Justice Department Disrupts North Korean ‘Laptop Farm’ Operation
Law enforcement authorities in the U.S. have arrested a Tennessee man accused of running a “laptop farm” that helped North Korean IT workers secure remote jobs at American companies. According to court documents, 38-year-old Matthew Isaac Knoot operated a scheme that assisted North Koreans posing as U.S.-based IT professionals by using the stolen identity of an American citizen.
NIST Formalizes World’s First Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards
The world’s first post-quantum cryptography standards have been formalized by the US National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST). The standards provide organizations with a framework to secure systems and data against future quantum threats. The announcement comes nearly a year after NIST published three draft Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS), the post-quantum cryptographic algorithms selected following a process that began in December 2016.
FBI claims success in taking down another major ransomware group
The FBI has announced taking down the infrastructure belonging to a notorious ransomware operation known as Radar (AKA Dispossessor). Even though the group doesn’t enjoy the same level of fame as the likes of LockBit or Black Basta, Radar was still a fairly formidable organization – the FBI’s announcement claimed it had hit 43 victim organizations located all over the world, including the US, UK, Germany, and many others. As a result of the FBI’s operation, the organization took down Radar’s website, and seized a number of servers. The website now features an FBI message stating “This website has been seized”. In total, three servers in the US, three in the UK, and 18 in Germany, were confiscated. Furthermore, the FBI took eight “criminal domains” in the US, and one in Germany.
Researchers race to document voting machine vulnerabilities ahead of November
One peek inside the Voting Village at the DEF CON hacker conference would lead the average person to believe they had entered a sterile operating room meant only for computers. At tables placed throughout the space, voting equipment and other machine parts lie exposed like patients awaiting surgery, surrounded by tech specialists taking notes and wielding diagnostic tools as they peer into the circuit boards, microchips and wires underpinning the pivotal instrument that will enable Americans to cast their votes in this November’s election.
Biden administration pledges $11 million to open source security initiative
The White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are partnering on an $11 million initiative to gain an understanding of how open source software is used across critical infrastructure and to better secure it. The White House announced the measure on Friday, and at the DEF CON cybersecurity conference over the weekend, National Cyber Director Harry Coker said DHS will fund it under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The effort — named the Open-Source Software Prevalence Initiative (OSSPI) — is designed to get a handle on the distribution of open-source software components in areas like healthcare, transportation and energy production, eventually allowing the federal government and private sector partners to strengthen national cybersecurity.
