One of the stories that I wrote this week for SiliconANGLE is chronicling the start of the Israeli/Hamas war. As many of you know, my daughter has been living there for several years, finding her husband and now has two small boys. The horrors of this catastrophe are too much for me to describe. My story is about the cyber dimension of the war, and what we know so far in terms of hacking attempts on various institutions. For those of you interested, I have begun writing my thoughts about what is happening to my family there and sending them out via email, LMK if you would like to see these remarks.

Today’s story is about the hopeful demise of Microsoft’s NTLM protocol. Well, sort of. Microsoft has been trying — not too hard — to rid itself of this protocol for decades. Many IT managers probably weren’t born when it was invented back in the 1980s, and few of them even remember when it ran on their networks.

I have written several times about the hackers behind the Magecart malware, which is used to compromise ecommerce servers, such as from Woo Commerce and Magento. This week’s story is about how the latest versions conceal the code inside a web 404 status page. Talk about hiding in plain sight. Most of us — probably all of us — haven’t given a 404 page much second thought, but maybe now you will.

This week also saw a new uptick in DDoS threats that have been observed by several of the major online operators. What is particularly troubling is that this botnet isn’t all that big — maybe 20,000 endpoints — yet is amplifying and generating enormous traffic loads, in some case more than a fifth of a normal’s day in web traffic. I write about how they happen with a new type of threat called rapid reset, based on the HTTP/2 protocol.

Finally, one more chilling story about a new type of spyware called Predator. It is another multinational journalistic endeavor that has simillarities to the Pegasus files from 2021. What makes this spyware lethal is that you don’t have to click on it to activate it, and how pervasive it has been seen across the planet.

Thanks for reading my work, and stay safe out there.

The war between Hamas and Israel is also raging across the cybersecurity realm, with various malware exploits, disinformation campaigns and recruitment of citizen hackers seen on both sides of the conflict. Security researchers are seeing an increase in cyberattacks targeting Israeli businesses and government agencies.

In my story for SiliconANGLE, I document some of the hacker groups involved.

The role of civilian hackers during warfare continues to expand, and now at least one group is trying to set up some rules of engagement. But whether the proposal from the International Committee of the Red Cross announced Wednesday will gain any traction and make these attempts more humane is anyone’s guess. In this story for SiliconANGLE, I review the roles that civilian hackers have played in previous conflicts, how the Russian/Ukrainian war has escalated civilian participation, and what this new proposal means for future conduct.

I have known John Kindervag for many years, going back to the days when Novell Netware was a major power and Interop a must-see international conference. Yes, those dinosaurs have become extinct, but John soldier’s on with promoting zero trust networking far and wide. Now he is with Illumio, which seems like a great fit. I interview him for a post here.

Have you heard the term purple teams in reference to IT security? There is yet another new vendor on the purple scene, and the purple trend is catching on, albeit slowly. The notion is to have both defenders and attackers collaborate, and learn something from each other. Here is my take on the situation.

Finally, there has been yet another NFT hack, this time with one of the OG NFT marketplaces OpenSea. It is not their first time when funds were stolen. You would hope by now they would have gotten their act together. Here is my post about the situation.

As expected, this summer has seen a rise in various cybersecurity threats based on deepfake audio and video impersonations.

Despite warnings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in June, it’s now quite common to experience these types of threats. The fakes are used to lend credibility to larger exploits, such as for a phishing email lure or a request from a superior. These can run the gamut of executive impersonation, performing various forms of financial fraud and obtaining stolen account credentials. My story for SiliconANGLE provides some perspective.

An aging core internet protocol is finally getting the ax by Microsoft Corp.

But it wasn’t just last month’s announcement that the software vendor was ending support for versions 1.0 and 1.1 of Transport Layer Security, or TLS, but that it was actually dropping the support from the impending release of the latest beta version of Windows 11. This means it is time to locate and update your aging TLS 1.0 and 1.1 systems, Windows 11 will disable by default in its next preview release.

You can read my story in SiliconANGLE here. 

By now most information technology managers are painfully aware of the consequences of software supply chain attacks. Thanks to exploits affecting the supply chains of SolarWinds,  Log4Shell and 3CX, the power and widespread damage inflicted by these attacks on thousands of businesses are certainly well-known. In addition to new software startups to try to help stop these attacks, there is also a new NIST draft strategy doc on how to cope with software supply chain exploits.

You can read my post for SiliconANGLE here.