[UPDATED] SIM Swap Fraud: AT&T Sued for $224 Million After Phone Hackers’ $24 Million Crypto Hack

[UPDATED] SIM Swap Fraud: AT&T Sued for $224 Million After Phone Hackers’ $24 Million Crypto Hack

“law enforcement has even confirmed that AT&T employees profited from working directly with cyber terrorists and thieves in SIM swap frauds“ [UPDATED 22 AUG 2018 – ARREST MADE … scroll down]   Michael Terpin is suing AT&T [aka formerly SBC], claiming the company’s failure to protect his cellphone data led to hackers stealing $24 million…

Chinese State-Owned Aerospace Firm Turns to Blockchain to Manage Billions of Invoices

Chinese State-Owned Aerospace Firm Turns to Blockchain to Manage Billions of Invoices

The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Ltd. is turning to blockchain technology to innovate its unwieldy electronic invoice system, according to an announcement republished on a government site August 13. The article, from official state newspaper People’s Daily, was posted yesterday by the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence…

SatCom Hacks: Hundreds of Planes Exposed to Remote Attacks

SatCom Hacks: Hundreds of Planes Exposed to Remote Attacks

“the astonishing fact is that this botnet was, inadvertently, performing brute-force attacks against SATCOM modems located onboard an in-flight aircraft”   A researcher has discovered that hundreds of airplanes from several airlines could have been hacked remotely from the ground through vulnerabilities in satellite communications systems. Back in 2014, IOActive Principal Security Consultant Ruben Santamarta…

Foreshadow and L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF): New Vulnerabilities Affecting Intel CPUs

Foreshadow and L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF): New Vulnerabilities Affecting Intel CPUs

Foreshadow: New Speculative Execution Flaws Found in Intel CPUs Researchers and several major tech companies on Tuesday disclosed the details of three new speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities affecting Intel processors. The flaws, tracked as Foreshadow and L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF), were discovered independently by two research teams, who reported their findings to Intel in January,…

$100 Million ICO for Fantasy Football League in Crypto Land

$100 Million ICO for Fantasy Football League in Crypto Land

A blockchain startup wants to raise nearly $100 million dollars to create a new form of fantasy football. Called the Crown League, the project’s owner told CoinDesk on Tuesday that it seeks to form a professional fantasy football league, with 12 teams initially, which will collectively be owned by fans via the platform’s crypto tokens.…

$700 Million Investment: Communist Party of China Releases Primer on Blockchain Technology

$700 Million Investment: Communist Party of China Releases Primer on Blockchain Technology

The Communist Party of China (CPC) has recently released a primer on blockchain technology and its possible applications, according to an official press release on the CPC website August 13. According to the statement, the book by China’s Communist Party provides a scientific description of key blockchain features, its origin, future application scenarios, as well as…

China Expands Surveillance of Sewage to Police Illegal Drug Use

China Expands Surveillance of Sewage to Police Illegal Drug Use

Chinese officers destroy seized drugs in June, 2018   Privacy concerns, cultural differences fuel skepticism about this approach in other settings Dozens of cities across China are applying an unusual forensic technique to monitor illegal drug use: chemically analysing sewage for traces of drugs, or their telltale metabolites, excreted in urine. One southern city, Zhongshan,…

First Look at DEF CON 26 Official Badge

First Look at DEF CON 26 Official Badge

To the delight of everyone, this year’s official DEF CON badge is an electronic badge chock full of entertainment. Of course there is blinky, the board is artistic, and everyone hopefully maybe gets one (it’s rumored 27,000+ were manufactured) if they don’t run out. But the badge contest at DEF CON is legendary — solve…

Honeypot Highlights Danger to ICS Systems From Criminal Hackers

Honeypot Highlights Danger to ICS Systems From Criminal Hackers

Nation-state attacks against the critical infrastructure of an adversary state are effectively military operations; and military operations are planned with incredible detail.   A security firm established a sophisticated honeypot masquerading as a power transmission substation for a major electricity provider. The purpose was to attract attackers and analyze how they operate against the energy…

West Virginia USA Offers Overseas Military Members Blockchain Voting Option for Midterm Elections

West Virginia USA Offers Overseas Military Members Blockchain Voting Option for Midterm Elections

U.S. troops serving overseas will be able to use a smartphone app based on blockchain technology for casting federal election ballots in West Virginia this November, CNN reports August 6. The mobile voting platform, Voatz, employes facial recognition software to ensure that each voter matches their government-issued identification. CNN notes that the West Virginia will…

Machine Learning Analysis: New Open Source Tools Help Find Large Twitter Botnets Using Twitter’s API

Machine Learning Analysis: New Open Source Tools Help Find Large Twitter Botnets Using Twitter’s API

Researchers have uncovered a huge botnet that mimics legitimate accounts on Twitter to spread a cryptocurrency “giveaway” scam. As reported by ITPro, the discovery was made during a research effort by Duo Security that looked at 88 million Twitter accounts from May to July and used machine learning to identify bots, malicious or otherwise, on the social…

Can US Cyber Command overcome its staffing shortage?

Can US Cyber Command overcome its staffing shortage?

The Department of Defense’s 10-year-old cyber war-fighting outfit is facing growing pains despite a concerted effort by the Pentagon to make cyber a higher priority. Sources speaking to Fifth Domain described a two-pronged problem with staffing shortfalls at U.S. Cyber Command’s headquarters, as well as the headquarters elements of the four service cyber components. These…