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Conti Ransomware Hacker Sentenced After Group Attacked Over 1,000 Victims Worldwide

Ukrainian national Oleksii Lytvynenko sentenced to four years in US prison for his role in Conti ransomware attacks on 1,000+ victims.

Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko, 44, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for working as a developer and intruder in the Conti ransomware operation, coding a malware loader and handling data stolen from 12 victims. Conti compromised over 1,000 victims across 47 US states and 31 foreign countries between 2020 and 2022, generating more than $150 million in ransoms. He was arrested in County Cork, Ireland in July 2023 and extradited to the US. The sentencing is part of a wider US investigation into the Conti and TrickBot ecosystem.

Cyber Security Newsupdated · 4d agofirst · 4d agoPolicy & legal 7 sources

Ukrainian lawyer's second career as a Conti coder earns him 4 years behind bars

Ukrainian lawyer turned Conti malware coder sentenced to four years in US prison, ordered to forfeit $25,042 in Bitcoin.

Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko, 44, a trained lawyer who joined Conti under the handle "henry", pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to four years. He coded a malware loader, researched targets using Google and ZoomInfo, and possessed data stolen from eight US victims who reported over $1.5 million in losses. Investigators found Cobalt Strike running and a Rocket.Chat session over Tor on his laptop when Gardaí arrested him in County Cork, Ireland in July 2023; he was extradited to the US in October 2025. Conti attacked over 1,000 victims across 47 US states and 31 countries, with payouts exceeding $150 million by January 2022.

The Register · Securityupdated · 4d agofirst · 4d agoPolicy & legal 7 sources

CISA Urges Service Providers to Provide Transparent Updates During Major IT and OT Outages

CISA and FBI issued guidance urging service providers to deliver timely, transparent communications during major IT and OT outages.

CISA, with the FBI and international partners, released 'Communicating Under Pressure: Best Practices for Service Providers', urging providers to prepare crisis-communication procedures, provide timely status updates during IT/OT outages, and maintain out-of-band communication channels. The guidance warns that disruptions to telecom, cloud, energy, and water services can cascade across critical infrastructure. It aligns with CISA's CI Fortify initiative supporting IT/OT isolation and recovery.

GBHackers · 4d agoAdvisory

Conti ransomware gang member sentenced to 4 years in prison

US court sentences Ukrainian Conti ransomware member Oleksii Lytvynenko to four years; the gang extorted over $150M from 1,000+ victims.

Ukrainian national Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko, 44, was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in Conti ransomware attacks between 2021 and 2022, after being arrested by Irish police in July 2023 and extradited to the US. He pleaded guilty in June 2026 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, admitting he controlled stolen data from 12 victims and helped develop a loader used in the gang's double extortion attacks. Per the DOJ, Conti attacked more than 1,000 victims across 47 US states and 31 foreign countries, with victim payouts exceeding $150 million as of January 2022. Conti shut down in 2022 and later split into groups including BlackCat, Black Basta, Hive and Quantum.

BleepingComputerupdated · 4d agofirst · 4d agoPolicy & legal 7 sources1

Chinese AI firms are siphoning capabilities from American models, CISA warns

CISA, NSA and FBI warn Chinese AI firms including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI extracted billions of tokens from US frontier models via distillation campaigns.

A joint CISA, NSA and FBI advisory says China-based firms including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI have run industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns against US frontier models such as Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok since at least late 2024, likely with Chinese government knowledge. The campaigns used gray-market API proxies called transfer stations, premium account pools and traffic routing to bypass restrictions, evade safeguards and exfiltrate billions of tokens used to train models like DeepSeek R1/V3 and Kimi. The agencies challenge DeepSeek's reported $5.6 million training cost and recommend identity verification, usage monitoring, response variation, differential privacy and indicator sharing as defenses.

Help Net Securityupdated · 4d agofirst · 6d agoAdvisory in the wild 13 sources1

CISA Warns Chinese AI Firms Extract Billions of Tokens From Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok

CISA, NSA and FBI advisory says six Chinese AI firms extracted billions of tokens from Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok via API proxies since late 2024.

A joint advisory from CISA, NSA and FBI alleges China-based AI companies including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI harvested billions of tokens across millions of exchanges from Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok variants since late 2024. Operators allegedly used API proxy 'transfer stations', account pools, bulk premium subscriptions and prompt injection or jailbreak-style requests to force models to reveal chain-of-thought reasoning. DeepSeek's R1 and V3 and Moonshot's Kimi-K2 and Kimi-K3 models reportedly benefited from the extracted data. CISA urged providers to add identity checks, monitor subscription-to-usage ratios, rate limit, and share infrastructure signals with cloud platforms.

Cyber Security Newsupdated · 4d agofirst · 6d agoAI safety & security in the wild 13 sources

DeepSeek, Alibaba and Chinese AI Firms Extract Billions of Tokens From U.S. AI Models

NSA, CISA and FBI advisory AA26-251A accuses DeepSeek, Alibaba and four other Chinese AI firms of industrial-scale distillation of US frontier models.

Joint advisory AA26-251A from NSA, CISA and FBI accuses DeepSeek, Alibaba, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI of extracting billions of tokens from Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok variants since at least late 2024, likely with Chinese government awareness. Campaigns allegedly used API proxy 'transfer stations', account pools, metadata sanitization and prompt injection to harvest reasoning, coding, agentic and reinforcement-learning capabilities, with techniques mapped to MITRE ATLAS. DeepSeek's R1 and V3 and Alibaba's Qwen families reportedly trained on harvested outputs, and DeepSeek's $5.6 million training-cost claim is disputed as excluding distilled data value. Agencies urge anomaly monitoring, output alteration for suspected extractors, and intelligence sharing across vendors, clouds and aggregators.

GBHackersupdated · 4d agofirst · 6d agoAI safety & security in the wild 13 sources1· 1 read

Russian suspect in bank account takeovers is extradited to US

Russian web developer Sergei Filimonov was extradited from Georgia to the US to face charges in a multimillion-dollar bank account takeover fraud.

Sergei Anatolyevich Filimonov, 36, appeared in an Atlanta federal court on September 4 and pleaded not guilty to bank fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft charges. Prosecutors say that from November 2023 to October 2025 his group bought sponsored search-engine links that diverted online banking customers to spoofed login pages, stole their credentials, and initiated unauthorized wire transfers. The FBI linked the scheme to the December 2025 seizure of the domain web3adspanels.org, identifying at least 19 victims, roughly $14.6 million in confirmed losses, and about $28 million in attempted losses.

The Record · 7d agoPolicy & legal

China-Based Artificial Intelligence Companies Conducting Industrial-Scale Distillation Campaigns Against U.S. AI Companies

NSA, CISA, and FBI warn DeepSeek, Alibaba, and other Chinese AI firms ran industrial-scale distillation of U.S. frontier models, threatening U.S. AI leadership.

A joint NSA, CISA, and FBI Cybersecurity Advisory (AA26-251A) says China-based firms DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted billions of tokens from U.S. frontier models including Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok, likely with Chinese government knowledge. Campaigns running since at least late 2024 used native APIs, cloud providers, third-party aggregators, gray-market proxy "transfer stations", and shared premium subscriptions to bypass geographic restrictions, evade safeguards, and violate providers' terms of use. The agencies recommend detecting anomalous prompts, accounts, and usage patterns; subtly altering responses to suspected distillers; and cross-organization intelligence sharing. They also call DeepSeek's publicly cited $5.6M training cost misleading because it excludes data acquired through distillation.

CISA Advisories · 7d agoAdvisory in the wild1

Communicating Under Pressure: Best Practices for Service Providers

CISA, FBI, and international partners issued guidance on crisis communications for service providers during IT and OT outages, emphasizing clarity, transparency, and backup channels.

CISA, the FBI, and international partners published guidance on planning and executing clear, timely, audience-appropriate communications during IT and OT service outages, whether caused by cyber threat actors, human error, or natural hazards. The guidance stresses clarity, accountability, and transparency, and warns that outages at one organization can cascade across interconnected systems. It recommends critical infrastructure owners assume telecommunications may be unreliable and integrate backup communication methods into crisis plans, and points to CISA's CI Fortify initiative for OT isolation and recovery resources.

CISA Advisories · 13d agoAdvisory

Five Venezuelan Nationals Plead Guilty in Kansas ATM Jackpotting Attempt

Five Venezuelan nationals pleaded guilty to failed ATM jackpotting attempts in Kansas as the FBI reports 700+ US incidents in 2025.

The five defendants traveled from Indiana to Kansas in December 2025 and tried to install malware on ATMs in Wamego and Manhattan, planning to remotely trigger the machines to dispense cash. Both attempts failed — one triggered an alarm — and the men were arrested days later after surveillance captured the thefts. All five pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank larceny; one has received a nine-month prison sentence. The FBI counted more than 700 jackpotting incidents in 2025 with over $20 million in losses, part of 1,900 incidents since 2020.

Security Affairs · 14d agoPhishing & fraud

FBI seizes hacking tools it says China used to attack NASA, DOE, US Senate and other critical networks

FBI seized botnets and hacking tools it says China used to attack NASA, DOE, US Senate and other critical networks.

The FBI seized command infrastructure and hacking tools allegedly used by Chinese state-linked botnets to compromise NASA, the Department of Energy, the US Senate and other critical networks. The operation, described as busting Beijing's botnets, disrupts access to networks of national security significance. The action ties into ongoing US efforts to counter Chinese state-sponsored intrusion activity against government and critical-infrastructure targets.

The Register · Security · 19d agoThreat actor in the wild

Srsly Risky Biz: Trump's Private Hacker Memo Is the Right Idea

A Trump presidential memo directs DHS to authorize vetted private-sector hackers to conduct cyber operations against foreign cybercriminal groups (CE-TCOs).

A presidential memorandum directs the Department of Homeland Security to establish a program authorizing private companies to conduct cyber surveillance and cyber effects operations against Cyber-Enabled Transnational Crime Organisations (CE-TCOs). Participating companies must pass vetting, obtain government approval before operations, and post a USD $1 million bond. The accompanying fact sheet cites more than USD $20.8 billion in US losses to cyber-enabled crime in 2025. Critics worry about accidental escalation if operations touch foreign government systems.

Risky Business News · 26d agoPolicy & legal

ICE Collecting DNA Samples

ICE's DNA collection program projects detainee samples to reach 33% of CODIS offender index by 2030, raising privacy concerns.

A Schneier on Security blog post discusses ICE collecting DNA samples from detainees, citing Georgetown Law research. DHS detainee samples are projected to constitute 33% of the FBI's CODIS offender index in 2030, up from 0.2% in 2019. The post raises concerns that samples collected under civil authority are being searched against crime scenes indefinitely, potentially without legal cause under Fourth Amendment standards.

Schneier on Security · 27d agoPolicy & legal

FBI: Hackers using social engineering to breach accounts and steal explicit content

FBI warns hackers use social engineering and password-stuffing to hijack social media accounts and sell victims' explicit content on criminal marketplaces.

The FBI issued an alert on threat actors who breach social media accounts of adults and children using password-stuffing with credentials from data leak sites, impersonation of social media support staff, and cloned login pages, in order to steal and sell explicit content. Stolen content is often posted with victims' personal information, leading to sextortion, harassment, and stalking. Related DOJ cases include a man who pleaded guilty to hacking about 600 Snapchat accounts and a former University of Michigan coach who accessed records of about 150,000 people across 100+ colleges.

The Record · Aug 12, 2026Phishing & fraud in the wild

Delta investigates in-flight Wi-Fi spoofing on post

A passenger on Delta flight 591 allegedly spoofed the airline's in-flight Wi-Fi with a rogue access point, prompting an FBI and FAA investigation.

Delta Airlines is investigating an incident on flight 591 from Las Vegas to Atlanta in which a passenger reportedly created a rogue Wi-Fi network named 'Delta WiFi Fast' to steal sensitive passenger data. The cabin crew deactivated the aircraft's Wi-Fi for roughly 30 minutes, and Delta says flight safety and aircraft operating systems were never affected. The FBI's Atlanta office and the FAA acknowledged awareness of the incident, which bears hallmarks of an evil twin attack involving spoofed login portals and credential harvesting. DEF CON organizers said this year's conference in Las Vegas also suffered multiple similar deauthentication Wi-Fi attacks.

CyberScoop · Aug 11, 2026Phishing & fraud in the wild