The UK’s long-term risk planning is under-powered and could expose the nation if it is struck by a serious cyber-threat, a new House of Lords (HoL) report has found.

The study, Preparing for Extreme Risks: Building a Resilient Society, was produced by the upper chamber’s Select Committee on Risk Assessment and Risk Planning after interviews with 85 expert witnesses.

It claimed that the government spends too much of its time reacting to crises and emergencies, neglecting the kind of long-term planning which would have prepared the country better for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The UK’s unpreparedness to manage the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus was and is clear. More broadly, our inquiry has analyzed the UK’s risk assessment process and found that our current system is deficient at assessing and addressing future threats and hazards,” it argued.

“However, pandemics are only one of a number of extreme risks facing the UK. Severe space weather events could render smart technologies on which much of society relies inoperable for weeks or longer; this would include GPS, the internet, communications systems and power supplies. A cyber or physical attack on our critical national infrastructure could wreak havoc.”

An AXA report published in September ranked cybersecurity second only to climate change as the biggest global risk. It was ranked as the number one business risk over the coming decade by North American and UK respondents to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report last year.

“If you ask, what keeps me awake at nights, it is the growing possibility of major disruption due to more and more frequent cyber-attacks,” said HoL committee member and noted astrophysicist, Martin Rees. “Even more, I worry on a timescale of tens of years about bioterrorism, bioengineered viruses and all that, which are going to be feasible.”

The United States has imprisoned a woman for her role in a child sexual abuse material (CSAM) subscription service that produced millions of images and videos of sexualized minors. 

Patrice Eileen Wilowski-Mevorah of Tampa, Florida, was one of four people charged in August in connection with the Newstar Websites operated by Newstar Enterprise, out of Florida. Since then, two more defendants have been charged.

According to court documents, Newstar purported to own and operate modeling sites hosted on servers in the United States and overseas. However, the company was in reality “an internet-based business aimed at for-profit sexual exploitation of vulnerable children under the guise of ‘child modeling.'”

Among the content sold by Newstar Websites were images and videos depicting children as young as six years old wearing transparent underwear. Other content featured children dressed in revealing swimsuits or mini-skirts holding provocative poses. 

Most minors whose images were sold through the website were residents of Eastern Europe. 

Newstar Enterprise was founded around 2005. Wilowski-Mevorah joined the company around 2009 and was still working for it in November 2019, when law enforcement authorities executed several search warrants across the United States and simultaneously seized Newstar Websites’ servers in the United States and Europe. 

On July 6, Wilowski-Mevorah pleaded guilty to laundering money for Newstar Enterprise. Court documents show that during her decade with the company, the 53-year-old laundered at least $2.3m.

Wilowski-Mevorah fraudulently opened payment-processing accounts and bank accounts for her employer under the pretense that the accounts were for a fictitious jewelry company. 

“For 10 years, she routinely used the phony company’s accounts to conceal criminal proceeds from the Newstar Websites and transfer those proceeds back to principal members of the Newstar Enterprise,” said the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.

On December 3, US District Judge Mary S. Scriven sentenced Wilowski-Mevorah to five years and three months in federal prison. The court also ordered Wilowski-Mevorah to forfeit $236,410.70.

Newstar defendant Mary Lou Bjorkman has pleaded guilty to money laundering and is awaiting sentencing. Of the remaining defendants, two are now deceased, one has been indicted and is pending extradition, and the other has been indicted and is pending trial.

The retailer SPAR has been forced to close some of its convenience stores in the UK after a cyber-attack on its IT systems.

The digital assault occurred on Sunday and is being investigated by Lancashire Police. 

SPAR has around 2,600 stores located across the UK. Because of the incident, 330 SPAR shops in the north of England were left unable to process payments made using credit or debit cards. 

The cyber-attack also prevented the stores from using their accounting or stock control systems.

While some of the affected shops remain closed in the wake of the attack, others have reopened but are accepting only cash payments. 

“There has been an online attack on our IT systems which is affecting stores’ ability to process card payments, meaning that several SPAR stores are currently closed,” SPAR UK said in a tweet. 

“We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing our customers and we are working as quickly as possible to resolve the situation.”

The retailer said that the cyber-attack had impacted all of the company’s IT systems, including staff email accounts. Technicians have reportedly been working through the night to mitigate the effects of the incident. 

A SPAR store on the campus of Hull University in Yorkshire was among the locations forced into closure by the incident. Stores located elsewhere in Yorkshire and others in Lancashire have also been impacted. 

SPAR Oswaldtwistle said on social media that SPAR stores have also been affected by “an online attack” on the IT system of its primary wholesaler, James Hall & Co Ltd, of Preston, Lancashire. The website of James Hall was offline at the time of publication. 

On Sunday morning, SPAR in Ribchester, Lancashire, posted on social media: “Due to a major & widespread IT failure across the entire Northern SPAR network, all Northern SPAR stores will be closed for an unknown period of time.”

In an update added today, the store stated: “Sadly the SPAR store side of our business remains closed today, however our Post Office is able to be open.”

Crypto-currency worth at least $150m has been stolen from crypto-currency exchange BitMart.

Blockchain security company Peckshield shared news of the theft on Saturday night on social media, claiming that digital currency worth $196m was stolen in the incident. 

Peckshield alleged that a hacker pumped crypto-currency worth $96m out of the Binance smart chain and kenneled $100m worth of crypto-currencies from the Ethereum blockchain. It reported that a mix of more than 20 tokens, including Binance, Safemoon, and Shiba Inu, was stolen in the incident.

To cover their digital tracks, the hacker reportedly used DEX aggregator 1inch to switch the stolen assets with Ethereum before sending the loot through non-custodial privacy solution Tornado Cash.

BitMart founder and CEO Sheldon Xia said on Sunday that the company had suffered a security breach that was “mainly caused by a stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised.”

According to BitMart, the cyber-criminal(s) behind the theft withdrew about $150m in assets. 

Xia said that the exchange would use its own funding “to cover the incident” and compensate affected users.

“We are also talking to multiple project teams to confirm the most reasonable solutions such as token swaps. No user assets will be harmed,” said Xia.

All withdrawals have been suspended by BitMart while the exchange completes a security review. 

The CEO went on to ask for users’ kind understanding while BitMart works to retrieve security setups and return to normal operation.

“In terms of asset deposit and withdrawals, we are confident that deposit and withdrawal functions will gradually begin on December 7, 2021,” Xia said yesterday. 

The CEO is scheduled to share more information regarding the security breach at 8pm EST Monday in an Ask Me Anything session on Telegram. 

Steve Forbes, government cybersecurity expert at Nominet, commented: “It’s no surprise that attackers are targeting crypto-currency exchanges; in many ways they are the new banks, which makes this a modern version of a bank heist with arguably less risk and less effort. With a lot of media focus around the use of crypto-currency for nefarious purposes, I expect these criminals are also hoping to attract less attention from law enforcement.”