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OODAcon 2022: Twenty Years of Cyber Threat Intelligence Panel Description: Twenty years ago, the first cyber threat intelligence company was launched. What was once an obscure business idea based upon Presidential Decision Directive 63, has now developed into an essential component of cyber risk management. This panel of experts from the leading cyber-threat companies will…
OODAcon 2022: Keynote Conversation with Congressman Will Hurd Keynote Conversation Description: Will Hurd joins us for a keynote conversation covering the domains of cybersecurity, AI, and the current and future threat environment.
he U.S. Congress should give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission more powers to police cryptocurrency stablecoins to reduce risks to the financial system, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said on Friday. Stablecoins are usually pegged to the U.S. dollar and are primarily used to facilitate trading in other digital assets. With around $150 billion in…
Blockchain is reinventing financial services, with digital assets and “programmable money” innovations that offer real utility and new approaches for reducing systemic risks. But customers have lost billions of dollars due to cyber hacking, scams, and unregulated products—and if we can’t trust it, we won’t scale it. It’s time to hardwire security into this emerging…
Last week’s BNB Chain attack led Cosmos developers to inspect their IBC code. They found a critical security vulnerability that endangered every IBC-enabled blockchain. It appears the entire Cosmos ecosystem was endangered by a single vulnerability. According to an announcement posted today in the Cosmos Hub governance forum by co-founder Ethan Buchman, lead developers recently discovered a…
Tech giant Samsung announced it will utilize blockchain technology to upgrade security protocols for all of its smart devices. Knox Matrix is its new blockchain-based security solution for “cross-device experiences.” This means the security layer covers all Samsung devices, from smartphones to home appliances, within the network. Samsung said Knox Matrix will work as an individual’s “own…
Things happen differently with cryptocurrency. A hacker who stole $117 million in digital assets from decentralized finance exchange Mango Markets now says they’ll return the funds, but only if token holders let them keep $70 million without the possibility of criminal prosecution. The hacker communicated their proposal on the Mango Markets decentralized governance platform and proceeded…
According to new research from Avanan, attackers are spoofing Google Translate in a new phishing campaign that uses a common JavaScript coding technique. The JavaScript technique allows it to bypass email security scanners. Researchers state that leveraging trust in Google Translate is a new approach that has not been observed until now. Avanan uncovered the…
A new threat cluster that is being tracked by SentinelLabs as WIP19 has been targeting telecommunications providers, according to new reports by security experts. WIP19 uses a legitimate, stolen digital certificate issued by DEEPSoft, a Korean messaging solutions company. The recent targets have been in the Middle East and Asia, the cybersecurity form reports. Security…
An advanced persistent threat actor known as Budworm has been spotted by security researchers targeting a US based entity. This marks the first time that the group has targeted a US organization as it typically focuses on international targets. Security researchers at Symantec were the first to discover the news. Budworm allegedly executed attacks over…
OODAcon 2022: Swimming with Black Swans – Innovation in an Age of Rapid Disruption Panel Description: If Yogi Berra were to evaluate today’s pace of global change, he might simply define it as “the more things change, the more they change”. Are we living in an exponential loop of global change or have we achieved…
Kurdish politician Abdul Latif Rashid was elected as Iraq’s new president by parliament on Thursday. This move ends a year of political stalemates and violence. Rashid won 162 out of the 269 votes in parliament, beating the current President Barham Salim. Rashid has named Mohammad Shia al-Sudani as prime minister, and he now has one…
British Prime Minister Liz Truss dismissed Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday and replaced him with former Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt. Truss and Kwarteng have been scrambling to reassure markets and lawmakers after a tax-cutting mini budget that was proposed on September 23 and created an economic maelstrom. It is expected that a reversal of…
The football stampede in Indonesia that killed over 130 people was caused by tear gas, it was announced by the country’s security minister. The announcement came after football, security experts and a team of government officials investigated the main cause of death in the stadium disaster on October 1. The stampede is one of the…
The Russian government has ordered for repairs to be finished on a key bridge linking the annexed region of Crimea to Russia by July of 2023. The bridge was damaged by a blast last Saturday that killed three people. Russia blames Ukraine for the attack, however, Ukraine has not claimed responsibility. The bridge stretches 12…
Open the Pod Bay Door – Resetting the Clock on Artificial Intelligence Panel Description: Artificial intelligence is like a great basketball head-fake. We look towards AI while we pass the ball to machine learning. But, that reality is quickly changing. This panel taps AI and machine learning experts to level-set our current capabilities in the…
Decentralized finance (DeFi) led cryptocurrency’s rapid growth in early 2021, but the crypto market has since plummeted in value. Global markets have played a role, but so has recklessness among developers when it comes to both cybersecurity and (often self-serving) inflationary token models. Too much DeFi has been based on tokens minted from nothing or tokens…
Despite the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), cryptocurrency investors appear to be sticking to centralized exchanges (CEXs) over DeFi tools, according to a new report. Crypto investors are more comfortable holding their assets on CEXs because decentralized exchanges are still more vulnerable to the threat of hacks. This is according to a joint report by the…
There’s something alluring about North Korea for those on the edges of the western crypto world. Earlier this year, the hacker Virgil Griffith was sentenced to five years for helping Kim Jong-Un’s government evade sanctions, while Tether, issuer of the third-largest cryptocurrency, has decided to pick a fight over its right to send money to…
October has become the worst-ever month for crypto-related crimes with over $718 million in overall losses, and that’s with two more weeks to go before the month ends. Data pointed out by Chainalysis on Thursday noted the amount was stolen from several decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols across 11 different attacks. This year “will likely surpass…
The paradoxical nature of cryptocurrency’s privacy is that the blockchain, that unchangeable ledger of all a cryptocurrency’s transactions, serves as both a map and a mask: Bitcoin are easy enough to follow from one address to the next. But only a few entities, like the cryptocurrency exchanges that allow users to trade their crypto for…
Telecommunications giant Singtel has confirmed that another one of its Australian subsidiaries was the victim of a cyberattack just a week after the Optus breach. Singtel reported to the Singapore stock exchange on Monday to confirm the cybersecurity incident. According to the telecom giant, an unauthorized party may have accessed company data and potentially affected…
The United Nations held a vote to condemn Russia’s attempts to annex four regions of Ukraine. 143 countries supported the resolution to condemn Russia, while 35 states abstained from voting. Five countries rejected the vote, North Korea, Belarus, Syria, Nicauragua and Russia. While this was a symbolic vote, it was the highest number of votes…
At least 16 Syrian government soldiers have been killed in a bomb blat near the capital of Syria, Damascus. This is one of the deadliest attacks in months in the country. 20 or more other soldiers were injured in the blast. The bomb detonated on Thursday morning on an army bus. No group has claimed…
According to new research discovered by Forescout’s cybersecurity research branch Vedere Labs, IoT devices such as conferencing systems and IP cameras are among the five riskiest IoT devices connected to networks. The security company has identified themes in its recent research that highlight the growing attack surface these devices are facing. As more devices are…
According to new data from Check Point Research, FormBook is the most prevalent malware across the world. In addition, an infostealer called Vidar has also made the top ten list at eighth for the first time due to a widespread fake Zoom campaign. Check Point Research shared its September 2022’s Most Wanted Malware report earlier…
OODAcon 2022: The Future Hasn’t Arrived – Identifying the Next Generation of Technology Requirements Panel Description: In an age when the cyber and analytics markets are driving hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and solutions is there still room for innovation? This panel brings together executives and investors to identify what gaps exist in…
OODAcon 2022: Canceling the Apocalypse – Funding the Next Generation of Innovation Panel Description: What problem sets and global risks represent strategic investment opportunities that help reduce those risks, but also ensure future global competitiveness in key areas of national defense? This session will provide insights from investors making key investments in these technologies and…
Crypto hacking has been the most tragic thing to happen in the crypto market. The prominent Binance exchange also hacked on October 7. And the crypto market claimed this morning that four attacks in one day are a new record in the crypto sector. Rabby Swap, a feature of the Rabby crypto wallet, was hack yesterday,…
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Yuga Labs over whether its Bored Ape Yacht Club Ethereum NFTs and the ApeCoin token are unregistered securities, according to Bloomberg. The report, which cites an unnamed source, claims that the agency is exploring whether the crypto startup broke federal law by issuing NFTs that act like…
Hackers from North Korea have sent around US$52.46 million worth of cryptocurrencies to digital asset exchanges in South Korea since 2019 in an effort to evade sanctions or to launder the money, said Yoon Han-hong, a South Korean lawmaker, on Wednesday. Yoon, a member of the ruling People Power Party, cited an investigation by New York-based…
Cryptocurrency mixers, a software that provides anonymity in crypto transactions, are at the forefront of the latest clash between regulators and the emerging world of digital assets, with legal actions, arrests, counter lawsuits, and North Korean hackers all part of the picture. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) slapped sanctions on the Tornado…
Google-parent Alphabet’s cloud computing business will accept customer payments using cryptocurrencies starting in early 2023. Google stock edged down a fraction amid the news, which came Tuesday at the company’s annual cloud computing conference. The crypto payment platform involves a partnership with Coinbase. Crypto stocks have been under pressure. But COIN stock popped 4.7% to…
A remote code execution vulnerability has been identified in a widely used JavaScript sandbox. The vulnerability has earned a rating of 10, the highest number on the CVSS vulnerability scale. Therefore, the bug is described as high severity. The flaw could allow threat actors to execute a sandbox escape and run shell commands through the…
76 people have died when their boat capsized trying to flee high floodwaters in southern Nigeria. The boat was carrying over 80 people and it capsized on Friday in the state of Anambra in southeastern Nigeria. Floodwaters in the area had risen as high as rooftops and the people were attempting to escape. The flooding…
European cybersecurity firm ESET has discovered previously unknown custom backdoors and tools it believes are being leveraged by an APT group called Polonium. The group is relatively new and was discovered in June 2022 by Microsoft. The group is highly sophisticated and currently active. It appears to be exclusively targeting Israeli organizations with the goal…
Japanese car company Toyota has confirmed that roughly 300,000 customers may have been impacted by a data leak that exposed personal data. According to the car manufacturer, an access key was left publicly available on GitHub for almost five years. The personal information exposed in the leak is customers’ email addresses and customer control numbers…
Security researchers at Trend Micro have identified a new wave of PayPal invoice scams that are leveraging blockchain and cryptocurrency related-businesses to lure victims. The scammers are using a common method of impersonating PayPal sellers to deliver invoices to random targets. The invoices state that the users have been charged a sum of money and…
OODAcon 2022: Tomorrowland – A Global Threat Brief Panel Description: The Pandemic, Russian invasion of Ukraine, demographic inversions, and technological labor force disruption have combined to forever shift the global geo-strategic environment. This session will examine the new world economy, seeking actionable insights for practitioners who need a deeper understanding of new realities. Impacts on…
OODAcon 2022: Future Wars – Beyond Cyberconflict Panel Description: Twenty years ago, cybersecurity experts warned of attacks against power grids and planes falling from the sky. They predicted a future that has not manifested itself yet. Will it? Or will the future of war be a conflict waged for the hearts and minds of social…
Tehran recognizes the blade cuts both ways and the same technologies that threaten regime security can also be harnessed to support its own objectives. The weaponization of information comes with many nomenclatures. Propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, and influence operations are all tools that rely on crafted messaging to affect targeted audiences to achieve specific objectives.
The nation’s oldest bank said it would begin receiving clients’ cryptocurrencies on Tuesday, becoming the first large U.S. bank to safeguard digital assets alongside traditional investments on the same platform. BNY Mellon won the approval of New York’s financial regulator earlier this fall to begin receiving select customers’ bitcoin and ether starting this week. The bank…
Not long after dropping out of college to pursue a career in cryptocurrencies, Ben Weintraub woke up to some bad news. Mr. Weintraub and two classmates from the University of Chicago had spent the past few months working on a software platform called Beanstalk, which offered a stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency with a fixed…
Although a panel of state and federal financial regulators has identified three areas in which new laws could help plug holes in U.S. cryptocurrencies rules, widely seen as a necessary precursor to broader adoption of blockchain-based finance, Congress may not be able to act on them any time soon. That could leave the market overseen…
There have been big-time cases of such criminal activities in the past, and many developers and users have learned the hard lesson. It’s a concern that seems to have no end in sight as the cryptocurrency continues to grow and attract more people across the globe. Perhaps the best natural way to deal with it…
The cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex was fined $24 million for breaking United States sanctions, the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday, the largest penalty the government has imposed on a crypto business for violating sanctions. Between 2014 and 2017, Bittrex allowed customers in Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria and the Crimea region of Ukraine to make virtual currency transactions…
On Tuesday, Britain’s GCHQ spy agency chief is expected to warn Western countries of an emerging threat originating from China seeking to exploit its tech dominance in order to exercise control over its own citizens. In addition, the country is looking to gain influence abroad. The Chinese Communist Party, according to the director of the…
The International Monetary Fund has warned that the world economy will experience worsening conditions as the war in Ukraine continues and prices spiral. After its latest assessment of the global economy, the IMF stated that 2023 will feel like a recession for many people. The organization has downgraded its economic growth forecasts due to the…
North Korean state media has claimed that the country’s recent missile tests are part of simulated procedures to demonstrate its preparedness to fire tactical nuclear weapons at potential targets in South Korea. North Korea has tested ballistic missiles seven times since September 25, and has performed 25 launch events of ballistic and cruise missiles this…
Cybersecurity researchers at Hornetsecurity have called on Microsoft to create greater backup for Microsoft Teams. According to the security researchers, nearly half of users send confidential or critical information over the platform frequently. Therefore, this sensitive information should be better protected. Internal business communications via the chat feature on Microsoft Teams have reached the same…
The websites of several US airports were reportedly disrupted yesterday, October 10, due to a large-scale campaign of distributed-denial-of-service attacks. According to security researchers, the airports’ websites were flooded with web traffic ultimately knocking some of them offline. Among those targeted were Los Angeles International Airport, Atlanta International Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, and locations…
OODAcon 2022: Digital Self Sovereignty, Blockchain, and AI – A Fireside Chat with Futurist and Author Karl Schroeder Fireside Chat Description: You are big data. Every day the technology you own, use, and otherwise interact with (often unintentionally) collects rich data about every element of your daily life. This session provides a quick overview of…
Meta has allegedly identified over 400 malicious Android and iOS apps that are targeting individuals with the goal of stealing their Facebook login information. The parent company of Facebook stated that the app discoveries were all made this year and have since been reported to the appropriate parties, Apple and Google. The malicious apps are…
OODAcon 20222: Keynote Conversation with Vint Cerf, Google Research Keynote Conversation Description: Vint Cerf will join us for a special keynote conversation focused on the emerging technology challenges and opportunities we face over the coming decade.
The European Union has confirmed a sweeping ban on providing crypto services to Russians as it tightens sanctions in the wake of what it calls “sham” secession votes in four Ukrainian regions. The news was first reported by CoinDesk last week. The bloc introduced an eighth set of economic and political measures against Russia after…
The debate in the decentralized finance (DeFi) community rages following sanctions from the U.S. Treasury against a popular crypto mixer, but the real progress is happening below the surface. Technologies underpinning privacy-preserving protocols, like zero-knowledge proofs, have found new compliant use cases that go far beyond finance itself. Zero-knowledge proofs are a tool that can…
Hackers are airdropping NFTs to Solana cryptocurrency owners pretending to be alerts for a new Phantom security update that lead to the installation of password-stealing malware and the theft of cryptocurrency wallets. This ongoing attack started two weeks ago, with NFTs titled ‘PHANTOMUPDATE.COM’ or ‘UPDATEPHANTOM.COM’ sent that claim to be warnings from the developers of…
The fortress of security surrounding cryptocurrencies is under attack, as crypto hackers continue to compromise firms and make away with large amounts of cash. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Thursday they had been compromised by hackers. The hackers stole two million BNB tokens, estimated to be worth around $570m, according to CNBC.…
It was an astonishing interview for recruiter Elliott Garlock. While screening candidate engineers for a crypto firm in February, Garlock encountered one applicant who raised almost every conceivable red flag. The interviewee joined the Zoom interview with his camera off and had to be cajoled into turning it on. There was constant chatter in the background,…
OODAcon 2022: Twenty Years of Cyber Threat Intelligence Panel Description: Twenty years ago, the first cyber threat intelligence company was launched. What was once an obscure business idea based upon Presidential Decision Directive 63, has now developed into an essential component of cyber risk management. This panel of experts from the leading cyber-threat companies will…
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Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence