Category Archives: Security Research

Symantec reveals state-sponsored group that doesn’t care for malware

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A newly revealed hacking group has been going after diplomatic and military targets in a malware-less campaign that researchers say makes it difficult to detect. Over the last 10 months, the so-called Gallmaker group has conducted what appear to be cyber-espionage operations against several embassies belonging to an Eastern European country, according to research from cybersecurity company Symantec published Wednesday. The group, which researchers say is likely state-sponsored, has also targeted military and defense organizations in the Middle East. “The type of targets seen in the attacks really fit that of what an espionage group would be interested in,” Jon DiMaggio, senior threat intelligence analyst at Symantec, told CyberScoop. “If simply for financial gain, it would be odd to restrict targets to diplomatic, military and defense personnel.” Gallmaker’s end goal appears to collecting intelligence on its targets in the form of documents and communications, according to DiMaggio. Gallmaker’s hackers use […]

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DEF CON founder says there’s a ‘civil war’ at voting vendors over security

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There is a “civil war’ going on at big U.S. voting-equipment vendors between employees who want to proactively address security vulnerabilities and those who stubbornly oppose doing that, according to DEF CON founder Jeff Moss. “Half the company wants to deny that there’s any problem and to do things on their own timescale and basically soldier on,” Moss said Thursday, while the other half typically includes “younger engineers who think this is a great opportunity to make a change” in how the company approaches cybersecurity. He spoke on Capitol Hill at the rollout of the DEF CON Voting Village report, which highlighted a decade-old vulnerability in a ballot-counting machine used in more than half the states. Moss, a cybersecurity expert and outside adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, told CyberScoop that the opposing impulses at voting-equipment vendors could force some engineers to leave the companies. Engineers who have reached […]

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Sen. Rubio wants answers from Apple on privacy-violating app

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Earlier this month, news broke that one of Apple’s most popular paid applications had been surreptitiously collecting user data and browser history and sending it to a server in China. On Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio wrote to Apple demanding answers on why it reportedly took the tech giant weeks to address the issue. “For a company that prides itself on prioritizing user privacy and security, this delayed response is extremely disconcerting,” Rubio, R-Fla., wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The application in question is Adware Doctor, a scanning tool that offers to remove adware from Mac computers. After security researchers published evidence on Sept. 7 that Adware Doctor was violating Apple’s data collection and storage rules, the company pulled it from the Mac App Store. But that was nearly a month after researcher @privacyis1st said he alerted Apple to the issue. Rubio, who has repeatedly raised national security concerns about technology […]

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Alejandro Hernandez’s Exposing Security Weakness in Stock Trading Tech

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via the White Paper mentioned herein.
Superlative security research is still coming out of the IOActive game-changing environment (this has been going on for years now – how do they do it…).
Case in Point: The work of Alejandro Hernandez and his cu… Continue reading Alejandro Hernandez’s Exposing Security Weakness in Stock Trading Tech→