the company’s most recent…

Norton Healthcare discloses data breach following May ransomware attack

Kentucky health system Norton Healthcare has confirmed that a ransomware attack in May exposed personal information belonging to patients, employees, and dependents. Norton Healthcare serves adult and pediatric patients in more than 40 clinics and hospitals across Greater Louisville, Southern Indiana, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. With over 20,000 employees, more than 1,750 employed medical providers, and over 3,000 total…

French juvenile court convicts 6 over roles in teacher’s beheading

A French juvenile court on Friday convicted six teenagers for their roles in the beheading of a teacher by an Islamist extremist that shocked the country. Teacher Samuel Paty was killed outside his school in 2020 after showing his class cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad during a debate on free expression. The attacker, a young Chechen who had radicalized, was…

23andMe updates user agreement to prevent data breach lawsuits

As Genetic testing provider 23andMe faces multiple lawsuits for an October credential stuffing attack that led to the theft of customer data, the company has modified its Terms of Use to make it harder to sue the company. In October, a threat actor attempted to sell 23andMe customer data and, after failing to do so, leaked the data for 1 million…

Pro-Russia Ukrainian MP Illia Kyva shot dead in Moscow suburb

A former Ukrainian MP regarded by Kyiv as a traitor has been shot dead in a park in suburban Moscow, in an attack attributed to Ukraine’s SBU security service. Illia Kyva was a pro-Russian member of Ukraine’s parliament before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but fled to Russia a month before the start of the war and frequently…

Mercer to pay $12 million penalty for misleading representations and fee disclosure failures

Mercer Financial Advice has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $12 million penalty for breaching fee disclosure obligations and for wrongly charging fees to customers, ASIC has reported. “This is a significant penalty for a financial advice provider,” said Sarah Court (pictured above), ASIC deputy chair. “Mercer failed in its obligation to provide fee disclosure statements to…

US audit inspectors unveil $7.9mn fines on China-based firms

WASHINGTON: US inspectors announced fines against China-based firms Thursday, as part of a broader effort to hold US-listed Chinese companies up to American auditing standards amid simmering geopolitical tensions. These included PwC affiliates in Hong Kong and China, alongside a Chinese audit company. The $7.9 million in penalties unveiled by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) represent some of the…

Hackers breach US water facility via exposed Unitronics PLCs

CISA (Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency) is warning that threat actors breached a U.S. water facility by hacking into Unitronics programmable logic controllers (PLCs) exposed online. PLCs are crucial control and management devices in industrial settings, and hackers compromising them could have severe repercussions, such as water supply contamination through manipulating the device to alter chemical dosing. Other risks include service…

US seizes Sinbad crypto mixer used by North Korean Lazarus hackers

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned the Sinbad cryptocurrency mixing service for its use as a money-laundering tool by the North Korean Lazarus hacking group. A cryptocurrency mixer is a server that allows people to deposit crypto, which is mixed among many different wallet addresses to help prevent it from being accurately traced. The mixing service takes a…

Healthcare giant Henry Schein hit twice by BlackCat ransomware

  American healthcare company Henry Schein has reported a second cyberattack this month by the BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang, who also breached their network in October. Henry Schein is a Fortune 500 healthcare products and services provider with operations and affiliates in 32 countries and a revenue of over $12 billion reported in 2022. It first disclosed on October 15 that it…

China investors face tens of billions in losses over shadow bank Zhongzhi Enterprise Group

  As China’s embattled shadow banking giant Zhongzhi Enterprise Group faces a criminal probe, lawyers and analysts are assessing the damage to investors. One estimate puts that at about US$56 billion (S$74.9 billion). More than three quarters of investor cash would be lost, with just 100 billion yuan (S$18.7 billion) being recovered from debt of as much as 460 billion…

Three Palestinian students attending US colleges shot and injured in Vermont

Three Palestinian students attending US colleges were shot on Saturday night in Burlington, Vermont, and were being treated for injuries on Sunday, according to the students’ former school in the West Bank. Ramallah Friends School said in a Facebook post on Sunday that three of its graduates had been shot near the University of Vermont Campus – Hisham Awartani, who…

4 found dead near North Carolina homeless camp; 3 shot before shooter killed self, police say

AUTRYVILLE: Deputies responding to a call about shots fired in North Carolina on Sunday found four people shot to death in what appeared to be a campsite for homeless people, authorities said. An initial review of the crime scene indicated someone killed three people before killing themselves, Sampson County Sheriff’s Capt. Eric Pope told WRAL-TV. Two men and two women…

Ex-Colombia president summoned over 1997 paramilitary massacre

BOGOTA: Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe will appear before the attorney general’s office next week over a 1997 paramilitary massacre, authorities said Thursday. While Uribe was governor of the Antioquia department, a group of 150 right-wing paramilitary members killed at least 15 people in the village of El Aro. Last week, paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, at a hearing with Colombia’s…

Welltok data breach exposes data of 8.5 million US patients

Healthcare SaaS provider Welltok is warning that a data breach exposed the personal data of nearly 8.5 million patients in the U.S. after a file transfer program used by the company was hacked in a data theft attack. Welltok works with health service providers across the U.S., maintaining online wellness programs, holding databases with personal patient data, generating predictive analytics,…