Category Archives: NATO

Spyware providers are flocking to international arms fairs to sell to NATO foes

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European and Middle Eastern spyware and surveillance firms are marketing intrusion software to adversaries of the U.S., its intelligence allies and NATO, Atlantic Council research published Monday reveals. Looking at more than 200 companies that attended international arms fairs in the past two decades, researchers found that 85% of companies likely selling interception or intrusion technologies marketed these capabilities to governments outside their home country — even when no intelligence relationship existed. Five companies, including Israel-based Cellebrite and Sweden-based Micro Systemation AB, marketed those capabilities to U.S. and NATO adversaries. Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment. The findings coincide with an explosion of surveillance vendors attending international arms trade shows, including the heavily attended Milipol France and the U.K. -based Security and Policing Home Office.  The report underscores growing concerns about the threat that spyware companies pose to the United States and its allies. U.S. and European leaders have […]

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EU takes aim at Russia over ‘Ghostwriter’ hacking campaign against politicians, government officials

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The European Union formally blamed Russia on Friday, just ahead of this weekend’s German elections, for a hacking campaign targeting EU government officials and politicians. And the EU is threatening to take unspecified action. “The European Union will revert to this issue in upcoming meetings and consider taking further steps,” reads a statement from the high representative of the EU. Known as Ghostwriter, the campaign drawing the EU’s ire has previously taken aim at NATO and launched disinformation efforts as well, according to researchers who have tied its goals to Russian interests but not attributed it to the government. “The European Union and its Member States strongly denounce these malicious cyber activities, which all involved must put to an end immediately,” the EU statement reads. “We urge the Russian Federation to adhere to the norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace.” The EU says that Ghostwriter targets in its member […]

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US blames China for Microsoft hacking, ransomware attacks as part of global condemnation

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The U.S. and its allies on Monday blamed China for exploiting flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server that enabled worldwide ransomware attacks on tens of thousands of victims. It was part of a multi-front response Monday from the European Union, NATO U.S. intelligence partners that included the announcement of charges against four Chinese hackers that the Justice Department said worked on behalf of Beijing to breach U.S. companies and institutions over a span of seven years. For the first time, the U.S. government also accused the Chinese government of employing criminal hackers who have conducted criminal attacks. U.S. government agencies also released a technical report Monday, first reported by CyberScoop, that warned of China’s ongoing appetite for targeting the defense, medical, semiconductor and other industries to steal intellectual property. “No one action can change China’s behavior in cyberspace and neither can just one country acting on its own,” a senior administration […]

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NATO Allies Say Kinetic Response to Cyberattacks on Table

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Just days before President Biden was set to meet with Russia President Vladimir Putin, with cyberattacks a key topic on the agenda, NATO heads of state and government met at the North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels and issued a communiqué that u… Continue reading NATO Allies Say Kinetic Response to Cyberattacks on Table→

‘Ghostwriter’ disinformation campaign rages on as Biden prepares for NATO trip

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For over a year, Stanislaw Zaryn, a Polish government official, has not been shy about exposing what he says are suspected Russian attempts to interfere in Polish politics. Zaryn has posted screenshots on Twitter of fake accounts and slapped a blaring “Disinformation” label on them. He has called out a forged letter that criticized the U.S. troop presence in Poland. But a study published by security firm FireEye on Wednesday makes clear that the propaganda flagged by Zaryn is but one front in a multi-pronged information operations effort aimed at sowing political discord in multiple NATO countries. FireEye has linked more than 30 such incidents in Lithuania, Latvia, Germany and elsewhere in the last five years to a previously disclosed, ongoing influence campaign it calls Ghostwriter. That includes more than 20 newly discovered Ghostwriter incidents since an initial FireEye report last summer, including one as recent as last month. The […]

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NATO tests its hand defending against blended cyber-disinformation attacks

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Member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have banded together in recent days to confront an apparent cyberattack carried out against a NATO member’s critical infrastructure, according to the alliance. NATO is also working to battle a stream of disinformation about the attack against island state Berylia that has flooded social media, the alliance said. While many world leaders have faced off with blended cyber and disinformation operations in recent years, the NATO members in this case are not in fact facing a real threat. NATO crafted the scenario, which was carried out by a fabricated non-NATO nation-state “Crimsonia,” as part of an annual simulation exercise. Known as Locked Shields, it’s designed to test leaders’ readiness to deal with live cyberthreats. Berylia, the target of the fake attack and disinformation, is also an imagined state. The exercise — which had Crimsonia target Berylia’s financial services sector, mobile networks and […]

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Authentication bypass vulnerability found in NATO, EU approved firewall

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By Waqas
A threat actor with network access to an admin interface could easily exploit the vulnerability to become a root user without any login credentials.
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Authentication bypass vulnerability f… Continue reading Authentication bypass vulnerability found in NATO, EU approved firewall→

The EU is making overtures about cybersecurity collaboration under Biden

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European Union members convened a ministerial discussion Monday in an effort to take stock of the 2020 U.S. presidential election and plan how to best jumpstart cooperation with the incoming Biden administration on a whole host of issues, including cybersecurity matters. The agenda was focused on a proposal from the European Commission and the office of the EU High Representative that suggests that the EU and the U.S. increase cybersecurity-related information-sharing and coordinate repercussions for bad actors in cyberspace. The commission and high representative — essentially the EU’s foreign minister — also proposed an increase in cybersecurity capacity-building efforts, discussions about 5G, and a meeting in early 2021 to discuss security and military operations. Europe and the U.S. have a long history of partnering on cybersecurity issues, and in the last year the U.S. and some members of the EU have taken steps meant to increase their ability to jointly […]

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Norway says Russian hackers carried out breach at parliament

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Russian state-sponsored hackers were behind a breach of the Norwegian parliament in August in which attackers stole data from lawmakers’ email accounts, Norwegian officials alleged on Tuesday. “This is a very serious incident, affecting our most important democratic institution,” Norway Foreign Affairs Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide said in a statement. “Based on the information the government has, it is our view that Russia is responsible for these activities.” The incident, and the suggestion of foreign political interference, has been a topic of significant contention for Norwegian national security officials. Among the victims of the breach were members of the opposition Labour Party and the Centre Party, according to local media reports. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday on the accusation. The Russian Embassy in Oslo balked at the allegations, calling them “unacceptable” and “destructive for bilateral relations.” Norway is a […]

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