Pangu Lab in China just published a report of a hacking operation by the Equation Group (aka the NSA). It noticed the hack in 2013, and was able to map it with Equation Group tools published by the Shadow Brokers (aka some Russian group)....the scope of victims exceeded …
Tarah Wheeler and Josephine Wolff analyze a recent court decision that the NotPetya attacks are not considered an act of war under the wording of Merck’s insurance policy, and that the insurers must pay the $1B+ claim. Wheeler and Wolff argue that the judge “did the right thing …
The US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis wrote an essay outlining a new social contract for the cyber age: The United States needs a new social contract for the digital age — one that meaningfully alters the relationship between public and private sectors and proposes a new set of obligations …
There are two bills working their way through Congress that would force companies like Apple to allow competitive app stores. Apple hates this, since it would break its monopoly, and it’s making a variety of security arguments to bolster its argument. I have written a rebuttal: I would …
Rolling Stone is reporting that the UK government has hired the M&C Saatchi advertising agency to launch an anti-encryption advertising campaign. Presumably they’ll lean heavily on the “think of the children!” rhetoric we’re seeing in this current wave of the crypto wars. The technical eavesdropping mechanisms …
Google took steps to shut down the Glupteba botnet, at least for now. (The botnet uses the bitcoin blockchain as a backup command-and-control mechanism, making it hard to get rid of it permanently.) So Google is also suing the botnet’s operators. It’s an interesting strategy. Let’s …
This is part 3 of Sean Gallagher’s advice for “securing your digital life.” [...]
Google researchers discovered a MacOS zero-day exploit being used against Hong Kong activists. It was a “watering hole” attack, which means the malware was hidden in a legitimate website. Users visiting that website would get infected. From an article : Google’s researchers were able to trigger the exploits and …
ArsTechnica’s Sean Gallagher has a two – part article on “securing your digital life.” It’s pretty good. [...]
Raising the bar on cybersecurity starts with education. That’s why we announced in August that Amazon is making its internal Cybersecurity Awareness Training Program available to businesses and individuals for free starting this month. This is the same annual training we provide our employees to help them better …
This is interesting: A company that is a critical part of the global telecommunications infrastructure used by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and several others around the world such as Vodafone and China Mobile, quietly disclosed that hackers were inside its systems for years, impacting more than 200 of its …
AWS recently released the Ransomware Risk Management on AWS Using the NIST Cyber Security Framework (CSF) whitepaper. This whitepaper aligns the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommendations for security controls that are related to ransomware risk management, for workloads built on AWS. The whitepaper maps the technical …
Robert Chesney wrote up the Solar Winds story as a case study, and it’s a really good summary. [...]
Vice has an article about how data brokers sell access to the Internet backbone. This is netflow data. It’s useful for cybersecurity forensics, but can also be used for things like tracing VPN activity. At a high level, netflow data creates a picture of traffic flow and volume …
In this blog post you’ll learn about a hands-on solution you can use for automated disk collection across multiple AWS accounts. This solution will help your incident response team set up an automation workflow to capture the disk evidence they need to analyze to determine scope and impact …
This post is part of a series about how Amazon Web Services (AWS) can help your US federal agency meet the requirements of the President’s Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. You will learn how you can use AWS information security practices to help meet the …
This is an interesting development : Just days after President Biden demanded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shut down ransomware groups attacking American targets, the most aggressive of the groups suddenly went off-line early Tuesday. [...] Gone was the publicly available “happy blog” the group maintained, listing some of …
China is making sure that all newly discovered zero-day exploits are disclosed to the government. Under the new rules, anyone in China who finds a vulnerability must tell the government, which will decide what repairs to make. No information can be given to “overseas organizations or individuals” other than …
Interesting attack : Masquerading as UK scholars with the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the threat actor TA453 has been covertly approaching individuals since at least January 2021 to solicit sensitive information. The threat actor, an APT who we assess with high confidence supports …
Two reports this week. The first is from Microsoft, which wrote : As part of our investigation into this ongoing activity, we also detected information-stealing malware on a machine belonging to one of our customer support agents with access to basic account information for a small number of our customers …
As ransomware becomes more common, I’m seeing more discussions about the ethics of paying the ransom. Here’s one more contribution to that issue: a research paper that the insurance industry is hurting more than it’s helping. However, the most pressing challenge currently facing the industry is …
I’m happy to share the latest episode of AWS Verified, where we bring you global conversations with leaders about issues impacting cybersecurity, privacy, and the cloud. We take this opportunity to meet with leaders from various backgrounds in security, technology, and leadership. For our latest episode of Verified …
Over at Lawfare, Susan Landau has an excellent essay on the risks posed by software used to collect evidence (a Breathalyzer is probably the most obvious example). Bugs and vulnerabilities can lead to inaccurate evidence, but the proprietary nature of software makes it hard for defendants to examine it …
The Center for Security and Emerging Technology has a new report: “ Machine Learning and Cybersecurity: Hype and Reality.” Here’s the bottom line: The report offers four conclusions: Machine learning can help defenders more accurately detect and triage potential attacks. However, in many cases these technologies are elaborations on …
Really good long article about the Chinese hacking of RSA, Inc. They were able to get copies of the seed values to the SecurID authentication token, a harbinger of supply-chain attacks to come. [...]