Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • February 26, 2024

FBI’s LockBit Takedown Postponed a Ticking Time Bomb in Fulton County, Ga.

The FBI’s takedown of the LockBit ransomware group last week came as LockBit was preparing to release sensitive data stolen from government computer systems in Fulton County, Ga. But LockBit is now regrouping, and the gang says it will publish the stolen Fulton County data on March 2 unless paid a ransom. LockBit claims the […]

Cyber News
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  • February 25, 2024

Authorities Claim LockBit Admin “LockBitSupp” Has Engaged with Law Enforcement

LockBitSupp, the individual(s) behind the persona representing the LockBit ransomware service on cybercrime forums such as Exploit and XSS, “has engaged with law enforcement,” authorities said. The development comes following the takedown of the prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation as part of a coordinated international operation codenamed Cronos. Over 14,000 rogue accounts on third-party services like […]

Cyber News
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  • February 24, 2024

Microsoft Expands Free Logging Capabilities for all U.S. Federal Agencies

Microsoft has expanded free logging capabilities to all U.S. federal agencies using Microsoft Purview Audit irrespective of the license tier, more than six months after a China-linked cyber espionage campaign targeting two dozen organizations came to light. “Microsoft will automatically enable the logs in customer accounts and increase the default log retention period from 90 […]

Cyber News
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  • February 23, 2024

Friday Squid Blogging: Illex Squid and Climate Change

There are correlations between the populations of the Illex Argentines squid and water temperatures. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here. Tags: squid Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.  

Cyber News
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  • February 23, 2024

Dormant PyPI Package Compromised to Spread Nova Sentinel Malware

A dormant package available on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository was updated nearly after two years to propagate an information stealer malware called Nova Sentinel. The package, named django-log-tracker, was first published to PyPI in April 2022, according to software supply chain security firm Phylum, which detected an anomalous update to the library on […]

Cyber News
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  • February 23, 2024

AIs Hacking Websites

New research: LLM Agents can Autonomously Hack Websites Abstract: In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have become increasingly capable and can now interact with tools (i.e., call functions), read documents, and recursively call themselves. As a result, these LLMs can now function autonomously as agents. With the rise in capabilities of these agents, recent […]

Cyber News
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  • February 23, 2024

Prescription orders delayed as US pharmacies grapple with “nation-state” cyber attack

Prescription orders across the United States are reportedly being delayed after a cyber attack impacted a healthcare technology firm that supplies services to pharmacies, including CVS Health. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog. 

Cyber News
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  • February 23, 2024

LockBitsupp unmasked!!? My reaction to the FBI and NCA’s LockBit ransomware revelation

Check out my “live reaction” (isn’t that what all the kids post on social media these days?) to the much-hyped revelation of the identity of the LockBit ransomware’s administrator. 

Cyber News
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  • February 23, 2024

Microsoft Releases PyRIT – A Red Teaming Tool for Generative AI

Microsoft has released an open access automation framework called PyRIT (short for Python Risk Identification Tool) to proactively identify risks in generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The red teaming tool is designed to “enable every organization across the globe to innovate responsibly with the latest artificial intelligence advances,” Ram Shankar Siva Kumar, AI red team […]

Cyber News