Defence and Aerospace


  • DoppelPaymer Ransomware Used to Steal Data from Supplier to SpaceX, Tesla

    March 3, 2020

    A company that provides custom parts to aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Boeing, has been the target of an attack by an emerging type of ransomware that can both encrypt files and exfiltrate data. Colorado-based Visser Precision said it was targeted by a “cyber incident” that involved the attacker accessing and stealing company data after a security ...

  • Israeli soldiers tricked into installing malware by Hamas agents posing as women

    February 17, 2020

    Members of the Hamas Palestinian militant group have posed as young teenage girls to lure Israeli soldiers into installing malware-infected apps on their phones, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) said today. Some soldiers fell for the scam, but IDF said they detected the infections, tracked down the malware, and then took down Hamas’ ...

  • Gamaredon APT Improves Toolset to Target Ukraine Government, Military

    February 5, 2020

    The Gamaredon advanced persistent threat (APT) group has been supercharging its operations lately, improving its toolset and ramping up attacks on Ukrainian national security targets. Vitali Kremez, head of SentinelLabs, said in research released on Wednesday that he has been tracking an uptick in Gamaredon cyberattacks on Ukrainian military and security institutions that started in December. ...

  • Mitsubishi Electric discloses security breach, China is main suspect

    January 20, 2020

    In a short statement published today on its website, Mitsubishi Electric, one of the world’s largest electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing firms, disclosed a major security breach. Although the breach occurred last year, on June 28, and an official internal investigation began in September, the Tokyo-based corporation disclosed the security incident today, only after two local newspapers, the Asahi ...

  • Israel launches civil aviation cybersecurity plan

    January 13, 2020

    The Israeli government approved a civil aviation cybersecurity program, the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) reported on Sunday. As part of the plan, a national steering committee will be established, to advance Israel’s capabilities in this field. The committee, headed by the INCD, will have representatives from Israel’s Ministry of Transport, the Civil Aviation Authority, Israel’s Airports ...

  • MP Says Austria Unprepared After Cyberattack on Foreign Ministry

    January 7, 2020

    The Austrian State Department’s IT systems were under a ‘serious attack’ suspected to be carried out by a state-backed threat group according to a joint statement from the Foreign Ministry (BMEIA) and the Ministry of the Interior (BMI). “A coordination committee has been set up on the basis of the Network and Information System Security Act, and ...

  • New Year Honours: Government faces multi-million pound compensation bill over leaked private details

    December 29, 2019

    The Government is facing fines and a compensation bill running into millions of pounds after the disclosure of the home addresses of counter-terrorism experts, senior police officers and celebrities on the new year honours list. Senior figures demanded an exhaustive inquiry into the circumstances which led to the personal details of more than 1,000 individuals who will ...

  • More than a Dozen Obfuscated APT33 Botnets Used for Extreme Narrow Targeting

    December 12, 2019

    The threat group regularly referred to as APT33 is known to target the oil and aviation industries aggressively. This threat group has been reported on consistently for years, but our recent findings show that the group has been using about a dozen live Command and Control (C&C) servers for extremely narrow targeting. The group puts up multiple layers of obfuscation to ...

  • Cyber security takes its place alongside UK’s armed services

    December 6, 2019

    The pervasiveness of information and the pace of technological change are utterly transforming the character of warfare in the 21st Century, and the cyber security industry has earned a seat at the table alongside the army, navy and air force, according to General Sir Nick Carter, chief of the defence staff. Carter, who served in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan ...

  • AWS is challenging Microsoft’s $10 billion JEDI contract win

    November 14, 2019

    It’s not surprising, but as of today, November 14, it is official: Amazon AWS is protesting the U.S. Department of Defense’s award of its $10 billion cloud contract to Microsoft. AWS made the company’s decision to file paperwork to challenge the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) public inside the company during an all-hands meeting on November ...

  • APT33 Mounts Focused, Highly Targeted Botnet Attacks Against U.S. Victims

    November 14, 2019

    The Iran-linked, espionage-focused advanced threat group known as APT33 has been spotted using more than a dozen obfuscated botnets to carry out narrowly targeted attacks against government and academic targets in the Middle East, the U.S. and Asia. Each botnet, linked to its own command-and-control (C2) server, comprises a small group of up to a dozen ...

  • Open database leaked 179GB in customer, US government, and military records

    October 21, 2019

    An open database exposing records containing the sensitive data of hotel customers as well as US military personnel and officials has been disclosed by researchers. On Monday, vpnMentor’s cybersecurity team, led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, said the database belonged to Autoclerk, a service owned by Best Western Hotels and Resorts group. Autoclerk is a reservations management system used ...

  • Malware infection disrupts production at defence contractor plants in three countries

    September 27, 2019

    One of the biggest defence contractors in the world is having a very bad week after malware infected the company’s network and caused “significant disruption” at plants in three countries, the company said on Thursday. The infection took root on Tuesday, September 24, and affected Rheinmetall AG, a German corporation based in Düsseldorf, and one of ...

  • A cyber-espionage group has been stealing files from the Venezuelan military

    August 5, 2019

    A cyber-espionage group known as “Machete” has been observed stealing sensitive files from the Venezuelan military, according to an ESET report published today. The group, known to have been active since 2010, has historically gone after a wide range of targets from all over the world. However, ESET said that starting with this year, Machete has ...

  • NSA to establish a defense-minded division named the Cybersecurity Directorate

    July 23, 2019

    The National Security Agency announced today plans to establish a new defense-minded cyber-security division that will focus on defending the US against foreign cyber-threats. This new division, which will be named the Cybersecurity Directorate, will become operational on October 1, later this year. Anne Neuberger will be the division’s first Director of Cybersecurity. She will report directly ...

  • French army will employ sci-fi writers to predict cyber threats

    July 22, 2019

    The French military is to assemble a team of science fiction writers to imagine possible future cyber threats and inject innovation into cyber defence. This will be a small group, known as the “Red Team” which will be comprised of four or five science fiction writers and or futurists. The team will be hired to “propose ...

  • Cyberwarfare in space: Satellites at risk of hacker attacks

    July 2, 2019

    There’s an urgent need for NATO and its member countries to address the cybersecurity of space-based satellite control systems because they’re vulnerable to cyberattacks – and if left unaddressed, it could have severe consequences for global security, a new paper from a major thinktank on international affairs has warned. Almost all modern military engagements rely on space-based assets, ...

  • Germany and the Netherlands to build the first ever joint military internet

    June 28, 2019

    Government officials from Germany and the Netherlands have signed an agreement this week to build the first-ever joint military internet. The accord was signed on Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, where NATO defense ministers met this week. The name of this new Dutch-German military internet is the Tactical Edge Networking, or TEN, for short. This is the first time ...

  • US launches cyber-attack aimed at Iranian rocket and missile systems

    June 24, 2019

    The US has responded to a recent rise in Iranian cyber-activity and the shooting of an unarmed drone last week by launching cyber-attacks against Iran’s military IT systems. The cyber-attacks were carried out by US Cyber Command with the direct approval of US President Donald Trump, the Associated Press reported on Sunday, citing two inside sources, and ...

  • Russian military moves closer to replacing Windows with Astra Linux

    May 30, 2019

    Russian authorities have moved closer to implementing their plan of replacing the Windows OS on military systems with a locally-developed operating system named Astra Linux. Last month, the Russian Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC) granted Astra Linux the security clearance of “special importance,” which means the OS can now be used to handle Russian ...