January 12th, 2021
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Among so many things that are horrific about last week’s deadly attack on the Capitol building was the fact that it was planned for weeks. In the open. With that in mind, we are left wondering about the cybersecurity questions raised in the aftermath.
When Engadget asked a physical cybersecurity penetration tester what he’d do if assigned to “pentest” the Capitol building during the riot, the response wasn’t comforting. His excitement was palpable. “Oooh, so many cool attacks you could do,” he said, and began listing equipment he’d bring.
That s my light on the Chicken Little, heavy on the realpolitik hot take on the SolarWinds Orion supply chain attack. What if CIA and NSA have already been doing to Russia what SVR did to the United States - just without getting caught doing it?
It s important to remember that the apparent focus of the hack of Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds software development pipeline, which resulted in the company s Orion network monitoring software being backdoored, was espionage. In particular, investigators have suggested that Russia s SVR foreign intelligence service may have been behind the hacking campaign.
While the Trojanized Orion software was pushed to nearly 18,000 customers, FireEye investigators suspect attackers only pushed additional malware onto devices - escalating the attack and paving the way for data exfiltration - at approximately 50 organizations networks. From an intelligence standpoint, each of those victims was likely a big fish.
Dec 21, 2020
WASHINGTON – The recent discovery of the devastating Sunburst hacking campaign against U.S. and global targets is once again challenging the international community to respond to an increase in cyberattacks. Over the past year, cybersecurity personnel worldwide have faced a surge of hacks against critical infrastructure, including institutions fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. While governments have openly condemned some of this behavior, more collective action is clearly needed.
There is no international treaty for cyber matters, and the 11 nonbinding norms of responsible state cyber behavior endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly are somewhat ambiguous. Additional norms are being put forward all the time, which is a good thing. But norms are not treaties and should not be treated that way. The better option is to concentrate on the spirit not just the letter of what the norms convey. Indeed, the latest hacking revelation shows precisely why an i
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With help from Eric Geller
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