This posting is here to collect cyber security news in January 2021.
I post links to security vulnerability news to comments of this article.
You are also free to post related links to comments.
This posting is here to collect cyber security news in January 2021.
I post links to security vulnerability news to comments of this article.
You are also free to post related links to comments.
369 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mimecast Confirms SolarWinds Hack as List of Security Vendor Victims Snowball
https://threatpost.com/mimecast-solarwinds-hack-security-vendor-victims/163431/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hezbollah Hacker Group Targeted Telecoms, Hosting, ISPs Worldwide
https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/hezbollah-hacker-group-targeted.html
A “persistent attacker group” with alleged ties to Hezbollah has retooled its malware arsenal with a new version of a remote access Trojan (RAT) to break into companies worldwide and extract valuable information.
In a new report published by the ClearSky research team on Thursday, the Israeli cybersecurity firm said it identified at least 250 public-facing web servers since early 2020 that have been hacked by the threat actor to gather intelligence and steal the company’s databases.
The orchestrated intrusions hit a slew of companies located in the U.S., the U.K., Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, with a majority of the victims representing telecom operators (Etisalat, Mobily, Vodafone Egypt), internet service providers (SaudiNet, TE Data), and hosting and infrastructure service providers (Secured Servers LLC, iomart).
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.enfo.fi/blogi/tutut-uhkat-kehittyvat-microsoftin-raportti-paljastaa-kyberrikollisuuden-globaalit-trendit
Tomi Engdahl says:
What happens when the internet realizes the stock market is basically a casino? They go shopping at the Mall
GameStop shares soaring to $350 from $5 last year?! WTF is going on?
https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/28/gamestop_reddit_madness/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suspected Russian Hack Extends Far Beyond SolarWinds Software, Investigators Say
Roughly 30% of victims are said to have no connection to the network-management company’s tainted software
https://www.wsj.com/articles/suspected-russian-hack-extends-far-beyond-solarwinds-software-investigators-say-11611921601
Tomi Engdahl says:
Losses on short positions in U.S. firms top $70 billion – Ortex data
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-trading-shortbets-idUSKBN29X1SW?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook
LONDON (Reuters) – Short-sellers are sitting on estimated losses of $70.87 billion from their short positions in U.S. companies so far this year, data from financial data analytics firm Ortex showed on Thursday.
The hefty losses come as shares of highly-shorted GameStop jumped more than 1,000% in the past week without a clear business reason, forcing short-sellers to buy back into the stock to cover potential losses — defined as a short-squeeze — while retail investors then piled in to benefit from the surge.
Chasing shorted companies became a trend among retail traders, rippling across U.S. markets and Europe. Ortex data showed that as of Wednesday, there were loss-making short positions on more than 5,000 U.S. firms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SEC issues statement on past week’s turbulent market activity prompted by Reddit-fueled GameStop run
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/29/sec-issues-statement-on-past-weeks-turbulent-market-activity-prompted-by-reddit-fueled-gamestop-run/?tpcc=ECFB2021
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued an official statement on the tumult of the past week in the public stock market. It’s a relatively brief statement, and doesn’t mention any of the key players by name (aka GameStop, Reddit, Robinhood and others), but it does say acknowledge that “extreme stock price volatility has the potential to expose investors to rapid and severe losses” which could “undermine market confidence,” and basically says the Commission is watching closely to ensure that it doesn’t.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2 short sellers admit defeat, bail out at huge loss as GameStop share surge hits 1000%
https://www.cbc.ca/1.5889652
Short sellers Andrew Left and Melvin Capital take huge losses to cover their bad bets
In the David and Goliath saga surrounding the struggling retail chain GameStop, Goliath has fallen.
Two Goliaths, actually.
Essentially, these short sellers borrowed shares of GameStop and sold them in hopes of buying them back later at a lower price and pocketing the difference. GameStop is one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street.
But its stock began rising sharply earlier this month after a co-founder of Chewy, the online retailer of pet supplies, joined the company’s board. The thought was that he could help in the company’s digital transformation.
At the same time, smaller investors gathering on social media have been exhorting each other to keep pushing the stock higher.
There is no overriding reason why GameStop has attracted those smaller investors, but there is a distinct component of revenge against Wall Street in communications online.
That has created titanic losses for major Wall Street players who have “shorted” the stock, which means they borrowed shares and sold them, hoping to buy them back at a cheaper price and pocket the difference.
As of Tuesday, the losses had already topped $5 billion in 2021, according to S3 Partners.
The phenomenon does not appear to be fading.
AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the theatre chain that has been ravaged by the pandemic, posted a quarterly loss this month exceeding $900 million.
It appears, however, that AMC has become the next battleground in the fight between smaller, retail investors and Wall Street.
Shares of AMC spiked 260 per cent when trading began Wednesday and #SaveAMC is trending on Twitter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robinhood raises $1B after trading halts to keep its platform running
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/29/robinhood-raises-1b-after-trading-halts-to-keep-its-platform-running/?tpcc=ECFB2021
After a turbulent week for the stock market and halts to the trading of certain speculative securities including GameStop (GME) and AMC, consumer investing app Robinhood has raised new capital. The new funds total more than $1 billion, with the company telling TechCrunch that they were raised from its existing investor base.
One result of the current climate is a boom in demand for trading apps. Today on the U.S. iOS App Store, Robinhood is ranked first; Webull, a rival service is second; Reddit, a hub for trading gossip mostly via r/WallStreetBets is third; Coinbase a popular crypto trading service is fourth in line. Square’s Cash App, which allows for share purchases is ranked seventh, Fidelity’s iOS app comes in tenth place, and TD Ameritrade is 16th. Finally, E*Trade’s own app is ranked 18th. That’s a good showing for fintech, both startup and incumbent alike.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Bubble Fueled By Cynicism’: Meme Stocks Surge Again As Reddit Traders Pile Back In–But Dow Falls 300 Points
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/01/29/bubble-fueled-by-cynicism-meme-stocks-surge-again-as-reddit-traders-pile-back-inbut-dow-falls-300-points/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The domain name perl.com was stolen this week and is now points to an IP address associated with malware campaigns.
Perl.com is a site owned by The Perl Foundation and has been used since 1997 to post news and articles about the Perl programming language.
On January 27th, the Perl NOC site posted that the perl.com domain was hijacked and is now pointing users to a different IP address.”
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/perlcom-domain-stolen-now-using-ip-address-tied-to-malware/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dow Plunged 1,000 Points This Week After Reddit Traders Stormed The Stock Market–What Happens Next?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/01/29/dow-plunges-1000-points-after-reddit-traders-storm-the-stock-market-what-happens-next/?utm_campaign=forbes&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=Gordie
Despite blowout corporate earnings and more solid news on the vaccine front, the stock market just posted its worst weekly performance in three months after Reddit traders squeezed Wall Street’s elite out of billions of dollars, sending prices of heavily shorted stocks up to atmospheric new highs and fueling concerns over market frothiness–but experts seem in broad agreement that the bull market can rage on.
Investor sentiment took a massive hit over the “relentless option buying by retail investors taking advantage of a structural weakness in market,” Oanda Senior Market Analyst Edward Moya said Friday, noting that the Dow’s 1,000-point plunge this week was the index’s worst weekly loss since election uncertainty tanked sentiment in late October.
“The market is not broken, but recent events have revealed some cracks,” says Commonwealth Financial Network Chief Investment Officer Brad McMillan, who thinks one likely result of the week’s frenzy could be that the price of options–which helped fuel some of the outsized meme-stock demand–rise to help curb “price hacking” in the future.
McMillan eschews concerns from other experts that the Reddit-fueled price mania could be a sign the market is in the middle of a bubble akin to the dot-com era in the late 1990s, but he says “crackdown” by regulators is likely.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keith Gill Drove the GameStop Reddit Mania. He Talked to the Journal.
Trader known as DeepF—ingValue on the WallStreetBets forum helped turn the investing world upside down. “I didn’t expect this.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/keith-gill-drove-the-gamestop-reddit-mania-he-talked-to-the-journal-11611931696
The investor who helped direct the world’s attention to GameStop, leading a horde of online followers in a bizarre market rally that made and lost fortunes from one day to the next, says he’s just a normal guy.
“I didn’t expect this,” said Keith Gill, 34 years old, known as “DeepF—ingValue” by fans on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum and “Dada” by his 2-year-old daughter. He said he didn’t set out to draw the attention of Congress, the Federal Reserve, hedge funds, the media, trading platforms and hundreds of thousands of investors.
“This story is so much bigger than me,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reddit-fueled investing mania will end with many losers, says expert who predicts Dow 35,000
https://yhoo.it/3j0K6mZ
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel — known for his prescient calls on the stock market, including a prediction of Dow 35,000 this year — says GameStop mania will end with its fair share of losers.
“I think that those that are in it now are generally going to lose,” Siegel told Yahoo Finance Live. “You have to be nimble. The fundamental value is lower. All manias die out, and it will go back to fundamental value and you are going to lose.”
Pros such as Siegel continue to argue that eventually the fundamentals of the struggling businesses will matter again. It’s wildly unclear when fundamentals (for example sales, earnings and cash flow) will come back into focus on these companies, but when it does it could be look out below for the legion of bullish day-traders in Reddit chat rooms.
“Right now, it’s the greater fool’s theory. I know it’s not worth this, but I know someone else who is more foolish who will buy it from me at a higher price. I am smart enough to get out in time, but obviously there is a lot of people left holding the bag here at the end. They’re going to be losers,” warns Siegel.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Let’s reflect on what happened this week: Individual traders outraged more professional investors by doing something hilarious, namely taking a trade that made some sense — betting that an atrophying physical retailer was going to continue obsolesce — and inverting it.
By going long on GameStop, investors flipped the script on the smart money. Then all heck snapped free, some stocks got blocked on trading services, Congress got mad, billionaires started to front on Twitter like they were the Common Man, some cryptos surged, including Dogecoin of all things, and as we headed into the weekend nothing was truly resolved. It was weird.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/30/stonks-flying-burritos-and-my-bosss-bosss-bosss-boss/?tpcc=ECFB2021
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘This story is so much bigger than me’
GameStop investor Roaring Kitty who led Reddit stock war speaks out: ‘This story is so much bigger than me’
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/gamestop-roaring-kitty-keith-gill-b1794857.html?utm_content=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1611952296
Keith Gill insists he’s ‘not out for anybody’ after tips inspire extraordinary battle between Redditors and Wall Street hedge fund giants
The Reddit, YouTube and TikTok tipster, known for his bandana, long-hair, aviator sunglasses and taste for prosecco, advises legions of fans in livestreams discussing market prospects.
“I didn’t expect this,” Mr Gill said of the week’s extraordinary David-and-Goliath trading battle. “This story is so much bigger than me.”
“I support these retail investors, their ability to make a statement.”
Mr Gill goes by the moniker “DeepF***ingValue” on the WallStreetBets Reddit forum, where the fight between amateur investors and major hedge funds over shares in the failing video games retailer began.
GameStop’s stock price rocketed from a low of $2.57 on 31 December 2020 to close at around $350 on Wednesday thanks to a push from Redditors to punish short sellers from seeking to profit from the brand’s fading fortunes – brought about by store closures due to the pandemic.
Mr Gill posted a screenshot of his brokerage account on Wednesday, revealing a roughly $20 million gain on GameStop shares and options in just one day.
“He will go down as the greatest legend in the history of WallStreetBets,” said another. “He’s the original OG.”
“The first thing that I had asked him when this craziness started was: is this illegal or anything dishonest? He said, ‘No mom, it’s not,’” she told the newspaper.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman went on CNBC to decry the Reddit-fueled frenzy that’s currently sending shockwaves through the trading markets. The irate businessman said that people who are sitting at home and trading stocks using government checks was a “bullshit concept” and “a way of attacking wealthy people.”
https://digg.com/2021/leon-cooperman-cnbc-gamestop-stock-price-interview
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bitcoin Investors May Lose Everything, Central Banker Warns
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/bitcoin-investors-may-lose-everything-central-banker-warns
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/this-week-in-security-sudo-database-breaches-and-ransomware/