CyberWire Daily

Guest Dr. Rosario Cammarota from Intel Labs joins us to discuss confidential computing. Confidential computing provides a secure platform for multiple parties to combine, analyze and learn from sensitive data without exposing their data or machine learning algorithms to the other party. This technique goes by several names — multiparty computing, federated learning and privacy-preserving analytics...

Microsoft warns that ransomware operators are exploiting vulnerable Exchange Servers. Threat actors continue to look for unpatched instances of Exchange Server. Johannes Ullrich joins us with his thoughts on the incident. REvil ransomware hits a range of fresh targets. Concerns are raised about the effects of the SolarWinds compromise on embedded devices. Our guest is Sally Carson from Cisco makin...

Norway’s parliament is hit with Exchange Server exploitation. CISA and the FBI issue more advice on how to clean up an Exchange Server compromise. CISA hints at more detailed attribution of the SolarWinds compromise “soon,” and US Cyber Command says military networks were successfully defended. Microsoft’s Kevin Magee of exporting cyber talent. Our guest is Hanan Hibshi from Carnegie Mellon Univer...

Patch Tuesday was a big one this month. Microsoft Exchange Server remains under active attack in the wild, with new threat actors hopping on the opportunity. Russia denies it had anything to do with the SolarWinds incident and says the kinds of US response that the word on the street tells them are under consideration would be nothing more than international crime. Hacktivists strike a blow agains...

CISA urges everyone to take the Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities seriously. The SolarWinds compromise is also going to prove difficult to mop up. The US is said to be preparing a response to Holiday Bear’s SolarWinds compromise (some of that response will be visible, but some will not). A plea for more OSINT. Ben Yelin from UMD CHHS ponders face scanning algorithms in the job application...

Threat actors rush to exploit Exchange Server vulnerabilities before victims get around to patching--it’s like a worldwide fire sale. Rick Howard digs into third party platforms and cloud security. Robert M. Lee from Dragos shares insights on the recent Florida water plant event. The US mulls some form of retaliation against Russia for the SolarWinds supply chain campaign, and it will also need to...

Army Cyber Institute Technical Director and Chief of Staff Colonel Stephen Hamilton takes us on his computer science journey. Fascinated with computers since the second grade, Stephen chose West Point after high school to study computer science. Following graduation he moved into the signal branch as it most closely matched his interest in ham radio as no branch related directly to computing. He w...

Guest Hossein Jazi of Malwarebytes joins us to take a deep dive into North Korea's APT37 (aka ScarCruft, Reaper and Group123) toolkit. On December 7 2020 the Malwarebytes Labs threat team identified a malicious document uploaded to Virus Total which was purporting to be a meeting request likely used to target the government of South Korea. The meeting date mentioned in the document was 23 Jan 2020...

A new second-stage backdoor has been found in a SolarWinds compromise victim. Those exploiting the now-patched Exchange Server zero days seem to have done so to establish a foothold in the targeted systems. India continues to investigate a Chinese cyber threat to its infrastructure. Misconfigured clouds leak mobile app data. A major airline IT provider sustains a cyber attack. Dinah David helps us...

Indian authorities say October’s Mumbai blackout was “human error,” not cybersabotage. CISA directs US civilian agencies to clean up Microsoft Exchange on-premise vulnerabilities. More effects of the Accellion FTA supply chain compromise. Some trends in social engineering. Andrea Little Limbago brings us up to date on the RSA supply chain sandbox. Our guest is Brittany Allen from Sift on a new Tel...

India continues to investigate the possibility of RedEcho cybersabotage of its power distribution system, but says any hack was stopped and contained. Microsoft issues an out-of-band patch against a Chinese-run “Operation Exchange Marauder.” The financial sector works to contain an Ursnif outbreak. CISA issues ICS security advisories. Myanmar and the difficulty of stopping cyber proliferation. Joe...

Indian authorities continue to investigate the possibility that Mumbai’s power grid was hacked last October. Apple’s walled garden’s security can inhibit detection of threats that manage to get inside. An Atlantic Council report recommends international action against access-as-a-service brokers to stall proliferation of cyber offensive tools. Ben Yelin has the story of legislators asking the mili...

Chinese cyber engagement with Indian critical infrastructure is reported: the objective isn’t benign from India’s point of view, but exactly what the objective is, specifically, remains a matter of speculation. The US Governemnt declassifies its report on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The SolarWinds supply chain compromise remains under investigation, with an intern making a spec...

Head of Product for IBM Security Aarti Borkar shares her journey which included going after her lifelong love of math rather than following in her parents' footsteps in the medical field. In following her passions, Aarti found herself studying computer engineering and computer science, and upon taking a pause from her studies, she found a niche working at IBM in a mix of databases and networking....

Guest Maurits Lucas from Intel471 joins us to discuss his team's research into cybercrime in China. Data from Intel 471 show that the Chinese cybercrime underground proliferates through use of common methods or platforms, but behaves differently in large part due to the caution that actors take with regard to their identity. While the average citizen must follow the heavy handed nature of the gove...

Oxford biology lab hacked. A Zoom impersonation phishing campaign afflicts targets in the EU. Senators disappointed in Amazon’s decision not to appear at this week’s SolarWinds hearing. NSA advocates adopting zero trust principles. CISA issues alerts on industrial control systems. The US Department of Homeland Security describes increases to its cybersecurity grant programs. Dinah Davis examines h...

FriarFox is a bad browser extension, and it’s interested in Tibet. Ukraine accuses Russia of a software supply chain compromise (maybe Moscow hired Gamaredon to do the work). Egregor hoods who escaped recent Franco-Ukrainian sweeps are thought responsible for DDoS against Kiev security agencies over the weekend. A look at Babuk, a new ransomware-as-a-service entry. VMware servers are patched. Veri...

As more organizations are affected by the Accellion FTA compromise, authorities issue some recommendations for risk mitigation. Ocean Lotus is back, and active against Vietnamese domestic targets. LazyScripter is phishing with COVID and air travel lures. SolarWinds hearings include threat information, exculpation, and calls for more liability protection. Turkey Dog is after bank accounts. Joe Carr...

Ukrainian security services complain of DDoS from Russia. The Accellion compromise is attributed to an extortion gang. Digital Shadow tracks the rise of initial access brokers, new middlemen in the criminal-to-criminal market. A botmaster uses an agile C2 infrastructure to avoid takedowns. IT executives to appear at US Senate hearings on Solorigate. US DHS talks up its cyber strategies. Ben Yelin...

Facebook takes down Myanmar junta’s main page. APT31 clones Equation Group tools. Silver Sparrow’s up to...something or other. Bogus Flash Player update serves fake news and malware. Effects of supply chain compromises spread. Clubhouse’s privacy issues. VC firm breached. CrowdStrike releases its annual threat report. We welcome Josh Ray from Accenture security to our show. Rick Howard examines Go...

High Performance Computing Systems Administrator at Brigham Young University Billy Wilson tells his cybersecurity career story translating language skills to technical skills. According to Billy's employer, moving to a technical position at his alma mater occurred because Billy showed this potential and a thirst for learning. He is currently pursuing his master's degree from SANS Technology Instit...

Guest Bojan Zdrnja of Infigo IS and a certified instructor at SANS Institute shares an incident he discovered where attackers were using a pretty novel way of exfiltrating data and using that channel for C&C communication. The code that was acquired was only partially recovered, but enough to indicate powerful features that the attackers were (ab)using in Google Chrome. The basis for this attack w...

Microsoft wraps up its internal investigation of Solorigate, which the US Government continues to grapple with, and which has had some effect in Norway. An apparent Iranian APT has been hosting its command-and-control in two Netherlands data centers. Estonia’s annual intelligence report describes Russian and Chinese ambitions in cyberspace. Threat actors are hard at work against Apple’s new proces...

Watch out for the WatchDog Monero cryptojacking operation. The US Justice Department describes North Korea as “a criminal syndicate with a flag.” CISA outlines the DPRK malware that figures in the AppleJeus toolkit. The Chair of the US Senate Intelligence Committee asks the FBI and EPA for a report on the Oldsmar water system cybersabotage incident. Egregor takes a hit from French and Ukrainian po...

High Bitcoin valuation draws the attention of cybercriminals, and a number of those criminals work for Mr. Kim, of Pyongyang. Alleged criminals, we should say. Centreon offers an update of its investigation of the Sandworm incident ANSSI uncovered. Reports of the Big Hack are received with caution. Patches applied, pulled, and replaced. Joe Carrigan describes a legal dustup between Proofpoint and...