Home Republicans target Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz with original investigation
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: The Republican-led Home Oversight Committee is opening an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats’ candidate for vice chairman.Why it issues: The panel has spent the final year and a half of attempting to bring to mild opposed files about President Biden. Now, it’s setting its sights on the original Democratic establish.Riding the news: Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray soliciting for files about Walz’s connections to China.Walz spent a year instructing in China after graduating from college and later organized annual student trips to the nation as a high college instructor in the U.S… Read Extra
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The U.K. government is offering political candidates, election officials and others at high risk of being targeted online an extra layer of security on their personal devices.
The National Cyber Security Centre, part of the U.K.’s intelligence and security agency GCHQ, is concerned about attempts by the Russian intelligence services and China state-affiliated actors to carry out malicious activity targeting UK institutions and individuals, including parliamentarians, over recent months.
“Individuals who play important roles in our democracy are an attractive target for cyber actors seeking to disrupt or otherwise undermine our open and free society,” said Jonathon Ellison, NCSC director for national resilience and future technology.
The new Personal Internet Protection service is designed to guard against spear-phishing, malware and other cyber attacks. It provides an extra layer of security on personal devices by warning users if they try to visit a domain which the NCSC knows to be malicious, and by blocking outgoing traffic to these domains.
It’s based on the NCSC’s Protective Domain Name Service, developed principally for use by organizations, and which now covers millions of public sector users.
The NCSC is also encouraging higher-risk individuals to sign up for its Account Registration service—another opt-in service which allows the NCSC to alert individuals if malicious activity is detected on their personal accounts.
“In this significant year of elections around the world, I urge individuals eligible for our services to sign up and to follow our guidance now to bolster their defenses,” said Ellison.
The move comes as GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler warned that the agency now devotes more resources to China than any other single mission.
“Russia and Iran pose immediate threats, but China is the ‘epoch-defining’ challenge,” she said.
“The people of China and the Chinese community overseas have contributed greatly to life here in the UK. But recent events remind us that our country and democratic institutions remain of interest to the Chinese authorities.”
Earlier this year, the U.K. formally accused China of cyber campaigns against members of Parliament and the U.K. Electoral Commission, which regulates party and election finance and sets election standards.
The NCSC said that the Electoral Commission was “highly likely” to have been compromised by a Chinese state-affiliated entity between 2021 and 2022, leading to the theft of the personal data of millions of voters.
It said it was also almost certain that the China state-affiliated Advanced Persistent Threat Group 31 was carrying out reconnaissance activity against U.K. parliamentarians during a separate campaign in 2021.
And while blame hasn’t been officially attributed for a recent hack of a Ministry of Defence database, it’s widely speculated that China was the culprit—an accusation that the country has denied.
“Cyber is being deployed across multiple fronts to help the Chinese state meet its strategic ends… This should worry all of us concerned with cyber resilience,” said NCSC CEO Felicity Oswald earlier this week.
“Business leaders and networks defenders must take action to make critical systems more secure across our economy… China is certainly not treating security as an extra, and neither should we.”
Standard cybersecurity firm Fortinet has been hit by a cyber attack. 440 GB of recordsdata has been stolen.
The attack used to be applied by a hacker community named “Fortibitch”. The community tried to extort a ransom from the firm and posted the records on a hacking forum when it failed.
Per the firm, much less than 0.3% of its prospects were affected and there’s no cloth affect on enterprise.
The incident got here to light on early September 12 when a risk actor posted on a hacking forum that he had stolen 440 GB of recordsdata from Fortinet’s Microsoft SharePoint server. The put up also contained the credentials to a S3 bucket where the stolen records is kept and on hand for obtain.
The hacker community, which works by the title “Fortibitch,” tried to extort a ransom from the firm nonetheless, upon their refusal, published the records online.
What Does Fortinet Fetch to Negate About This?
“An particular individual won unauthorized salvage admission to to a miniature different of recordsdata kept on Fortinet’s occasion of a third-celebration cloud-basically based completely shared file power, which incorporated miniature records associated to a runt different of Fortinet prospects.” – Fortinet in a assertion
On the foundation, the firm refused to suppose how many prospects were affected or what invent of recordsdata used to be stolen. On the other hand, later, thru an replace on its arrangement, it printed that much less than 0.3% of its prospects were affected.
There’s no signal of focused malicious say in direction of them as of now, which is appropriate. All impacted prospects (which largely involves prospects from the Asia-Pacific space) were notified concerning the incident.
Fortinet also confirmed that its product and companies dangle now now not been impacted and there’s no signal of unauthorized salvage admission to on any of its assorted products. There’s also no signal of recordsdata encryption, deployment of ransomware, or salvage admission to to Fortinet’s corporate community.
Also, since the different of customers affected used to be barely runt, there’s no cloth affect on the firm’s funds or operation.
The firm contacted the law enforcement agency at this time after the attack used to be chanced on – the investigation is level-headed underway. An external forensics team used to be also hired, as smartly as to Fortinet’s in-condominium forensic team, to make certain an incident love this never occurs all over again.
About the Firm
Fortinet is the third-largest cybersecurity firm within the US with a total valuation of $60 billion. Based completely completely in California, it’s known for offering firewalls and endpoint security to companies across the field.
This has been a strong 365 days for Fortinet to this level. Earlier than this incident, it faced three assorted runt security lapses.
The major one used to be in January, when two extreme flaws were squawk in its FortiOS and FortiProxy HA cluster codes. The firm patched them, nonetheless there’s no formulation to make certain if there used to be any exploitation sooner than the patch.
There were two extra extreme flaws and a controversy with Fortinet’s running draw in February. Customers were leisurely to practice the fixes, as a outcomes of which better than 100,000 gadgets were exposed online. All the arrangement thru this time, China’s Volt Storm hacking community also started concentrating on Fortinet gadgets.
Lastly, in June, Chinese hackers breached the Netherlands Ministry of Protection’s security the expend of an unknown flaw. This flaw remained undetected for two months. For the time being, around 20,000 extra FortiGate firewalls were compromised sooner than the firm in the end grew to change into aware concerning the assaults.
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A lady employee used to be given the bogus to switch to the evening shift or hand in her keys after cooperating with an interior investigation, basically based entirely on the criticism.
Printed Oct. 7, 2024
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Dive Transient:
Shimmick Construction allegedly engaged in sex-basically based entirely discrimination in opposition to a lady employee and forced her to resign after she cooperated in a subsequent investigation, basically based entirely on a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Fee.
On the U.S. Navy Corps of Engineers’ Chickamauga Lock Alternative project in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the assign Shimmick is the high contractor, the woman used to be subjected to sex discrimination and gender-basically based entirely slurs, basically based entirely on the swimsuit. Men working on the positioning cursed at her and refused to study her instructions, even supposing she used to be performing long-established foreman, basically based entirely on the swimsuit. One man allegedly called her a derogatory name for a female physique portion.
After the woman’s fiancé, also a broken-down employee on the positioning, filed the criticism with Shimmick that precipitated the investigation, a supervisor gave the woman a assortment of straight away switching to the nightshift — no topic her must situation up for childcare — or handing in her keys and leaving her job, basically based entirely on the swimsuit.
Dive Perception:
Irvine, California-basically based entirely Shimmick, which makes a speciality of gorgeous-scale water projects, disputed the yarn introduced by the lawsuit.
“We firmly disagree with the characterization of the info alleged in this criticism,” the firm stated in a observation shared with Construction Dive. “Shimmick particularly has a long history of embracing variety and fostering a custom that treats all employees with fairness, appreciate and dignity. We sustain our teams to the very ideal ethical requirements, with honesty, security and professionalism central to all the pieces we attain.”
The EEOC’s lawsuit, filed Sept. 25 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, seeks a everlasting injunction barring Shimmick from conducting retaliation one day, backpay with hobby for the woman employee and punitive damages, amongst diversified remedies.
“The EEOC prioritizes enforcing anti-retaliation laws, particularly in industries look after construction, to assign sure girls must now not punished for preserving their rights and to ruin down the constraints that perpetuate their underrepresentation,” stated Edmond Sims, performing district director for the EEOC’s Memphis District Set aside aside of job, in a news originate about the swimsuit.
