Cyberattack disrupts X, AI Empowers Cybercrime, Ford Airbus Hacked

Hello again! New week, same old concerns. You got that right- we are talking about cyber attacks penetrating deeper into our everyday lives.

We are back with our fresh dose of cyber news. This week, we will talk about the X outage. Next, we will focus on AI and analyze whether or not it has actually contributed to increased cyberattacks. Lastly, we will focus on the recent data hostage crisis that has affected Airbus and Ford.

Let’s not waste any more time and jump straight to the details!

Cyberattack leads to sudden X outage

X experienced a massive cyberattack this Monday. Elon Musk shared the details while hinting towards nation states or organized threat groups as the main perpetrators. Because of the attack, X users faced as many as three outages in a single day. Each outage incident lasted for around 1 hour. Musk has said that even though regular attacks are common, this one was on a huge scale. The threat actors had planned this attack elaborately.

Downdetector, a website that keeps track of website disruptions, identified a total of three outages across the span of 24 hours. 

Every time users tried accessing X, they got the message: “Something went wrong. Try reloading.”  As many as 40,000 complaints peaked at a certain point during the intermittent outages.

Soon after Musk’s statement, Dark Storm, a 2023-originated hackers group, claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on X. They posted a screenshot on Telegram claiming, “We took Twitter offline.” 

Experts believe that it is highly likely that the attack on X was a Distributed Denial of Service attack. Such attacks are designed specifically to overwhelm any specific platform by bringing in humongous traffic that eventually leads to outages or slowdowns. 

Is AI really bolstering the attempts by cyber crooks?

While threat actors are quite eager to exploit AI or artificial intelligence to enhance their cyber campaigns, experts believe that cybercriminals have not been able to make the most out of AI tools. Intel 471, one of the leading cybersecurity vendors, believes that threat actors have not yet unlocked the power of AI at its fullest.

One of the major reasons behind this significant win is the guardrails set by reputed technology brands. The guardrails have managed to restrict cybercriminals from using AI tools for malicious intentions. 

With every passing day, legitimate AI tools are further improving, one update at a time. Besides, their open-source nature makes it further difficult for cybercrooks to leverage them.

Even though threat actors are trying their best to run and sell their crooked AI tools, such as malicious chatbots, swift actions taken by cybersecurity experts are giving them a tough time. The shelf life of such malicious tools is merely a couple of weeks, and then they either get taken down or are made obsolete forever. 

As cyber threats escalate, organizations must strengthen their email security with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prevent phishing attempts that often exploit major outages and data breaches.

Data hostage crisis affects Ford and Airbus

Tata Technologies has been allegedly attacked by a ransomware group called Hunters International. Tata Tech is a multinational tech company that serves popular brands such as Airbus, Honda, Ford, and Jaguar. The ransomware group has enlisted the name of Tata Tech on the Dark Web as its latest victim.

If we are to believe the attackers, a dataset worth 1.4TB has been wiped off. It includes a whopping 730,000 files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, and so much more. The core purpose of enlisting Tata Tech’s name on the Dark Web is to be able to coerce them into paying ransom in exchange for the stolen data.

Hunters International has also shared a part of the data they managed to wipe off. The leaked data contains sensitive details of active and former employees at Tata Technologies. The breached data also includes sensitive company papers. For example, the agreements with Indian as well as international clients, purchase deals, and so on.

What’s a real cause for concern is that Tata Technologies is facing a similar attack for the fourth time in a row. Prior to this, Tata Teleservices was attacked by the LockBit gang. Tata Steel’s name was also enlisted by the REvil Gang. Similarly, Tata Power was also attacked by threat actors.

Tata Technology has been tight-lipped about the claims of Hunter International. However, they went public about a cyberattack that affected their IT assets just two months ago. At that time, the tech giant assured its stakeholders that their operations were “fully functional and unaffected throughout.” Experts are suspicious of the uncanny connection between this recent attack and the prior one.

The attack on Tata Technology is a staggering reminder of the increasing instances of ransomware attacks. Over the past decade, the number of hacking cases has steeped as they primarily focus on critical infrastructures such as healthcare, government entities, and finance sectors.