A Brief Weekly Review of Top Stories that Dominated the Cyberworld

The outgoing week saw a number of events that had long-term effects on the cybersecurity landscape. But the news that eclipsed many notable events was the tragic death of antivirus pioneer John McAffee, who was found dead in a Spanish prison. Other important developments of the week included revelation of a data breach by UK law firm Gateley and the US’s seizure of several Iran-linked news sites.

Here’s a brief review of the major developments of the outgoing week.

British Law Firm Gateley Revealed Data Breach

Gateley, a legal and professional services group in the UK, disclosed it was probing a cybersecurity event that led to the revelation of some data, including client information.

Listed on the London Stock Exchange (GTLY), Gatley said its IT team spotted a breach from an external resource. The company took some systems offline after the intrusion was exposed, but said it swiftly restored core systems.

Based on the information the company gathered, it believed the effect of the incident was limited and the cybercriminals only managed to access almost 0.2% of its data.

Attacks against Container Infrastructures on the Rise

As per reports, attacks against the container infrastructure, including supply chain attacks, are on the increase in both frequency and sophistication. A new vulnerable container using internet scanning tools can be detected in just a few hours.

Aqua Security’s Team Nautilus has found that rivals could spot a new misconfigured container within an average of five hours. In 50pc of cases, the new container was spotted in less than one hour. The implication: if a new container is established today with a view to safeguarding it tomorrow, it will be too late. The probability is that the container will already be affected.

More than 90pc of the attacks are intended to capture resources for cryptomining. Most of these are related to the Kinsing malware drive, which downloads a cryptominer.

US Seized Several Iran-linked News Sites, Accused of Disinformation

In a move that appeared to be a sweeping crackdown on Iran media, the United States seized a range of Iran’s state-linked news website domains that were accused of spreading disinformation.

According to the US Justice Department, 33 of the held websites were used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union, which was singled out by the U.S. government last October for what officials branded as efforts to spread disinformation and create discord among American voters ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

The website domains are owned by U.S. firms, but notwithstanding the sanctions, neither the IRTVU nor KH obtained the required licenses from the U.S. government before using the domain names.

Antivirus Creator John McAfee Found Dead in Spanish Prison

The news of John McAfee, the creator of McAfee antivirus software, was found dead in his jail cell near Barcelona in what officials claimed was an apparent suicide. The tragic news, which shook the technology world to its core, came hours after a Spanish court approved his repatriation to the United States to face tax charges punishable by several years in prison.

The peculiar cryptocurrency promoter and tax adversary whose history of legal battle spanned from Tennessee to Central America to the Caribbean was found at the Brians 2 prison in northeastern Spain. As per the regional Catalan government, security personnel tried to resuscitate him, but the prison’s medical team finally confirmed his death.

The antivirus guru, who was arrested last year, had been in the Spain prison awaiting the extradition proceedings. The arrest followed charges in Tennessee for dodging taxes after being unable to report income from endorsing cryptocurrencies. The criminal charges carried a prison sentence of up to 30 years.