- Reassessing cyberwarfare. Lessons learned in 2022
December 14, 2022
At this point, it has become cliché to say that nothing in 2022 turned out the way we expected. We left the COVID-19 crisis behind hoping for a long-awaited return to normality and were immediately plunged into the chaos and uncertainty of a twentieth-century-style military conflict that posed serious risks of spreading over the continent. ...
- Meta links US military to fake social media influence campaigns
November 24, 2022
In its latest quarterly threat report, Meta said it had detected and disrupted influence operations originating in the US, and it calls out those it believes are responsible: the American military. Meta said it picked up on three major covert influence operations on its platforms in the third quarter of the year, the first of which ...
- Sweden boosts cyber, defense spending with NATO in mind
November 22, 2022
Sweden’s newly elected center-right government has prioritized spending on defense-strengthening measures in its draft budget bill for 2023, eying to edge the country closer to NATO’s target quota. Sweden, along with fellow unaligned Nordic nation Finland, is currently awaiting unanimous consent from NATO members to join the alliance, a process that could reach its conclusion in ...
- Cyber vulnerability in networks used by spacecraft, aircraft and energy generation systems
November 15, 2022
A major vulnerability in a networking technology widely used in critical infrastructures such as spacecraft, aircraft, energy generation systems and industrial control systems was exposed by researchers at the University of Michigan and NASA. It goes after a network protocol and hardware system called time-triggered ethernet, or TTE, which greatly reduces costs in high-risk settings by ...
- Billbug: State-sponsored Actor Targets Cert Authority, Government Agencies in Multiple Asian Countries
November 15, 2022
State-sponsored actors compromised a digital certificate authority in an Asian country during a campaign in which multiple government agencies were also targeted. Symantec, by Broadcom Software, was able to link this activity to a group we track as Billbug due to the use in this campaign of tools previously attributed to this group. Billbug (aka Lotus ...
- Russia-based Pushwoosh tricks US Army and others into running its code – for a while
November 15, 2022
US government agencies including the Army and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled apps running Pushwoosh code after learning the software company – which presents itself as American – is actually Russian, according to Reuters. Pushwoosh is a software company that provides code and data analysis for developers so they can automate custom push notifications ...
- Japan officially joins NATO’s cyber defense center
November 7, 2022
Japan’s Ministry of Defence (JMOD) announced on Friday that it has formally joined NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE). he CCDCOE is recognized as an international military organization and cyber defence hub focusing on research, training and exercises, like its yearly red team versus blue team cyber war game, Locked Shields. Japan participated in the ...
- DARPA’s CASTLE to Fortify Computer Networks
October 24, 2022
An ever-expanding cyber-attack surface, infrequent computer vulnerability scans, and burdensome security procedures create a seemingly lopsided battle when it comes to defending critical computing assets. Couple those factors with costly cybersecurity assessments that often lack actionable feedback, and the odds may appear to favor bad actors. DARPA intends to change that dynamic through a new program ...
- How America’s Cyber Strategy Could Create an International Crisis
October 23, 2022
The United States has adopted a new cyber warfare strategy focused on “persistent engagement” and “forward defense” in an attempt to thwart Chinese, Russian and other state-sponsored cyber attacks. While this unprecedented “defend forward” approach gives America many significant advantages in navigating cyber warfare, it also entails high-risks that could unintentionally escalate conflict. As a ...
- NSA, CISA, FBI Warn of Custom Exfiltration Tools Being Used Against Defense Industrial Base Organization
October 4, 2022
FORT MEADE, Md. — The National Security Agency (NSA), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the FBI released a Cybersecurity Advisory today that details the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that likely multiple advanced persistent threat (APT) groups recently used to steal sensitive information from a Defense Industrial Base organization. The advisory, “Impacket, ...
- BlackCat malware lashes out at US defense IT contractor
October 2, 2022
The BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, has allegedly broken into IT firm NJVC, a provider of services to civilian US government agencies and the Department of Defense. DarkFeed, which monitors the dark web for ransomware intelligence, tweeted this week that BlackCat had added NJVC to its victims’ list, along with sharing a screenshot allegedly ...
- Lazarus hackers abuse Dell driver bug using new FudModule rootkit
October 1, 2022
The notorious North Korean hacking group ‘Lazarus’ was seen installing a Windows rootkit that abuses a Dell hardware driver in a Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver attack. The spear-phishing campaign unfolded in the autumn of 2021, and the confirmed targets include an aerospace expert in the Netherlands and a political journalist in Belgium. According to ESET, which ...
- US arm of Israeli defense giant Elbit Systems says it was hacked
September 26, 2022
Elbit Systems of America, the U.S. arm of Israeli defense contractor Elbit, says its network was compromised in early June and personal information of employees was stolen. In a breach notification filed with the Maine attorney general’s office, Elbit Systems of America said 369 employees were affected by the data breach, which included employee names, addresses, ...
- Israel has foiled dozens of cyber attacks by Iran over last year, IDF says
September 21, 2022
The IDF’s network, said to be the largest in the Middle East, is constantly being threatened, and the military has identified an increase of 70% in hostile activity in recent years. Though the majority of attacks were identified and thwarted ahead of time, the significant increase in attempts worries the IDF. “In the past year, the ...
- Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations
September 19, 2022
The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules. Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in ...
- New Wave of Espionage Activity Targets Asian Governments
September 13, 2022
A distinct group of espionage attackers who were formerly associated with the ShadowPad remote access Trojan (RAT) has adopted a new, diverse toolset to mount an ongoing campaign against a range of government and state-owned organizations in a number of Asian countries. The attacks, which have been underway since at least early 2021, appear to ...
- NATO investigates hacker sale of missile firm data
August 26, 2022
Nato is assessing the impact of a data breach of classified military documents being sold by a hacker group online. The data includes blueprints of weapons being used by Nato allies in the Ukraine war. Criminal hackers are selling the dossiers after stealing data linked to a major European weapons maker. MBDA Missile Systems admitted its data was ...
- Indian military ready to put long-range quantum key distribution on the line
August 15, 2022
India’s military has celebrated the nation’s Independence Day by announcing it will adopt locally developed quantum key distribution (QKD) technology that can operate across distances of 150km. QKD is a technology to securely distribute encryption keys – items that could make communications an open book to an adversary. QKD makes interception of encryption keys vastly difficult ...
- Potential hack for some Boeing planes fixed
August 12, 2022
A digital vulnerability in the computer systems used on some Boeing Co aircraft that could have allowed malicious hackers to modify data and cause pilots to make dangerous miscalculations has been fixed, security researchers said on Friday. Older versions of a digital tool used to calculate landing and take-off speeds on some aircraft could be tampered ...
- #StopRansomware: Zeppelin Ransomware
August 11, 2022
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are releasing this joint CSA to disseminate known Zeppelin ransomware IOCs and TTPs associated with ransomware variants identified through FBI investigations as recently as 21 June 2022. The FBI and CISA encourage organizations to implement the recommendations in the Mitigations section ...