Paul Manafort's associate Sam Patten charged with lobbying law violation

A former associate of Paul Manafort, Sam Patten, was charged Friday with failing to register in the US as a foreign agent for his work lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian political party. US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office referred the case to the US Attorney in the District of Columbia, according to William Miller, a spokesman for US Attorney Jessie Liu. From 2014 until now, Patten worked with a Russian national on lobbying and political consulting services, including on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch and a Ukrainian political party, according to a document filed by the U.S. in federal court in Washington. As part of his lobbying work, he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the US said. The charge is a felony and carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, Miller said. Because it’s a pending case, the US Attorney declined to comment further.

BadRabbit' cyber attacks hit airport, metro in Ukraine

The chief of Ukraine's cyber police said Ukraine was attacked on Tuesday by malware called BadRabbit, adding that the country was barely affected.

Earlier the airport in the southern city of Odessa said it had tightened security measures after being hit by a cyber attack, while the metro system in the capital Kiev reported a hack on its payment system.

Asked whether the malware BadRabbit was used in the attacks, Cyber Police Chief Serhiy Demedyuk said by text message "yes, correct".
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G20 Summit: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin discuss Ukraine, Syria, terrorism

US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held their first ever and much-anticipated sit-down discussion here on Friday, focussing on the situation in Ukraine and Syria, fight against terrorism and cyber security, on the sidelines of the G20 summit here.

The meeting lasted about 2 hours and 20 minutes, according to Russian news agency Sputnik.

"I had a very lengthy conversation with the President of the United States. There were a lot of issues such as Ukraine, Syria, other problems, some bilateral issues," Putin said at the beginning of his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We again returned to the issues of fighting terrorism and cyber security," Putin added.

The Trump-Putin formal meeting came hours after a brief encounter upon arrival at the Hamburg summit, during which they shook hands and exchanged a few words.

Trump began their meeting by saying: "President Putin and I have been discussing various things. And I think it is going very well."

"We look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia, for the United States and for everybody concerned. And it is an honor to be with you," Trump said.

"I'm delighted to meet you personally, and I hope our meeting will bring results," Putin said after shaking hands with Trump.

Following the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Putin-Trump meeting was constructive and confirmed desire to search for mutually-beneficial agreements, according to Sputnik.
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Cyberattack hits Ukraine then spreads internationally

Computer systems from Ukraine to the United States were struck on Tuesday in an international cyberattack that was similar to a recent assault that crippled tens of thousands of machines worldwide.

In Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, A.T.M.s stopped working. About 80 miles away, workers were forced to manually monitor radiation at the old Chernobyl nuclear plant when their computers failed. And tech managers at companies around the world — from Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, to Merck, the drug giant in the United States — were scrambling to respond. Even an Australian factory for the chocolate giant Cadbury was affected.

It was unclear who was behind this cyberattack, and the extent of its impact was still hard to gauge Tuesday. It started as an attack on Ukrainian government and business computer systems — an assault that appeared to have been intended to hit the day before a holiday marking the adoption in 1996 of Ukraine’s first Constitution after its break from the Soviet Union. The attack spread from there, causing collateral damage around the world.

The outbreak was the latest and perhaps the most sophisticated in a series of attacks making use of dozens of hacking tools that were stolen from the National Security Agency and leaked online in April by a group called the Shadow Brokers.

Like the WannaCry attacks in May, the latest global hacking took control of computers and demanded digital ransom from their owners to regain access. The new attack used the same National Security Agency hacking tool, Eternal Blue, that was used in the WannaCry episode, as well as two other methods to promote its spread, according to researchers at the computer security company Symantec.

The National Security Agency has not acknowledged its tools were used in WannaCry or other attacks. But computer security specialists are demanding that the agency help the rest of the world defend against the weapons it created.
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