Amid serious cyberattacks by Russian and Chinese threat actors, the Biden administration issued a new National Security Memorandum (NSM-22) to update Presidential Policy Director 21 (PPD-21) from the Obama administration to secure and enhance the resilience of US critical infrastructure in “a comprehensive effort to protect US infrastructure against all threats and hazards, current and…

“[We] have confirmed that Volt Typhoon has compromised the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure organizations in the continental and non-continental United States and its territories, including Guam,” CISA said in an advisory, warning that the hacking team’s choice of targets and pattern of behavior is not consistent with traditional cyber espionage or intelligence gathering…

The operation, announced just before FBI Director Chris Wray addressed House lawmakers, disrupted a botnet of hundreds of U.S.-based small office and home routers owned by private citizens and companies that had been hijacked by the Chinese hackers to cover their tracks as they sowed the malware. Their ultimate targets included water treatment plants, the…

The FBI and U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are urging critical infrastructure organizations to implement mitigation techniques to thwart a cybercriminal group known as Scattered Spider that targets major companies and their IT help desks. A joint advisory describes the hacking group, also known as Octo Tempest and UNC3944, as having expertise in social…

The White House released its long-anticipated National Cybersecurity Strategy, a comprehensive document that offers fundamental changes in how the US allocates “roles, responsibilities, and resources in cyberspace.” The strategy involved months of discussions among more than 20 government agencies and countless consultations with private sector organizations. It encompasses virtually all the weaknesses and challenges inherent…

Ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure conducted by North Korea-linked hacker groups are used by the government of Pyongyang to fund its malicious cyber operations, U.S. and South Korean agencies warn. US CISA published a Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to provide information about the threat actors to network defenders. The joint CSA about ongoing ransomware activity against…

Available as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), BlackByte has been used in attacks against US and foreign businesses, including in critical infrastructure sectors such as government, financial, and food and agriculture, the FBI and USSS warn. BlackByte operators recently claimed to have obtained financial data from the San Francisco 49ers as a result of an attack that…

Designed to assess the effectiveness of Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB), Critical Infrastructure (CI), and State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) stakeholders in identifying and resolving network vulnerabilities, the RVAs revealed that phishing links were the most successful technique for initial access. CISA conducted a total of 37 RVAs, leveraging the MITRE ATT&CK framework to…