Evolving Hostilities in the Global Cyber Commons
Russian Defense Ministry photo taken from the Moskva on Feb 18, 2022 Following up on an earlier report of the success of Ukraine's Cyber Forces in accessing the servers of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, here's a sampling of additional documents from the ones shared with Ukraine's Defense Intelligence Service. They are related to the 30th Division of Surface Ships, formerly known as the 11th BASS in…
Ukraine's Cyber Force has gained access to the mobile phone of Sergei Gennadievich Buev, the Chief Missile Officer for Russia's Ministry of Defense. That background image on Buev's mobile phone is that of a Soyuz rocket that he photographed at the new Vostochny Cosmodrome during his visit on April 3, 2017. Vostochny has been plagued with problems since its construction began in 2011. On April 3,…
Ukraine's Cyber Troops gained access to the computer network of an FSB special operations detachment (Unit 607) that has been operating in Ukraine as part of VCH 6762. They've downloaded personnel information on 171 unit members, changed financial account data, and released photos of the latrines taken before the base was occupied. This document authorizes FSB unit 607 to operate outside of…
Ukraine Cyber Troops, a division under the Ministry of Defense, has been conducting multiple successful computer network operations against Russian government targets since the start of the invasion. The latest breach is against Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, which consists of over 350 enterprises as well as Russia's nuclear weapons complex. All of the files, with the exception of a few…
Russian Cruiser "Moskva" - flagship of the Black Sea fleet Ukraine's Cyber Forces are continuing to breach Russian Ministry of Defense targets and extract valuable data, apparently at will. This time the target was the communications servers for Russia's Black Sea fleet. The breach was announced this morning on Telegram . Here is a translation: "The cyber troops of Ukraine have received full…
One of thousands of captured documents, passports, credit card accounts obtained from the accounting department of VCH 6762 Russian military unit VCH 6762 is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, based in the City of Zheleznovodsk, a part of Stavropol Krai in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia. Over the years they've been deployed to suppress riots, combat terrorism, and generally…
ByteDance ordered to improve its user portrait mining software in TikTok's 700 million user base While this headline is for a fictional scenario at the Social Media Information Warfighter Exercise on Nov 19th, there’s no way to know that it isn’t already happening and just hasn’t been reported. In fact, the sub-heading is 100% real. BACKGROUND According to The Information , ByteDance, TikTok’s…
Source: http://www.capitalpress.com/washington/20160611/a-family-tradition-of-efficiency The McIrvin family, owners of the Diamond M cattle ranch for five generations, have been running cattle in Colville National Forest, one million acres of federal land in Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties. There's no good reason for it because the land is ill-suited for cattle and it's home to about 100…
"I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work." - (Thomas Edison) I’m the founder of a failed cybersecurity startup. Or, to use Edison’s perspective, I’ve successfully found multiple ways for my startup not to make a profit. But Edison’s positive spin on failure is bullshit. Only a scientist or an tenured academic on a salary has the luxury of failing so…
"Faith-Based Attribution" is my latest article on the challenges of attributing attacks to the person or entity responsible. Check it out at LinkedIn.com .
"When you need something to be true, you will look for patterns; you connect the dots like the stars of a constellation. Your brain abhors disorder. You see faces in clouds and demons in bonfires. Those who claim the powers of divination hijack these natural human tendencies. They know they can depend on you to use subjective validation in the moment and confirmation bias afterward." Author: David…
UPDATE : Someone claiming to be responsible for the DNC breach has released the Trump opposition file to Gawker and mocked CrowdStrike according to the Salted Hash blog: "The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks. They will publish them soon. I guess CrowdStrike customers should think twice about company’s competence," they wrote." CrowdStrike's response to…
Farnborough International Airshow 2014 I founded Suits and Spooks in 2011 in an effort to make it easier for startup technology companies to engage with the Intelligence Community; a problem based largely back then on an antiquated acquisition system. A lot has changed in five years, and so has Suits and Spooks. Today, I'm pleased to announce the next evolution of this event. Delivering security…
I'm not a marketing guy. I always figured that if you build a solution that solves a hard problem, the customers will come. Right now, every marketing guy reading this is falling down laughing, but I really did believe that. In 2011 and 2012, after participating in dozens of post-breach consultations with multi-nationals, I learned about a problem with no viable solution (how can a company with…
Cyber espionage is a worldwide multi-billion dollar problem for every technologically advanced nation; even the ones that the U.S. traditionally considers its adversaries (Russia and China). Think of it as a stool with three legs: Targets (High Value Technologies), Actors (both State and non-State), and Defenses (ways that we can protect those HVTs). The reason why companies and government…
ISIL, aka ISIS or The Daesh, has claimed responsibility for yesterdays suicide bomber attacks in Brussels which targeted transportation hubs. Government and corporate employees are invited to attend Taia Global's one day workshop on Terrorism, Technology and the Law in Washington D.C. on March 29th. You'll join a small group of government and military employees, information security…
If you want to know what the Chinese and Russian governments consider valuable, just follow the R&D money. Our linguist/researchers have been busy building the world's first and only commercial R&D database which up until now has been accessible only via our Redact™ search engine so that you can tell if your high value digital assets are at risk. As of today, you can purchase our entire Russia and…
Whether we in the West like it or not, the People's Republic of China is continuing to achieve rapid technological growth in a growing number of areas thanks in part to its smart use of Five Year Plans, increased spending on research and development, and technology acquisition through a variety of means from foreign companies. Reuters reports that China aims to boost its R&D spending for its 13th…
Suits and Spooks DC 2016 is now less than two weeks away and I'd like to make it our best attended event in the five years since I founded this security forum. To that end, I'm giving away two rare gifts for the next 20 people who register for a full two day pass ($599 for Industry; $499 for Gov't and Academia). The first gift is an autographed and personalized 2nd edition copy of my book Inside…
Kung Fu Panda 3 opens simultaneously in the U.S. and China on Jan 29th to high hopes by Dreamworks Animation and Oriental Dreamworks, which is a joint venture formed with China Media Capital and Shanghai Media Group. A test run of two screenings at various Chinese theaters last weekend yielded an impressive $6.5 million, and January 29th is a coveted opening date in China due to its proximity to…
#7: The Rise of Global Terrorism Engage in a discussion about the evolution and expansion of terrorism by the Islamic State with CIA and DOD experts Mark Kelton and Dave Kilcullen. #6: Are Commercial Airlines Safe From Hacking Should you be worried about hackers interfering with the control systems of commercial aircraft? What safety measures are in place to keep that from happening? Jim Vasatka,…
This is a unique opportunity to hear Jim Vasatka (Director of Aviation Security at Boeing) discuss the overall cybersecurity threat space as it pertains to commercial aircraft in a NO PRESS, Chatham House Rules environment. Attendees will also be invited to submit implementation ideas for AIAA's Cybersecurity Framework. For the first time in five years, Suits and Spooks DC is structured in…
On December 1st, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, together with Chinese State Councilor Guo Shengkun, co-chaired the first U.S.-China High-Level Joint Dialogue on Cybercrime and Related Issues. On December 2nd, China’s official news agency Xinhua reported on the meeting and dropped a bombshell: “Among the cases discussed included the one…
Back in the early 2000’s, cybersecurity researchers blamed every financial services attack on Russian or Eastern European hackers and every non-financial services attack on China. Every attack literally fell into one of those two buckets. U.S. Air Force officers in the 90’s were convinced that only the Chinese government was interested in stealing non-financial data like intellectual property.…
UPDATE: As of this morning (Oct 16th), we have only 2 tickets remaining for this promotion. Act fast to secure your chance to win a free trip to Paris Suits and Spooks. UPDATE: As of the 15th, we have only 5 tickets remaining. This promotion will end at close of business omorrow, Friday Oct 16th. ----- For the next 48 hours, we will make ten tickets for Suits and Spooks DC (Feb 11-12, 2016)…