Authorities Lag Against Fast-Evolving Cyberspace Threats: Report
And while the US remains the dominant cyberspace power, China is rapidly gaining ground and could soon be a major rival in both the civil and military spheres, the Britain-based research group said after a two-year study. “All countries are still in the early stages of coming to terms with the strategic implications of cyberspace,”…
UN Security Council Confronts Growing Threat of Cyber Attacks
At their summit earlier this month in Geneva, the US president set out red lines for Russia, which is often accused of being behind major hacks. In this case, he laid out 16 “untouchable” entities, ranging from the energy sector to water distribution. “This is the generic list of critical infrastructure which every country has,”…
EU Announces New Joint Cyber Unit to Protect Against Critical Attacks
The cyber threat to critical infrastructure has grown dramatically over the last few years – to such an extent that western governments are finally accepting that they need to get more involved. In the EU, this has taken the form of a new Joint Cyber Unit (JCU), situated next to ENISA’s offices in Brussels. ENISA…
Biden Sets Red Line for Putin Over Ransomware Attacks
Speaking after the two leaders’ first summit in Geneva, Biden said he laid down the line on Moscow not taking action against hackers who have extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from western governments, companies, and organisations from the safety of Russian soil. “I pointed out to him we have significant cyber capability and he…
Google Intros SLSA Framework to Enforce Supply Chain Integrity
The U.S. tech giant this week unveiled SLSA (Supply chain Levels for Software Artifacts), a new end-to-end framework the company hopes will drive the enforcement of standards and guidelines to ensuring the integrity of software artifacts throughout the software supply chain. The framework, released as part of the OpenSSF Foundation, is essentially a set of…
Google Rolls out E2EE For Android Messages App
Google announced end-to-end encryption is now available in Android, but only for one-on-one conversations between users of the Messages app. “No matter who you’re messaging with, the information you share is personal. End-to-end encryption in Messages helps keep your conversations more secure while sending. It ensures that no one can read the content of your…
G7 Tells Russia to Crack Down on Ransomware, Other Cybercrime
In a communiqué issued after the conclusion of the summit, G7 countries vowed to work together to “further a common understanding of how existing international law applies to cyberspace” and collaborate to “urgently address the escalating shared threat from criminal ransomware networks.” The G7 called on all states to “urgently identify and disrupt ransomware criminal networks operating…
Russian Hackers Use New ‘SkinnyBoy’ Malware in Attacks on Military, Government Orgs
Active since at least 2007 and also tracked as Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Strontium, and Tsar Team, APT28 is well known for its cyber-espionage operations targeting the 2016 Presidential elections in the United States, but is also associated with attacks on NATO countries and with activities against organizations in the energy and transportation sectors….
Chinese Hackers Using Previously Unknown Backdoor
Researchers have discovered a new cyber espionage weapon they believe was developed and is used by a China-based APT group they have named SharpPanda. A previously unknown Windows backdoor enables remote access and the collection of considerable live data – but only during Chinese working hours. An ongoing campaign is targeting the Ministry of Foreign…
Months After Hack, US Poised to Announce Sanctions on Russia
The sanctions, foreshadowed for weeks by the administration, would represent the first retaliatory action announced against the Kremlin for last year’s hack, familiarly known as the SolarWinds breach. In that intrusion, Russian hackers are believed to have infected widely used software with malicious code, enabling them to access the networks of at least nine agencies…
