In-brief: Russian hackers aren’t the biggest threat to the security and integrity of elections says Bev Harris of Black Box Voting. Instead, it’s a more common enemy: run of the mill political corruption, mostly at the local level. Also: Eric Hodge of CyberScout talks about the challenges of helping states secure their election systems. Problem number one: recalcitrant voting machine makers.
In-brief: A British researcher who became a hero after he stopped the WannaCry ransomware from spreading globally has been apprehended in Nevada and charged with distributing the Kronos banking trojan in the U.S. between July 2014 and July 2015.
In-brief: is it ever the case that things happen that “nobody saw coming”? Our guest on this week’s podcast would say “no.” He is Richard Clarke, a former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States and a veteran of four administrations, from President Ronald Reagan through to President George W. Bush. We talk about modern-day Cassandras: people who are warning about looming catastrophes, mostly in vain.
Hackers working on behalf of the government of Iran are using alluring social media profiles featuring a young, English photographer to entice and then compromise the systems of high value targets in the oil and gas industry, according to a report by Dell Secureworks. In a report released on Thursday, Secureworks’ Counter Threat Unit (CTU) said that it observed an extensive phishing campaign beginning in January and February 2017 that used a polished social media profile of a young, English woman using the name “Mia Ash” to conduct highly targeted spear-phishing and social engineering attacks against employees of Middle Eastern and North Africa firms in industries like telecommunications, government, defense, oil and financial services. The attacks are the work of an advanced persistent threat group dubbed COBALT GYPSY or “Oil Rig” that has been linked to other sophisticated attacks. The attacks, which spread across platforms including LinkedIn and Facebook, as […]
In-brief: Machine learning is all the rage in the information security industry. But a study by Endgame and University of Virginia suggests that it may be vulnerable to manipulation by sophisticated AI-driven tools.
