After a year of high-profile cybercrime busts, a senior Justice Department official said Tuesday that he expects more to come in 2024.
At the 10th International Conference on Cybersecurity in New York City this week, several top prosecutors within the Justice Department spoke about cybersecurity trends throughout 2023 and what this year may bring.
Newell highlighted several operations in 2023, including the takedown of ransomware gangs like Hive and AlphV, as well as actions against popular botnets like Snake and Qakbot.
His comments came after the U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York - Breon Peace and Damian Williams - spoke at length about their priorities for the year.
Williams said the Southern District would prioritize prosecutions in the cryptocurrency hacking space after their most recent action against Shakeeb Ahmed - a former security engineer who pleaded guilty last month for stealing more than $12 million from hacking two decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
In addition to cryptocurrency platform thefts, his office is also looking into other crypto scams and fraudulent coins, he said.
Peace, from New York's Eastern District, explained that his office would focus on dismantling the infrastructure around cybercriminal activity as a supplement to cases against cybercriminals.
He mentioned several recent operations, including the takedown of the Bizlato platform last month.
He also said that law enforcement plans to conduct more disruptions that don't involve criminal charges, like the Snake malware takedown in May 2023.
In that case, there were no prosecutions and the activity was not attributed to any specific individuals, but they were able to stop an effective Russian government espionage campaign nonetheless, Peace said.
Peace noted that one alarming trend his office continues to see is that hackers are getting quicker at exploiting new vulnerabilities.
They continue to opportunistically scan for unpatched software with known vulnerabilities, and the time it takes them to exploit them is dropping each year.
Both Williams and Peace urged victims of cyberattacks and ransomware incidents to report them to the FBI or DOJ, even if they have paid a ransom, because any information provided is valuable.
Peace noted that in situations where a victim pays a ransom, it is helpful for law enforcement agencies to identify the cryptocurrency address where it was paid so that funds may be recovered.
The Justice Department will be able to issue disclosure delays for companies that are important to national security.
Both Williams and Peace said a concerning trend they are seeing is the plummeting barrier to entry into cybercrime - allowing less skilled actors to increasingly participate in complicated hacks.
The tools for cybercrime are getting cheaper and easier to deploy, helping younger and less experienced people commit harmful cyberattacks that would have been beyond their reach a few years ago.
Cybercrime, Williams said, is more professionalized and available for those without technical skill.
Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia.
He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
This Cyber News was published on therecord.media. Publication date: Tue, 09 Jan 2024 21:50:05 +0000