There are records for more than 32 million accounts in the United States, 11 million in the United Kingdom, and 6 million in India, according to Alon Gal, the CTO of cyber intelligence firm Hudson Rock.
Details in some cases include full name, location, birthday, email addresses, phone number, and relationship status, he said.
Hudson Rock showed CNN Business the phone numbers of two our senior staff which are included in the database.
The leak was first reported by the news website Insider.
“This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told CNN Saturday.
Facebook did not say if it notified affected users at the time.
Stone added, “In 2019, we removed people’s ability to directly find others using their phone number across both Facebook and Instagram – a function that could be exploited using sophisticated software code, to imitate Facebook and provide a phone number to find which users it belonged to.”
Although this data is from 2019 it could still be of value to hackers and cyber criminals like those who engage in identify theft.
Hudson Rock’s Alon Gal pointed out on Twitter that the way the data was sorted and posted on the hacking site this week makes it far more accessible for criminals to exploit.
Rachel Tobac, an ethical hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security, told CNN, “These are the pieces of data cyber criminals spend time searching for to perform social engineering attacks (a type of hacking) — but now they’re all in one place and easily accessible in this leak, which makes social engineering quicker and easier.”
A massive trove of hacked data from more than 500 million Facebook users was made easily accessible Saturday — including Mark Zuckerberg’s cellphone number, according to one security expert.
The information was initially stolen in January, after hackers exploited a vulnerability related to phone numbers associated with Facebook accounts, ultimately creating a massive database of private data.
On Saturday, the database became readily accessible to those with basic data skills after it was posted to a hacker forum, according to Bloomberg.
Facebook dismissed the data as “very old” but security expert Dave Walker pointed out the company’s own CEO was victimized in the hack.
“Regarding the #FacebookLeak, of the 533M people in the leak – the irony is that Mark Zuckerberg is regrettably included in the leak as well. If journalists are struggling to get a statement from @facebook, maybe just give him a call, from the tel in the leak?” he tweeted alongside a screenshot of Zuckerberg’s name and information with the phone number partially blacked out.
A sophisticated hacking campaign that was previously witnessed targeting security flaws in Android, Windows and iOS devices is actually the work of “Western government operatives” conducting a “counterterrorism operation,” according to a new report from MIT Technology Review.
The campaign in question, which has garnered more and more attention from media outlets over the last few weeks, was first written about in January by Google’s threat research team Project Zero. At the time, all that was publicly known was that someone had been up to some very tricky business: a “highly sophisticated” group, likely staffed by “teams of experts,” was responsible for targeting numerous zero-day vulnerabilities (the grand total would later turn out to be 11) in various prominent operating systems, researchers wrote.
This hacking campaign, which ended up going on for about nine months, used the so-called “watering hole” method—in which a threat actor injects malicious code into a website to effectively “booby trap” it (visitors to the site will subsequently become infected with malware, which allows the hacker to target and escalate compromise of specific targets).
From all of these descriptors, signs naturally pointed to the involvement of some sort of high-level nation-state hackers—though few would’ve guessed that the culprits were, in fact, our friends! Nevertheless, that would appear to be the case. It is unclear what government is actually responsible for the attacks, who its targets were, or what the so-called “counterterrorism” operation related to all of this entailed. MIT has not divulged how they came into this information.
One thing is certain: Google’s discovery and subsequent public disclosure of the exploits (as well as the company’s decision to patch the vulnerabilities) has apparently derailed whatever government operation was occurring. MIT writes that, by going public, the tech company effectively shut down a “live counterterrorism” cyber mission, also adding that it “is not clear whether Google gave advance notice to government officials that they would be publicizing and shutting down” the attacks. This has apparently “caused internal division at Google and raised questions inside the intelligence communities of the United States and its allies.”
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There are a whole lot of questions here, obviously. First off, what government was doing this? What was the “terror” threat they were investigating? Which websites were used in the pursuit of said terrorists? Given the sensitive political nature of these kinds of operations, it’s unlikely that we’re going to get any answers to those questions—at least not right away. But since there’s so little information available, it’s also pretty difficult to understand whether Project Zero was justified in outing the operation or not, or what was even going on here.
Google apparently knows who the hackers are, and MIT reports that the incident has spurred a debate at the company over whether counterterrorism operations like this should be considered “out of bounds” for public disclosure, or whether it was well within their purview to disclose the vulnerabilities to “protect users and make the internet more secure.”
Enlarge / NASA astronaut Jessica Meir looks on as the SLS core stage completes a full-duration eight-minute firing.
Welcome to Edition 3.37 of the Rocket Report! This week saw NASA reach a big milestone in igniting the four main engines of its Space Launch System rocket and firing them for a full duration of more than eight minutes. Whatever you think about the program, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate this achievement with the engineers who pulled it off.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Virgin Orbit may go public, too. The Wall Street Journal reports that Richard Branson has hired Credit Suisse Group AG and LionTree LLC to explore taking Virgin Orbit public through a special-purpose acquisition company, with a valuation of up to $3 billion. The company successfully reached orbit for the first time earlier this year.
Another space SPAC … “The targeted valuation would mark a significant jump from the $1 billion the rocket startup had been aiming for last year, from a previously planned private fundraising. The company still hasn’t ruled out a private fundraising but is now focused on a SPAC,” the newspaper reports. This would be an impressive valuation. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
German rocket company to use Ukrainian engines. Rocket Factory Augsburg announced last year that its first booster, RFA One, would have the capability of launching 1.2 tons to a polar orbit. This impressive increase in the rocket’s performance, from 200 tons in an earlier iteration, caught the eye of German space reporter Frank Wunderlich-Pfeiffer. He was skeptical because the launch price remained the same, about 3 million euros.
Playing catch-up … Eventually, Wunderlich-Pfeiffer found the answer. RFA had decided not to develop its own engine but to source it from Yuzhmash, the Ukrainian state-owned aerospace manufacturer. He reported this finding in the golem.de publication, and RFA confirmed it in a subsequent statement. The company cited as one reason for its decision that commercial competitors in the United States were “much further” ahead in developing their small satellite launch vehicles. (submitted by TM)
The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.
FAA renews Pegasus rocket-launch license. After completing a comprehensive review, the FAA said this week it has approved the renewal of two Launch Operator Licenses for Orbital Sciences, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. The licenses are valid for five years and authorize the company to conduct flights of its Pegasus launch vehicle from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
How many more missions? … Northrop must still receive FAA authorization for specific launches. Pegasus was the first successful, privately developed orbital rocket. Its future, however, is uncertain. The booster has been surpassed by smaller vehicles that cost a fraction of its launch price. It is also not clear what other missions are on the rocket’s manifest beyond the TacRL-2 launch later this year. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
SpaceX apparently bid Starship for a cubesat mission. A NASA competition to launch a cluster of six cubesats attracted a bid from SpaceX, which appeared to offer a vehicle other than its current Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, SpaceNews reported. NASA on March 11 released the source selection statement from the competition to launch the TROPICS mission, which was won by Astra.
No launch license yet … One of the five bids came from SpaceX, and in its assessment of the bidders, NASA noted a weakness in SpaceX’s proposal because the company “did not clearly demonstrate progress toward the resolution of the environmental assessment which results in risk associated with obtaining an FAA launch license, increasing the likelihood of delays that would affect contract performance.” This would appear to apply to Starship, rather than the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. Separately, NASA also eliminated Virgin Orbit from the competition because its original bid did not fall in the “competitive range” the agency established. (submitted by platykurtic and Ken the Bin)
Relativity Space lands first Department of Defense contract. This week, the company announced it has won its first orbital launch contract from the US Department of Defense. This contract was awarded as a Space and Missile Systems Center Launch Enterprise as part of an effort to identify commercial solutions for low-cost, responsive access to space “as a service.” Relativity is seeking to launch its first rocket later this year.
Lots of contracts for an unflown rocket … For this military mission, the company is targeting a 2023 launch date on its Terran 1 rocket. According to the company, this agreement represents the ninth announced launch customer for Relativity and the third announced government customer, following the recently announced Venture Class Launch Services Demonstration 2 contract with NASA. (submitted by Ken the Bin and platykurtic)
India targeting seven more launches this year. The Indian space agency, ISRO, is targeting at least seven more launches in 2021, including an uncrewed Gaganyaan demonstrator mission to test technologies for an eventual human spaceflight. The missions will be launched on three different Indian rockets, Times of India reports.
Double the effort … The chief of ISRO, K. Sivan, said he considered this to actually be 14 different missions, involving the development of seven different satellites and launching on seven rockets. “We are confident of achieving this target and (our) top priority is Gaganyaan,” he said. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Japan’s H3 rocket completes pressure test. This week, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency completed a wet dress rehearsal of its new H3 rocket, developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The agency, JAXA, said the test at Tanegashima Space Center was a success. A launch attempt remains at least several months away.
Next stop, the Moon? … Japan’s answer to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the H3, is not reusable. But with a launch price of around $50 million, it could be commercially competitive for some missions, and it will certainly be more competitive than the existing H2A rocket. There is also a pathway toward upgrading the H3 booster for lunar cargo missions.
SpaceX on the cusp of historic reuse milestone. SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink satellites early on Sunday morning and, in doing so, came close to a substantial rocket-reuse milestone. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that lofted this payload toward orbit, Booster no. 1051, was making its ninth flight. It successfully landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship.
Baseline goal of Falcon 9 upgrade … As this is the first Falcon 9 rocket to launch nine missions, it raises the prospect of a first stage making a 10th flight in the near future, probably within a month or two. Reaching 10 flights would accomplish one of the main goals set by SpaceX with the Falcon 9 rocket, after optimizing the vehicle for reuse about three years ago, Ars reports.
China to construct commercial spaceport. China will establish a commercial spaceport in the coming years to support the rapid growth of private space activities in the country, SpaceNews reports. The commercial space launch center was included in a list of national projects in the recently formulated Five-Year Plan that covers 2021-2025. China currently has four national launch centers that mainly support launches of Long March rockets from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., the state’s main space contractor.
No deets yet … Dou Xiaoyu—a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the top Chinese legislative body, and a vice chairperson at China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp.—called for a Chinese commercial spaceport project in order to meet an expected surge in demand for space launch services. No other details, including a potential location, were released. (submitted by Ken the Bin and platykurtic)
Amateur radio hackers decode SpaceX telemetry. Amateur radio enthusiasts in Europe managed to decode some portions of the telemetry data broadcast by the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket when it was in orbit. YouTuber Scott Manley has an excellent video with all of the details.
Where cameras have not gone before … It is somewhat surprising that this data was not more rigorously encrypted, but its public release provides some pretty cool insights. Most notably, the engineering camera view inside the upper stage’s liquid oxygen tank was wild to see. (submitted by Wanderlost)
NASA successfully test-fires its SLS rocket. The road has been long, difficult, and expensive for NASA and its Space Launch System rocket. But on Thursday afternoon, the space agency got a taste of success with what appeared to be a nominal ground test-firing of the vehicle’s core stage. The main engines burned for 499.6 seconds, exhausting the vehicle’s supply of liquid oxygen, Ars reports.
Burn, baby, burn … After the test completed, engineers in the control room began clapping and cheering. Although days of data review lie ahead, the fact that the vehicle made it through a complete eight-minute test without stopping and in apparent good condition represents a huge win for NASA, the Space Launch System program, and the core-stage primary contractor, Boeing. In the coming weeks, NASA is also expected to set a target launch date for this Artemis 1 mission to fly an uncrewed Orion around the Moon and back.
NASA studying ways to reduce cost of the SLS rocket. After a report in Ars Technica, NASA confirmed it is studying ways “to find efficiencies and opportunities to reduce costs” in the Space Launch System program. The analysis is being led by Paul McConnaughey, a former deputy center director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, as well as its chief engineer.
Concerns about costs … With a maximum cadence of one launch per year, the SLS rocket is expected to cost more than $2 billion per flight, and that is on top of the $20 billion NASA has already spent developing the vehicle and its ground systems. Some Biden administration officials do not believe the Artemis Moon Program is sustainable with such launch costs.
Aerojet says revenue from shuttle main engines is increasing. Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference March 15, Dan Boehle, chief financial officer of Aerojet Rocketdyne, said the engines used on the Space Launch System rocket are an increasing source of revenue for the company. The RS-25 accounts for an increasing share of Aerojet’s revenue, going from 14 percent to 18 percent of overall revenues in the last few years, SpaceNews reports.
Netting a tidy profit … Boehle said that program should stay at that level over the next few years, growing at the same pace as overall company revenues. “The RS-25 is a great program for us,” he said. It seems noteworthy that the 50-year-old space shuttle main engine is a growing profit center for Aerojet Rocketdyne, especially when eliminating its reuse capability should be driving costs down, not up. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Next three launches
March 20: Soyuz 2.1a | Ride-share mission including Astroscale ELSA-d mission | Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazahkstan | 06:07
March 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink-22 | Cape Canaveral, Florida | 22:19 UTC
March 25: Soyuz | OneWeb-5 | Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia | 02:47UTC
Laura Rose Carroll, 50, was arrested Monday and booked into the Escambia County Jail with a bond of $8,500, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said in a news release. Her 17-year-old daughter was taken into custody and transferred to the Escambia Regional Juvenile Detention Center, it said.
When reached by CNN, a man identifying himself as Carroll’s husband, said, “We have no comment right now. Our lawyers told us not to speak and we will have our day in court.”
Escambia County Superintendent Tim Smith confirmed to CNN that Carroll is an employee of Bellview Elementary and has been suspended.
The FDLE said it was contacted in November 2020 by the Escambia County School District over allegations of unauthorized access to hundreds of student accounts.
The release says investigators found Carroll, an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary, and her daughter, a student at Tate High used Carroll’s district-level access to enter accounts, where hundreds of fraudulent votes were cast for the Taft homecoming court. The votes were flagged as fraudulent when 117 votes allegedly originated from the same IP address within a short period of time. Authorities reported that FDLE agents found evidence of unauthorized access linked to Carroll’s cellphone as well as home computers.
Investigators said they found almost 250 fraudulently cast votes for the homecoming court.
“Multiple students reported that Carroll’s daughter described using her mother’s account to cast votes,” the statement said.
The investigation also found that beginning August 2019, Carroll’s account allegedly accessed 372 high school records and 339 of those belonged to students at Tate, the FDLE release said.
Carroll and her daughter were each charged with offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks and electronic devices; unlawful use of a two-way communications device; criminal use of personally identifiable information; and conspiracy to commit these offenses, the release said. All but the conspiracy charge are listed as third-degree felonies.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels said they attacked a major Saudi Arabian oil port on the Persian Gulf with drones and missiles on Sunday. Saudi authorities said the strike caused no casualties or damage.
The Saudi Energy Ministry said an assault “coming from the sea” had targeted petroleum tanks at the Ras Tanura port. It condemned what it called “repeated acts of sabotage and hostility” targeting energy supplies to the world.
“All indications point to Iran,” said an adviser to the Saudi royal court who said he was briefed on the matter. He said it wasn’t clear whether the origin was Iran or Iraq but that it hadn’t come from the direction of Yemen.
Iranian officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. An Iraqi official said he was unaware of any connection between his country and the attack.
Oil prices rose after the market opened Sunday evening in New York following the attack. Brent crude, the global gauge of oil prices, added more than 2.5% and rose above $71 a barrel. Prices have surged to their highest level since May 2019, lifted by rising demand as the global economy reopens from shutdowns designed to stop the coronavirus and supply curtailments around the world.
In 2019, a drone and missile attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry temporarily shut down half the kingdom’s crude production. At the time, the Houthis claimed responsibility, but the U.S. said the attack was launched from Iraq or Iran, which denied the accusations.
Yahya Saree, spokesman for Houthi forces fighting the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen, said the group on Sunday used 10 drones and a ballistic missile in an attack on Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, as well as four drones and six missiles aimed at the southern Saudi regions of Asir and Jazan.
The Houthis have stepped up aerial attacks on Saudi Arabia following the inauguration in January of President Biden, who has pledged to end the six-year-old civil war in Yemen and recalibrate Washington’s relationship with Riyadh.
The Biden administration has said it wants to re-enter the 2015 nuclear deal and then negotiate a deeper, broader agreement with Tehran that also addresses Iran’s military posture and activities in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is leading a military coalition that intervened in the conflict in Yemen, which now faces one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The coalition launched a new round of airstrikes on the capital Sanaa earlier Sunday, warning that targeting civilians in Saudi Arabia was “a red line.”
Hussein Nasser, a father of two living in Sanaa, said the coalition bombardment of a nearby military base shattered the windows in dozens of homes in his neighborhood, injuring several people. “Five airstrikes at the same time while people and their kids were having lunch,” he said.
Following the incident at Ras Tanura, the port was operating as normal, according to several shipping sources. “Loadings are continuing normally,” said a manager at a shipping agency there who declined to be named. He wasn’t aware of any distribution center being hit.
Ras Tanura is the site of Saudi Aramco’s oldest and largest oil refinery and the world’s biggest offshore oil loading facility. The 550,000 barrel-a-day refinery supplies over a quarter of the kingdom’s fuel supply.
Shrapnel from a ballistic missile, which the Houthis said they had fired at military targets in nearby Dammam, fell near Aramco’s residential area in neighboring Dhahran, the Saudi statement said.
An Aramco employee living in the area said he saw two projectiles intercepted overhead by Saudi air defenses, which rely heavily on U.S. Patriot antimissile systems. Nearby residents reported the windows of their homes had trembled or even shattered from the blasts.
Images shared on social media showed bright blasts of light in the sky above Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province and later a plume of white smoke.
—Benoit Faucon, Saleh al-Batati and Amrith Ramkumar contributed to this article.
Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com
SÃO PAULO—Researchers and doctors are sounding the alarm over a new, more aggressive coronavirus strain from the Amazon area of Brazil, which they believe is responsible for a recent rise in deaths, as well as infections in younger people, in parts of South America.
Brazil’s daily death toll from the disease rose to its highest level yet this week, pushing the country’s total number of Covid-19 fatalities past a quarter of a million. On Tuesday, Brazil reported a record 1,641 Covid fatalities. Neighbor Peru is struggling to curb a second wave of infections.
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The new variant, known as P.1, is 1.4 to 2.2 times more contagious than versions of the virus previously found in Brazil, and 25% to 61% more capable of reinfecting people who had been infected by an earlier strain, according to a study released Tuesday.
With mass vaccination a long way off across the region, countries such as Brazil risk becoming a breeding ground for potent versions of the virus that could render current Covid-19 vaccines less effective, public-health specialists warned.
A more prolonged pandemic could also devastate the economies of countries such as Brazil, slowing growth and expanding the country’s already large debt pile as the government extends payouts to the poor, economists said.
“We’re facing a dramatic situation here—the health systems of many states in Brazil are already in collapse and others will be in the next few days,” said Eliseu Waldman, an epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo.
Healthcare workers checked arrivals at a field hospital in Manaus, Brazil, on Feb. 11.
Photo:
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Several doctors have reported a surge in younger patients in their Covid-19 wards, many in their 30s and 40s with no underlying health problems. In Peru, some doctors said patients are becoming seriously ill faster, just three or four days after the first symptoms emerged, compared with an average of nine to 14 days last year.
“The virus is behaving differently,” said Rosa Lopez, a doctor in the intensive-care unit at Lima’s Guillermo Almenara Irigoyen Hospital. “It’s really aggressive…the situation is very difficult, really terrible.”
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The Amazonian strain, P.1, emerged in the Brazilian city of Manaus late last year and quickly caught the attention of Brazilian and international scientists who raced to map its spread. The variant’s large number of mutations to the spike protein, which helps the virus penetrate cells, have caused particular concern.
“We’re in the worst moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if P.1 is all over Brazil by now,” said Felipe Naveca, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation who has studied the new strain. He estimated that Brazil is already home to hundreds of new Covid-19 variants, although P.1. is the most worrying so far, he said.
However, researchers are still at a loss as to why more young people appear to be falling ill and if P.1 is more deadly, or just more contagious.
“The recent epidemic in Manaus has strained the city’s healthcare system, leading to inadequate access to medical care,” wrote the authors of the P.1 study, which was led by Nuno Faria, a professor of virus evolution at Oxford University and Imperial College London.
People waited to refill empty oxygen cylinders on the southern outskirts of Lima, Peru, on Feb. 25.
“We therefore cannot determine whether the estimated increase in relative mortality risk is due to P.1 infection, stresses on the Manaus healthcare system, or both,” they wrote.
A study led by Mr. Naveca released last week showed that in some cases the P.1 strain carried a viral load about 10 times higher than the initial versions of the virus that were circulating in Brazil for most of the pandemic. But the group of international scientists led by Mr. Faria concluded that it wasn’t possible to determine whether P.1 infection is associated with increased viral loads until detailed clinical investigations are conducted.
Researchers in South Africa struggled with the same questions when studying another new variant, B.1.351. Doctors there also reported a rise in hospitalizations and deaths of younger patients, but researchers concluded that more younger people were getting seriously ill because more people were being infected overall. The likelihood of younger people dying increased, they said, because hospitals were overwhelmed, not because the variant itself was more deadly.
Another possible explanation for the rise in younger patients is that the virus has already moved its way through many older hosts who passed away, said Francisco Cardoso, an infectious-disease specialist at the Emílio Ribas hospital in São Paulo.
Latin America has been one of the world’s Covid-19 hot spots since the pandemic began, but in recent days doctors in Brazil have grown ever more desperate, describing scenes of horror across the country. While the new strain is largely to blame, so too is a lack of preparation and prevention by the region’s governments, said public-health specialists.
Hospitals are operating at ICU occupancy rates above 80% in almost two-thirds of Brazilian states. After scores of patients suffocated to death in Manaus earlier this year when hospitals ran out of oxygen, prosecutors are investigating reports from another Amazonian city that intubated patients were tied to their beds following a shortage of sedatives.
In Peru, where the government has detected the P.1 strain, hospitals were quickly pushed beyond capacity as infections surged in January after one of the world’s worst outbreaks last year. Doctors are now choosing among dozens of patients when an ICU bed opens up, while Chile is donating lifesaving oxygen amid acute shortages.
The scenes come as the U.S., the U.K. and Israel celebrate falling rates of infection amid mass vaccination campaigns, evidence of a widening immunity gap between rich and poorer nations. While more than 15% of people in the U.S. have received a Covid-19 shot, Brazil has administered vaccines to only 3% of its population. Peru and Colombia have vaccinated less than 1%.
If Latin America doesn’t find a way to speed up its vaccination campaigns, other countries such as Colombia and Bolivia that have seen recent slowdowns in new infections could also fall victim to the new variant, infectious-disease specialists said.
The longer the disease is left to fester in countries such as Brazil, the greater the chance that new variants will emerge that reduce the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines, thereby also posing a threat to nations that have already immunized their populations.
“Unless everyone in the world gets the vaccine soon, none of us will be protected,” said Patricia Garcia, a former Peruvian health minister and epidemiologist. “It will never stop.”
Cesar Palacios, a 44-year-old pediatrician in Peru’s northern city of Piura, lost his parents and younger sister to the disease earlier this year. He spent 10 days on a ventilator after getting sick himself, the illness advancing quickly as his blood-oxygen levels fell into dangerous territory, at 86% just a day after his first symptom. A few days later he was in an ICU.
“When you are going to be put on a mechanical ventilator, you think, am I going to live? Am I going to die?” said Dr. Palacios. “I had no other option. I was so scared.”
While Peru has imposed a nighttime curfew in Lima and other states with high infections, Brazilian cities such as São Paulo and the capital, Brasília, have introduced tougher restrictions over recent days.
But many Brazilians have defied the rules, taking a cue from the country’s president. Right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro has played down the disease and attacked state governors for imposing lockdowns, accusing them of destroying local businesses.
Military police in São Paulo raided about 50 establishments over the weekend that refused to comply, including a group of 190 elderly Brazilians holding a clandestine party.
—Luciana Magalhaes in São Paulo and Gabriele Steinhauser in Johannesburg contributed to this article.
As highly transmissible coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading faster, and what this could mean for vaccine efforts. New research says the key may be the spike protein, which gives the coronavirus its unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood/WSJ
Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com and Ryan Dube at ryan.dube@dowjones.com
China-based government hackers have exploited a bug in Microsoft’s email server software to target U.S. organizations, the company said Tuesday.
Microsoft
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said that a “highly skilled and sophisticated” state-sponsored group operating from China has been trying to steal information from a number of American targets, including universities, defense contractors, law firms and infectious-disease researchers.
Microsoft said it has released security upgrades to fix the vulnerabilities to its Exchange Server software, which is used for work email and calendar services, mostly for larger organizations that have their own in-person email servers. It doesn’t affect personal email accounts or Microsoft’s cloud-based services.
The company said the hacking group it calls Hafnium was able to trick Exchange servers into allowing it to gain access. The hackers then masqueraded as someone who should have access and created a way to control the server remotely so that they could steal data from an organization’s network.
Microsoft said the group is based in China but operates from leased virtual private servers in the U.S., which helps it avoid detection.
The company declined to name any specific targets or say how many organizations were affected.
Reston, Virginia-based cybersecurity firm Volexity, which Microsoft credits for helping to detect the intrusions, said its network security monitoring service began picking up on a suspiciously large data transfer in late January.
“They’re just downloading email, literally going to town,” said Steven Adair, Volexity’s president, who said the targets have included “defense contractors, international aid and development organizations, the NGO think-tank community.”
Adair said he’s concerned that the hackers are going to accelerate their activity in the coming days before organizations are able to install Microsoft’s security upgrades.
“As bad as it is now, I think it’s about to get a lot worse,” he said. “This gives them a limited amount of opportunity to go and exploit something. The patch isn’t going to fix that if they left their backdoor behind.”
A hacker claims to have stolen files belonging to the global law firm Jones Day and posted many of them on the dark web.
Jones Day has many prominent clients, including former President Donald Trump and major corporations.
Jones Day, in a statement, disputed that its network has been breached. The statement said that a file-sharing company that it has used was recently compromised and had information taken. Jones Day said it continues to investigate the breach and will continue to be in discussion with affected clients and appropriate authorities.
The posting by a person who self-identified as the hacker, which goes by the name Clop, includes a few individual documents that are easily reviewed by the public, including by The Wall Street Journal. One memo is to a judge and is marked “confidential mediation brief,” another is a cover letter for enclosed “confidential documents.” The Journal couldn’t immediately confirm their authenticity.
The Journal was able to see the existence of many more files—mammoth in size—also purported to belong to Jones Day, posted by the hacker on the so-called dark web. Hackers typically post such stolen information after the hacked entity fails to pay a ransom. The Journal was able to contact the hacker using an email on its blog.
The FBI, Secret Service and Florida law enforcement are searching for one or more suspects they say tried to change the make-up of a local town’s water in a failed attempt to add a potentially caustic chemical by remotely accessing the computer system at a treatment plant that services the entire city, officials said.
A plant operator at the Oldsmar water treatment facility thwarted a hacker’s attempt to elevate the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water to “dangerous levels” on Friday afternoon, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a Monday news conference. Federal partners have since joined forces in probing the case.
HACKER TRIED TO POISON FLORIDA WATER SUPPLY NEAR SUPER BOWL, POLICE SAY
The FBI and Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office had no updates in the case as of Tuesday morning.
“Right now, we do not have a suspect identified but we do have leads that we’re following,” Gualtieri said Monday. “We don’t know right now whether the breach originated from within the United States or outside the country. We also do not know why the Oldsmar system was targeted and we have no knowledge of any other systems being unlawfully accessed.”
Oldsmar is approximately 15 miles from Tampa and is home to just under 15,000 people.
The hacker first breached the system at approximately 8 a.m. Friday, but only did so momentarily before logging off. A plant operator on duty noticed the “brief” remote access, but wasn’t particularly concerned because supervisors “regularly” access the computers remotely to monitor the system, officials said.
But around 1:30 p.m. that same day, “someone again remotely accessed the computer system, and it showed up on the operator’s screen with a mouse being moved about to open various software functions that control the water being treated,” Gualtieri said.
In this screen shot from a YouTube video posted by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri speaks during a news conference as Oldsmar, Fla., Mayor Eric Seidel, left, listens, Monday, Feb. 8, 2021, in Oldsmar, Fla. (Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office via AP) ((Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office via AP))
The hacker took over the system for anywhere from three to five minutes, he said. They opened a function that controls the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water – changing the amount from 100 parts-per-million to 11,100 parts-per-millions, Gualtieri said.
“This is obviously a significant and potentially dangerous increase. Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, is the main ingredient in liquid drain cleaners,” he continued. “It’s also used to control water acidity and remove metals from drinking water in the water treatment plants.”
The hacker left the system shortly after changing the parts-per-million, and officials say the plant operator “immediately reduced the level back to the appropriate amount.”
JUDGE RULES BROWARD SCHOOL DISTRICT HAD NO RESPONSIBILITY TO WARN STUDENTS ABOUT PARKLAND SCHOOL SHOOTER
The treatment plant provides water directly to Oldsmar’s businesses and residences, officials said, but the affected water would not have made its way to the Oldsmar public until 24 to 36 hours later and was checked multiple times before it did. Oldsmar’s water system is no longer capable to being accessed remotely, Gualtieri said. The public was never in danger.
Sodium hydroxide is often used to manage acid levels in water, and can cause burns or irritation, among other adverse reactions when it reaches a certain level.
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Following Monday’s announcement, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio said he would ask the FBI “to provide all assistance necessary.”
He added: “This should be treated as a matter of national security.”
