Once again, malicious actors are leveraging a crisis for monetary gain. CyberScoop warned that the Ukrainian government and charities supporting the people of Ukraine were using cryptocurrencies to raise funds, “But the innovative means of fundraising have also introduced opportunities for cybercriminals to scam donors for a cut.”

Brian Krebs continued his four-part series on cryptocrime as it relates to discoveries unearthed in the leaked internal chat records of the Conti ransomware group. Russians are reportedly relying on VPNs as the Russian government continues to restrict access to internet platforms.

Alas, people the world over did have access to social media platforms on Tuesday, March 8, and many feeds were decorated with images of women in celebration of International Women’s Day. It truly did feel like people the world over took a moment to honor the accomplishments of women as mothers, sisters, daughters, leaders, courageous soldiers, warriors, heroes, colleagues, and friends, perhaps none more than the video of a young girl singing “Let It Go” from a Ukrainian bomb shelter.

In other news, RSA Conference was proud to host some pretty phenomenal women alongside their male cohorts in the RSAC 365 Virtual Seminar & Innovation Showcase on Zero Trust this week. As a follow-up to that event, we are hosting a webcast on Tuesday, March 15, that will host a panel of vendors discussing Making Security Simpler. Be sure to register and explore our Library for more educational content on Zero Trust and other industry topics.

Let’s look at what else made cybersecurity headlines this week.

Mar. 11: Plans to introduce legislation to better secure digital identity solutions are on the docket for the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Mar. 11: Reuters reported, “Ukraine’s two leading suppliers of neon, which produce about half the world’s supply of the key ingredient for making chips, have halted their operations as Moscow has sharpened its attack on the country, threatening to raise prices and aggravate the semiconductor shortage.”

Mar. 10: Security researchers could yield major earnings for reporting severe vulnerabilities to password manager 1Password, as the company announced it would increase the maximum bug bounty payout to $1 million.

Mar. 10: “Federal prosecutors extradited two suspected ransomware operators, including a man they said was responsible for an intrusion that infected as many as 1,500 organizations in a single stroke, making it one of the worst supply chain attacks ever,” Ars Technica reported.

Mar. 10: Dr. Wade Baker highlighted the many reasons organizations should be making use of CISA’s catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities.

Mar. 9: BleepingComputer reported, “Security experts have spotted an interesting case of a suspected ransomware attack that employed custom-made tools typically used by APT (advanced persistent threat) groups.”

Mar. 9: The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a reminder to federal agencies that they must move swiftly in their adoption of the Secure Software Development Framework.

Mar. 9: Threatpost reported, “Nearly 70 percent of instances of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform ServiceNow Customers aren’t locking down access correctly, leading to ~70 percent of ServiceNow implementations tested by AppOmni being potentially exposed to the public.”

Mar. 8: Mandiant issued a press release announcing the company entered into a definitive acquisition agreement with Google.

Mar. 7: The Hacker News reported, “Linux distributions are in the process of issuing patches to address a newly disclosed security vulnerability in the kernel that could allow an attacker to overwrite arbitrary data into any read-only files and allow for a complete takeover of affected systems.”