Security News for the Week Ending June 17, 2022

Ransomware Morphs Again

We know that ransomware has gone through a lot of iterations over the last couple of years as hackers try to maximize their revenue. The BlackCat group is now creating public websites for each victim company and has indexed the data to make it easy to search. I guess this means that it will be harder for companies that get hacked to hide what data was stolen. In one of their sites, you can select between employee data and customer data as the first filter and then search on that subset. Credit: Brian Krebs

NSA Quietly Appoints General Counsel After Two Years

You may remember that in the final, sort of weird, final days of the last President’s administration, the ex-President attempted to force the NSA to accept an unqualified political hack in the role of GC – a person who had not even worked inside the intelligence community, a process known as burrowing. Burrowing converts a political appointee into a career civil servant. Gen. Nakasone was ordered, on the last day of the ex-President’s administration to swear the guy in. That same day, the General put the new GC on administrative leave pending an inquiry about some security incidents. After several months in limbo, he resigned. He now is a lawyer at Rumble, a business partner of Truth Social. See a pattern? Anyway, April Falcon Doss, who seems to have impressive legal creds, was finally, quietly, sworn in as GC last month. Credit: The Record

Cyberattack – One and Done? Nope; Not Likely

According to research by Cymulate, 39% of companies were hit by cybercrime over the last year. Of those, TWO THIRDS were hit more than once. Also, of those who were hacked once, 10% were hacked ten times. That doesn’t give me a lot of warm fuzzies. Credit: ZDNet

Joshua Schulte, Former CIA Coder, Represents Himself in Second Espionage Trial

Joshua Schulte, is a former software engineer who worked for the CIA. He is accused of the largest, most damaging leak the CIA ever had. In his first trial, the jury hung on espionage charges. Now the second trial is beginning and he is representing himself. I recall a saying about a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Even though he is not a lawyer, the saying applies. He says he was framed. Prosecutors say he is guilty. Stay tuned for details. Credit: Security Week

Indian Police Planted False Evidence on Activist’s Computers to Arrest Them

Police in India were caught using hacking tools to plant evidence on people’s computers and then arresting them for the staged crime. The people being cyber attacked are not terrorists, but rather journalists and activists – in other words, people who annoy the police. With the help of SentinelOne, the hacking-by-police incidents have been publicly exposed. Credit: Wired

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