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The United States government, states, municipalities, and private companies all have been trying to defend themselves from cyber warfare from foreign adversarial governments, including Russia, China, and North Korea, for years—actually, for decades. Even when I started practicing full time in this area of law in the early 2000s, we were talking about not traveling…

Last week, the Executive Order on Protecting the United States from Certain Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) expanded the U.S.-China drone controversy to North Korea, Iran, and Russia.

The Order also provides the Secretary of Commerce with the authority to designate “any other foreign nation, foreign area, or foreign non-government entity engaging in long-term patterns or…

Last week, authorities from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada accused a well-known hacker group tied to the Russian government, APT29 a/k/a Cozy Bear of using malware to exploit security vulnerabilities to enable it to steal COVID-19 vaccine research from companies located in these countries working to develop a vaccine. This was after a…

A new ransomware, dubbed “Ryuk,” has surfaced in the last few weeks that is said to be targeting large organizations in the United States.

The attackers behind Ryuk have reportedly made over $640,000 in just two weeks, and are allegedly connected to the well-known hacking group out of North Korea—Lazarus.

According to security company Check…

Chinese cyber espionage and cyber-attack capabilities will continue to support China’s national security and economic priorities,” says Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence “Americans should not buy Huawei or ZTE products.” In March 2017 the Chinese Telecom company, ZTE, plead guilty to shipping US technology to Iran and North Korea, and reached a settlement…

Just before the false alarm last weekend in Hawaii when residents were erroneously warned of an impending missile attack, think tank Chatham House issued a report stating that it had identified vulnerabilities in nuclear weapons systems located throughout the world that made them susceptible to malware and ransomware attacks that could lead to inadvertent missile…

Researchers at cybersecurity firm AlienVault have discovered a computer virus of North Korean origin which infects and hijacks computers in order to mine Monero, a private digital currency which styles itself as “secure, private and untraceable.” Cryptocurrency mining is the resource-intensive process by which computers or “miners” running specific software verify cryptocurrency transactions. In exchange for their computing power, miners are given small amounts of cryptocurrency. In the case of North Korean’s Monero malware, the virus installs mining software on infected computers unbeknownst to their owners or users. The software then secretly mines Monero and sends mining rewards back to a server located at Kim II Sung University in Pyongyang. Researchers are unsure how many computers may be affected.
Continue Reading Another Hitch in the Crypto Boom? North Korean Malware Hijacks Computers to Mine Monero Cryptocurrency

It’s scary to think about, but anything that is online is hackable. Including critical infrastructure like nuclear power plants.

It has been reported that U.S. authorities are investigating a cyber intrusion that has hit numerous nuclear power generation sites in the past few months.

The attack has been named “Nuclear 17.” Although details of the…

Cybersecurity specialists at BAE Systems and Symantec announced last week new evidence suggesting that the criminals behind the notorious 2014 attack on Sony Corp. are also responsible for recent cyber-attacks involving 104 organizations in 31 countries. Researchers and investigators have long attributed the 2014 Sony attack, which crippled computer systems and revealed internal emails, to the North Korea-linked group known as “Lazarus.” Malware recently discovered running on the computers of a Polish bank suggest that the Lazarus group is now targeting global financial institutions using a sophisticated “watering hole” technique.
Continue Reading Sony Cyber-Attackers Lurking at Financial Supervisor “Watering Hole” Target Banks and Others