Cyberpunk 2020: The hacker’s Netrunner’s arsenal
The Cyberpunk game series originated in the late 1980s, and it owes its existence largely to the popularity of books by William Gibson and Philip K. Dick as well as the film Blade Runner, which was based on one of the latter’s novels. Since then, the pen-and-paper games in this series have been refined and…
Malware activity spikes 128%, Office document phishing skyrockets
Nuspire released a report, outlining new cybercriminal activity and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) throughout Q3 2020, with additional insight from Recorded Future. Threat actors becoming even more ruthless The report demonstrates threat actors becoming even more ruthless. Throughout Q3, hackers shifted focus from home networks to overburdened public entities, including the education sector and…
What is the true extent of the modern corporate digital attack surface?
RiskIQ released a report analyzing the company’s internet-wide telemetry and massive internet data collection to reveal the true extent of the modern corporate digital attack surface. Digital attack surface challenges “Today, organizations are responsible for defending not only their internal network but also their digital presence across the internet and the cloud,” said Lou Manousos,…
Six Months in Jail for University Email Hacker
A man who accessed over 1,000 email accounts maintained by a New York City-area university to download in appropriate photos and videos was sentenced to 6 months in prison this week. The man, Jonathan Powell, 30, of Phoenix, Arizona, pled guilty to the charges on August 9, 2017, in Manhattan federal court before United States…
Hacker Falsely Claiming to Breach FireEye Arrested, CEO Says
The hacker who falsely claimed to have breached FireEye — it was just the personal online accounts of one employee — was arrested by international law enforcement and taken into custody on October 26, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia said Wednesday. “These attackers rarely, if ever get caught and therefore I’m pleased, that in this case…
Def Con hackers showed how easily voting machines can be hacked
At Def Con’s hacker voting machine village, where 30 pieces of election equipment sat waiting, hackers were given a deliciously wicked goal. John Hopkins computer scientist Matt Blaze said, “We encourage you to do stuff that if you did on election day they would probably arrest you.” And they did. Most of the voting machines…
Hacker allegedly stole $7.4 million worth of Ether in 3 minutes
While there is a general consensus that the Knightscope security robot in Washington, D.C., committed suicide on Monday, the same everyone-agrees-opinion is not true for the $7.4 million heist of the cryptocurrency Ether that happened on the same day. CoinDash maintains that a hacker made off with the Ether, which comes from the app platform ethereum, during its…
How Active Intrusion Detection Can Seek and Block Attacks
Researchers at Black Hat USA will demonstrate how active intrusion detection strategies can help administrators detect hackers who are overly reliant on popular attack tools and techniques. Penetration testers as well as bad-guy hackers typically rely on several common attack tools to break into business networks. Enterprises defending their networks can flip the equation on…
Week in review: Evaluating AI-based cyber security systems, how CIA hit air-gapped computers
Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news and articles: How the CIA gained access to air-gapped computers A new WikiLeaks release of documents believed to have been stolen from the CIA show the intelligence agency’s capability to infect air-gapped computers and networks via booby-trapped USB sticks. Hackers extorted a cool $1…
Flying Under the Radar: How Hackers Use Protection Strategies for Attack
It’s a recurring theme in sports movies, war stories and crime stories alike: In order to defeat the enemy, one must think like the enemy. This approach has been taken – oftentimes quite successfully – in an array of settings, including the cybersecurity realm. Security researchers are constantly working to pinpoint and better understand the…