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.
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: That’ll be $99, or $150 without the vulnerabilities! A lawsuit in Germany is trying to force stores to come clean about security holes in the products they sell to consumers.
In-brief: A crippling cyber attack that could damage and destroy equipment needed to keep the lights on in major US cities is already possible. The only thing that’s lacking is a motive to carry out such an attack, according to our guest on this week’s podcast: Joe Weiss, a Managing Partner at Applied Control Solutions, LLC and a persistent, if lonely, voice calling for an overhaul of cyber security for the U.S. electric grid.
In-brief: more than three years after it was first discovered, the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL continues to plague organizations worldwide. Why has it been so hard to fix? In this Industry Perspective, Patrick Carey of the firm Black Duck talks about some of the complicating factors that make vulnerabilities like Heartbleed so hard to eradicate.
