CyberWire Daily

Our guest today is Richard A. Clarke, former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States. Under President George W. Bush he was appointed Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity. He’s currently Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting. He’s the author or coauthor of several books, the latest of which is titled The Fifth Domain - Defe...

Researchers at Guardicore Labs have been tracking an unusual cryptominer that seems to be based in China and is targeting Windows MS-SQL and phpMyAdmin servers. Some elements of the exploit make use of sophisticated components previously associated with nation-state actors. Ophir Harpaz and Daniel Goldberg are members of the Guardicore Labs team, and they join us to explain their findings. The res...

K3chang is out, about, and more evasive than ever. Data breached at Bulgaria’s National Revenue Agency has turned up online in at least one hacker forum. Facebook’s planned Libra cryptocurrency received close scrutiny and a tepid reception on Capitol Hill this week. Emsisoft offers some common-sense reflections on why local governments are attractive ransomware targets. Please patch BlueKeep. And...

TrickBot gets some new tricks, and they’re being called Trickbooster. Poisoning the advertising supply chain. Hessian schools will shy away from American cloud services. A novel phishing campaign is technically savvy but gives itself away with broken English phishbait. Congress would like to see Presidential cyberwar instructions. Microsoft warns of foreign attacks on elections. FaceApp looks susp...

Sprint warns of data breach. Eclypsium announces discovery of server firmware supply chain problems. Bluetooth Low Energy may be less secure than thought. Congress hears about US census cybersecurity. Ransomware and continuity of operations. The FBI offers help decrypting GandCrab-affected files. Venafi on why financial services are especially affected by certificate issues. Congress asks to see N...

The retirement of GandCrab’s hoods may have been exaggerated. Video conferencing tools RingCentral and Zhumu may have picked up Zoom’s issues in the tech they licensed. Broadcom’s projected acquisition of Symantec is on hold, at least for now. One Silicon Valley executive calls another company “treasonous.” The US FCC wants to reign in robo-calls. And there’s a free decryptor out for Ims0rry ranso...

Upgraded voting machines may not be as secure, or as upgraded, as election officials seem to think. Criminals continue to exploit routers in Brazil. A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange shuts down while it investigates a multimillion dollar theft. The Federal Trade Commission fines Facebook $5 billion over privacy issues. Weekend power outages seem not to have been the result of cyberattacks. Anothe...

Researchers at Netscout's ASERT Team have been tracking the growth of botnets originating in Egypt and targeting routers in South Africa. The payload is a variant of the Hakai DDoS bot. Richard Hummel is threat intelligence manager at Netscout, and he joins us to share their findings. The original research is here: https://www.netscout.com/blog/asert/realtek-sdk-exploits-rise-egypt Learn more abou...

Buhtrap moves from financial crime to cyber espionage. There may have been as many as three distinct US cyber operations against Iran late last month. The US legislative and executive branches continue to try to sort out Constitutional issues surrounding cyber conflict. The US Intelligence Community tell Congress that there are “active threats” to upcoming elections. One city’s cyber woes will be...

GDPR fines and their implications. A reminder about Magecart, and some notes on its recent interest in scanning for unprotected AWS S-3 buckets. Agent Smith (of Guangzhou, not the Matrix) is infesting Android stores with evil twins of legitimate apps. FinSpy is out and about in the wild again. “Daniel Drunz” is the catphish face of a gang that stung a US Government contractor for millions in goods...

Zoom agrees to change what it still sort of regards as a feature and not a bug. Industrial control system vulnerabilities are reported and patched. Microsoft issues seventy-seven fixes on Patch Tuesday. Adobe has a relatively light month for patches. Marriott is hit with a large fine from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office. An investigative report traces disinformation about a 2016 Washing...

Zoom user security appears to have been sacrificed on the altar of user experience. The fileless Astaroth Trojan is again in circulation, mostly, for now, in Brazil. Torrents are distributing the GoBot2 backdoor. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office clobbers British Airways with a record fine under GDPR, probably to encourage all the rest of us. Croatian government offices are spearphished....

Another ransomware victim pays up. Privilege escalation comes to ransomware. Vendor impersonation scams hit cities, and government impersonation scams hit citizens: be wary of both. Former NSA contractor Hal Martin will be sentenced later this month, with suspected connections with the ShadowBrokers still unresolved. An exploit supply chain is described. The Silence gang is suspected in Bangladesh...

US Cyber Command warns that an Outlook vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. Other sources see a connection with Iran. GPS signals are being jammed near Tel Aviv, and Russian electronic activity in Syria is suspected as the cause. A look at the consequences of satellite cyber vulnerabilities. The TA505 gang changes some of its tactics. Yesterday’s brief Internet outages are traced...

Tensions between the US and Iran are likely to find further expression in cyberspace. OceanLotus’s Ratsnif kit isn’t up to the threat actors normally high standards of coding, but it’s plenty good enough. Cyberattacks in the states of Florida and Georgia. Utilities are urged to go lower tech where possible. Magecart skimmer “Inter” is being hawked on the dark web. And no, they haven’t videoed you...

Huawei gets to buy some products from US companies, again. CISA reiterates warnings about the risk of cyberattack from Iran. Considerations about power grid security. Cryptocurrencies draw criminals, and some of the scammers are looking ahead. Australia and New Zealand will conduct a simulation to study ways of removing “abhorrent content” from the Web. The Senate likes Hack the Pentagon. And tech...

Synopsys recently published the 2019 edition of their Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) Report, providing an in-depth look at the state of open source security, compliance, and code quality risk in commercial software. Tim Mackey is principal security strategist within the Synopsys Cyber Research Center, and he joins us to share their findings. The research can be found here: https://...

Yandex says it was hacked with Regin spyware. The Golang cryptominer is spreading, again. And the ShadowGate ransomware crew is newly active with a dangerous drive-by. Three data exposures are reported. London’s Metropolitan Police are in trouble with the Information Commissioner’s Office. A look as tracker behavior. The Verified Badge as a phishing lure. And congratulations to a Loeb Award winner...

The US cyberattack against Iranian targets remains only indistinctly visible in the information fog of cyberwar. Iran’s APT33 seems to have altered its tactics after its operations against Saudi targets were described by Symantec at the end of March. An insurer and provider of vision and dental benefits investigates a “data incident.” Skids-on-skids, kids. Facebook talks information operations, an...

Sources name a Shi’ite militia aligned with Iran as one target of last week’s US cyberattacks. Myanmar shuts down mobile networks in its Rakhine province, where the Buddhist insurgents of the Arakan Army have been using Facebook for coordination and inspiration. A major spam campaign is distributing LokiBot and NanoCore. Finite State finds bugs in Huawei gear. Election security notes. And paying t...

Operation Soft Cell was low, slow, patient, and focused, and apparently run from China. Washington and Tehran are woofing at each other, with more exchanges in cyberspace expected. Cyber due diligence is taken increasingly seriously during mergers and acquisitions. Short-sighted design choices affect app security. The US security clearance process gets an overhaul. Shimmers replace skimmers. And y...

The US is said to have conducted cyberattacks against Iranian targets related to recent Iranian moves in the Gulf. They cyber operations are also said to have been a covert alternative to conventional military strikes. The Atlantic Council describes “Secondary Infektion,” a Russian disinformation campaign that begins obscurely, then depends upon amplification. And a case of cyber stalking in Minne...

Researchers at Cloudflare have been examining HTTPS interception, a technique that weakens security, and have developed tools to help detect it.  Nick Sullivan is head of cryptography at Cloudflare, and he joins to us share their findings. The research can be found here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/monsters-in-the-middleboxes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tensions between the US and Iran over tanker attacks, nuclear ambitions, and the downing of a Global Hawk drone seem to be finding expression in cyberspace: Refined Kitten sees to be pawing for some American phish. Facebook tries friction as an alternative to content moderation in damping its abuse in fomenting South Asian violence. Cryptomining campaigns are showing some renewed vigor. And a look...

Call it Waterbug or call it Turla, the Russian cyber operation has been hijacking Iran’s OilRIg cyber espionage infrastructure. Other cyber campaigns also afflict Middle Eastern targets. A US panel convened by CISA has some recommendations for supply chain security. An ad agency inadvertently exposes sensitive personal data. A bankruptcy filing in the AMCA breach. And Riviera Beach, Florida, decid...