Thursday, April 28, 2016



Complete DHS Report for April 28, 2016

Daily Report                                            

Top Stories

• Seven California residents were charged the week of April 18 for their roles in a $14 million identity theft and international money laundering scheme where the group filed approximately 7,000 fraudulent tax returns. – Los Angeles Daily News See item 3 below in the Financial Services Sector

• A 6-alarm fire April 26 at Kofkoff Egg Farms in Connecticut killed at least 80,000 chickens, destroyed 1 of the facility’s 13 chicken coops, and prompted the response of 150 firefighters. – Hartford Courant

11. April 27, Hartford Courant – (Connecticut) Fire at Lebanon egg farm kills 80,000 chickens, investigation underway. A 6-alarm fire April 26 at Kofkoff Egg Farms in Lebanon, Connecticut, killed at least 80,000 chickens, destroyed 1 of the facility’s 13 chicken coops, and prompted 150 firefighters from 25 fire departments to remain on site for several hours containing the blaze. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Source: http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-lebanon-kofkoff-egg-farms-fire-0427-20160426-story.html

• Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., expanded a previous recall April 26 to include approximately 4,568,080 pounds of its fully cooked chicken products due to potential contamination with extraneous materials. – U.S. Department of Agriculture

12. April 27, U.S. Department of Agriculture – (National) Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. recalls poultry products due to possible foreign matter contamination. Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., expanded an April 7 recall April 26 to include approximately 4,568,080 pounds of its fully cooked chicken products sold in 23 variations due to potential contamination with plastic, wood, rubber, and metal pieces after the company received consumer complaints regarding extraneous materials found in the chicken nugget products. There have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions in connection with the recall and the products were distributed for institutional use nationwide.

• Pfizer Inc., and Wyeth agreed to pay $784.6 million April 27 to resolve allegations that Wyeth sold its Protonix Oral and Protonix IV drugs through hidden, bundled sales arrangements without notifying the Federal Government, which allowed hospitals to earn deep discounts. – U.S. Department of Justice

14. April 27, U.S. Department of Justice – (National) Wyeth and Pfizer agree to pay $784.6 million to resolve lawsuit alleging that Wyeth underpaid drug rebates to Medicaid. The U.S. Department of Justice announced April 27 that Pfizer Inc., and Wyeth agreed to pay $784.6 million to resolve allegations that Wyeth sold two of its proton pump inhibitor (PPI) drugs, Protonix Oral and Protonix IV, through hidden, bundled sales arrangements allowing a hospital to earn deep discounts on both drugs if it placed them on formulary and made them available within the hospital. The company did not disclose the bundled sales arrangements to the government, enabling them to avoid paying hundreds of millions in rebates to Medicaid from 2000 – 2006.

Financial Services Sector

3. April 27, Los Angeles Daily News – (International) Feds break up money-laundering scheme linked to fraudulent Armenian passports. The U.S. District Court in Santa Ana unsealed charges the week of April 18 against 7 California residents for their roles in a $14 million identity theft and international money laundering scheme where the group filed approximately 7,000 fraudulent tax returns by using stolen identities to create fraudulent foreign passports from the Republic of Armenia, Georgia, and the Czech Republic in order to open numerous bank accounts and mailboxes, which were used to deposit and launder the refunds. Officials stated that a total of 10 people were involved in the fraud scheme that sought a total of $38 million in fraudulent tax returns.

Information Technology Sector

21. April 27, Help Net Security – (International) DDoS aggression and the evolution of IoT risks. Neustar released its findings after conducting a survey on over 1,000 information technology (IT) professionals across 6 continents which revealed that 76 percent of companies are investing in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection as DDoS attacks are continuing to evolve from single large attacks to multi-vector attacks. Forty-seven percent of attacked organizations were participating in information sharing on threats and counter measures to mitigate future assaults.

22. April 26, SecurityWeek – (International) Information stealer “Fareit” abuses PowerShell. Security researchers from Trend Micro discovered a new variant of the Fareit malware was stealing login details, Bitcoin-related data, and other personal information from victims after the malware was delivered via spam emails and executed through two different tactics including Word documents and malicious macros, and PDF documents and Windows PowerShell. Attackers could use PDF files to execute PowerShell via the OpenAction event that allows Fareit to download onto a victim’s machine and collect information.

23. April 26, Softpedia – (International) The Pirate Bay malvertising campaign pushes Cerber ransomware. Security researchers from Malwarebytes and RiskIQ reported that malicious ads on The Pirate Bay torrent portal were redirecting victims, using older windows and Internet Explorer software to another Uniform Resource Identifier (URL) where the Magnitude exploit kit (EK) would leverage a Flash zero-day flaw to compromise vulnerable personal computers (PCs), install the Cerber ransomware, and install potentially unwanted software (PUP). Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/the-pirate-bay-malvertising-campaign-pushes-cerber-ransomware-503455.shtml

For another story, see item 24 below in the Communications Sector

Communications Sector

24. April 27, SecurityWeek – (International) Android ransomware dropped via Towelroot, hacking team exploits. Security researchers from Blue Coat Labs discovered that a ransomware named “Cyber.Police” was able to install malicious programs onto a mobile device without user interaction after finding that at least 224 devices running Android versions 4.0.3 to 4.4.4 were communicating the malware’s command and control (C&C) server since February and that the malicious programs were on devices running Cyanogenmod 10 version of Android 4.2.2. The malware was delivered via two known exploits including the Towelroot exploit and a JavaScript exploit. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/android-ransomware-dropped-towelroot-hacking-team-exploits