The CyberWire Daily

Russia’s Ministry of Defense says its website sustained a distributed denial-of-service attack this morning. Facebook disrupts a complex Iranian catphishing operation aimed at military personnel and employees of defense and aerospace companies. Microsoft and Citizen Lab describe the recent operations of an Israeli intercept tool vendor. The US shows no signs of relenting on Huawei. Johannes Ullrich from the SANS technology institute has been Hunting Phishing Sites with Shodan...

A Chinese APT is active against targets in Myanmar and, especially, the Philippines. Cyberespionage campaigns suggest that there’s a thriving market for zero-days. MI5 warns against spying, disinformation, and radicalization. REvil continues to lie low (and the Kremlin hasn’t seen anything). CISA offers ransomware mitigation advice. Bogus Coinbase sites steal credentials. Ransomware attacks on old SonicWall products expected...

SolarWinds patches a zero-day exploited by a Chinese threat group. Patch Tuesday notes. What’s up with REvil: takedown, retirement, rebranding, or glitch? (Don’t bet against rebranding.) Joe Carrigan from JHU ISI on cell phone carriers sneaking us ads via SMS. Our guest is Nicko van Someren of Absolute Software with a look at endpoint risk. And bots like futbol. For links to all of today's stories check out our CyberWire daily news briefing: https://www.thecyberwire...

SolarWinds addresses a zero-day that was exploited in the wild. A watering hole campaign lures users of online gaming sites. Inauthentic accounts (now suspended) get a blue check mark. Trickbot is back, with new capabilities. The DarkSide hits fashion retailer Guess. Malek Ben Salem from Accenture on Remediation of Vulnerabilities using AI. Our guest is Jeff Williams from Contrast Security with a look at Application Security in Financial Services...

Kaseya has patched the VSA on-premises and SaaS versions affected by REvil ransomware. The US tries some straight talk about privateering with Russia, but with what effect remains to be seen. Russia’s autarkic Internet poses some challenges for international security. Iranian rail and government sites were hit with a cyber incident over the weekend. Ukraine says Russian threat actors defaced its Naval website. Carole Theriault looks at ethics in phishing simulations...

Cloud attacks have become so widespread that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned against an increase of nation states, criminal groups and hacktivists targeting cloud-based enterprise resources. APTs such as Pacha Group, Rocke Group and TeamTNT have been rapidly modifying their existing tools to target Linux servers in the cloud. Modifying their existing code to create new malware variants which are easily bypassing traditional security solutions...

Senior Threat Analyst and Shift Lead at VMware Taree Reardon shares her journey to becoming leader for women in the cybersecurity field.

Guest Daniel Kats, Senior Principal Research Engineer at NortonLifeLock, joins Dave to discuss his team's work, "Encrypted Chat Apps Doubling as Illegal Marketplaces." Encrypted chat apps are gaining popularity worldwide due to their central premise of not sending user data to tech giants. Some popular examples include WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. These apps have also been adopted by businesses to securely communicate directly to their users...

Kaseya continues to work through remediation of the VSA vulnerability exploited by REvil, with completion expected Sunday afternoon. And while REvil has made a nuisance of itself, this time they may not have seen a big payday, or at least not yet. The US is still considering its retaliatory and other options in the big ransomware case. China’s MSS is active against targets in Asia. Andrea Little Limbago from Interos looks at Government access to data analysis...

Ukrainian government websites may have come under an unspecified cyberattack early this week. Kaseya delays its VSA patch until Sunday, and offers assistance to victims of VSA exploitation by REvil. The US continues to mull its response to Russia over REvil and Cozy Bear. A small electric utility’s business systems go offline after a ransomware attack. Microsoft continues to grapple with PrintNightmare. Caleb Barlow from CynergisTek on the changing Cyber Insurance landscape...