Category Archives: offensive cyber

U.S. Air Force invests millions this month on cyberweapons projects

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Three of the United States’ largest military contractors each won multimillion-dollar projects in the last month to boost American offensive power in the cyber domain. Raytheon, Northrop Grunman and Booz Allen Hamilton have all seen their stock prices rise 10 to 20 percent since the November 2016 U.S. election. Investors sprinted to military contractors based on Trump’s promises for higher spending on — among other warfighting capabilities — the cyber domain. Many of the world’s biggest weapons manufacturers are expanding aggressively into offensive and defensive cybersecurity in search of the same level of profitability found in building conventional weapons systems. Raytheon will build the Air Force’s newest Cyber Command and Control Mission System (C3MS) operating location — at San Antonio’s Lackland Air Force Base — after winning an $8.5 million contract this week. Lackland is home to the 24th Air Force, the organization tasked with operating and defending the Air Force’s networks. It’s […]

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Here’s how the FBI’s most wanted cybercriminal hacks his targets

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The FBI’s most wanted cybercriminal — who was indicted by the Justice Department for helping Russian intelligence break into Yahoo’s digital infrastructure — has repeatedly taken advantage of self-inflicted security mistakes made by private companies in order to compromise targets, according to Chris McNab, co-founder of AlphaSOC. FBI agents told reporters Wednesday that the 2014 Yahoo breach possibly began with 29-year-old Latvian native Alexsey Belan sending a routine phishing email sent to a “semi-privileged” employee. It appears that the attacker was able to progressively gain access to new systems after entering the company’s network via a malicious attachment. As a former employee of NCC Group, McNab responded to a data breach in 2012 that Belan was also allegedly behind. McNab wrote about Belan’s hacking tactics, techniques and procedures, which he discovered during that investigation in a blog post published Monday. McNab’s article provides some rare insight into how Belan, also known as […]

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Congressman says proposed ‘hacking back’ bill is gaining traction

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A bill recently proposed by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., that would allow companies victimized by hackers to take “active cyber defense measures,” is now gaining bipartisan support, according to the congressman. Graves told CyberScoop he has received “positive feedback for the concept from both Republican and Democrat members” and “significant interest from the public, business community and academic researchers.” Interest in the bill, Graves explained, reflects a “growing recognition that current federal law doesn’t provide an adequate deterrence for criminal hacking.” “With less than 1 percent of criminal hackers being prosecuted, there is a growing consensus that we need to determine a better way to impose costs to deter their behavior. Self-defense is one method of imposing a higher cost,” Graves said. The proposed bill, named the “Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act,” is currently a discussion draft. Graves’ office continues to receive feedback from industry, think tanks, academia and other members of […]

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Congressman says proposed ‘hacking back’ bill is gaining traction

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A bill recently proposed by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., that would allow companies victimized by hackers to take “active cyber defense measures,” is now gaining bipartisan support, according to the congressman. Graves told CyberScoop he has received “positive feedback for the concept from both Republican and Democrat members” and “significant interest from the public, business community and academic researchers.” Interest in the bill, Graves explained, reflects a “growing recognition that current federal law doesn’t provide an adequate deterrence for criminal hacking.” “With less than 1 percent of criminal hackers being prosecuted, there is a growing consensus that we need to determine a better way to impose costs to deter their behavior. Self-defense is one method of imposing a higher cost,” Graves said. The proposed bill, named the “Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act,” is currently a discussion draft. Graves’ office continues to receive feedback from industry, think tanks, academia and other members of […]

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