It was undoubtedly a historical day on Monday as the January 6 committee met for one last time in a culmination of diligent and outstanding work. And in a move never having been done before, the committee approved referrals — four of them against a former President — Donald John Trump — to the Department of Justice.

I expect a lot of televisions were tuned in on Monday afternoon. I also expect many were ecstatic with what they heard and saw. Here are the criminal referrals against Trump:

– Obstruction of an official proceeding.

– Conspiracy to defraud the United States.

– Conspiracy to make a false statement.

– “Incite,” “assist,” or “aide and comfort” an insurrection.

And so it is done. The final bell has rung. The bell has tolled, and it has tolled for Donald John Trump. But the referrals were not just against Trump. The January 6 committee also made a criminal referral for Attorney John Eastman.

And the committee referred several Senators and congressmen to the House Ethics Committee for failing to honor subpoenas. These people include:

Rep Gym Jordan

Rep Scott Perry

Rep Andy Biggs

And (as if he doesn’t have enough problems) Kevin McCarthy.

In addition, the final report from the committee was released. “That evidence has led to an overriding and straight-forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6 was one man, former president Donald Trump,” the report said. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him,” it goes on.

So yes, it was quite a day, a historic day, the kind of day historians relish as these scholars and researchers take to their devices and notepads to write about it. It is the type of day that will live on hundreds of years from now.

And someday, far away, inquisitive students of history will study this day, reading about it in all its detail and perhaps wondering how the thing that is Donald trump came to be at all.

Historians will look back and speculate about the brilliant group of people — — the January 6 committee and how they were there to make sure the dirty deeds of a traitor were emblazoned in history for all to see.

The post What a historic day appeared first on Palmer Report.

Researchers spotted a malicious package in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that impersonates a software development kit (SDK) for SentinelOne.

Cybersecurity researchers at ReversingLabs have discovered a new malicious package, named ‘SentinelOne,’ on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that impersonates a legitimate software development kit (SDK) for SentinelOne.

The malicious package was first uploaded to the repository on December 11, 2022, in just two days, attackers pushed twenty versions of the malicious project.

The package claims to offer access the SentinelOne’s APIs, but it actually contains malicious code to harvest sensitive information from development systems, including credentials, configuration data, and SSH keys. The package is part of a malicious campaign tracked by ReversingLabs as “SentinelSneak.

According to the researchers, the package is a copy of the actual SentinelOne SDK python client, and the threat actor added the malicious functionality to its code.

“The package appears to be a fully functional SentinelOne client, but contains a malicious backdoor, ReversingLabs threat researcher Karlo Zanki discovered.” reads the analysis published by ReversingLabs. “The malicious functionality in the library does not execute upon installation, but waits to be called on programmatically before activating — a possible effort to avoid detection. ReversingLabs is calling this campaign “SentinelSneak.””

Threat actors behind the SentinelSneak campaign also released two additional packages, named SentinelOne-sdk and SentinelOneSDK, with similar functionalities.

The fake ‘SentinelOne’ package contains “api.py files that contains the code to steal and exfiltrate data uploading it to the IP address 54[.]254[.]189[.]27).

“we see the malicious code for collecting information about shell command execution history as well as the contents of the .ssh folder containing ssh keys and configuration information, including access credentials and secrets, related to git, kubernetes and AWS services.” continues the post. “The code likewise performs a directory listing of the root directory.”

The analysis of the changes between the versions of the malicious module revealed that threat actors modified it to improve the data collection algorithm and make it work on multiple platforms.

Threat actors published five additional malicious packages with a similar name, these modules did not contain api.py files with malicious functionality, a circumstance that suggests they were used for testing purposes.

The experts discovered that the malicious versions of the package have been downloaded over 1,000 times on PyPI.

The packages were published between December 8th and 11th, 2022. ReversingLabs reported their findings to the PyPI security team on December 15th, 2022, and SentinelOne was notified on December 16th, 2022. 

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Python)

The post Malicious PyPI package posed as SentinelOne SDK to serve info-stealing malware appeared first on Security Affairs.

Dante Carrer/Reuters

• Sam Bankman-Fried is accepting extradition to the US, The New York Times reported.
• The former FTX CEO is being held at the Fox Hill prison in the Bahamas, where he was arrested.
• He is facing criminal charges in New York, where he would have to enter a plea once he arrives.

Sam Bankman-Fried has consented to being extradited to the US, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing a lawyer for the FTX founder.

Bankman-Fried, who had indicated to the Bahamas court last week that he wanted to keep the choice open to fight extradition, appears to have reversed course after a tumultuous week in Bahamian custody. His lawyer in the Bahamas, Jerone Roberts, said that Bankman-Fried is now willing to be extradited, according to The New York Times.

A source familiar with Bankman-Fried’s plans confirmed to Insider that the former crypto executive was open to being brought back to the US.

Since his arrest earlier this month, Bankman-Fried is being held in the Fox Hill prison there. 

It is still unclear what Bankman-Fried’s next steps before the Bahamas court will be, and when he would leave for the US. A hearing earlier on Monday did not resolve questions about his stance on extradition, after news outlets initially reported that he would submit to the process to return home.

Federal prosecutors can bring criminal charges in the US to extradite defendants living overseas. Extraditions are governed by treaties between countries that outline the circumstances under which defendants can be brought to the US. 

A criminal indictment unsealed in New York federal court last week revealed that prosecutors charged Bankman-Fried with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy. 

Keystone/Getty Images

• Long Island Republican George Santos has been accused of fabricating his biography.
• In a statement Monday night, Santos’s attorney quoted Winston Churchill.
• But the quote — on the importance of creating enemies — is not from the British prime minister.

Before being elected to Congress this past November, George Santos, a Republican from Long Island, told voters he had worked at Goldman Sachs, and attended Baruch College, and after he was elected he claimed he had lost four of his employees in the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre.

None of that appears to be true, according to an investigation by The New York Times, which found that Santos’s claimed employers and educators had no record of him.

Santos, who is openly gay and of Brazilian heritage, has not rebutted any of the Times’ claims, nor did he respond to an Insider request for comment on the story. Rather, in a statement posted on social media Monday night, the Santos camp is appealing to partisanship and right-wing distrust of The Times — and using a fake quote from Winston Churchill to make the point.

The statement posted on George Santos’ Twitter account attributes a Victor Hugo quote to Winston Churchill.

Screenshot/Twitter

Attributed to Santos’s attorney, Joseph Murray, the statement asserts that “the Left” is threatened by the election of a gay, conservative Latino. Accordingly, “It is no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.”

It goes on to quote the former Conservative UK prime minister who led Britain during World War II: “As Winston Churchill famously stated, ‘You have enemies? Good. It means that you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

But Churchill did not famously state the quote attributed to him; he never said it at all.

As PolitiFact noted in 2019, the quote attributed to Churchill — which went viral on a Facebook meme — is actually a rough paraphrase of Victor Hugo, the French playwright, from an essay he wrote a century before the Nazis were defeated. As a representative for the International Churchill Society told the fact-checking website: “Churchill never said it.”

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

A United Nations summit approved on Monday a landmark global deal to protect nature and direct billions of dollars toward conservation but objections from key African nations, home to large tracts of tropical rainforest, held up its final passage.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, reflecting the joint leadership of China and Canada, is the culmination of four years of work toward creating an agreement to guide global conservation efforts through 2030.

The countries attending the U.N.-backed COP15 biodiversity conference had been negotiating a text proposed on Sunday and talks addressing the finer points of the deal dragged on until Monday morning.

Delegates were able to build consensus around the deal’s most ambitious target of protecting 30% of the world’s land and seas by the decade’s end, a goal known as 30-by-30.

“We have huge achievements in this text now,” EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius told reporters after the deal passed. “It was huge effort to find the landing zone and get everyone on board.”

Another negotiator said he thought it was a balanced agreement but that “a good deal always leaves everyone somewhat unhappy.”

Canada Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault called the agreement “a major win for our planet and for all of humanity, charting a new course away from the relentless destruction of habitats and species.”

The deal also directs countries to allocate $200 billion per year for biodiversity initiatives from both public and private sectors.

Developed countries will provide $25 billion in annual funding starting in 2025 and $30 billion per year by 2030.

The agreement, which contains 23 targets in total, replaces the 2010 Aichi Biodiversity Targets that were intended to guide conservation through 2020. None of those goals were achieved, and no single country met all 20 of the Aichi targets.

“Governments have chosen the right side of history in Montreal,” said World Wildlife Fund International Director General Marco Lambertini.

Unlike Aichi, this deal contains more quantifiable targets — such as reducing harmful subsidies given to industry by at least $500 billion per year — that should make it easier to track and report progress.

But the agreement “can be undermined by slow implementation and failure to mobilize the promised resources,” said Lambertini. “It also lacks a mandatory ratcheting mechanism that will hold governments accountable to increase action if targets are not met.”

More than 1 million species could vanish by the century’s end, from plants to insects, in what scientists have called a sixth mass-extinction event. As much as 40% of the world’s land has been degraded, and wildlife population sizes have shrunk dramatically since 1970.

Investment firms focused on a target in the deal recommending that companies analyse and report how their operations affect and are affected by biodiversity issues.

The parties agreed to large companies and financial institutions being subject to requirements to make disclosures regarding their operations, supply chains and portfolios – but the word “mandatory” was dropped from previous drafts.

“We think this is something that is going to push the financial sector to step up,” said Ingrid Kukuljan, head of impact and sustainable investing at fund manager Federated Hermes.

“This time around we actually need implementation …. we are facing an unprecedented rate of decline,” she said.

Division over how to fund conservation efforts in developing countries led to fiery negotiations at the end.

With China holding the COP15 presidency, Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu appeared to disregard objections from the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday, declaring the deal passed minutes after they said they were not able to support it.

A Congolese representative argued that developed nations should create a separate fund to help support conservation efforts in developing countries.

DRC is the second-largest tropical forested country in the world and home to the greatest extent of African tropical rainforest, giving it a crucial role in the future of the planet’s biodiversity.

Huang declared shortly after 3:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) that the deal was agreed, drawing outrage from other African delegates.

A representative from Cameroon said through a translator that the agreement was passed by force of hand. Another from Uganda invoked a “coup d’etat”.

However, at a second meeting Monday evening, the DRC appeared to walk back its outright objection, downgrading them to “reservations” on financing and resource mobilization.

“We’d like to have this clearly placed on record,” said DRC Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba. “I would like to reiterate our readiness to participate in any process of negotiations until COP16. We do hope our voice will be heard”.

The DRC statement followed a 30-minute huddle of roughly a dozen members of delegations from Brazil, Indonesia and the DRC – the world’s three most forest-rich nations – witnessed by Reuters.

Brazil ultimately helped to broker a solution, with the support of Indonesia, “whereby no questions would be left regarding the legality of the approval of the (deal),” a negotiator said. “There are no longer grounds to question the legality and legitimacy of the agreement.”

Minister Huang highlighted the DRC’s important influence in global biodiversity governance and thanked the country for its support.

Related Galleries:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said COVID-era restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border that have prevented hundreds of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum should be kept in place for now, siding with Republicans who brought a legal challenge.

The restrictions, known as Title 42, were implemented under Republican former President Donald Trump in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and gave border officials the ability to rapidly expel migrants to Mexico without a chance to seek U.S. asylum.

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had campaigned on overturning Trump’s hardline immigration measures before taking office in 2021 but kept Title 42 in place for more than a year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said earlier this year that Title 42 was no longer needed for public health reasons and the Biden administration has said they want it to end but will abide with any court rulings.

A federal judge last month ruled Title 42 was unlawful in response to a lawsuit originally by asylum-seeking migrants represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The judge set the restrictions to be lifted on Wednesday, Dec. 21.

But a group of 19 states with Republican attorneys general sought to overturn that decision by intervening in the case and took their request to the conservative-leaning Supreme Court.

Hours later, Chief Justice John Roberts in a brief order issued a stay that will leave Title 42 in place until further notice from the court. The parties in the legal dispute have until Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET (2200 GMT) to respond, the court said.

After Robert’s action, U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Title 42 “will remain in effect at this time and individuals who attempt to enter the United States unlawfully will continue to be expelled to Mexico.”

The Biden administration had been preparing for Title 42 to end on Wednesday and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a press conference Monday that the White House was seeking more than $3 billion from Congress to pay for additional personnel, technology, migrant holding facilities and transportation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

After the ruling DHS said it still urged Congress to provide the additional funds for border management “while this stage of the litigation proceeds.”

The push for additional resources came as U.S. authorities had been preparing for the possibility of 9,000-14,000 people per day trying to cross into the United States if Title 42 was lifted, Reuters and other outlets reported this month, around double the current rate.

The Biden administration has been weighing plans to prepare for Title 42’s end, with government officials privately discussing several Trump-style plans to deter people from crossing, including barring single adults seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week updated a six-pillar plan that calls for the expanded use of a fast-track deportation process. The revised DHS plan also suggests there could be expansion of legal pathways for migrants to enter the country from abroad, similar to a program launched for Venezuelans in October.

Since Biden took office in January 2021, about half of the roughly 4 million migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border – a record number – have been expelled under Title 42 while the other half have been allowed into the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

Mexico only accepts the return of certain nationalities, including some Central Americans and, more recently, Venezuelans.

For months, El Paso, Texas, has been receiving large groups of asylum-seeking migrants, including many Nicaraguans who cannot be expelled to Mexico. On Saturday, the city’s mayor declared a state of emergency to move migrants from city streets as temperatures have dropped below freezing.

U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose South Texas district borders Mexico, has said U.S. border officials told him that an estimated 50,000 people are waiting in Mexico for the chance to cross.

In El Paso, shelters have struggled to house newcomers even as many ultimately are headed to join relatives in other parts of the United States.

Rescue Mission of El Paso, a shelter near the border, last week housed 280 people, far beyond its 190-person capacity, with people sleeping on cots and air mattresses in the chapel, library and conference rooms, said Nicole Reulet, the shelter’s marketing director, in an interview with Reuters.

“We have people where we tell them, ‘We have no room,'” she said. “They beg for a place on the floor.”

Related Galleries:

Former movie producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape in a trial in Los Angeles on Monday, the second conviction for the one-time Hollywood kingmaker who became the face of #MeToo sexual abuse allegations five years ago, according to the Los Angeles Superior Court.

The jury found Weinstein guilty of rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by foreign object involving one woman, but acquitted him of charges relating to a second alleged victim.

The jury could not reach a verdict on two allegations, including rape, by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, and did not reach a verdict on charges relating to one other women.

Related Galleries:

Peru’s newly installed President Dina Boluarte sent three ministers to Ica, one of the regions at the heart of recent protests on Monday, in an effort to placate public anger as families in nearby Ayacucho held funerals and mourned for the people killed in the unrest over the last fortnight.

The Andean country has been torn apart by protests since the Dec. 7 ouster and arrest of former leftist leader Pedro Castillo, hours after he tried to dissolve Congress to avoid an impeachment vote. At least 20 people have died – including many teenagers – with around half being from Ayacucho, the largely rural, impoverished and indigenous communities in the country’s south.

The police and armed forces have been accused by rights groups of using deadly firearms and dropping smoke bombs from helicopters. The military says protesters, most in Peru’s Andean south, have used homemade weapons and explosives.

The protests, the worst to hit the country in years, threaten to disrupt Peru’s economy and the political stability in the world’s No. 2 copper producer where many have lost faith in government institutions in recent years.

The delegation, including the ministers of farming, development and housing, comes after days when many families in nearby Ayacucho held funerals for those who were killed in clashes with police and security forces.

Reuters images on Sunday showed relatives and friends, wiping away tears as they carried a white coffin in the streets of Ayacucho. Others came with flowers and placards reading “Justice!”

Housing minister Hania Pérez de Cuellar, one of the trio in Ica, told radio station RPP the government wanted dialogue and was giving property titles to residents in Ica, some 300 km (186 miles) south of Lima, where many blockades had started.

“In this crisis today where families are mourning and in pain, where basic public infrastructure is destroyed… I reiterate that dialogue is our main way to return to normality,” Boluarte said in a speech at a naval school.

While many protesters have called for Boluarte to resign, Magali Vivanco Hernandez, one local resident, supported her efforts, saying she needed more time and that people should remain calm.

A recent Ipsos Peru poll showed that 52% of people who live in Peru’s south supported Castillo’s attempt to shutter Congress, while nationally only 33% approved with 63% against it.

Among the protesters are Castillo supporters who say the former teacher and union activist is the democratically elected president, while many others are Peruvians simply angry with the opposition-controlled Congress and the Lima-based political elite, seen as corrupt and self-serving.

“The situation is sad, rights have been trampled on,” Alcides Taquiri Barboza, a resident of the town of Tierra Prometida in the Ica region, told Reuters.

“This area is forgotten by politicians and rulers.”

Related Galleries: