A global education technology company based in Boston has signed a $191M deal to buy the cybersecurity training platform, Infosec.

Cengage Group announced the planned addition to its ed2Go business on Monday. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. 

“The online, employer-paid cybersecurity training segment is currently a $1bn market, with expectations that it will grow to $10bn annually by 2027,” said Cengage CEO Michael Hansen. 

He added: “Combining Infosec with our already-successful Workforce Skills business will provide top-line growth, expand our base of recurring revenue and accelerate our opportunity within the space.”

Infosec was founded in 2004 by its current chief executive Jack Koziol who will remain at the helm to manage the transition. The company is based in Wisconsin and provides skills development and certification programs for the cybersecurity industry. 

“Cengage Group has the same level of passion for making learning accessible, affordable and applicable to today’s cybersecurity professionals,” said Jack Koziol, CEO and Founder of Infosec. 

He added: “Building on ed2go’s history in online training, Infosec will benefit from Cengage Group’s scale and expertise, which means we can reach more cybersecurity professionals and employers that are looking to not only grow their careers but to keep businesses, governments and people safe from cyber threats.”

Infosec employs around 100 people and offers more than 1,400 online cybersecurity courses. Nearly all Infosec’s current employees will reportedly be joining Cengage’s workforce of 4,500 people. 

According to Cyber Seek, there are just under 600,000 vacant cybersecurity roles in the United States. Research by Burning Glass Technologies suggests that around half of these positions require at least one certification. 

“We can’t hire people fast enough,” Hansen told The Boston Globe. “Right now, the demand for workforce skills courses is just exploding, and it’s exploding in very specific job categories,” he said. 

Hansen continued: “There is such a labor shortage. Every CEO tells me that…the labor shortage is really a skills shortage.”

News of Cengage’s planned purchase comes as rival British publishing house Pearson announced its acquisition of Credly, a digital workforce credentialing service provider, for around $200m.

A Russian-born tech entrepreneur has been extradited to the United States from Australia to face charges relating to a multi-million-dollar text messaging consumer fraud scheme.

The arrival in America of 41-year-old dual Russian and Australian citizen Eugeni Tsvetnenko was announced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Friday. Tsvetnenko – also known as “Zhenya” – was extradited on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Prosecutors allege that former Perth resident Tsvetnenko conspired with others to operate an auto-subscribing scheme that signed cell phone users to receive premium paid for content via text message without their knowledge or consent. 

“Eugeni Tsvetnenko is alleged to have surreptitiously subscribed hundreds of thousands of cell phone users to a $9.99 per-month charge for recurring text messages they did not approve or want,” said US attorney Damian Williams.  

Victims of the scheme received text messages on horoscopes, celebrity gossip and trivia facts. The scheme’s operators defrauded victims of approximately $41,389,725 and made around $20m in profits. 

Tsvetnenko’s alleged co-conspirators include Darcy Wedd, the operator of telecommunications company Mobile Messenger, and Fraser Thompson, Mobile Messenger’s senior vice president of strategic operations. 

“Tsvetnenko and his co-conspirators concocted a scheme that turned thousands of mobile phone customers into unwitting subscription service participants, as alleged,’ said FBI assistant director-in-charge Michael J. Driscoll said.

He added: “These customers incurred monthly charges for services they never subscribed to and, in many cases, disregarded as spam until the charges turned up on their monthly statements.”

Prosecutors allege that at the start of 2012, Wedd, Thompson and two other Mobile Messenger senior executives recruited Tsvetnenko to their auto-subscribing scheme to boost their company’s revenue. Tsvetnenko allegedly agreed and established two new content providers based in Australia, CF Enterprises and DigiMobi, to auto-subscribe on Mobile.

CC-3 allegedly provided Tsvetnenko with lists of phone numbers to target, along with instructions on how to auto-subscribe without being caught by making it appear as if the customers had genuinely chosen to buy the text-messaging services.

Tsvetnenko is further accused of working with co-conspirators to launder the proceeds of the auto-subscribing scheme.

A Canadian man has been sentenced to prison in the United States for trading in stolen identities and collaborating with the Dark Overlord cyber extortionist group.

Using the screen name GoldenAce, Slava Dmitriev bought and sold hundreds of illegally obtained IDs on the dark web. The 29-year-old resident of Vaughn, Ontario, traded in Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information, including names and dates of birth belonging to American citizens. 

Between May 2016 and July 2017, Dmitriev made approximately $100K by selling 1,764 items (mostly stolen identities) via the darknet marketplace AlphaBay.

An investigation into Dmitriev’s cyber-criminal activities revealed that he aided the Dark Overlord with their illegal activities on multiple occasions. On June 16 2016, Dmitriev sent access credentials to the group for a New York-based dentist he had purchased on a criminal marketplace. The dentist subsequently became the victim of a cyber extortion attack perpetrated by the group. 

A month later, Dmitriev received a spreadsheet from the Dark Overlord containing approximately 200,000 stolen identities. Investigators also determined that in May 2017, Dmitriev sold data stolen by the group containing the identity of a victim residing in La Quinta, California.

Dmitriev was arrested in Greece in September 2020 through the coordinated efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Hellenic Police. When Greek police searched the residence where Dmitriev was staying, they located a computer containing emails discussing the buying and selling of identities and Social Security numbers, as well as a video about how to commit identity theft.

Dmitriev was extradited to the United States in January 2021 to face a charge of fraud and related activity in connection with access devices. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to three years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

“Dmitriev stole the identities of hard-working citizens of the United States and thought he was safe from prosecution while overseas,” said Phil Wislar, acting special agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta.  

He added: “This sentence will serve as a reminder that the FBI will always work diligently with International Law Enforcement partners to bring justice to citizens who have been victimized.”

The US government has effectively stripped another Chinese telecoms player of its license to operate in the country on national security grounds.

The new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order ends the ability of China Unicom Americas to provide telecoms services within the US.

It follows a March 2021 finding by the FCC in which it said the Chinese vendor had “failed to dispel serious concerns” about its continued operations.

In its ruling late last week, the FCC claimed that, as a state-owned enterprise, China Unicom “is subject to exploitation, influence and control by the Chinese government and is highly likely to be forced to comply with Chinese government requests without sufficient legal procedures subject to independent judicial oversight.”

It said this is more likely today than two decades ago when the firm’s license was first approved. The FCC is particularly concerned about Beijing’s ability to “access, store, disrupt and/or misroute US communications” and therefore conduct state-backed cyber-espionage via China Unicom.

“China Unicom Americas’ conduct and representations to the commission and Congress demonstrate a lack of candor, trustworthiness, and reliability that erodes the baseline level of trust that the Commission and other US government agencies require of telecommunications carriers given the critical nature of the provision of telecommunications service in the United States,” the FCC added.

According to the FCC order, “mitigation” would not address these national security concerns.

The firm now has 60 days to stop providing its services within the US.

China Unicom Americas is the latest of several Chinese state-owned telecoms firms caught in the middle of escalating hostility between Beijing and Washington.

Last year, China Telecom Americas also had its license revoked. In contrast, several years before that, the Trump administration blocked China Mobile USA’s application to enter the US market.

China Telecom is currently appealing the revocation of its license.

A decentralized lending platform that lost $80m to hackers has offered them an astonishing multimillion-dollar bug bounty in return for the stolen funds.

Qubit Finance revealed at the end of last week that an attacker had exploited a vulnerability in its QBridge deposit function.

In doing so, they managed to get away with a large amount of Ethereum, which they converted to Binance coins with a value of tens of millions of dollars. In effect, they were able to exploit a mistake in Qubit Finance’s code to withdraw Binance tokens without depositing any Ethereum.

The firm pleaded with its attacker to return the funds, addressing them on Twitter as “dear exploiter.”

“We propose you to negotiate directly with us before taking any further action,” it wrote on Friday. “The exploit and loss of funds have a profound effect on thousands of real people. If the maximum bounty is now what you are looking for, we are open to have a conversation. Let’s figure out a solution.”

A follow-up note confirmed the firm would offer a “maximum” bug bounty and not seek to press charges if the attacker returned the funds.

Subsequent messages over the weekend then increased this ‘maximum’ bounty to $1m and then on Sunday to $2m.

It’s unclear whether the tactic was merely intended to buy investigators ADDITIONAL time or if the firm was genuinely prepared to hand over a considerable bug bounty to a cyber-criminal.

A new post issued hours ago revealed the firm is working on a new site that will enable affected users to access their digital wallets to file reports with local police. However, they have little hope of getting their money back unless the cyber-thieves decide to cooperate with Qubit Finance.

A report from Chainalysis last week claimed that decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols were attacked most last year, losing over $2bn.

Thousands of QNAP users have been infected by a new ransomware variant flagged by the network-attached storage (NAS) vendor last week, according to a security vendor.

Taiwan-headquartered QNAP said last week that customers should urgently upgrade their systems to the latest version of its QTS operating systems and take steps to disconnect devices from the internet to mitigate the campaign.

Dubbed “DeadBolt,” the new ransomware variant demands a 0.03 Bitcoin ($1100) payment in return for a decryption key.

“This is not a personal attack,” reads the notice. “You have been targeted because of the inadequate security provided by your vendor (QNAP).”

Inventory firm Censys last week claimed there were around 5000 such devices impacted by the ransomware, although this is out of a total of 130,000 globally.

Interestingly, the vendor observed that the number fell sharply between January 26 and 27.

“Overnight, the number of services with the DeadBolt ransomware dropped by 1061, down to a total of 3927 infected services on the public internet,” it wrote.

“The exact reason for this drop is unknown at the moment, and we are continuing to monitor the situation. But earlier today, Malwarebytes reported that QNAP released a forced automatic update for their Linux-based operating system called QTS to address the vulnerability. This update reportedly removed the ransomware executable and reverted the web interface changes made by the ransomware.”

QNAP’s extorters had given it the opportunity to pay a flat rate of 50 BTC ($1.8m) to decrypt all customer data, but it does not appear to have acceded to these demands.

Some users have reported that decryption keys they were given following payment did not work.