The Microsoft security team has published details about a malware campaign that is currently spreading a remote access trojan named STRRAT that steals data from infected systems while masquerading as a ransomware attack. From a report: According to the Microsoft Security Intelligence team, the campaign is currently leveraging a mass-spam distribution vector to bombard users with emails containing malicious PDF file attachments. "Attackers used compromised email accounts to launch the email campaign," Microsoft said in a series of tweets last night. "The emails contained an image that posed as a PDF attachment but, when opened, connected to a malicious domain to download the STRRAT malware." First spotted in June 2020, STRRAT is a remote access trojan (RAT) coded in Java that can act as a backdoor on infected hosts. According to a technical analysis by German security firm G DATA, the RAT has a broad spectrum of features that vary from the ability to steal credentials to the ability to tamper with local files.

Craig Federighi is currently testifying during the Apple vs. Epic lawsuit. While facing questioning from Apple's lawyers, Federighi made some interesting comments about security, particularly noting that the Mac currently has a level of malware that Apple "does not find acceptable." 9to5Mac reports: One of Federighi's goals is to paint the iPhone ecosystem, including the App Store and lack of side-loading support, as a secure and trusted environment for users. To do this, it appears that part of Federighi's strategy is to throw the Mac under the bus. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is presiding over the Epic vs. Apple case, asked Federighi about why the Mac can have multiple app stores, but not the iPhone. "It is regularly exploited on the Mac," Federighi explained. "iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection. The Mac is not meeting that bar today." "Today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don't find acceptable," Federighi added.

The Apple executive also pointed to Android as another example of a platform with multiple app stores that suffers from security problems. "It's well understood in the security community that Android has a malware problem," he explained. "iOS has succeeded so far in staying ahead of the malware problem." Federighi added that Apple is essentially playing "an endless game of whack-a-mole" with malware on the Mac and has to block "many instances" of infections that can affect "hundreds of thousands of people" every week. Since last May, Federighi testified there have been 130 types of Mac malware, and one of them infected 300,000 systems. When asked whether side-loading would affect security on iOS, Federighi said things would change "dramatically. No human policy review could be enforced because if software could be signed by people and downloaded directly, you could put an unsafe app up and no one would check that policy," he said.

Brian Krebs: In a Twitter discussion last week on ransomware attacks, KrebsOnSecurity noted that virtually all ransomware strains have a built-in failsafe designed to cover the backsides of the malware purveyors: They simply will not install on a Microsoft Windows computer that already has one of many types of virtual keyboards installed -- such as Russian or Ukrainian. So many readers had questions in response to the tweet that I thought it was worth a blog post exploring this one weird cyber defense trick. The Twitter thread came up in a discussion on the ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline, which earlier this month shut down 5,500 miles of fuel pipe for nearly a week, causing fuel station supply shortages throughout the country and driving up prices. The FBI said the attack was the work of DarkSide, a new-ish ransomware-as-a-service offering that says it targets only large corporations.

DarkSide and other Russian-language affiliate moneymaking programs have long barred their criminal associates from installing malicious software on computers in a host of Eastern European countries, including Ukraine and Russia. This prohibition dates back to the earliest days of organized cybercrime, and it is intended to minimize scrutiny and interference from local authorities. In Russia, for example, authorities there generally will not initiate a cybercrime investigation against one of their own unless a company or individual within the country's borders files an official complaint as a victim. Ensuring that no affiliates can produce victims in their own countries is the easiest way for these criminals to stay off the radar of domestic law enforcement agencies. [...] Here's the thing: Digital extortion gangs like DarkSide take great care to make their entire platforms geopolitical, because their malware is engineered to work only in certain parts of the world.

Slashdot reader quonset writes: To this day no one is sure why he did it, but in 1989 a Harvard-taught evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp mailed out 20,000 floppy discs with malware on them to people around the world. At the time he was doing research into AIDS and the discs had been sent to attendees of the World Health Organization's AIDS conference in Stockholm.

Eddy Willems was working for an insurance company in Belgium and his boss asked him to see what was on the disc...
CNN picks up the story: Willems was expecting to see medical research when the disc's contents loaded. Instead he became a victim of the first act of ransomware — more than 30 years before the ransomware attack on the US Colonial Pipeline... A few days after inserting the disc, Willems' computer locked and a message appeared demanding that he send $189 in an envelope to a PO Box in Panama. "I didn't pay the ransom or lose any data because I figured out how to reverse the situation," he told CNN Business.

He was one of the lucky ones: Some people lost their life's work.

"I started to get calls from medical institutions and organizations asking how I got around it," said Willems, who is now a cybersecurity expert at G Data, which developed the world's first commercial antivirus solution in 1987. "The incident created a lot of damage back in those days. People lost a lot of work. It was not a marginal thing — it was a big thing, even then...." It's unclear if any people or organizations paid the ransom.
CSO reports that Popp was eventually arrested and charged with multiple counts of blackmail after law enforcement identified him as the owner of the P.O. box where the ransom checks were to be sent.

CNN adds that "One of the biggest problems about ransomware nowadays is that ransoms are often paid with cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin, which is exchanged anonymously and not traceable."

Slashdot reader storagedude writes: The MITRE cybersecurity product evaluations use adversarial attack techniques instead of basic malware samples, and as a result are the best tests of enterprise security products — particularly in light of dramatic recent attacks on SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline.

What's especially interesting is just how well first-generation antivirus vendors like Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro have fared in the MITRE tests. An eSecurity Planet article analyzes the data and speculates on why the old guard may have a built-in advantage over the hot upstarts:

"They may have been overshadowed in recent years by some of the flashy marketing of the upstarts, but that long history gives the old guard a product depth that's tough to beat," eSecurity Planet wrote. "Just one example: Symantec was prepared for last year's SolarWinds hack because it long ago faced attacks when hackers tried to disable endpoint agents, a primary vector for the Sunburst malware.

"In cybersecurity, experience still counts for something."

ITWire reports on how Norwegian firm Volue Technology handled a ransomware attack that began on May 5th: The company has set up a Web page with information about the attack and also links to frequent updates about the status of its systems. There was no obfuscation about the attack, none at all. The company said: "The ransomware attack on Volue Technology ('Powel') was caused by Ryuk, a type of malware usually known for targeting large, public-entity Microsoft Windows systems."

What is even more remarkable about this page is that it has provided the telephone number and email address of its chief executive, Trond Straume, and asked for anyone who needs additional information to contact him. Not some underling.
ITWire argues this response "demonstrated to the rest of the world how a ransomware attack should be handled."

Politico writes: President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered a sweeping overhaul of the federal government's approach to cybersecurity, from the software that agencies buy to the security measures that they use to block hackers, as his administration continues grappling with vulnerabilities exposed by a massive digital espionage campaign carried out by the Russian government... Biden's order requires agencies to encrypt their data, update plans for securely using cloud hosting services and enabling multi-factor authentication...

It also creates a cyber incident review group, modeled on the National Transportation Safety Board that investigates aviation, railroad and vehicle crashes, to improve the government's response to cyberattacks. And it sets the stage for requiring federal contractors to report data breaches and meet new software security standards.

The directive, which sets deadlines for more than 50 different actions and reports, represents a wide-ranging attempt by the new Biden administration to close glaring cybersecurity gaps that it discovered upon taking office and prevent a repeat of Moscow's SolarWinds espionage operation, which breached nine federal agencies and roughly 100 companies... In addition to requiring agencies to deploy multi-factor authentication, the order requires them to install endpoint detection and response software, which generates warnings when it detects possible hacks. It also calls for agencies to redesign their networks using a philosophy known as zero-trust architecture, which assumes that hackers are inside a network and focuses on preventing them from jumping from one computer to another... Officials say current federal monitoring programs are outdated — they can only spot previously identified malware, and they can't protect increasingly pervasive cloud platforms...

Biden's executive order attempts to prevent another SolarWinds by requiring information technology service providers to meet new security requirements in order to do business with the federal government. These contractors will need to alert the government if they are hacked and share information about the intrusion.
The order "reflects a fundamental shift in our mindset from incident response to prevention, from talking about security to doing security," one senior administration official told reporters. The order notes "persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns" that "threaten the public sector, the private sector, and ultimately the American people's security and privacy," calling for "bold changes and significant investments."

But the order also argues that "In the end, the trust we place in our digital infrastructure should be proportional to how trustworthy and transparent that infrastructure is..." warning that "The development of commercial software often lacks transparency, sufficient focus on the ability of the software to resist attack, and adequate controls to prevent tampering by malicious actors." To that end, the order also requires guidelines for a "Software Bill of Materials" or "SBOM," a "formal record containing the details and supply chain relationships of various components used in building software... analogous to a list of ingredients on food packaging." [A]n SBOM allows the builder to make sure those components are up to date and to respond quickly to new vulnerabilities. Buyers can use an SBOM to perform vulnerability or license analysis, both of which can be used to evaluate risk in a product. Those who operate software can use SBOMs to quickly and easily determine whether they are at potential risk of a newly discovered vulnerability. A widely used, machine-readable SBOM format allows for greater benefits through automation and tool integration. The SBOMs gain greater value when collectively stored in a repository that can be easily queried by other applications and systems. Understanding the supply chain of software, obtaining an SBOM, and using it to analyze known vulnerabilities are crucial in managing risk.
ZDNet reports that "the Linux and open-source community are already well on their way to meeting the demands of this new security order," citing security projects in both its Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) and from the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).

Computer hardware maker MSI is warning gamers not to visit a website that's impersonating the brand and its graphics card overclocking software, Afterburner, to push malware. From a report: On Thursday, MSI published a press release warning of "a malicious software being disguised as the official MSI Afterburner." "The malicious software is being unlawfully hosted on a suspicious website impersonating as MSI's official website with the domain name https:// afterburner - msi [ . ] space," the company wrote. "MSI has no relation with this website or the aforementioned domain. [...] This webpage is hosting software which may contain virus, trojan, keylogger, or other type of malicious program that have been disguised to look like MSI Afterburner," the company added. "DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY SOFTWARE FROM THIS WEBSITE."

As part of the trial against Epic Games, Apple released emails that show that 128 million users, of which 18 million were in the U.S., downloaded apps containing malware known as XCodeGhost from the App Store. From a report: In 2015, unknown hackers snuck malware onto thousands of apps on the iPhone App Store. At the time, researchers believed the hack had the potential to impact hundreds of millions of people, given that it affected around 4,000 apps, according to researcher estimates. This made it perhaps the largest hack against iPhones ever in terms of affected users. But for years, the full scale of the hack was unknown to the public. Some even thought the real impact of the hack -- known as XCodeGhost, the name of the malware used -- would never be revealed.

But now, thanks to emails published as part of Apple's trial against Epic Games, we finally know how many iPhone users were impacted: 128 million in total, of which 18 million were in the US. "In total, 128M customers have downloaded the 2500+ apps that were affected LTD. Those customers drove 203M downloads of the 2500+ affected apps LTD," Dale Bagwell, who was Apple's manager of iTunes customer experience at the time, wrote in one of the emails. Another Apple employee wrote in the emails that "China represents 55% of customers and 66% of downloads. As you can see, a significant number (18M customers) are affected in the US." The emails also show that Apple was scrambling to figure out the impact of the hack, and working on notifying the victims.

Australian security software house Click Studios has told customers not to post emails sent by the company about its data breach, which allowed malicious hackers to push a malicious update to its flagship enterprise password manager Passwordstate to steal customer passwords. TechCrunch reports: Last week, the company told customers to "commence resetting all passwords" stored in its flagship password manager after the hackers pushed the malicious update to customers over a 28-hour window between April 20-22. The malicious update was designed to contact the attacker's servers to retrieve malware designed to steal and send the password manager's contents back to the attackers. In an email to customers, Click Studios did not say how the attackers compromised the password manager's update feature, but included a link to a security fix.

But news of the breach only became public after Danish cybersecurity firm CSIS Group published a blog post with details of the attack hours after Click Studios emailed its customers. Click Studios claims Passwordstate is used by "more than 29,000 customers," including in the Fortune 500, government, banking, defense and aerospace, and most major industries.

In an update on its website, Click Studios said in a Wednesday advisory that customers are "requested not to post Click Studios correspondence on Social Media." The email adds: "It is expected that the bad actor is actively monitoring Social Media, looking for information they can use to their advantage, for related attacks." "It is expected the bad actor is actively monitoring social media for information on the compromise and exploit. It is important customers do not post information on Social Media that can be used by the bad actor. This has happened with phishing emails being sent that replicate Click Studios email content," the company said. The report says Click Studios has remained extremely tightlipped about the situation. The company has refused to comment or respond to questions; it's also unclear if the company has disclosed the breach to U.S. and EU authorities, which require companies to disclose data breach incidents or face hefty fines.

syn3rg shares a report from ZDNet: A Linux backdoor recently discovered by researchers has avoided VirusTotal detection since 2018. Dubbed RotaJakiro, the Linux malware has been described by the Qihoo 360 Netlab team as a backdoor targeting Linux 64-bit systems. RotaJakiro was first detected on March 25 when a Netlab distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet C2 command tracking system, BotMon, flagged a suspicious file.

At the time of discovery, there were no malware detections on VirusTotal for the file, despite four samples having been uploaded -- two in 2018, one in 2020, and another in 2021. Netlab researchers say the Linux malware changes its use of encryption to fly under the radar, including ZLIB compression and combinations of AES, XOR, and key rotation during its activities, such as the obfuscation of command-and-control (C2) server communication. At present, the team says that they do not know the malware's "true purpose" beyond a focus on compromising Linux systems.

There are 12 functions in total including exfiltrating and stealing data, file and plugin management -- including query/download/delete -- and reporting device information. However, the team cites a "lack of visibility" into the plugins that is preventing a more thorough examination of the malware's overall capabilities. In addition, RotaJakiro will treat root and non-root users on compromised systems differently and will change its persistence methods depending on which accounts exist.

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said today it discovered new malware that appears to have been developed by the US Central Intelligence Agency. From a report: Kaspersky said it discovered the malware in "a collection of malware samples" that its analysts and other security firms received in February 2019. While an initial analysis did not find any shared code with any previously-known malware samples, Kaspersky has recently re-analyzed the files and said it found that "the samples have intersections of coding patterns, style and techniques that have been seen in various Lambert families." Lamberts is the internal codename that Kaspersky uses to track CIA hacking operations. Four years ago, after WikiLeaks exposed the CIA hacking capabilities to the public in a series of leaks known as Vault7, US security firm Symantec publicly linked the Vault7 hacking tools to the CIA and the Longhorn APT (another industry name for Lamberts).

Apple has spent years reinforcing macOS with new security features to make it tougher for malware to break in. But a newly discovered vulnerability broke through most of macOS' newer security protections with a double-click of a malicious app, a feat not meant to be allowed under Apple's watch. From a report: Worse, evidence shows a notorious family of Mac malware has already been exploiting this vulnerability for months before it was subsequently patched by Apple this week. Over the years, Macs have adapted to catch the most common types of malware by putting technical obstacles in their way. macOS flags potentially malicious apps masquerading as documents that have been downloaded from the internet. And if macOS hasn't reviewed the app -- a process Apple calls notarization -- or if it doesn't recognize its developer, the app won't be allowed to run without user intervention.

But security researcher Cedric Owens said the bug he found in mid-March bypasses those checks and allows a malicious app to run. Owens told TechCrunch that the bug allowed him to build a potentially malicious app to look like a harmless document, which when opened bypasses macOS' built-in defenses when opened. "All the user would need to do is double click -- and no macOS prompts or warnings are generated," he told TechCrunch. Owens built a proof-of-concept app disguised as a harmless document that exploits the bug to launch the Calculator app, a way of demonstrating that the bug works without dropping malware. But a malicious attacker could exploit this vulnerability to remotely access a user's sensitive data simply by tricking a victim into opening a spoofed document, he explained.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hackers backed by nation-states are exploiting critical vulnerabilities in the Pulse Secure VPN to bypass two-factor authentication protections and gain stealthy access to networks belonging to a raft of organizations in the US Defense industry and elsewhere, researchers said. At least one of the security flaws is a zero-day, meaning it was unknown to Pulse Secure developers and most of the research world when hackers began actively exploiting it, security firm Mandiant said in a blog post published Tuesday. Besides CVE-2021-22893, as the zero-day is tracked, multiple hacking groups -- at least one of which likely works on behalf of the Chinese government -- are also exploiting several Pulse Secure vulnerabilities fixed in 2019 and 2020.

Used alone or in concert, the security flaws allow the hackers to bypass both single-factor and multifactor authentication protecting the VPN devices. From there, the hackers can install malware that persists across software upgrades and maintain access through webshells, which are browser-based interfaces that allow hackers to remotely control infected devices. Multiple intrusions over the past six months have hit defense, government, and financial organizations around the world, Tuesday's post reported. Separately, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that targets also include US government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and other private sector organizations." Mandiant said that it has uncovered "limited evidence" that tied one of the hacker groups to the Chinese government. Dubbed UNC2630, this previously unknown team is one of at least two hacking groups known to be actively exploiting the vulnerabilities. Tuesday's blog post also referred to another previously unseen group that Mandiant is calling UNC2717. In March, the group used malware Mandiant identifies as RADIALPULSE, PULSEJUMP, and HARDPULSE against Pulse Secure systems at a European organization. Pulse Secure on Tuesday published an advisory instructing users how to mitigate the currently unpatched security bug.

America's top law enforcement agency "obtained a court order that allowed it to remove a backdoor program from hundreds of private Microsoft Exchange servers that were hacked through zero-day vulnerabilities earlier this year," reports CSO. (Thanks to detritus. (Slashdot reader #46,421) for sharing the news...) Earlier this week, the Department of Justice announced that the FBI was granted a search and seizure warrant by a Texas court that allows the agency to copy and remove web shells from hundreds of on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers owned by private organizations. A web shell is a type of program that hackers install on hacked web servers to grant them backdoor access and remote command execution capabilities on those servers through a web-based interface.

In this case, the warrant targeted web shells installed by a cyberespionage group dubbed Hafnium that is believed to have ties to the Chinese government. In early March, Microsoft reported that Hafnium has been exploiting previously unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange to compromise servers. At the same time, the company released patches for those vulnerabilities, as well as indicators of compromise and other detection tools, but this didn't prevent other groups of attackers from exploiting the vulnerabilities after they became public. In its warrant application, dated April 13, the FBI argues that despite the public awareness campaigns by Microsoft, CISA and the FBI itself, many servers remained infected with the web shell deployed by Hafnium. While the exact number has been redacted from the unsealed warrant, the DOJ said in a press release that it was "hundreds."

The FBI asked for, and received court approval, to access the malicious web shells through the passwords set by the original attackers and then use that access against the malware itself by executing a command that will delete the web shell, which is essentially an .aspx script deployed on the server. The FBI was also allowed to make a copy of the web shells first because they could constitute evidence.

The warrant states that it "does not authorize the seizure of any tangible property" or the copying or alteration of any content from the servers aside from the web shell themselves, which are identified in the warrant by their unique file paths. This means the FBI was not granted permission to patch the vulnerabilities to protect the servers from future exploitation or to remove any additional malware or tools that hackers might have already deployed...

The FBI sent an email message from an official email account, including a copy of the warrant, to the email addresses associated with the domain names of the infected servers.
An official statement from the Department of Justice is already using the past tense, announcing that U.S. authorities "have executed a court-authorized operation to copy and remove malicious web shells from hundreds of vulnerable computers in the United States. They were running on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server software used to provide enterprise-level email service."

Security researchers say APKPure, a widely popular app for installing older or discontinued Android apps from outside of Google's app store, contained malicious adware that flooded the victim's device with unwanted ads. From a report: Kaspersky Lab said that it alerted APKPure on Thursday that its most recent app version, 3.17.18, contained malicious code that siphoned off data from a victim's device without their knowledge, and pushed ads to the device's lock screen and in the background to generate fraudulent revenue for the adware operators. But the researchers said that the malicious code had the capacity to download other malware, potentially putting affected victims at further risk.

Security researcher Brian Krebs wants you to know... "New data suggests someone has compromised more than 21,000 Microsoft Exchange Server email systems worldwide and infected them with malware that invokes both KrebsOnSecurity and Yours Truly by name. Let's just get this out of the way right now: It wasn't me." The Shadowserver Foundation, a nonprofit that helps network owners identify and fix security threats, says it has found 21,248 different Exchange servers which appear to be compromised by a backdoor and communicating with [a domain that begins with brian . krebsonsecurity... Not a safe domain.] Shadowserver has been tracking wave after wave of attacks targeting flaws in Exchange that Microsoft addressed earlier this month in an emergency patch release. The group looks for attacks on Exchange systems using a combination of active Internet scans and "honeypots" — systems left vulnerable to attack so that defenders can study what attackers are doing to the devices and how.

David Watson, a longtime member and director of the Shadowserver Foundation Europe, says his group has been keeping a close eye on hundreds of unique variants of backdoors (a.k.a. "web shells") that various cybercrime groups worldwide have been using to commandeer any unpatched Exchange servers. These backdoors give an attacker complete, remote control over the Exchange server (including any of the server's emails)... Shadowserver's honeypots saw multiple hosts with the Babydraco backdoor doing the same thing: Running a Microsoft Powershell script that fetches the file "krebsonsecurity.exe"... Oddly, none of the several dozen antivirus tools available to scan the file at Virustotal.com currently detect it as malicious. The Krebsonsecurity file also installs a root certificate, modifies the system registry, and tells Windows Defender not to scan the file. Watson said the Krebsonsecurity file will attempt to open up an encrypted connection between the Exchange server and the above-mentioned IP address, and send a small amount of traffic to it each minute.

Shadowserver found more than 21,000 Exchange Server systems that had the Babydraco backdoor installed. But Watson said they don't know how many of those systems also ran the secondary download from the rogue Krebsonsecurity domain. "Despite the abuse, this is potentially a good opportunity to highlight how vulnerable/compromised MS Exchange servers are being exploited in the wild right now, and hopefully help get the message out to victims that they need to sign up our free daily network reports," Watson said.

Security researchers say a powerful new Android malware masquerading as a critical system update can take complete control of a victim's device and steal their data. From a report: The malware was found bundled in an app called "System Update" that had to be installed outside of Google Play, the app store for Android devices. Once installed by the user, the app hides and stealthily exfiltrates data from the victim's device to the operator's servers. Researchers at mobile security firm Zimperium, which discovered the malicious app, said once the victim installs the malicious app, the malware communicates with the operator's Firebase server, used to remotely control the device. The spyware can steal messages, contacts, device details, browser bookmarks and search history, record calls and ambient sound from the microphone, and take photos using the phone's cameras. The malware also tracks the victim's location, searches for document files and grabs copied data from the device's clipboard. The malware hides from the victim and tries to evade capture by reducing how much network data it consumes by uploading thumbnails to the attacker's servers rather than the full image. The malware also captures the most up-to-date data, including location and photos.

A Russian man has pleaded guilty in the U.S. to offering a Tesla employee $1 million to cripple the electric car company's massive electric battery plant in Nevada with ransomware and steal company secrets for extortion, prosecutors and court records said. The Associated Press reports: In a case that cybersecurity experts called exceptional for the risks he took, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Reno. Prosecutors alleged that Kriuchkov acted on behalf of co-conspirators abroad and attempted to use face-to-face bribery to recruit an insider to physically plant ransomware, which scrambles data on targeted networks and can only be unlocked with a software key provided by the attackers. Typically, ransomware gangs operating from safe havens hack into victim networks over the internet and download data before activating the ransomware.

"The fact that such a risk was taken could, perhaps, suggest that this was an intelligence operation aimed at obtaining information rather than an extortion operation aimed at obtaining money," said Brett Callow, a cybersecurity analyst at anti-virus software company Emsisoft. "It's also possible that the criminals thought the gamble was worth it and decided to roll the dice," Callow said. The FBI said the plot was stopped before any damage happened. Although Kriuchkov says the Russian government was aware of his case, prosecutors and the FBI have not alleged ties to the Kremlin.

"His guilty plea to conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer could have gotten him up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine," the report says. "But he's expected to face no more than 10 months under terms of his written plea agreement."

Police have warned students in the UK against using the Sci-Hub website, which they say lets users "illegally access" millions of scientific research papers. Specifically, the police say the website could "pose a threat to their personal information and data." The BBC reports: The police are concerned that users of the "Russia-based website" could have information taken and misused online. The Sci-Hub says its website "removes all barriers" to science. It offers open access to more than 85 million scientific papers and claims that copyright laws should be abolished and that such material should be "knowledge to all." It describes itself as "the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers."

But Max Bruce, the City of London Police's cyber protection officer, has urged universities to block the website on their network because of the "threat posed by Sci-Hub to both the university and its students." "If you're tricked into revealing your log-in credentials, whether it's through the use of fake emails or malware, we know that Sci-Hub will then use those details to compromise your university's computer network in order to steal research papers," he said. "Students should be aware that accessing such websites is illegal, as it hosts stolen intellectual property," said Det Insp Kevin Ives. He warned that visitors to the website, whose Twitter account has been suspended, are "very vulnerable to having their credentials stolen."