CyberWire Daily

A reply-chain incident is reported at a major international furniture and housewares retailer. North Korean operators are phishing for South Korean marks using bogus Samsung recruiting emails as phishbait. Fancy Bear has been seen pawing at Gmail. A regional escalation to civilian targets in the cyber conflict between Iran and Israel. More organizations are added to the US Entity List. Johannes Ul...

Associate Director at Raytheon Intelligence and Space in the Cyber Protection Services Division Anisha Patel always loved math and it defined her career journey. As a first-generation American from an Asian household, Anisha said she was destined for a STEM-focused career and chose electrical engineering. She began her career and remains at Raytheon (formerly E-Systems) working in several areas of...

Enjoy a peek into CyberWire Pro's Research Briefing as the team is off recovering from our Thanksgiving feasts. This is the spoken edition of our weekly Research Briefing, focused on threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences, as they’re played out in cyberspace. This week's headlines: Iranian threat actors target the IT supply chain. North Korean cyberespionage. More information on Emotet's retur...

Our team decided to extend our Thanksgiving holiday and thought you might like to try a sample of a CyberWire Pro podcast called Interview Selects. These podcasts are a series of extended interviews, exclusives, and a curated selection of our most engaging and informative interviews over the years, featuring cyber security professionals, journalists, authors and industry insiders. On this episode,...

Thanks for joining us for our fun project brought to you by the team of Hacking Humans, the CyberWire's social engineering podcast. Co-hosts Dave Bittner and Joe Carrigan are joined by Rick Howard in this series where they view clips from their favorite movies with examples of the social engineering scams and schemes you hear about on Hacking Humans. In this episode, Dave, Joe and Rick are watchin...

An apparent cyberespionage campaign targets the Iranian diaspora. Babadeda is an emerging crypter seeing use against alt-coin and NFt speculators. RATDispenser is out in the wild, a malware-as-a-service operation. Proofs-of-concept published for Microsoft exploits. Apple sues NSO Group. Group-IB’s founder asks President Putin for clemency. Caleb Barlow on the difference between working for a compa...

Tardigrade malware infests the US biomanufacturing sector. GoDaddy suffers a significant data breach. A Gizmodo-led consortium will review and release the Facebook Papers. Ben Yelin on our privacy rights during emergency situations. Our guest is Ric Longenecker of Open Systems to discuss how ransomware attacks represent the number one threat for universities. And NSO Group may not recover from cur...

The Lazarus Group seems interested in learning from, by which they mean stealing from, some of the world’s leading state-sponsored cyber operators. Void Balaur remains an enigma, but it’s not the only player in the C2C market. CISA and the FBI warn all, but especially critical infrastructure operators, to remain alert during the holidays. Some scammers are impersonating the US SEC. Dinah Davis fro...

As ransomware attacks rapidly rise in frequency, eye-popping ransom demands grab headlines, and consumers experience product shortages and difficulty accessing services as the organizations they do business with are knocked offline. However, little is reported about the impact of a ransomware attack inside an organization. However, little is reported about the impact of a ransomware attack inside...

Director of Google Cloud's Office of the CISO, MK Palmore, dedicated much of his life to public service and now brings his experience working for the greater good to the private sector. A graduate of the US Naval Academy, including the Naval Academy Prep School that he calls the most impactful educational experience of his life, MK commissioned into the US Marine Corps following his service academ...

Guests Nicholas Boucher and Ross Anderson from the University of Cambridge join Dave Bittner to discuss their research, "Trojan Source: Invisible Vulnerabilities." The researchers present a new type of attack in which source code is maliciously encoded so that it appears different to a compiler and to the human eye. This attack exploits subtleties in text-encoding standards such as Unicode to prod...

Software supply chain incidents: FatPipe, PyPi, and IT services generally. A look at recent Iranian operations. The US Federal Reserve publishes its disclosure rules for banks sustaining cyber incidents. CISA issues a set of ICS advisories. Two of the Five Eyes announce plans for continued, even closer cooperation in cyberspace. Johannes Ullrich on attackers abusing "PAM" (Plug Authentication Modu...

Red Curl is a Russophone gang with an unusual target list. North Korea’s TA406 is having a busy year, hacking for intelligence and for profit. Wicked Panda’s getting good at code-signing, and software supply chain attacks are in Beijing’s long-term plans. A spearphishing campaign abuses legitimate collaboration tools. Kevin Magee from Microsoft has an insider’s look at Windows 11 security. Our gue...

CISA, the FBI, the ACSC, and the NCSC issue a joint advisory warning of an Iranian cyber campaign exploiting known vulnerabilities in Fortinet and Microsoft Exchange. A Belarusian connection to Ghostwriter. Candiru tools reported in watering holes. SideCopy’s interest in Afghanistan. RAMP shows an interest in attracting Chinese operators. Josh Ray from Accenture Security digs into the CONTI playbo...

Older threats, including Emotet and Mirai, are out and about, and an old vulnerability, Rowhammer, gets a fresh proof-of-concept. A new banking Trojan threatens Europe. Intel works on vulnerabilities. CISA advises awareness of recently reported DDS vulnerabilities. Joe Carrigan explains how spearphishers are using customer complaints as bait. Rick Howard epaks with Carlos Vega from Devo on Supply...

Exploitation of a configuration error in the FBI’s Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal enables hackers to send bogus warning emails. Philippine Office of Civil Defense Twitter account briefly hijacked. Update on Iranian politically motivated threat group MosesStaff. Discount retailer Costco discloses a point-of-sale skimmer incident. Dinah Davis from Arctic Wolf track zero days. Rick the Toolman How...

Ground Labs' Head of Engineering, Swati Shekhar, shares her circuitous route from and back to engineering. Always being interested in leveraging the tools available to solve problems, Swati talks about how she found her place in engineering. She mentions how she had her first real experience with a computer when she was 17 in her first year at college. Aside from being one of 30 young women in a s...

Ransomware: the problem that everyone is talking about, yet somehow continues to get worse with each passing year. In 2021, the cost of ransomware to global businesses is estimated to reach a whopping $20B. The problem has reached such a critical mass that it can no longer be cast away as some unknowable IT problem–everyone from cyber insurance providers to the federal government have taken note....

Senior Intelligence Researcher at Anomali, Tara Gould, joins Dave to discuss their team's work on "Inside TeamTNT’s Impressive Arsenal: A Look Into A TeamTNT Server." Anomali Threat Research discovered an open server to a directory listing that they attribute with high confidence to the German-speaking threat group, TeamTNT.The server contains source code, scripts, binaries, and cryptominers targe...

Notes on rising international tension in Eastern Europe. A watering-hole campaign in Hong Kong. The US and the EU have joined the Paris Call. NSO Group’s prospective CEO resigns his position before formally assuming it. Void Balaur, a cybermercenary group, is active in the Russophone cyber underground. Johannes Ullrich on leaked vaccination cards and Covid tests. Our guest is Carolyn Crandall of A...

Welcome to a fun new project by the team who brings you Hacking Humans, the CyberWire's social engineering podcast. Co-hosts Dave Bittner and Joe Carrigan are joined by Rick Howard in this series. They view clips from their favorite movies with examples of the social engineering scams and schemes you hear about on Hacking Humans. In this first episode, Dave, Joe and Rick are watching Dave's and Jo...

Tehran’s Lyceum group expands its activities against ISPs and telcos in Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia. Clopp is going after unpatched instances of SolarWinds. Cyber mercenaries are quietly competing with lawful intercept vendors. NSO Group receives a setback from the US 9th Circuit. Mexico makes an arrest in its Pegasus investigation. Carole Theriault shares her thoughts on the supply...

Hive ransomware hits electronics retailer Media Markt. Robinhood Markets sustains a data breach it traces to social engineering. Ben Yelin looks at the law behind U.S. police demanding your phone passcode. Dave checks in with Rick Howard for his thoughts on the Trojan Source vulnerability. And more notes on the international action against REvil, including the US application of sanctions (with Bal...

REvil operators arrested and indicted. China says a foreign intelligence service accessed passenger travel records. Suspected Emissary Panda campaign. Conti (sort of) apologizes. Caleb Barlow thinks it’s time to re-think your security documentation. Our guest is Jessica Hetrick of Optiv Security on cyber fraud running rampant. And the FBI warns of ransomware attacks targeting casinos. For links to...

Senior Vice President for Strategy, Partnerships, and Corporate Development at IronNet Cybersecurity, Jamil Jaffer, shares how his interest in technology brought him full circle. Always a tech guy, Jamil paid he way through college doing computer support. Jamil went to law school and worked in various jobs in Washington DC including a stint in the newly-created National Security division of the Ju...