DISC InfoSec blog

According to a recent security report, Chinese government has decided to resort to hacking, cyberwarfare and corporate espionage tactics to boost its ambitious defense program, compromising the systems of firms like Lockheed Martin in order to access classified information useful for their own purposes. Peter Suciu, a renowned researcher, says China is an actor that should be taken seriously, […]

Matt Kunze, an ethical hacker, reported wiretapping bugs in Google Home Smart Speakers, for which he received a bug bounty worth $107,500. Google Assistant is currently more popular among smart homeowners than Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri, given its superior intuitiveness and capability to conduct lengthy conversations. However, according to the latest research, a vulnerability […]

Cyber espionage group Worok abuses Dropbox API to exfiltrate data via using a backdoor hidden in apparently innocuous image files. Researchers from cybersecurity firm Avast observed the recently discovered espionage group Worok abusing Dropbox API to exfiltrate data via using a backdoor hidden in apparently innocuous image files. The experts started their investigation from the analysis published […]

A cyber espionage group targets governments and state-owned organizations in multiple Asian countries since early 2021. Threat actors are targeting government and state-owned organizations in multiple Asian countries as parts of a cyber espionage campaign that remained under the radar since early 2021. “A distinct group of espionage attackers who were formerly associated with the […]

China-linked threat actors have breached telecommunications companies and network service providers to spy on the traffic and steal data. US NSA, CISA, and the FBI published a joint cybersecurity advisory to warn that China-linked threat actors have breached telecommunications companies and network service providers. The nation-state actors exploit publicly known vulnerabilities to compromise the target […]

An espionage attempt was made by an NSO Group customer to hack the phones of senior EU officials. Although there’s some suggestion that it might have been QuaDream—a similar Israeli spyware firm. Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders (pictured) seems to have been the main target, along with several of his staffers at the Directorate-General for Justice and […]

Gimmick is a newly discovered macOS implant developed by the China-linked APT Storm Cloud and used to target organizations across Asia. In late 2021, Volexity researchers investigated an intrusion in an environment they were monitoring and discovered a MacBook Pro running macOS 11.6 (Big Sur) that was compromised with a previously unknown macOS malware tracked […]

Pegasus spyware was allegedly used by governments to spy upon prominent journalists, politicians and activists. A Google blog has revealed how the sophisticated software was used to attack iPhone users. The software used a vulnerability in iMessages to hack into iPhones without the user’s knowledge. The Pegasus spyware, developed by Israel’s NSO group, made headlines for being used by […]

Alaskan health department still struggling to recover after ‘nation-state sponsored’ cyberattack

There’s a lot to read out there. Amnesty International has a report. Citizen Lab conducted an independent analysis. The Guardian has extensive coverage. More coverage. Most interesting is a list of over 50,000 phone numbers that were being spied on by NSO Group’s software. Why does NSO Group have that list? The obvious answer is that NSO Group provides spyware-as-a-service, and centralizes […]

LONDON — Western countries risk losing control of technologies that are key to internet security and economic prosperity to nations like China and Russia if they don’t act to deal with the threat, one of the UK’s top spy chiefs warned Friday. “Significant technology leadership is moving east” and causing a conflict of interests and […]

The year 2020 broke all records when it came to data lost in breaches and sheer numbers of cyber-attacks on companies, government, and individuals. In addition, the sophistication of threats increased from the application of emerging technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and 5G,  and especially from greater tactical cooperation among hacker groups and […]

In a brief yet fascinating press release, Europol just announced the arrest of an Italian man who is accused of “hiring a hitman on the dark web”. According to Europol: The hitman, hired through an internet assassination website hosted on the Tor network, was paid about €10,000 worth in Bitcoins to kill the ex-girlfriend of the […]

he Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau on March 12 identified five Chinese companies they said posed a threat to U.S. national security. These companies are: Huawei Technologies Co., ZTE Corp., Hytera Communications Corp., Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Dahua Technology Co. The declaration, according to the FCC, is in accordance […]

A Chinese cyber-espionage group has shifted operations from targeting Vatican officials and Catholic organizations to telecom providers across Asia, Europe, and the US. The group, known in the cybersecurity community as Mustang Panda or RedDelta, has been targeting employees of telecom companies since last fall, as a gateway inside organizations, with the end goal of stealing 5G-related information. […]

Microsoft announced the release of open-source CodeQL queries that it experts used during its investigation into the SolarWinds supply-chain attack In early 2021, the US agencies FBI, CISA, ODNI, and the NSA released a joint statement that blames Russia for the SolarWinds supply chain attack. The four agencies were part of the task force Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) […]

The Chinese APT group had access to an NSA Equation Group, NSA hacking tool and used it years before it was leaked online by Shadow Brokers group. Check Point Research team discovered that China-linked APT31 group (aka Zirconium.) used a tool dubbed Jian, which is a clone of NSA Equation Group ‘s “EpMe” hacking tool years before it was leaked online […]

Bloomberg News has a major story about the Chinese hacking computer motherboards made by Supermicro, Levono, and others. It’s been going on since at least 2008. The US government has known about it for almost as long, and has tried to keep the attack secret: China’s exploitation of products made by Supermicro, as the U.S. company is […]

Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury Department and an agency that decides internet and telecommunications policy, according to people familiar with the matter. Three of the people familiar with the investigation said Russia is currently believed to be behind the attack. Two of the […]