Flashpoint Intelligence

🤝 Following an unexplained disappearance earlier this year, the notorious 2easy darknet market has hinted at a possible comeback.

〰️ Our latest blog delves into the context surrounding 2easy's disappearance and the potential for its revival, analyzing how 2easy's return could impact the larger fraud ecosystem.

📍 Read more here: https://flashpoint.io/blog/2easy-fraud-ecosystem/

🛡️ And to learn more about how your Fraud team can equip themselves to handle an advancing threat landscape, visit our site: https://flashpoint.io/solutions/fraud/

📌 Real-time data from social media platforms and illicit communities is vital to gaining an understanding of the domestic public response to Putin’s military mobilization declaration—a significant risk from Russia’s leader.

👉🏼 Initial responses to the mobilization among the general population reflected shock and panic. As of September 22, Russian authorities have arrested more than 1,300 people across the country at protests against mobilization.

⚠️ One anthropologist counted more than 160,000 posts on social media platforms before mobilization even began in practice, around 20-30 percent of which were negative, in spite of the risks of prosecution that such posting entails in Russia.

📣 Russian citizens have been posting photos and videos of angry verbal exchanges with recruitment officers, as well as queues of vehicles near border crossings and chaotic scenes from before and after draftees were taken away in buses or aircraft.

🗞️ On September 18, a cyber threat actor posted on an online forum claiming to have hacked Rockstar Games, the creator of the popular and controversial Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series. The hacker has been allegedly tied to LAPSUS$—the prolific extortionist group.

🔍 Flashpoint analysts have been monitoring illicit channels regarding this incident and found an investigative lead potentially detailing how the breach occurred, as well as its scope.

👥 A threat actor claiming to be in close communication with the original perpetrator has provided screenshots demonstrating their access to compromised data, while also stating:

⛔ Rockstar Games was compromised from an internal Slack channel

👤 This was done by social engineering a Rockstar employee located in India, gaining access to Rockstar's Okta

🛑 The perpetrator stole source code for other Rockstar titles, such as 'Red Dead Redemption 2' and 'Red Dead Redemption 3'

👉 Click here for the latest details: https://bit.ly/3xIGVZJ

📌 Learn more about LAPSUS$ here: https://bit.ly/3BHUXMs

: al-Qaeda is yet to name a new leader, following the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri. Our intelligence team dives into a al-Zawahiri’s influence and legacy, plus how the future of al-Qaeda may take shape in the coming months: https://lnkd.in/gzbEXzQD

👀 And for more on our coverage, read our blog: "20 Years After 9/11: Tracking the Evolution of Jihadism" https://lnkd.in/geG4rt5x

📣 The US Department of Treasury has designated Task Force Rusich, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has participated in combat alongside Russia’s military in Ukraine.

💡 Mercenary groups like Task Force Rusich often engage in online fundraising activities, raising money for military and tactical equipment, medicine, and care for the wounded. Most of the fundraising activities that we observe are occurring through Russian bank cards—but these groups also use .

👉🏼 Alexey Milchakov and Yan Petrovsky, who founded the militia in 2014, were included on an updated SDN list from OFAC, which disclosed five cryptocurrency wallet addresses connected to Task Force Rusich.

‣ One Rosich Ethereum donation wallet, which the US Treasury disclosed on September 15, provides a window into how Russian mercenary groups transact using cryptocurrency.

‣ This wallet was newly funded on September 7 with about .67 Ethereum (~$922).

‣ Two days later, with fresh funds at its back, Task Force Rusich posted a list of the military equipment it needed for an unspecified unit in the “Northern Military District”—likely code for Kharkiv, Sumy, and Kyiv regions, which includes the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and the capital, Kyiv.

‣ Then, two days after that, on September 11, a Task Force Rusich ally announced that the same wallet had received donations of more than $20,000.

🔥 Flashpoint’s intelligence team—which includes support to anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CTF), and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance programs—has been aware of and its illicit funding effort since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Read our latest blog here: https://flashpoint.io/blog/russia-neo-nazi-mercenary-groups-pmcs-and-illicit-financing/

📌 Last week, the US Office of Management and Budget announced that all federal agencies are now required to create an inventory of all software within 90 days. What does this mean for you?

1️⃣ Organizations providing software to federal agencies will have to prove that their products do not contain backdoors or exploitable, critical vulnerabilities.

2️⃣ Organizations will likely have to provide a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) that lists all the components used in their products—including open source software (OSS) and third party libraries.

💪 Therefore, having comprehensive vulnerability intelligence is critical. Why?

🛑 CVE/NVD is currently missing over 95,000 vulnerabilities, with many affecting major vendors and products.

💢 CVE/NVD lacks significant coverage of OSS and third-party libraries, as well as important vulnerability metadata.

👉 Want to get the full vulnerability intelligence picture? Learn more here: https://bit.ly/3DSqvCj

Click here to learn how Flashpoint can help maintain quality SBOMs: https://bit.ly/3ey3kSM

The Flashpoint team is on-site today at the intelligence and national security summit in National Harbor, MD! Stop by kiosk #169 and let's get to work. What's top-of-mind for us is the role of open-source intelligence in enabling teams to accomplish their security missions across multiple use cases, including:

📌 Counterterrorism
📌 Mis-/disinformation
📌 Crisis monitoring
📌 Geopolitical risk
📌 Supply chain risk
📌 Sentiment analysis
📌 Executive protection.. and more.

Learn more about Flashpoint's Nationals Security Solutions here: https://flashpoint.io/solutions/public-sector-and-national-security/flashpoint-national-security-solutions/

https://intelsummit.org/