CyberWire Daily

This week we’re discussing the a campaign the McAfee Advanced Threat Research team recently discovered, one that’s targeting organizations involved with the upcoming Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Raj Samani is chief scientist at McAfee, and he shares the campaign's clever details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's podcast, we hear how Lebal malware steps its way through layered defenses. Cryptocurrency mining campaigns go after Monero with XMRig, WannaMine, and other toolkits. It's not a victimless crime, either—CPUs can be rendered effectively unusable. Influence operations are tracked in Twitter and Facebook. Dutch intelligence services penetrated Cozy Bear and shared warnings with allied servi...

It’s fair to say that 2017 was a busy year when it came to cyber security, and as we head into 2018 there’s certainly no sign of things slowing down. Days into the new year the news of serious vulnerabilities like Meltdown and Spectre, the ongoing threat of ransomware, major data and privacy breaches, and political unrest around the world, well, hold onto your hats, it looks like we may be in for...

In today's podcast, we hear about how patriotic hacktivists are talking turkey to high-profile Twitter accounts. The Hide 'N' Seek IoT botnet spreads swiftly through specially crafted peer-to-peer communications. Vulnerabilities found in the Electron developers framework. ICOs are heavily targeted by criminals. Bell Canada was breached, and the Mounties are on the case. Ontario transit operator Me...

In today's podcast, we hear that new Satori variants are out. Turkish hacktivists use Twitter for social engineering. Parties unknown are conducting an espionage campaign against Turkish defense contractors. North Korea's Lazarus Group improves its cryptocurrency theft tradecraft. Dating app vulnerabilities are a cyber-stalker's dream date. Britain will combat disinformation with a national office...

In today's podcast we hear that ISIS is howling "we are in your home" as they lose their own home. Intel says a new patch for Spectre and Meltdown is coming to fix instability problems. Babies' social security numbers and other data are for sale on the dark web. So are email credentials from top-500 British law firms. Look closely at urls—IDN spoofing is out and about. Satori expands the reach of...

In today's podcast, we learn that the Evrial Trojan is interested in what's on your Windows Clipboard. The healthcare sector continues its struggle to recover from SamSam ransomware. People raise the possibility that Olympic timekeeping could be hacked. They're not saying it was, just that it might be. Russian troll farms are barking at the US House Intelligence Committee and the Czech Presidentia...

Researchers at ThreatConnect have discovered evidence that Fancy Bear, a cyber espionage group generally associated with Russia's military agency GRU, may be spoofing domains belonging to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), and the Olympic Council of Asia. Kyle Ehmke is a threat intelligence researcher with ThreatConnect, and he takes us through their work.   Le...

In today's podcast we hear about ransomware afflicting a healthcare IT provider. Group 123 phishes in South Korean waters. Schneider Electric describes the zero-day Triton/Trisis exploited. The Dark Caracal spyware campaign is attributed to Lebanon's intelligence service. The US Congress will extend Section 702 surveillance authority for six years. GhostTeam-infected apps are booted from the Play...

In today's podcast we hear that Norway's Southern and Eastern Regional Health Authority has suffered a breach. False civil defense alerts are mistakes, not hacks, but they're worth some attention. Davos will take up international conflict and cybersecurity next week. Banking Trojan Exobot holds a going-out-of-business sale. Satori botnet rifles cryptocurrency wallets. Emily Wilson from Terbium Lab...

In today's podcast, we hear that the US Senate is ready, after a successful cloture motion, to vote on Section 702 surveillance reauthorization. Bipartisan Congressional support for election security bill. Skygofree is an unusually capable variety of Android spyware. More evidence ties North Korea's Lazarus Group to a Bitcoin spearphishing campaign. German users lured by fake Spectre/Meltdown patc...

In today's podcast, we hear that a new Mirai variant, Okiru, is forming botnets of ARC-based IoT devices. Meltdown and Spectre remediation continues. CIA is said to have confirmed that NotPetya was a GRU operation. Suspicions rise that the Shadow Brokers used security tools to scan for classified documents. US and Canadian officials raise alarms about election influence operations. Wichita swatter...

A group of Russian-speaking hackers have stolen nearly $10 million from banks around the world. Group-IB, a company with expertise in computer forensics, information security and, specifically, Russian‑speaking criminal groups, have named these thieves MoneyTaker. Nicholas Palmer is the director of international business development at Group-IB, and he's joined by their head of threat intelligence...

In today's podcast, we hear that Spectre and Meltdown have continued to receive patches, and they may not be as performance-killing as feared. F-Secure says if you leave your laptop alone it could be pwned in 30 seconds. Mobile ICS apps seem to be getting less, not more, secure. Google boots more bad stuff from the Play Store. Monero miners afflict unpatched Oracle WebLogic servers (so patch). The...

In today's podcast we hear that the Government of India is working on Aadhaar security, suspending many officials' access. Fancy Bear doxes the IOC. WhatsApp snooping proof-of-concept revealed. Spectre and Meltdown patching continues. The US House voted to reauthorize Section 702 surveillance (the Senate is considering its own version). On the FBI's unwanted list: jerks and evil geniuses (and they...

In today's podcast, we hear that Turla's back, with a depressingly nifty man-in-the-middle campaign. The US thinks it sees Russia trying to influence Mexico's national elections. Russian banks are hit with a new mobile Trojan. Iran continues its Internet crackdown, and conducts more domestic surveillance and hacking. Winter Olympics-themed cyberattacks rely on well-crafted social engineering. Patc...

In today's podcast, we hear about how Spectre and Meltdown mitigations are proceeding, with many successes (but some blue-screen-of-death failures, too). Psiphon looks like the souped-up VPN of choice for Iranian dissidents, as that country's Internet crackdown continues. Pop-up ads infest mobile devices as an old tactic finds new scope for its misapplication. Olympic phishing targets South Korean...

In today's podcast we hear that someone is phishing for hockey enthusiasts during the run-up to the Winter Olympics. Continued unrest in Iran, with more arrests. More on Meltdown and Spectre, as most experts agree you should apply the mitigations being offered. Intel receives much hostile scrutiny over the chip bugs, but other vendor's processes are affected, too. India says Aadhaar is secure, but...

Robert M. Lee. is CEO of Dragos Security, a company that specializes in the protection of industrial control systems. He’s describing his team's research on TRISIS, tailored ICS malware infecting safety instrumented systems (SIS), so far found only in the middle east. It's only the fifth known incident of malware targeting ICS systems.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

In today's podcast we hear how Meltdown and Spectre have put the fear of hardware flaws into enterprises everywhere. No family of systems can be safely assumed to be immune. Most are positively identified as vulnerable. Proofs-of-concept show that remote attacks exploiting chips' speculative execution features are feasible. India's Aadhaar national identification database is compromised. Justin Ha...

In today's podcast we follow the story of Meltdown and Spectre, which pose kernel-level security issues: speed was inadvertently purchased at the price of insecurity. Spectre affects most chips, not just those from Intel. Mitigations are on the way. Bogus security apps booted from Google Play. Be on the lookout for phony Android Uber apps. Iran's Internet crackdown continues. Michael Daly from Ray...

In today's podcast we hear that Iran's crackdown on Internet channels of dissent continues. Intel processors are determined to have a deep security flaw: cloud users are likely to be affected. A macOS local privilege escalation vulnerability is published. The "Trackmageddon" location service vulnerability seems to originate in a buggy API. The suicide forest video appears to have passed through Yo...

In today's podcast we hear that ISIS has claimed responsibility for the December 27th St. Petersburg shopping center bombing. UK authorities seek to think ahead about cyber terror. US standards bodies propose more stringent mandatory reporting of cyber incidents at electrical utilities. Unrest in Iran prompts a government crackdown on the Internet. We meet our newest academic & research partner, D...

Alan Neville is a senior threat intelligence analyst at Symantec located in Dublin. He is responsible for leading and documenting investigations into high priority attacks. He recently published research on the Sowbug cyber espionage group targeting South American and Southeast Asian governments. https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/sowbug-cyber-espionage-group-targets-south-american-and-southea...

Gerald Hahn is CEO of Softshell ag, a German cybersecurity company. He shares his insights into the market for cybersecurity products in the German market, and how US companies can best prepare themselves to do business, there.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices