Even Small Nations Have Jumped into the Cyber Espionage Game
While the media tends to focus on the Big 5 nation-state cyber powers, commercial spyware has given smaller countries sophisticated capabilities, as demonstrated by a zero-click iMessage exploit that targeted journalists last year.
Driven by the accessibility of commercial spyware and surveillance tools, sophisticated attacks using a variety of zero-click exploits attacks that don t require user interaction are increasingly within the reach of smaller nations, according to The Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at University of Toronto.
In an analysis published in late December, the group detailed how nations of the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) in the Middle East used the commercial Pegasus spyware sold by the NSO Group to hack three dozen phones and spy on journalists and news producers. The attacks used a zero-click iMessage exploit that u
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Road to IPO: Coinbase’s Power Struggles
“Some people lead by loyalty and inspiration. Balaji [Srinivasan] leads by fear and by money,” says Nathalie McGrath who, as Coinbase’s VP of People, watched as infighting engulfed the company.
Balaji’s style as he led the charge for a non-corporate vision of crypto was abrasive but effective. For someone who by all accounts did not work well with others, [Coinbase’s former CTO] was remarkably good at office politics. Anyone in his way got edged aside with alacrity. Balaji either fired them outright or, through back-office maneuvering, stripped them of influence until, totally demoralized, they quit on their own accord.
Novel techniques used by the attackers cheated security tools and forensics, according to FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia.
The cybersecurity firm best known for its incident response (IR) chops today said it had been breached by nation-state attackers who hacked into its systems and stole its red team tools. FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia revealed the hack in a blog post this afternoon, noting the company had contacted the FBI and is working with both the bureau and Microsoft in an investigation of the attack. This attack is different from the tens of thousands of incidents we have responded to throughout the years. The attackers tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye, Mandia said in the post. They are highly trained in operational security and executed with discipline and focus. They operated clandestinely, using methods that counter security tools and forensic examination. They used a novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our pa
FireEye breach explained: How worried should businesses be?
The theft of red team tools, allegedly by Russia s Cozy Bear group, poses only a small threat to other organisations. The real lesson: Anyone can be hacked Credit: FireEye
Cyber security firm FireEye announced on Tuesday that a sophisticated group of hackers, likely state-sponsored, broke into its network and stole tools the company s experts developed to simulate real attackers and test the security of its customers.
While this is a worrying development, it s unlikely that this will result in a significant risk increase to organisations, as some offensive tool leaks did in the past.