X-Industry

Colonial Pipeline said there has been no disruption to pipeline operations or their systems after a ransomware gang made several threats last Friday; yes Friday the 13^th.  The company, which runs the largest pipeline system for refined oil products in the US, addressed claims made by the Ransomed.vc gang that data had been stolen from their systems.

“Colonial Pipeline is aware of unsubstantiated claims posted to an online forum that its system has been compromised by an unknown party.  After wor

Articles on cyber warfare have consistently seen cyberattacks as a first-strike weapon for attacking countries before or at least at the onset of a moving conflict.  The speed with which these attacks occur and the difficulty in allowing for sufficient indications and warning for defenders to mitigate their intensity and volume successfully have bolstered cyberattacks as a legitimate capability for degradation, disruption, and destruction.  Cyberattacks in a moving conflict are synonymous with a

The US intelligence community is warning the domestic space industry of the growing risk of espionage and satellite attacks from China, Russia, and other adversaries.  In coordination with the FBI, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a warning about the growing threat of foreign intelligence entities (FIEs) as they continue to launch cyberattacks to gain acces

North Korean threat actors have caught Sentinel Lab's attention over the past year, providing us with fruitful insight into a variety of campaigns, such as new reconnaissance tools, (multiple) new supply chain intrusions, elusive multi-platform targeting, and new sly social engineering tactics.  To add to that list, analysts looked at an intrusion into what might be considered a highly desirable strategic espionage mission, supporting North Korea’s contentious missile program.[1]

The Target Orga

BRICS leaders are meeting in South Africa on 22 August 2023 to discuss how to turn a loose cabal of nations, accounting for a quarter of the global economy, into a geopolitical force that can challenge the West's dominance in World affairs.  Russian President Putin, who faces an international arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, will not join leaders from Brazil, India, China and South Africa amid rifts over whether to expand the bloc to include dozens of "Global South" nations que

Microsoft reported on 02 August 2023 that they caught a known Russian government-linked hacking group using its Microsoft Teams chat app to phish for credentials at targeted organizations.  According to a research report from their Threat Intelligence team, the hacking team is linked to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (also known as the SVR) and has been caught targeting government, non-government organizations (NGOs), IT services, technology, discrete manufacturing, a

The head of Russia’s space agency has extended an offer to Moscow’s partners in the BRICS group Brazil, India, China, and South Africa to participate in constructing a joint module for its planned orbital space station, state media reported on 24 July 2023.

See: https://redskyalliance.org/xindustry/the-brics

Construction of the planned space station follows Moscow’s decision last year to end its decades-long partnership with NASA and withdraw from the aging International Space Station, one of th

Submarine cables, the backbone network of the global economy and telecommunications, are operating in an increasingly risky environment and are prone to geopolitical, physical, and cyber threats, including nation-state sabotage and spying.  Fiber-optic submarine cables on the ocean floor transmit an estimated 99% of all intercontinental internet traffic and communications, including roughly $10 trillion of financial transactions daily and sensitive government and military communication, making t

The US Department of Energy and several other federal agencies were compromised in a Russian cyber-extortion gang’s global hack of a file-transfer program popular with corporations and governments. Still, the impact was not expected to be great, Homeland Security officials said on 15 June 2023.  But for others, among what could be hundreds of victims from industry to higher education, including patrons of at least two state motor vehicle agencies, the hack was beginning to show some serious impa

Free speech and digital privacy appear to be key components left out of a United Nations (UN) Cybercrime Treaty being proposed, primarily by Russia.  To say the cybersecurity community is skeptical would be an understatement.  "The UN Cybercrime Treaty, to the extent it gets adopted, is expected to define global norms for lawful surveillance and legal processes available to investigate and prosecute cybercriminals," reports The Register in a special report.  "And what has emerged so far contempl

Note: this Recorded Future Ransomware Tracker is updated on the second Sunday of each month to stay current.  The number of victims posted on ransomware extortion sites increased in May, with ransomware gangs publicly claiming more than 400 attacks in a month for the second time this year. 

The uptick was fueled in large part by the Russia-linked LockBit ransomware group, which posted 74 victims to its extortion site in May.  The group has become far and away the most active ransomware gang, wit

"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase closely associated with PT Barnum, an American showman of the mid-19th century, although there is no evidence that he said it.  Early examples of its use are among gamblers and confidence tricksters of the era.  A previously undetected cryptocurrency scam has leveraged over 1,000 fraudulent websites to ensnare users into a bogus rewards scheme since at least January 2021.

This massive campaign has likely resulted in thousands of people being scamm

Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Twain's quote provides two key lessons: first, why double negatives in a sentence are a terrible idea, and second, how assumptions can lead one into trouble. Assumptions affect all levels of decision-making; however, when national leaders make assumptions, trouble can rapidly escalate to chaos and turmoil.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military suffered fro

British Airways; Boots, a British health/beauty retailer and pharmacy chain; and the BBC are investigating the potential theft of personal details of staff after the companies were hit by a cyber-attack attributed to a Russia-linked criminal gang.   British Airways (BA) confirmed it was one of the companies affected by the hack, which targeted software called MOVEit used by Zellis, a payroll provider.  “We have been informed that we are one of the companies impacted by Zellis’s cybersecurity inc

Researchers have uncovered malware designed to disrupt electric power transmission that may have been used by the Russian government in training exercises for creating or responding to cyberattacks on electric grids.

Known as CosmicEnergy, the malware has capabilities that are comparable to those found in malware known as Industroyer and Industroyer2, both of which have been widely attributed by researchers to Sandworm, the name of one of Russia’s most skilled and cutthroat hacking groups.  Sand

Several Polish media and news websites were hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that the government said could be the action of Russian hacking groups, the digitalization minister was quoted as saying on 18 May.  Warsaw has positioned itself as one of Ukraine's staunchest allies since Russia invaded the country, and Poland says it frequently faces Russian attempts to destabilize the situation in the country.  Moscow has consistently denied that it carries out hacking operations.

The Snake implant is considered the most sophisticated cyber espionage tool designed and used by Center 16 of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) for long-term intelligence collection on sensitive targets.  To conduct operations using this tool, the FSB created a covert peer-to-peer (P2P) network of numerous Snake-infected computers worldwide.  Many systems in this P2P network serve as relay nodes that route disguised operational traffic to and from Snake implants on the FSB’s ultimate targe

Ransomware, which was a novelty just a few years ago, is now endemic.  We will have to learn to live with the malicious file-encrypting code, even as we all struggle to limit it.  Why this matters: Ransomware attacks, which take an organization's data hostage and shut down its systems until the hackers receive payment, have exacted an escalating price on law enforcement, policymaking and financial resources around the world.

Ransomware remains the top cyber threat on the minds of cyber defenders

Companies in Finland are increasingly the target of cyber-attacks, Finnish authorities said last week.  Firms are reporting an uptick in cyber-attacks, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom[1]) and the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO[2]) said in a joint press conference.  But despite the greater frequency of corporate cyber-attacks, the agencies said an event that could paralyze systems in Finland was highly unlikely.

The SUPO chief reported that Russia is inc

In the era of cyber wars, AI, and drones, wars are still being fought with 20th-century weapons that require massive amounts of ammunition.  Russia is sending a delegation to North Korea to offer food in exchange for weapons, US national security spokesman.  He said any arms deal between North Korea and Russia would violate UN Security Council resolutions.  The US has previously accused North Korea of supplying arms to the Russian military in Ukraine and the Wagner group of Russian mercenaries.