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Canadian Hacker Linked To Anonymous Charged In Texas GOP Hack: Cyber Security Today for March 31, 2025
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Cybersecurity Today: Hacktivism, Solar Power Vulnerabilities, and Global Phishing Challenges In this episode of Cybersecurity Today, host David Shipley covers multiple cybersecurity stories including: a Canadian hacker charged for the 2021 Texas GOP...
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This is Cybersecurity Today and I'm your host David Shipley, sitting in for Jim Love. A Canadian hacker with linked Anonymous is charged for a 2021 hack of the Texas Republican Party solar power gear found vulnerable to remote sabotage. France fishes millions of middle school and high school students an online fraud in India claims the lives of an elderly couple. The U.S. department of justice announced on Friday that it has charged a Canadian man for the September 11, 2021 hack of the Texas Republican Party. The charges alleged that the hack involved the unauthorized access to a third party company's computer system in order to deface the Texas GOP website and download a copy of the political party's web server, which also included personal identifying information. Aubrey Cottle, 37, of Oshawa, Ontario, was charged by Canadian officials. The Ontario Provincial Police and Durham Regional Police assisted the FBI in the investigation. Caudle, AKA Curtainer, according to court documents, claimed to be behind the breaches of right wing social media platforms Parler, Gab and Trusocial, as well as the crowdfunding service GiveSendGo. Canadian listeners may remember that GiveSendGo was the service used by the 2022 trucker convoy protest. Cottle has significant has a significant online footprint, including claims to be among the early founders of the hacktivist group Anonymous. The Daily Dot has excellent coverage of this story, including alleged comments from Cottle taunting the FBI that are, well, colorful to say the least and likely not safe for work. My advice to online activists based on this story, committing crimes, taunting the FBI and messing with Texas are clearly a recipe for disaster for cybersecurity professionals. This case, should it go to trial, could give fascinating insights into so called hacktivism which we can likely expect to grow over the coming years given deeply divisive politics around the world. The court documents posted so far yield fascinating insights into hacktivist culture in the gathered discourse chats, researchers from cybersecurity firm Forescout said in a report released late last week that there are dozens of vulnerabilities in inverters used in solar panel technology made by popular manufacturers Sungrow and growwatt, both based in China and Germany based SMA Solar Technology. The vulnerabilities vary in severity from information disclosure right up to the ability to overwrite devices firmware with malicious code. Key Takeaways from this story the energy Internet of things will be a juicy target for cybercriminals and nation states as the world moves to more renewable energy and the use of smart grid technologies. The challenge of securing this critical infrastructure will continue to grow exponentially. Have you ever wondered how smart kids are when it comes to cyber scams? Turns out that France was thinking the same thing. France has raised the bar for cybersecurity awareness for kids between the ages of 11 and 18 with a national phishing simulation. More than 2.5 million students in 4700 middle and high schools received a phishing test. The message urged them to click on a link that would lead them to a website where they could download pirated video games and cheats for free. More than 210,000 students, or about 1 in 10, clicked on the malicious link. Instead of pirated software, they got a video educating them about the risks of cybersecurity and illegal actions on the Internet. For context, 1 in 10 isn't the worst I've seen on a phishing click rate, but remember, phishing click rates can vary dramatically based on the appeal of the lure. Had they tried a phishing test about, say, the students new marks being emailed to their parents or something more related to what they were expecting in their school information, the click rate could have been far higher. This phishing test, called Operation Cactus, built on a smaller test done last year in certain regions of France. If they want to take this program to the next level, my recommendation would be to actually make it a continuous monthly exercise throughout the school year with a variety of different phishing tests. Now, this next story may be disturbing for some listeners. We're going to talk about suicide and the growing human cost of technology enabled fraud. An elderly couple from the Belgavi district in India who are harassed by fraudsters posing as telecommunications company officials committed suicide. Diego Santan Nazareth, 82, and his wife Lavinia, 79, were found dead in their home. Stories from national media in India have placed their losses to the scammers as high as US$60,000. They hadn't told their family, friends or police of the online harassment which had accused them of being involved in criminal activities via their mobile SIM card. This tragedy comes amidst a surge of technology enabled fraud globally. According to Meta, 100 million WhatsApp, accounts tied to Indian phone numbers have been banned for abuse of the service in 2024 alone. Here in Canada, we've seen online fraud continue to grow at ridiculous rates. It's up nearly 20% in 2024 compared to the previous year, and police estimate that fraud losses could now be more than $6 billion in this country. Police have shared similar stories here in Canada of desperate individuals who are suicidal after losing their life savings in investment or romance baiting scams. And while fraud numbers are up in Canada and the consequences are becoming even more dire, sadly, resources for our national police force have continued to be cut. And with even more pressure to spend more on border security, that's going to get worse. Now, here's what we all need to take away from this tragedy. As security professionals, we need to work even harder to destigmatize fraud. We need to make sure that our friends, family, colleagues and clients know it's okay to tell someone and to ask for help. We're always interested in your opinion and you can contact us@EditorialEchnewsDay CA or leave a comment under the YouTube video. I'm your host, David Shipley, sitting in for Gym Love. We'll be back in on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.