Security News Bites for March 28, 2025
US National Security Advisor Not So Good At Personal Security
In light of “Signalgate”, reporters are looking for more breaches of security at the upper echelon of the president’s team. All of this is unclassified, but still sensitive. This includes National Security Advisor Waltz’s Venmo friend list (he has 328 friends), mobile phone numbers, email addresses and passwords of people like DNI Gabbard and SecDef Hegseth. I guess the White House needs to run a remedial class in OpSec, because his team’s operational security doesn’t look so good. What about YOUR opsec? Credit: cybernews
Was Russia Behind Heathrow Fire and Shutdown?
It is the kind of story that fuels conspiracy theories. And we might not know for decades. After all, only now is the government declassifying some of the documents around the JFK assassination. What do we know? Not much. There was a fire. It shut down the airport (which all by itself shows a really bad business continuity plan – one source of power goes away and the airport is toast.). The government is not saying much. The investigation is being “run by” the London Fire Brigade whose job is not national security. Of course that could just be a front. Unless Russia claims responsibility – which they are not – we may never know. But it does make for an interesting move. Credit: NBC News
US Senators Push Trump for Details on TikTok Deal Before April 5th Deadline
The Senate is asking for details of a proposed ByteDance deal to sell prior to the April 5th deadline to shut it down. The law gave the president only one get out of jail free card to extend the deadline from January 19th and that has been already used. The president has two options here. Ignore the law and hope Google and Apple get on board, which is risky to them given history or to ask Congress for an extension. Stay tuned. Credit: Cybernews
You Know Those Private Dating Sites – No, Not Really
If you participate in a traditional dating site and the information is exposed, well, maybe, you might be embarrassed a bit. But, if you use alternative sites like BDSM People, CHICA, TRANSLOVE, PINK and BRISH, well, they don’t seem to care about your privacy and left “secrets”, AKA passwords and the like, publicly assessable along with the apps’ code. Things like profile verification pictures (those things like drivers licenses and passports that many states are now requiring you to provide in order to use certain sites), along with potentially intimate or kinky pictures are now available to blackmail you with. For those states that make keeping these secrets mandatory – I am sure you can sue them and get made whole again. NOT! My suggestion – if that is a requirement, don’t use the website. Credit: Cybernews
Sanctioned Entities Fueled $16 Bil in Crypto Activity
Even though the Tornado crypto cash mixer was sanctioned – with those sanctions now eliminated by the courts – inflows into the Tornado crypto blender doubled in 2024. Outflows of crypto from Iran in 2024 were over $4 billion, up about 70% from the previous year. Overall, the global crypto transaction volume was over $10 trillion in 2024, up 56% from the year before. The illicit crypto volume, which is really hard to track (so this number is probably quite low) was $45 billion, which was down 24% from 2023. One year, of course, does not make a trend. Credit: The Record
by 