Security News for the Week Ending September 11, 2020

Pioneer Kitten Sells Compromised Corporate Credentials

Pioneer Kitten, an Advanced Persistent Threat group backed by Iran, is compromising corporate systems and then selling those credentials to the highest bidder. Like all large organizations, they want to diversify from just ransomware and stealing credit cards. Now they have a new and apparently very lucrative revenue stream. Credit: Threat Post

Ireland Unfriends Facebook

In the aftermath of the Schrems II decision, Ireland has told Facebook to stop sharing data from the EU to the US. Of course Zucky says that they have a right to do that using standard contract clauses (and they could possibly be right), but there will be a fight. Stay tuned. Credit: The Register

Pentagon has a New Way to Protect Their Browsing

In case you thought I was going to diss DISA, the Pentagon’s IT department, nope, not this time. Actually, I really like what they are doing and hope some enterprising company offers it as a service.

The Pentagon plans to roll it out to 1.5 million users in the first year. What they are doing is instead of opening a browser on your computer, you open a window to a browser in the cloud from your computer. You then surf in that sandbox, containing any explosive debris from malware. When you drop the connection, the sandbox goes away, along with any malware. In addition, since these sandboxes live in the data center, the amount of data bandwidth required at the user’s location goes down dramatically. It is a brilliant idea. Credit: Government Computer News

After Microsoft Outs Russian Election Hacking White House Sanctions 4 Russians

The same day that Microsoft published details of Russians who are trying to hack the 2020 US Elections, the White House added 4 Russians to the Treasury’s equivalent of the do not fly list called OFAC. This is also after the whistleblower at DHS came out saying he was told by the head of DHS not to say anything about Russian hacking. Maybe the three events are not related. Maybe the Republican administration was forced to do something to look like it was being tough on Russia. The hacking includes publishing fake news designed to spark false corruption investigations in an effort to affect the election outcome. Other Russians stole US citizens’ identities to open fake bank and cryptocurrency exchange accounts. Microsoft said that it detected attacks targeting both the Biden and Trump campaigns. The Russians also used traditional attacks like phishing and brute force password attacks. Credit: Dark Reading

Army Cyber Command Moves to Fort Gordon

While the move of Cybercom to Fort Gordon in and of itself may not be exciting, it may be an indication of how serious the Army is taking cyber. The Army built a new 336,000 SF building for them, consolidating folks who were at Forts Belvoire and Meade. More importantly, consider who else is at Gordon. This move puts Cybercom at the same garrison as the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, Army Cyber Corps and Army Signal Corps. It also houses Homeland Security training, Naval Information Ops Command and Joint Strategic Intelligence Command, among others. Putting all these cyber and information folks within walking distance has to allow them to better coordinate and cooperate. Credit: Security Week

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