NBA Warns Fans of Cyber Attack and Data Breach

“The data hacked was limited, and it is ample to do phishing attacks and other scams. The NBA urges its fans to stay cautious when they open doubtful emails that only appear to be from the association or its partners.”

Though the credentials of fans were not impacted by the attack, the hackers managed to steal some of their information. The National Basketball Association (NBA) has already hired a third-party cybersecurity service to investigate and resolve the issue.

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However, the data hacked was limited, and it is ample to do phishing attacks and other scams. The NBA urges its fans to stay cautious when they open doubtful emails that only appear to be from the association or its partners.

To ensure that fans won’t get trapped in phishing attempts, the association clarified that it will never ask its fans for their usernames, account information, or passwords through their emails. Another indication that the email is true is if the email address ends in “@nba.com.”

Fans requested to ensure that if they do get an email with attachments that have suspicious links and take it to another website, they must verify it first before opening it since it could lead fans to a malicious website.

Previous NBA-Related Cyber Attacks

Back in April 2021, the NBA team Houston Rockets also faced a cyber attack, where the hackers tried to install malware on the computer systems of the franchise. However, the trials failed and threat actors did not breach their systems.

Houston Rockets hired cybersecurity experts to investigate the attack as they worked with the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) as well. 

Tracey Hughes, Houston Rockets Spokesperson, said, “the organization detected suspicious activity on certain systems in its internal network.”

The malware did not impose any threat because of the cyber defenses that were already installed before the attack. The Houston Rockets mentioned that a few systems were impacted but it did not disturb their operations.

New US Cybersecurity Strategy Targets Cyber Attacks from China

“The strategy also pointed towards China which is considered, “the broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks.”

The US unveils a new cybersecurity strategy that puts a huge responsibility on tech giants in preventing cyber crimes and cyber attacks.

The National Cybersecurity Strategy made by The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration in the US put stress on equalizing the responsibility to safeguard cyberspace by “shifting the responsibility for cybersecurity away from local governments, individuals or small businesses and also to the companies that are best fit to minimize risks for all of us.

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The strategy also pointed towards China which is considered, “the broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks.”

The strategy ensured that we must reorient incentives to support long-term investments by “striking a careful balance between defending ourselves against urgent threats today and simultaneously strategically planning for and investing in a resilient future”.

The US government said by using all instruments of national power, “we will make malicious cyber actors incapable of threatening the national security or public safety of the United States” and track ransomware threats via a complete Federal approach and in “lockstep with our international partners”.

The US will put the responsibility on those organizations in the digital ecosystem which are best placed to minimize risk and move the consequences of poor cybersecurity away from the most feeble “in order to make our digital ecosystem more trustworthy”.

The country has lately been the victim of several nation-state cyber attacks on its industry and government organizations, especially from China-based cyber attacks.

The country “seeks a world where responsible state behavior in cyberspace is expected and reinforced and where irresponsible behavior is isolating and costly”.

Cybersecurity Attacks: New Wave of Ransomware Target ESXi Hypervisors of VMware

Synopsis

“VMware ESXi hypervisors which are bare-metal hypervisors that install directly onto physical servers are the target of a new wave of attacks made to place ransomware on compromised systems.”

VMware is a top-notch provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, allowing digital innovation with enterprise control. The VMware ESXi hypervisors which are bare-metal hypervisors that install directly onto physical servers are the target of a new wave of attacks made to place ransomware on compromised systems.

The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), France said on Friday, “These attack campaigns appear to exploit CVE-2021-21974, for which a patch has been available since February 23, 2021,”.

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VMware in its released alert explained the issues as an OpenSLP heap-overflow exposure that could cause the execution of arbitrary code.

The virtualization services provider noticed, “A malicious actor residing within the same network segment as ESXi who has access to port 427 may be able to trigger the heap-overflow issue in OpenSLP service resulting in remote code execution,”.

Resecurity, a California-based cybersecurity company said in January, “The actors are inviting both Russian- and English-speaking affiliates to collaborate with a big number of Initial Access Brokers (IABs) in [the] dark web.

Notably, the group behind the Nevada Ransomware is also buying compromised access by themselves, the group has a dedicated team for post-exploitation, and for conducting network intrusions into the targets of interest.”

Although, Bleeping Computer, an information security and technology news publication said that the ransom notes seen in the attacks do not resemble Nevada ransomware, adding the strain is being tracked under the name ESXiArgs.

OVHcloud, a French cloud services provider said that these Ransomware attacks are discovered across the globe mainly focusing on Europe to disrupt its cybersecurity power. It is speculated that these ransomware attacks are done with Nevada, a Rust-based ransomware strain that surfaced on the scene in December 2022.

Hive, Luna, BlackCat, RansomExx, Nokoyawa, and Agenda are other ransomware families that have embraced Rust in recent months.