Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2025

Security Theater: Vanity Metrics Keep You Busy – and Exposed

After more than 25 years of mitigating risks, ensuring compliance, and building robust security programs for Fortune 500 companies, I’ve learned that looking busy isn’t the same as being secure.  It’s an easy trap for busy cybersecurity leaders to fall into. We rely on metrics that tell a story of the tremendous efforts we’re expending […]

Cyber News

PoisonSeed Exploits CRM Accounts to Launch Cryptocurrency Seed Phrase Poisoning Attacks

A malicious campaign dubbed PoisonSeed is leveraging compromised credentials associated with customer relationship management (CRM) tools and bulk email providers to send spam messages containing cryptocurrency seed phrases in an attempt to drain victims’ digital wallets. “Recipients of the bulk spam are targeted with a cryptocurrency seed phrase poisoning attack,” Silent Push said in an 

Cyber News

Microsoft Credits EncryptHub, Hacker Behind 618+ Breaches, for Disclosing Windows Flaws

A likely lone wolf actor behind the EncryptHub persona was acknowledged by Microsoft for discovering and reporting two security flaws in Windows last month, painting a picture of a “conflicted” individual straddling a legitimate career in cybersecurity and pursuing cybercrime. In a new extensive analysis published by Outpost24 KrakenLabs, the Swedish security company unmasked the […]

Cyber News

North Korean Hackers Deploy BeaverTail Malware via 11 Malicious npm Packages

The North Korean threat actors behind the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign are spreading their tentacles on the npm ecosystem by publishing more malicious packages that deliver the BeaverTail malware, as well as a new remote access trojan (RAT) loader. “These latest samples employ hexadecimal string encoding to evade automated detection systems and manual code audits, […]

Cyber News

Malicious Python Packages on PyPI Downloaded 39,000+ Times, Steal Sensitive Data

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered malicious libraries in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that are designed to steal sensitive information and test stolen credit card data. Two of the packages, bitcoinlibdbfix and bitcoinlib-dev, masquerade as fixes for recent issues detected in a legitimate Python module called bitcoinlib, according to ReversingLabs. A third package discovered 

Cyber News

Friday Squid Blogging: Two-Man Giant Squid

The Brooklyn indie art-punk group, Two-Man Giant Squid, just released a new album. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.  

Cyber News

Cyber Forensic Expert in 2,000+ Cases Faces FBI Probe

A Minnesota cybersecurity and computer forensics expert whose testimony has featured in thousands of courtroom trials over the past 30 years is facing questions about his credentials and an inquiry from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Legal experts say the inquiry could be grounds to reopen a number of adjudicated cases in which the […]

Cyber News

SpotBugs Access Token Theft Identified as Root Cause of GitHub Supply Chain Attack

The cascading supply chain attack that initially targeted Coinbase before becoming more widespread to single out users of the “tj-actions/changed-files” GitHub Action has been traced further back to the theft of a personal access token (PAT) related to SpotBugs. “The attackers obtained initial access by taking advantage of the GitHub Actions workflow of SpotBugs, a […]

Cyber News

Troy Hunt Gets Phished

@ ALL, Getting Phished is to be expected. As two sayings put it, We are all human.To err is human. As I’ve said before, for most people, in most cases of attack, the only reasons it’s not yet happened to you are, 1, It’s a target rich environment.2, Your number has not yet come up.3, […]

Cyber News