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Cybersecurity researchers have discovered what they say is malicious cyber activity orchestrated by two prominent Chinese nation-state hacking groups targeting 24 Cambodian government organizations. "This activity is believed to be part of a long-term espionage campaign," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers  said  in a report last week. "The observed activity aligns with geopolitical goals of the Chinese government as it seeks to leverage their strong relations with Cambodia to project their power and expand their naval operations in the region." Targeted organizations span defense, election oversight, human rights, national treasury and finance, commerce, politics, natural resources, and telecommunications sectors. The assessment stems from the persistent nature of inbound network connections originating from these entities to a China-linked adversarial infrastructure that masquerades as cloud backup and storage services over a "period of several month...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned about a Windows version of a wiper malware that was previously observed targeting Linux systems in cyber attacks aimed at Israel. Dubbed  BiBi-Windows Wiper  by BlackBerry, the wiper is the Windows counterpart of  BiBi-Linux Wiper , which has been put to use by a pro-Hamas hacktivist group in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war last month. "The Windows variant [...] confirms that the threat actors who created the wiper are continuing to build out the malware, and indicates an expansion of the attack to target end user machines and application servers," the Canadian company  said  Friday. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET is  tracking  the actor behind the wiper under the name BiBiGun, noting that the Windows variant (bibi.exe) is designed to overwrite data in the C:\Users directory recursively with junk data and append ".BiBi" to the filename. The BiBi-Windows Wiper artifact is said to have been compiled on October...

The Indian President Droupadi Murmu on Friday granted assent to the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill ( DPDPB ) after it was unanimously passed by both houses of the parliament last week, marking a significant step towards securing people's information. "The Bill provides for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognizes both the rights of the individuals to protect their personal data and the need to process such personal data for lawful purposes and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto," the Indian government  said . The  long-awaited data protection law  comes months after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) released a  draft version  of the bill in November 2022. It has been in the making for over five years, with a first draft released in July 2018. A year before, India's Supreme Court  upheld  privacy as a  fundamental right . The legislative framework, which applies ...

Attacks on critical infrastructure and other OT systems are on the rise as digital transformation and OT/IT convergence continue to accelerate. Water treatment facilities, energy providers, factories, and chemical plants — the infrastructure that undergirds our daily lives could all be at risk. Disrupting or manipulating OT systems stands to pose real physical harm to citizens, environments, and economies. Yet the landscape of OT security tools is far less developed than its information technology (IT) counterpart. According to a recent  report from Takepoint Research and Cyolo , there is a notable lack of confidence in the tools commonly used to secure remote access to industrial environments.  Figure 1: New research reveals a large gap across industries between the level of concern about security risks and the level of confidence in existing solutions for industrial secure remote access (I-SRA). The traditional security strategy of industrial environments was isolation –...

As security professionals who have spent more than a few years in the industry, we know a good challenge when we see one. SaaS and cloud-based technologies are growing rapidly, offering organizations convenience and constant feature refreshes without the need to install and deploy software on-premises. However, even when referred to as 'a game-changer,' many organizations are still highly concerned by security breaches. Today, organizations have anywhere from 35-to literally hundreds of SaaS applications running. Slack, Office 365, Zoom, Zendesk, Salesforce, Hubspot, etc. These applications are at the core of modern enterprises, to the point where running a business without them would be nearly impossible, with the cost and time-saving benefits they provide enabling growth while conserving resources. SaaS applications are easy to use, scalable, and now, they even come with an impressive array of native security controls to secure sensitive corporate data. How to make the...

WikiLeaks' release of secret government communications should serve as a warning to the nation's biggest companies: You're next. Computer experts have warned for years about the threat posed by disgruntled insiders and poorly crafted security policies that give too much access to confidential data. WikiLeaks' release of U.S. diplomatic documents shows that the group can—and likely will—use the same methods to reveal the secrets of powerful corporations. As WikiLeaks claims it has incriminating documents from a major U.S. bank, possibly Bank of America, there's new urgency to address information security inside corporations. This situation also highlights the limitations of security measures when confronted with a determined insider. At risk are companies' innermost secrets—emails, documents, databases, and internal websites thought to be locked from the outside world. Companies create records of every decision they make, whether it's rolling out new produ...

The likelihood of an unprovoked cyberattack is low, according to extensive new legal research featured in an upcoming issue of the British journal INFO. This research explores a 150-year-old series of Geneva Conventions related to cyberwar. However, defining "cyberwar" remains elusive, and reaching a broad consensus on its definition is challenging. What is Cyberwar? The terms "cyber" and "war" have been abstract concepts for many years. After an attack, nations typically assert the right to proportional responsive measures, using all available means during warfare. International Treaty Provisions While the topic of cyberwar is widely discussed, few know that two key provisions were added to an international treaty in the 1990s. This treaty, signed and ratified by almost every country, limits the conditions under which a nation can adversely affect another nation's networks, services, and equipment. These provisions were added following major cyber...