As the world rapidly shifts to EV transport, the automotive industry is experiencing some major teething issues. The global charging network is having to keep pace with more and more EVs on the road, and as manufacturers expand their networks, cracks are starting to appear in their grand schemes. We recently reported that a long string of EV chargers outside of Moscow were hacked by Ukrainian programmers to display anti-war and anti-Putin messaging, and there have even been cases in the UK where charging station displays showed graphic images. Hacking EV infrastructure is becoming more commonplace, and it could be a bigger issue than many might think.
R&D & Innovation For U.S. Security & Resilience — Kathryn Coulter Mitchell, Acting Under Secretary for Science and Technology, DHS Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security.
Kathryn Coulter Mitchell (https://www.dhs.gov/person/kathryn-coulter-mitchell), is Acting Under Secretary for Science and Technology (S&T), at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where as the science advisor to the Homeland Security Secretary, she heads the research, development, innovation and testing and evaluation activities in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) operational Components and first responders across the nation.
The Science and Technology Directorate is responsible for identifying operational gaps, conceptualizing art-of-the-possible solutions, and delivering operational results that improve the security and resilience of the nation.
In her former role as the Chief of Staff, Ms. Coulter Mitchell oversaw the operational and organizational needs of the $1 billion, 500-career-employee Directorate. A member of the Senior Executive Service, she was responsible for strategy, policy, organizational development, communications, and planning and she guided the creation of a DHS strategic vision and roadmap for research and development (R&D), the reestablishment of Integrated Product Teams to prioritize and manage DHS R&D investments, and the crafting of strategies for organizational effectiveness. Ms. Mitchell previously served S&T as Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Communications Advisor for the Under Secretary and Deputy Under Secretary.
Ms. Coulter Mitchell came to DHS after a 15-year career in the private sector and on Capitol Hill. In industry, she provided organizational strategy and communications support to the S&T directorate and the Federal Emergency Management Agency where she authored the communications strategy for the multi-million dollar, multi-agency rollout of Presidential Policy Directive 8 (This directive is aimed at strengthening the security and resilience of the United States through systematic preparation for the threats that pose the greatest risk to the security of the Nation, including acts of terrorism, cyber attacks, pandemics, and catastrophic natural disasters.)
A recently discovered backdoor malware called BPFdoor has been stealthily targeting Linux and Solaris systems without being noticed for more than five years.
BPFdoor is a Linux/Unix backdoor that allows threat actors to remotely connect to a Linux shell to gain complete access to a compromised device.
The malware does not need to open ports, it can’t be stopped by firewalls, and can respond to commands from any IP address on the web, making it the ideal tool for corporate espionage and persistent attacks.
On the “World Password Day”, which was on May 5, Google, Microsoft and Apple joined hands to “kill” the password.
The three technology giants have vowed to create a future where your phone will be the primary source of online authentication. The new standard is being referred to as “muti-device FIDO credential”.
In a rare show of alliance, Apple, Google and Microsoft have joined forces to expand support for passwordless logins across mobile, desktop and browsers.
Passwords are notoriously insecure, with weak and easily guessable credentials accounting for more than 80% of all data breaches, per Verizon’s annual data breach report. While password managers and multi-factor technologies offer incremental improvements, Apple, Google and Microsoft are working together to create sign-in technology that is more convenient and more secure.
Through the new system, users will be able to sign-in to their accounts “through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN.”
The new approach would protect people against phishing and the logins would be more secure compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS\.
Those who call for mandatory reporting have the right intent, but if it’s not implemented in the right way, it will cause more harm than good.
Mandatory reporting almost always puts companies at risk, either legally or through financial penalties. Penalizing an organization for not reporting a breach in time puts it in a worse cybersecurity posture because it is a strong incentive to turn a blind eye to attacks. Alternatively, if a company knows of a breach, it will find ways to “classify” it in a way that falls into a reporting loophole.
The reporting timelines in the law are arbitrary and not based in the reality of effective incident response. The first hours and days after a breach are integral to the actual incident reporting process, but they are chaotic, and teams are sleep-deprived. Working with lawyers to determine how to report and figuring out the evidence that companies do and don’t want to “see” just makes the process harder.
A new malicious campaign has been spotted taking advantage of Windows event logs to stash chunks of shellcode for the first time in the wild.
“It allows the ‘fileless’ last stage trojan to be hidden from plain sight in the file system,” Kaspersky researcher Denis Legezo said in a technical write-up published this week.
The stealthy infection process, not attributed to a known actor, is believed to have commenced in September 2021 when the intended targets were lured into downloading compressed. RAR files containing Cobalt Strike and Silent Break.
The U.S. Department of Treasury today sanctioned cryptocurrency mixer Blender.io used last month by the North Korean-backed Lazarus hacking group to launder funds stolen from Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge.
In the wake of the attack, Sky Mavis (the bridge’s creator) revealed that hackers breached the Ronin bridge on March 23 to steal 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC tokens in two transactions worth $617 million at the time, the largest cryptocurrency hack in history.
Tenet Healthcare Corporation recently experienced a cybersecurity incident in April 2022, which resulted in a temporary disruption to a subset of acute care operations.
The report from Tenet comes on the heels of telephone and computer problems occurring at St. Mary’s Medical Center and Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach Florida, that were reported by WPTV NewsChannel 5. Tenet health is the parent company for both of the medical centers.
Patients and staff have contacted WPTV NewsChannel 5 expressing concerns about patient care tied to limits of electronic charting and their inability to communicate by telephone.
