CyberWire Daily

Reports of cyberattacks against Iranian government and, possibly, economic targets, are circulating, but details are sparse. Norway accuses Russia of hacking parliamentary emails. A cybercriminal gang’s secret is volume. A social engineering campaign singles out victims with US IP addresses. Joe Carrigan on a million dollar REvil recruitment offer. Our guest is Paul Nicholson from A10 Networks wit...

Trickbot gets hit by both US Cyber Command and an industry team led by Microsoft. CISA and the FBI warn that an unnamed threat actor is chaining vulnerabilities, including Zerologon, to gain access to infrastructure and government targets. Ben Yelin shares his thoughts on the US House’s report on monopoly status for some of tech's biggest players. Our guest is David Higgins from CyberArk on how wo...

Ben describes a decades-long global espionage campaign alleged to have been carried out by the CIA and NSA, Dave shares a story about the feds using cell phone location data for immigration enforcement, and later in the show our conversation with Drew Harwell from the Washington Post on his article on how Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines. Links to stories: ‘The inte...

Investigative journalist and author Geoff White talks about tracing a line through the dots of his career covering technology. Geoff shares that he has always been "quite geeky," but came to covering technology after several roles in the journalism industry. Newspapers, magazines and television were all media Geoff worked in before covering technology. Geoff got into journalism not due to the glam...

Containers offer speed, performance, and portability, but do they actually contain? While they try their best, the shared kernel is a disturbing attack surface: a mere kernel vulnerability may allow containerized processes to escape and compromise the host. This issue prompted a new wave of sandboxing tools that use either unikernels, lightweight VMs or userspace-kernels to separate the host OS fr...

A Parliamentary committee issues a scathing report on Huawei’s connection to the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China. Facebook takes down coordinated inauthenticity with a domestic focus in four countries. Twitter goes after influence operators in four other countries. Betsy Carmelite addresses threats to telehealth platforms. Our guests are the FBI’s Herb Stapleton and the US Secr...

Add the Bahamut cyber mercenaries to the shadow armies for hire in cyberspace. Reports associate the SlothfulMedia RAT with Chinese intelligence services, and claim that it’s being used against India and China. The US takes down domains the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps uses to push disinformation. Trends in phishbait. Caleb Barlow rethinks a TED talk he gave a while back, given what we’ve lea...

Cyber ops accompany fighting in the Caucasus. Iranian threat group exploits Zerologon in the wild. The Kraken gets unleashed in Southeast Asia, of all places. Emotet is back, and it’s after state and local governments. The US House identifies the Four Horsemen of Silicon Valley. Monero gains criminal market share. The US Comptroller of the Currency moves for clarity in alt-coin regulation. Joe Car...

Spyware version of Mirai detected in the wild. The People’s Liberation Army is told, by its government, to lighten up on US election stories. Centripetal wins a major patent lawsuit. Excel is not a big data tool. John McAfee is arrested on US tax charges. Our guest is Roger Barranco from Akamai on tracking increased DDoS attacks. Ben Yelin on a case involving warrants for Wifi location data. And a...

Attacks on maritime shipping organizations raise concerns about global supply chains. Someone’s pushing spyware through the firmware. Someone else is messing with the heads of Trickbot’s masters. A new ransomware strain, Egregor, shows again that a ransomware attack amounts to a data breach. Huawei may be losing ground in Europe. Mike Benjamin from Lumen on DDoS ransoms. Scott Algeier from IT-ISAC...

Commandant for the National Security Agency's National Cryptologic School Diane M. Janosek shares the story of her career going global Diane explains how she's always been drawn to doing things that could help and raise the nation. From a position as a law clerk during law school, to the role of a judicial clerk, and joining the White House Counsel's office, Diane was exposed to many things and fe...

Threat actors and cybercriminals that don’t have the ability to develop their own ransomware for malicious campaigns can turn to the Smaug Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) offering, which is available via a Dark Web Onion site. At least two threat actors are operating the site, providing ransomware that can be used to target Windows, macOS, and Linux machines. The site is built with ease of use in m...

SlothfulMedia is the new RAT in town. Emotet spam counts on political commitments. ESET describes two distinct spyware campaigns in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Hackers are paying more attention than usual to the maritime sector. Awais Rashid from the University of Bristol on privacy concerns of contact tracing apps. Our guest is Krystle Portocarrero from Juniper Networks on the continued r...

Two ransomware incidents now seem worse than originally believed. Hacking hospitals raises concerns for patient safety. It appears Fancy Bear was the group that hacked the US Federal agency CISA warned about recently. Chris Novak from Verizon considers whether investigations should be performed under attorney client privilege and if that privilege will hold. Alex Mosher from MobileIron explains ho...

Ransomware gangs continue to look for an opportunistic payday. Another exposed database is found, and secured. Captchas and padlock icons have their place, but they’re not a guarantee of security. Microsoft explains how to reduce exposure to Zerologon. The US looks to reduce dependence on foreign microelectronics. Joe Carrigan has thoughts on Facebook running SuperPAC ads. Our guest is Sanjay Gupt...

Three (count ‘em) three big ransomware attacks are in progress. One of them has moved into its doxing phase. Microsoft resolves authentication problems that briefly disrupted services yesterday. Tracking trends in cyberattacks--the sophistication seems to lie in the execution. The US Defense Department now has an interim rule implementing its CMMC program. Ben Yelin describes the extensive use of...

The TikTok ban has been delayed; the November goal for the company’s change in ownership still stands, at least for now. Microsoft takes down infrastructure used by a Chinese cyberespionage group. Huawei’s CFO returns to court in Vancouver. The UK shows some of its cyber offensive hand. DDoS in Hungary; malware in Texas. The strange and sad case of eBay and a newsletter. Rick Howard shares lessons...

Director of security operations at Syntax Richard Torres talks about his path leading him working in juvenile justice to becoming a private investigator to physical security at a nuclear power plant to cybersecurity presently. Always a fan of police shows, Richard became a member of the Air Force Junior ROTC in high school and began his path there. Richard shares the challenges of working in sever...

Throughout March and April, QuoIntelligence (QuoINT) observed four attacks (i.e. sightings) utilizing various tools from the Golden Chickens (GC) Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) portfolio – they recently declassified their findings, after first notifying their clients. Further, during their analysis of the sightings, QuoIntelligence confirmed the GC MaaS Operator, Badbullzvenom, released improved vari...

Facebook takes down three Russian networks for coordinated inauthenticity: a lot of activity but not much evident ROI. Russia calls for confidence-building measures in cyberspace. CISA detects a successful incursion into an unnamed Federal agency. Governments warn of heightened rates of cyberattacks against medical organizations. Mike Benjamin from Lumen joins us with details on Alina malware. Our...

Zerologon is being actively exploited in the wild. The OldGremlin ransomware gang picks on Russian targets. Thought Fancy Bear was done with NATO? (Think again.) The US Treasury Department sanctions more organizations and individuals for malign influence operations. Betsy Carmelite from BAH on vaccine laboratory cybersecurity. Our guest is Shena Tharnish from Comcast Business with insights for sma...

Facebook takes down coordinated inauthenticity. A ransomware-involved death is attributed to DoppelPaymer. CISA and the FBI warn of coming election disinformation. LokiBot is back in a big way. Operation DisrupTor collars a hundred-seventy Darknet contraband merchants. Joe Carrigan comments on the botched ransomware attack in Germany that led to a woman's death. Our guest is Matt Davey from 1Passw...

In an unusual lapse, Microsoft briefly left a Bing backend server exposed online--now fixed. Sources say the CIA has concluded that Russian President Putin is personally involved in setting the direction of operations designed to influence the US elections, The deal to spin out TikTok Global to avoid a US ban may not be enough, Europe looks for more control over tech companies. Activision’s hack s...

CISA tells the Feds to patch Zerologon by midnight tonight. Cerberus surges after its source code is released. Rampant Kitten, an Iranian surveillance operation, is described. The US bans on WeChat and TikTok were both postponed. Justin Harvey from Accenture marks three years since wannacry with a look at ransomware. Our own Rick Howard on red and blue team operations. And police in Germany are lo...

Cyber Initiative and Special Projects Fellow at the Hewlett Foundation Monica Ruiz shares her career development from aspirations of being a weather woman to her current role as a grantmaker and connector in cybersecurity. Monica discusses how her international study experience changed her outlook and brought her to the field of security. She shares the difficulties she faced as a woman of color w...