Thursday, January 5, 2017



Complete DHS Report for January 5, 2017

Daily Report                                            

Top Stories

• A Bellevue, Washington-based developer was charged January 3 for allegedly orchestrating a scheme that defrauded hundreds of Asian investors who hoped to receive green cards through the Federal Government’s EB-5 program out of about $150 million. – Seattle Times See item 3 below in the Financial Services Sector

• New York officials reported that an equipment failure at the wastewater treatment plant in Amsterdam caused over 30,000 gallons of raw sewage to spill into the Mohawk River January 3. – WNYT 13 Albany

10. January 3, WNYT 13 Albany – (New York) 30,000 gallons of raw sewage spill into Mohawk River in Amsterdam. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation reported that an equipment failure at the wastewater treatment plant in Amsterdam, New York, caused over 30,000 gallons of raw sewage to spill into the Mohawk River January 3.

• A Tennessee woman pleaded guilty January 3 after she stole more than $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Child and Adult Care Food Program. – Nashville Tennessean

16. January 3, Nashville Tennessean – (Tennessee) Tennessee woman pleads guilty to child food program fraud. A Tennessee woman pleaded guilty January 3 after she stole more than $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Child and Adult Care Food Program after she used her sponsor agency, All About Giving, Inc., to make monthly reimbursement requests to the Federal program that overstated the number of child care providers and meals served between March 2015 and July 2016 in order to obtain more funds. In order to conceal the scheme, the woman and co-conspirators created fake names and addresses of child care providers that did not exist, and wrote checks to providers who returned a portion to her in cash, among other fraudulent actions.

• A fire at JR’s Repair and Import Sales in Billings, Montana, caused an estimated $750,000 in damages January 3. – Billings Gazette

23. January 3, Billings Gazette – (Montana) Repair shop destroyed by fire, damage estimated at $750,000. A fire at JR’s Repair and Import Sales in Billings, Montana, caused an estimated $750,000 in damages January 3. No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire remains under investigation. Source: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/repair-shop-destroyed-by-fire-damage-estimated-at/article_4a776546-1768-5818-9080-5dd4224ca7bb.html  

Financial Services Sector

3. January 4, Seattle Times – (International) Seattle-area developer charged with fraud after collecting $150M from Asian investors. A Bellevue, Washington-based commercial developer was charged January 3 for allegedly orchestrating a scheme that defrauded hundreds of Asian investors who hoped to receive green cards through the Federal Government’s EB-5 program out of about $150 million, the Federal agency that approved the conditional green cards based on the developer’s false assurances, as well as American and Chinese companies that raised tens of millions of dollars for the job creation projects. The charges allege that the scheme threatened the permanent green card status of more than 200 foreign investors, as well as the financial institutions that approved the defendant for $85 million in loans. Source: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-developer-charged-with-fraud-after-collecting-150m-from-asian-investors/

Information Technology Sector

18. January 4, SecurityWeek – (International) Pseudo-Darkleech remains prominent distributor of ransomware. Palo Alto Networks security researchers reported that the pseudo-Darkleech campaign is expected to remain a prominent ransomware distributor in 2017 after finding the campaign’s operators were able to quickly adapt to major exploit kit (EK) and ransomware landscape changes during 2016 to maintain the high level of attacks and to ensure the campaign remained relevant. The researchers found, however, that the pseudo-Darkleech campaign’s infection method remains the same, in that it directs a victim who visits a compromised Website with malicious script to an EK landing page designed to fingerprint the device to find vulnerable applications and exploit them.

19. January 4, SecurityWeek – (International) Google researcher finds certificate flaws in Kaspersky products. Kaspersky Lab resolved two flaws in its anti-malware products after a Google Project Zero security researcher found the products were plagued with a critical flaw related to how Kaspersky Antivirus inspects Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections that could allow an attacker to intercept all traffic to a certain domain by sending the targeted Kaspersky Antivirus user two certificates with the same key. The researcher also found a high severity flaw involving improper protection of the private key for the local certificate authority (CA) root which could allow any unprivileged user to become a CA. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/google-researcher-finds-certificate-flaws-kaspersky-products

20. January 4, SecurityWeek – (International) XSS flaws decline, DoS becomes more common: Imperva. Imperva analyzed Web application vulnerability trends in 2016, and found that the total number of vulnerabilities discovered since 2015 has increased, while the number of issues impacting Web applications has declined potentially due to a shift in research focus, and not due to Web applications being more secure than before. Imperva found that more than 25 percent of flaws observed were classified as high priority, and that the number of denial-of-service (DoS) bugs has significantly increased, but the amount of cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws has declined, among other findings. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/xss-flaws-decline-dos-becomes-more-common-imperva

Communications Sector

Nothing to report