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Pawn Storm Hacking Develops New Tools For Cyberespionage
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A Russian cyberespionage group known as Pawn Storm has made use of new tools in an ongoing attack campaign against defense contractors with the goal of defeating network isolation policies.
Since August, the group has been engaged in an attack campaign focused on defense contractors, according to security researchers from Kaspersky Lab.
During this operation, the group has used a new version of a backdoor program called AZZY and a new set of data-stealing modules. One of those modules monitors for USB storage devices plugged into the computer and steals files from them based on rules defined by the attackers.
The Kaspersky Lab researchers believe that this module’s goal is to defeat so-called network air gaps, network segments where sensitive data is stored and which are not connected to the Internet to limit their risk of compromise.
However, it’s fairly common for employees in organizations that use such network isolation policies to move data from air-gapped computers to their workstations using USB thumb drives.
Pawn Storm joins other sophisticated cyberespionage groups, like Equation and Flame, that are known to have used malware designed to defeat network air gaps.
“Over the last year, the Sofacy group has increased its activity almost tenfold when compared to previous years, becoming one of the most prolific, agile and dynamic threat actors in the arena,” the Kaspersky researchers said in a blog post. “This activity spiked in July 2015, when the group dropped two completely new exploits, an Office and Java zero-day.”
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/pawn-storm-hacking-group-develops-new-tools-for-cyberespionage.html
Will Lenovo Go Public In 2K14?
Lenovo’s parent firm Legend Holdings could float an initial public offering (IPO) as soon as 2014, according to the firm’s chairman.
Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of Legend Holdings told China Business News that the firm plans to list on the China A-share market between 2014 and 2016. Chuanzhi also reportedly said the company will invest $3.2bn by 2014 to develop its various businesses.
Legend Holdings is 36 percent owned by the Chinese state controlled Academy of Sciences, with a further 20 percent owned by the private investment firm China Oceanwide Holdings Group.
Legend Holdings also has venture capital and real estate interests outside of Lenovo Group. The firm’s system building operations however have gone from strength to strength since it bought IBM’s PC business back in 2005, and it is now heavily promoting its Yoga tablet-laptop hybrid device.
Earlier this year Gartner reported that Lenovo had overtaken HP to become the largest PC vendor, something that HP disputed by offering IDC’s figures. Regardless of HP’s protestations then, Lenovo is set to overtake HP as its PC business continues to grow while HP’s has been shrinking for some time.
Legend Holdings might want to cash in on Lenovo’s high flying status and a cash injection from an IPO could help the company invest in designing products for the smartphone and tablet markets.
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Is HP Getting Sued?
HP is in the process of being sued by an angry investor who claims the company knew statements about its Autonomy acquisition were misleading and led the stock to fall.
A proposed class action lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco federal court. HP bought British software firm Autonomy for a $11.1 billion last year but made an $8.8 billion write-down on its acquisition claiming the company inflated sales with improper accounting.
Autonomy co-founder Mike Lynch has denied any wrongdoing. The lawsuit, one of the first to be filed by investors on the Autonomy mess, said HP hid the fact it gained control of Autonomy based on financial statements that could not be relied upon.
It claims HP had not revealed to investors that it tried to undo the Autonomy agreement before it closed because of the accounting issues.
Lenovo On The Rise
Lenovo has topped off a great 2012 with record sales figures and revenues, and claimed it took 15.6 percent of the PC market.
Lenovo is the PC maker that has bucked the industry trend of a shrinking PC market, posting faster than average industry growth for 14 consecutive quarters. All of that has left the firm announcing an 11 percent increase in second fiscal quarter sales to $8.7bn with profits of $162m, an increase of 13 percent over the same period last year.
Lenovo has managed to maintain the legendary status held by IBM’s Thinkpads and introduce its own low-cost models aimed at consumers. The firm has also been pushing smartphones in China and close to half of its revenues in its second fiscal quarter came from its home market.
Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo said, “Our global PC market share reached another historic high, moving us closer to our dream of becoming the worldwide PC leader. With four years’ effort, our consumer PC business has become the world’s number one in this segment for the first time. Our smartphone business in China, which we started only two years ago, has again strengthened its number two position,”
Lenovo Adds Enterprise Servers
Eager to expand its horizons beyond PCs and tablets, Lenovo on Monday announced the first server from the newly created Enterprise Product Group, which deals in servers, storage, networking and software.
The ThinkServer TD330 is a tower server based on Intel’s Xeon E5-2400 processors. The server will support up to 16 processor cores and start at $929.
Lenovo last week announced the formation of the Enterprise Product Group. It is headed by Roy Guillen, vice president and general manager of the division. Guillen was previously vice president and general manager of Dell’s data center solutions (DCS) division.
Lenovo already offers low-end servers and workstations for homes and small businesses, but the new division will target small, medium-size and large enterprises. Lenovo has offered low-end servers based on Intel’s Xeon E3 and E5 processors, but the company did not respond to a request for comment on whether existing ThinkServer products would be part of the enterprise product portfolio.
“We’ve placed expanded emphasis on building our server portfolio this year, introducing products that meet the needs of all our customers — from enterprise customers to small businesses,” Guillen said in a statement.
Lenovo established itself as a PC company after it bought IBM’s PC division in 2005. Lenovo’s progress in the PC market has been rapid, with IDC placing the company as the world’s largest PC vendor for the first time in the third quarter this year. The new enterprise division will put Lenovo in competition with IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which also sell x86 servers.