X-Industry

A European Commission-funded biometric “gait recognition” program to study how to more easily identify people crossing the European Union’s external borders by examining their unique walking styles began last week.  The initiative, called the PopEye Project, is supported by a €3.2 million (USD $3.5 million) grant that covers a three-year pilot testing the technology, according to TechTransfer, a program at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and a partner on the effort.  Horizon Europe, a European U

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced arrests and charges against several individuals and entities for allegedly manipulating digital asset markets as part of a widespread fraud operation. The law enforcement action, codenamed Operation Token Mirrors, is the result of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) taking the "unprecedented step" of creating its own cryptocurrency token and company, NexFundAI.

NexFundAI, as per information on the website, was marketed as redefining the "

Iranian hackers are acting as Initial Access Brokers (IAB), selling access to critical infrastructure organizations in the West to the highest bidder.  A joint security advisory recently published by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), together with the FBI, NSA, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSE), the Australian Federal Police (AFP), and Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ASCS), claims Iranian threat actors are activel

Kroger’s plans to roll out facial recognition tools at its grocery stores is attracting increased criticism from lawmakers, who warn that it could be exploited to increase the prices certain individuals pay for food and put customers’ personal data at risk.  In a letter this week to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said the plans, which involve using facial recognition tools in digital displays to target advertising to customers and collect information on them, pote

Threat Type: Foreign Adversarial Technological, Physical, and Cyber Influence

Geographic Area: Worldwide

This advisory supersedes and cancels US Maritime Advisory 2024-002

1. Issue: This Advisory seeks to alert maritime stakeholders of potential vulnerabilities to maritime port equipment, networks, operating systems, software, and infrastructure. Foreign companies manufacture, install, and maintain port equipment that creates vulnerabilities to global maritime infrastructure information technology

Recently, the Dutch police have announced the takedown of Bohemia and Cannabia, which has been described as the world's largest and longest-running dark web market for illegal goods, drugs, and cybercrime services.  The takedown is the result of a collaborative investigation with Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States that began towards the end of 2022, the disclosure reported.  The marketplace discontinued its operations in late 2023 following reports of service disruptions and exit

The Internet Archive has come back online, in slightly degraded mode, after repelling an 9 October DDoS attack and then succumbing to a raid on users' data.  For several days after the attack, the Archive loaded into the basic page depicted below.

Currently, it is seen that the site sometimes load that page, but sometimes load another that's closer to the Archive's usual busy home page, but omits many items.  It is unclear why the site is switching between the two (and yes, we cleared caches and

In today’s interconnected world, safeguarding critical infrastructure from cyber threats is more important than ever.  The continuous evolution of technology and the adoption of the Connected Worker have created unprecedented opportunities for growth and innovation.  However, they have also created a vast and complex digital landscape where vulnerabilities can be easily exploited.  The cybersecurity challenges facing critical infrastructure are not hypothetical; they are stark realities that can

A new attack technique that relies on radio signals from memory buses to exfiltrate data from air-gapped systems has been identified. The exploit is a novel side-channel attack that has been found to leverage radio signals emanated by a device's Random Access Memory (RAM) as a data exfiltration mechanism, posing a threat to air-gapped networks.  Air-gapped systems, typically used in mission-critical environments with exceptionally high-security requirements, such as governments, weapon systems,

The US election cycle is here, and it is becoming more important for voters not to be fooled by Deepfakes.  According to recent research, just over half of Britons surveyed (53%) either have not heard of the term Deepfake or have misunderstood its meaning, with only 17% feeling confident in their ability to spot them.  Meanwhile, two in five have encountered at least one deepfake in the past six months, as recent reports reveal that over 4k celebrities have fallen victim to Deepfakes, and 400 di

Some television stations and websites in Russia are offline for the second day in a row following what Moscow called an “unprecedented” attack on its digital infrastructure.  The disruption began on October 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s birthday.  Last week, Russian state-owned broadcaster VGTRK’s website and digital streaming services went off the air.  The affected outlets included radio stations and TV channels such as Russia-1 and Russia-24.  “Our state media holding, one of the larg

It is not the federal government that’s responsible for the cyber defense of critical infrastructure.  The responsibility falls on the critical infrastructure operators themselves and most aren’t equipped for the fight.  Cyber threats to the United States' critical infrastructure are on the rise.  On 31 January 2024, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress, highlighting how Chinese government hackers are attempting “‘to find and prepare to destroy or degrade the civilian critical

Despite current of law enforcement action to take down ransomware gangs, Secureworks has observed a 30% year-on-year rise in active ransomware groups.   In the eighth edition of the Secureworks annual State of The Threat Report[1], the firm identified 31 new groups that had entered the ransomware ecosystem in the last 12 months.  The report noted that while a few big players had previously dominated the threat landscape, it is now home to a broader set of emerging entities.[2]

The top four most

In today’s world, cars are not just machines that take us from one place to another. They have transformed computers into wheels, packed with technology for navigation, entertainment, and safety. However, this technology also comes with a dark side: cyber-attacks.  As vehicles become more connected through the Internet of Things (IoT), they are increasingly vulnerable to hackers.  Understanding how these attacks happen, and their potential consequences is crucial in our technologically advanced

With new rules on Cyber Security coming down from the US Coast Guard, Angeliki Zisimatou, Director Cybersecurity, ABS, is uniquely positioned to discuss maritime cyber security in the round, with insights on what she’s seen and heard from the draft rules, with advice on what it could mean for vessel owners.  Cyber security and all that it entails is quickly climbing the priority ladder in maritime, as increasing dependance on connectivity is a double edge sword of promise and peril.  While the l

Earlier this week, a US federal judge ordered Google to tear down the digital walls shielding its Android app store from competition as punishment for maintaining an illegal monopoly that helped expand the company's internet empire.  The injunction was issued by US District Judge James Donato and will require Google to make several changes that the California company had been resisting.  Those include a provision that will require its Play Store for Android apps to distribute rival third-party a

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their fundamental discoveries in machine learning, which paved the way for how artificial intelligence is used today.

Hopfield, a professor at Princeton University and Hinton, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, were praised for laying the foundations for the machine learning that powers many of today’s AI-based products and applications.  Hinton, however, has also expressed fears about AI’s

Automating the on-demand collection of memory dumps, process information, system files, and event logs for inclusion in threat-hunting activities allows for a more comprehensive and proactive approach to adaptive threat-hunting. In the WatchTower Threat Hunting blog series, Sentinel Labs calls out some adaptive threat-hunting methodologies, including Chained Detections, a Multi-Directional Approach, and AI-powered hunts. This shows the benefits of applying a multi-directional approach to adaptiv

Cyber risks continue to expand across industries, and as ships and boats at sea increasingly become connected to the shore in the name of crew welfare and operational efficiency, so too grow the risks that a ship could be hacked, the safety of its crew and cargo compromised.  “Cyber risk is real, it's really growing substantially, especially with increased concerns around geopolitical tensions, which is having a direct impact on maritime operations,” said Cedric Warde, Vice President, at Digital

If you’re an Old Trekkie like me, this will be interesting.  MIT has created a chip-based optical tractor beam that can focus a penetrating beam of light over 5 millimeters away from the surface of the chip itself.  That might not sound like much, but it's a game-changer compared to previous integrated "optical tweezers" that could only work within a few microns of the chip.  Those older approaches had to remove cells from their sterile glass containers (commonly used for biological experiments)