Security News Bites for the Week Ending June 16, 2023
White House Cyber Official to Depart
Rob Knake, who served as deputy national cyber director for budget and policy and a key drafter of the National cyber strategy is leaving this week. Following Chris Inglis resignation a few months ago, this represents a problem in pushing the administration’s cyber strategy. Some lawmakers are supporting nominating Kemba Walden, the acting National Cyber Director, but there are no nominations yet. Credit: The Record
UPDATE: Atomic Wallet Hack Now Netted $100 Million
An estimated 5,000+ crypto wallets have been compromised as a result of a North Korean attack. Originally, the depth of the attack was reported as $35 million stolen, then $50 million and now $100+ million. The software company (they don’t actually do anything other than storing your crypto in a software “wallet”) is not saying anything and people are telling me that they are fleeing the company like rats from a sinking ship – which it may be (a sinking ship) after all of the lawsuits are done with them. Credit: Coin Telegraph
Feds Side With Car Makers Against Consumers’ Right to Repair
Even though the feds have had years to get involved with the right to repair movement, at the last minute, as the law was about to go into effect, the feds claimed federal preemption to overrule the Massachusetts law. What they are saying – which is sad but probably true – is that automakers’ security practices are so shoddy that if they open up their cars to their owners and repair shops, cars will become unsafe. Unfortunately, probably true and this is the fault of the feds. Credit: Motherboard by Vice
Crypto Exchange Decides to Leave U.S. Rather Than Being Regulated
What does that headline say to you? Obviously, businesses don’t want to be regulated; that is a given. But when a business decides to leave a country like the U.S. rather than being regulated; that is pretty unusual. CoinEx was sued by New York, admitted that they are an unregulated exchange and said that they will wind down U.S. operations. That tells me that if they have to follow the same rules that every other financial services firm has to follow, they would be out of business. Consumers should take note. Credit: WSJ
Legal Tech Firm Casepoint Breached – Hackers Get Terabytes of Data
This is a special type of breach. You hire a law firm after some event or maybe you are just suing someone. The case gets technical and the law firm needs to do some discovery. Nowadays, that is mostly digital. Or maybe it is just a deposition. I have been deposed multiple times (we serve as expert witnesses) and there is all sorts of digital tech going on. In this case, the hackers broke into this legal tech firm and ransacked the place. Now all of this confidential data that lawyers actually have an obligation to protect is in the wind. MAKE SURE YOU DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE BEFORE PICKING A LAW FIRM AND IF YOU ARE SHARING DATA WITH THE OPPOSITE SIDE, MAKE SURE THEY ARE PROTECTING YOUR INFORMATION TOO. Credit: Yahoo News
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