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Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities

[Down]loaded by GuLoader Malware | DeepInstinct (Deep Instinct) GuLoader, also commonly referred to as CloudEyE or vbdropper, was first noticed in the wild around December 2019, and has since been used to distribute malware at scale around the globe.

Tor2Mine cryptominer is warning sign of network exploitation (Register) So says Sophos in warning about Tor2Mine Monero malware

Google Disrupts Massive Glupteba Botnet (Decipher) Google has taken down servers associated with the huge Glupteba botnet and also sued two alleged operators of the network.

University Targeted Credential Phishing Campaigns Use COVID-19, Omicron Themes (Proofpoint) Proofpoint researchers have identified an increase in email threats targeting mostly North American universities attempting to steal university login credentials. The threats typically leverage COVID-19 themes including testing information and the new Omicron variant.

Hackers using omicron variant concerns to trick college students out of personal data (WPMI) Hackers have begun leveraging increased COVID-19 vigilance around the omicron variant to trick unsuspecting college students into giving them their university log-in credentials. Staff and students focus on their college’s COVID-19 messaging, such as testing protocols, has been taken advantage of by malicious actors throughout the pandemic. Now, with concerns over the new omicron variant growing, research suggests an increase in email threats targeting primarily North American universities.

Trickbot Rebirths Emotet: 140,000 Victims in 149 Countries in 10 Months (Check Point Software) Check Point Research (CPR) warns of potential ransomware attacks, as it sees samples of Emotet fast-spreading via Trickbot. Since Emotet’s takedown by law

Emotet now drops Cobalt Strike, fast forwards ransomware attacks (BleepingComputer) In a concerning development, the notorious Emotet malware now installs Cobalt Strike beacons directly, giving immediate network access to threat actors and making ransomware attacks imminent.

SolarWinds Attackers Spotted Using New Tactics, Malware (Threatpost) One year after the disruptive supply-chain attacks, researchers have observed two new clusters of activity from the Russia-based actors that signal a significant threat may be brewing.

Criminal hackers are now going after phone lines, too (NPR) One way or another, most phone calls these days involve the internet. Cybersecurity experts say that makes us vulnerable in ways we might not realize.

Gravatar “Breach” Exposes Data of 100+ Million Users (Search Engine Journal) A security site emailed notices of a data breach affecting over 100 million users of Gravatar. Gravatar denies it was hacked

This Small Tech Company May Actually Be a Ransomware Front Group (The Daily Beast) The U.S. government is trying to arrest ransomware criminals and offering millions of dollars in bounties for their identities. But sometimes the evidence is hiding in plain sight.

Law Enforcement Collaboration Has Eastern-European Cybercriminals Questioning Whether There Is A Safe Haven Anymore (Trustwave) Through the active Dark Web research that Trustwave SpiderLabs conducts for its clients, we have observed new communications on various Dark Web forums between Eastern-European cybercriminals.

Money, Reputations at Stake in Dark Web Courtrooms (SecurityWeek) A look at the justice system run by some dark web forums shows that the decisions are important to the involved parties, particularly those who want to maintain a good reputation.

The Dark Web Has Its Own People’s Court (Dark Reading) Many underground forums have processes for arbitrating disputes between cybercriminals.

An Amazon server outage caused problems for Alexa, Ring, Disney Plus, and deliveries (The Verge) Your Amazon delivery might be delayed.

Amazon outage hits Disney, Netflix and Coinbase (Computing) The issue also brought down key tools used inside Amazon, affecting its warehouses, delivery drivers and sellers

How Amazon Outage Left Smart Homes Not So Smart After All (Bloomberg) The outage at Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing arm left thousands of people in the U.S. without working fridges, roombas and doorbells, highlighting just how reliant people have become on the company as the Internet of Things proliferates across homes.

Amazon Packages Pile Up as AWS Outage Spawns Delivery Havoc (Bloomberg) Chaos arrived at the peak of Amazon’s holiday shopping season. Service mostly restored after Netflix among websites affected.

A total Amazon cloud outage would be the closest thing to the world going offline (Quartz) The Amazon Web Services outage affected everything from home deliveries to dating to vacuum cleaners.

Hacked Cryptocurrency Platform Begs Hacker to Please Return $119 Million (Vice) BadgerDAO, which lost about $119 million in a hack last week, is now pleading with the hacker to return the money.

BadgerDAO users’ cryptocurrency stolen in cyber attack (SearchSecurity) Decentralized finance platform BadgerDAO suffered a cyber attack where users’ funds were stolen, though it’s unclear how much was lost.

Maryland health department says there’s no evidence of data lost after cyberattack; website is back online (Baltimore Sun) The Maryland Department of Health said Monday that there was “no evidence” any of its data had been compromised after a cyberattack forced the agency to take its website offline over the weekend.

Half a Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump (The New Yorker) For years, a Welshman who threw away the key to his cybercurrency stash has been fighting to excavate the local landfill.

The vice president should not be using Bluetooth headphones (The Verge) The CVE program lists 459 current and historical vulnerabilities involving the protocol.

Kamala Harris Is Right: Bluetooth Is a Security Risk (Vice) Vice President Kamala Harris is absolutely right in not trusting Bluetooth or email.

Everything you need to know about Kamala Harris’ Bluetooth security concerns (Newsweek) A recent Politico article alleges that Kamala Harris is “Bluetooth-phobic.” Here is all you need to know about whether the vice president’s concerns are justified.

The Most Popular Holiday Online Scams—and How to Avoid Them (Wall Street Journal) We’re in a festive mood, looking to spend money on people we love. And that makes us prime targets for cybercriminals.

5 common gift card scams and how to spot them (WeLiveSecurity) Getting familiar with these 5 types of gift card scams will go a long way toward helping you stay safe from this growing fraud not just this holiday season.

Verizon Once Again Expands Its Snoopvertising Ambitions (Techdirt.) Back in 2008, Verizon proclaimed that we didn’t need additional consumer privacy protections (or opt in requirements, or net neutrality rules) because consumers would keep the company honest. “The extensive oversight provided by literally…

Security Patches, Mitigations, and Software Updates

SonicWall ‘strongly urges’ customers to patch critical SMA 100 bugs (BleepingComputer) SonicWall ‘strongly urges’ organizations using SMA 100 series appliances to immediately patch them against multiple security flaws rated with CVSS scores ranging from medium to critical.

Firefox update brings a whole new sort of security sandbox (Naked Security) Firefox 95.0 is out, with the usual security fixes… plus some funky new ones.

Hitachi Energy XMC20 and FOX61x (CISA) 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CVSS v3 9.0
ATTENTION: Exploitable remotely/low attack complexity
Vendor: Hitachi Energy
Equipment: XMC20 and FOX61x
Vulnerabilities: Weak Password Requirements, Missing Handler
2.

Hitachi Energy RTU500 OpenLDAP (CISA) 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CVSS v3 7.5
ATTENTION: Exploitable remotely/low attack complexity
Vendor: Hitachi Energy
Equipment: RTU500 Series
Vulnerabilities: Type Confusion, Reachable Assertion
2. RISK EVALUATION

Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could cause a denial-of-service condition in the affected version of the RTU500 series product.

FANUC Robot Controllers (CISA) 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CVSS v3 7.4
ATTENTION: Exploitable remotely
Vendor: FANUC
Equipment: R-30iA and R-30iB series controllers
Vulnerabilities: Integer Coercion Error, Out-of-bounds Write
2. REPOSTED INFORMATION

This advisory is a follow-up to the original advisory titled ICSA-21-243-02P FANUC Robot Controllers that was posted to the HSIN ICS library on August 31, 2021.

Trends

Toward a New Momentum (Trend Micro) 2021 marked a turning point for organizations big and small, as the ongoing lockdown drove many to expedite their digital transformations and embrace hybrid work models.

Norton Labs Reveals Top Cybersecurity Predictions for 2022 (StreetInsider.com) NortonLifeLock (NASDAQ: NLOK), a global leader in consumer Cyber Safety, released its top predictions for cyber trends to watch in 2022, including…

Onfido 2022 Identity Fraud Report: Surge in Sophisticated Fraud Points to Increase in Organized Crime Rings (Onfido) The Onfido Identity Fraud Report shares insights and trends gained on the state of digital identity fraud over the past year.

Acronis Cyberthreats Report 2022 unveils cyberthreat predictions (Acronis) At this year’s Acronis #CyberFit summit in Dubai, held December 8 and 9, Acronis will release its 2022 cyberthreats report. The report focuses on the increasing number and severity of cyberattacks during 2021, and provides the outlook for 2022.

Report: Financial Institutions Struggle to Keep Pace with Cumbersome Audit Processes (Telos Corporation) Ashburn, VA – December 8, 2021 – Telos® Corporation, a leading provider of cyber, cloud and enterprise security solutions for the world’s most security-conscious organizations, today released new findings from research conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne that examines how financial services are faring with the ever-increasing challenge of audit overload. The study, which… Read more

Marketplace

Grip Security Raises $25M in 9 Months to Displace Legacy CASB Solutions (Businesswire) In one of the fastest Series A funding rounds of the year, Grip Security, a SaaS security startup founded in February 2021, has secured a total of $25

Torq Raises $50M in Series B to Reinvent Security Automation for Modern Digital Enterprises (Businesswire) Torq, the no-code security automation platform, raises a $50M Series B led by Insight Partners, will re-invent security automation.

S.F. identity startup Incode raises $220M Series B to prove you’re you (Bay Area Inno) Are you really who you say you are? Being able to prove your identity is a perennial necessity that’s even more crucial as digital spaces dominate more of our daily lives from shopping to banking.

LogDNA Snags $50 Million for Data Observability Tech (SecurityWeek) LogDNA, a late-stage startup that helps DevOps teams scour logs for signs of problems, has secured a new $50 million investment led by Dave DeWalt’s NightDragon.

Swisscom Ventures investing tens of millions of dollars in Cato Networks (CTECH) Shlomo Kramer’s cybersecurity company announced the news less than two months after completing a $200 million round at a $2.5 billion valuation

Cerberus Sentinel Announces Acquisition of Arkavia Networks (Dark Reading) U.S. cybersecurity services firm expands internationally into Latin America.

NetSpring raises $13M to fuel operational intelligence suite (SearchBusinessAnalytics) Startup analytics vendor NetSpring emerged from stealth with $13 million in new funding to fuel the development of its operational intelligence platform.

Claroty Advances Mission to Secure All Cyber-Physical Systems with $400 Million Funding and Acquisition of Medigate (Claroty) Company announces intent to acquire healthcare IoT security provider; Series E funding co-led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2

SentinelOne brings in $56 million for Q3, reports more than 6,000 customers (ZDNet) The autonomous cybersecurity company reported a non-GAAP net loss per share of 15 cents.

SentinelOne COO: ‘We Do Not Compete With Our Partners’ (CRN) SentinelOne sets itself apart from the competition by not offering services that would put the company in competition with its MSSP or incident response partners, according to COO Nicholas Warner.

Why Companies Should Have ‘Zero Trust’ in Their IT Suppliers (Wall Street Journal) Two cybersecurity experts say that tech buyers are at a disadvantage these days in dealing with their suppliers

Is This Beaten Down Cybersecurity Company A Coiled Spring? (The Motley Fool) This innovative cybersecurity company is led by the former head of the nation’s security. The stock has sold off heavily, but may be poised for a comeback.

nVisium Records Strong Momentum in 2021 as Demand for Application Security Accelerates (PR Newswire) nVisium, a leader in application security, today announced a year of substantial business growth, recording a 30 percent year-over-year…

UAE cybersecurity firm Digital14 sets up shop in hackers-for-hire capital New Delhi (Intelligence Online) The Emirati cybersecurity firm Digital14, which operates the Darkmatter-established vulnerabilities laboratory xen1thLabs, now has an office in India, reflecting the closer cyber cooperation between the two countries.

Strider Technologies Expands Operations to Europe, Dennis Murphy Joins as Executive Vice President (Strider) Strider Technologies, Inc. (“Strider”), the leading provider of Economic Statecraft Intelligence™, announced today it is expanding operations to Europe with the opening of a London office and the hiring of Intelligence Community veteran, Dennis Murphy, as Executive Vice President. Since launching in May 2019, Strider has established itself as the leading […]

Twitter’s New CEO Agrawal Got Early Nod From Dorsey a Year Ago (Bloomberg) Activist investor Elliott Management cranked up pressure for the social network’s board to set a succession plan

Former Microsoft “Channel Chief” and Diversity Champion Gavriella Schuster Joins Open Systems’ Board of Directors (Open Systems) Schuster’s insights will help Open Systems in its mission to empower Microsoft customers with enterprise-grade security and connectivity.

Redgate Software | Redgate Software announces a new CEO (RealWire) Redgate Software, the Cambridge UK based leading provider of database DevOps solutions, announced today the appointment of Jakub Lamik as its new CEO. Currently the Ch

Former Cisco and Adobe Executive Joins Banyan Security as CSO to Help Enterprises Reimagine Zero Trust (GlobeNewswire News Room) Security Veteran Den Jones Brings Robust Zero Trust Architecture and Deployment Expertise to Leading ZTNA Startup…

SafeBreach Hires New Chief Information Security Officer (PR Newswire) On the heels of its $53.5M Series D funding, SafeBreach, the pioneer in breach and attack simulation (“BAS”), today announced it has expanded…

Tish Long Re-Elected for Third Term as Chair, INSA Board of Directors and INSF Board of Trustees (INSA) The Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) today announced that Letitia “Tish” Long has been re-elected to serve a third term as chair of the INSA Board of Directors and INSA Foundation Board of Trustees.

Products, Services, and Solutions

Tessian | Tessian Integrates With KnowBe4 to Deliver Tailored Phishing Training for Employees (RealWire) 7 December 2021 – Human Layer Security company Tessian is integrating with KnowBe4, the world’s largest integrated security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, to provide organizations with enhanced visibility into phishing risk

SPHERE Announces Launch of Cyber Hygiene Solution (PR Newswire) Today, SPHERE, a woman-owned cybersecurity business focused on providing best-of-breed software and services for access governance across data,…

DigiCert Advances Passwordless Authentication with Support for Windows Hello for Business (PR Newswire) DigiCert, Inc., the world’s leading provider of TLS/SSL, IoT and other PKI solutions, today unveiled a key advancement in passwordless…

Forter Announces Trusted Identities to Simplify Authentication for eCommerce Interactions (Businesswire) Forter has launched Trusted Identities to help businesses simplify online account authentication.

Amazon Web Services Announces Second ‘Top Secret’ Cloud Region (Nextgov.com) The region is designed for U.S. defense, intelligence and national security agencies.

Very Good Security (VGS) Joins AWS ISV Accelerate Program (Businesswire) Very Good Security (VGS) announced that it has been accepted into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program.

Trustwave Achieves CREST Vulnerability Assessment Accreditation (Trustwave) Trustwave, a leading managed security services provider focused on managed detection and response, today announced it has been accredited by the internationally-recognized professional certification board CREST for its world-class vulnerability assessment services.

Cyren Launches Community Edition of its URL Classification Engine (Yahoo Finance) URL Lookup API provides easy and fast integration of web intelligence into security products, incident response workflows, and productivity tools

Rubrik Delivers Cyber Threat Hunting in Battle Against Ransomware (GlobeNewswire News Room) Now organizations can more accurately identify the last known clean copy of data to prevent reinfection and accelerate recovery…

Digital Twin Consortium Announces Digital Twin System Interoperability Framework (Digital Twin Consortium™) Designing Interoperable Systems to Empower Digital Twins

Honeywell Unit Offers First-Ever Quantum-Created Encryption Key (Bloomberg) Company says quantum computing’s power improves security. Product to compete against offerings from Amazon, Microsoft.

CyCognito Teams with Intel 471 to Bolster Cyber Threat Intelligence… (Intel471.com) Enterprises benefit from improved access to data, along with richer and more relevant insights that will enable them to further strengthen their cybersecurity postures.

DigiCert Advances Passwordless Authentication with Support for Windows Hello for Business (Dark Reading) Managing Windows Hello hybrid certificate trust model on DigiCert PKI platform streamlines enterprise passwordless authentication and access, an industry first for public Certification Authorities (CAs).

Rubrik Delivers Cyber Threat Hunting in Battle Against Ransomware (GlobeNewswire News Room) Now organizations can more accurately identify the last known clean copy of data to prevent reinfection and accelerate recovery…

Tenable introduces single-pane-of-glass for cloud security (SC Media) Latest move by Tenable extends Accurics Infrastructure as Code platform so security teams can more nimbly secure cloud infrastructure.

Cossack Labs Opens Up a Number of Enterprise Features in Open-Source Release, Making Premium Security Features Available for Free (IT News Online) British data security software company Cossack Labs updated its flagship open-source product Acra database security suite to version 0.90.0 and made many of its core security features previously available only for enterprise customers free in Acra Community Edition.

ioXt Alliance Selects Bishop Fox for Authorized Labs Program (Businesswire) The ioXt Alliance, the global standard for IoT security, today announced the addition of Bishop Fox, the largest private offensive security testing fi

Druva Expands MSP Partner Network by Threefold Months After Launching Transformative Program (Druva) Adoption Accelerates as Partners Look to Eliminate Supply Chain Constraints, Accelerate Time to Revenue, and Remove Costly Hardware for Customers through Managed Services Center

Invixium Integrates Biometric Solutions with AEOS by Nedap (Invixium) Invixium Integrates Touchless Face Recognition and Multi-Factor Biometric Solutions with AEOS Access Control

Utility Warehouse Chooses Exabeam Fusion SIEM to Future-proof its SOC (Exabeam) Utility Warehouse selected Exabeam Fusion SIEM to increase efficiency and strengthen its security operations team.

Votiro Joins McAfee Enterprise Security Innovation Alliance (Businesswire) Votiro announced today its acceptance into the McAfee Enterprise Security Innovation Alliance (SIA) program.

Technologies, Techniques, and Standards

How to defend an air-gapped network (IT World Canada) Separating networks with an air gap without additional security precautions won’t protect them from attack, according to research by security firm ESET. An air-gapped network is physically isolated from any other networks to increase the security of the most sensitive and high-value systems within an organization. Industrial control systems running pipelines and power grids, voting […]

An Ethical Hackers Guide to IoT Security Risks and Challenges: Part 2 (Security Boulevard) This post is part of a series about IoT security risks and how you can minimize them. Read Part 1 here.

AdaptiveMobile Security Publishes Blueprint for Securing 5G SMS (Totaltelecom) AdaptiveMobile Security, an Enea company and the world leader in mobile network security, today published a comprehensive blueprint on how to secure SMS on 5G Networks.

Design and Innovation

STOP Ransomware vaccine released to block encryption (BleepingComputer) German security software company G DATA has released a vaccine that will block STOP Ransomware from encrypting victims’ files after infection.

Academia

The Pentagon and UMD to launch intel-focused research center (Defense Systems) The Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security will focus on basic and applied research for the security and intelligence communities.

Legislation, Policy, and Regulation

Kremlin says presidents agree to further U.S.-Russian talks on Ukraine (Reuters) Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden set out their opposing positions on Ukraine in a video call on Tuesday and agreed that Russia and the United States should keep talking, the Kremlin said.

NATO defense chiefs discuss situation around Ukraine in broader context (Ukrinform) NATO Chiefs of Defense held a virtual meeting on Monday to discuss the security challenges facing the Alliance, including the situation resulting from Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine and the wider implications of such actions.

How might allies respond if Russia invades Ukraine? (Defense News) NATO needs to plan beyond efforts to deter another Russian invasion of Ukraine and recognize that its actual response may differ depending on the extent of Russian military operations.

Ukraine says Russia is sending troops to war-torn east amid tensions (Stars and Stripes) Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that Russia is sending tanks and snipers to the line of contact in war-torn eastern Ukraine to ‘provoke return fire.’

Biden-Putin square off as tension grows on Ukraine border (Military Times) Face to face for over two hours, President Joe Biden and Russia’s Vladimir Putin squared off in a secure video call Tuesday as the U.S. president put Moscow on notice that an invasion of Ukraine would bring sanctions and enormous harm to the Russian economy.

Biden warns Putin of sanctions, aid for Ukraine military if Russia invades (Reuters) President Joe Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that the West would impose “strong economic and other measures” on Russia if it invades Ukraine, while Putin demanded guarantees that NATO would not expand farther eastward.

Biden and Putin make little apparent headway on Ukraine in virtual summit (the Guardian) White House says the US president voiced ‘deep concerns’ about the Russian military buildup in the two-hour video call

Biden Delivers a Warning to Putin Over Ukraine (New York Times) In a high-stakes video call, President Biden warned President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of “strong economic and other measures” from the U.S. and European allies if military tensions with Ukraine escalated.

Biden, Putin discuss Ukraine in video call amid growing tensions (Washington Post) President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a video call Tuesday morning focused on growing tensions over Ukraine as Russia masses troops along the border, prompting fears of a Russian invasion of the Eastern European nation.

Biden Told Putin He’d Send Ukraine More Weapons If It’s Attacked (Bloomberg) U.S., Russian leaders spoke for two hours with tensions high. U.S. intelligence says Russia could invade with 175,000 troops.

The US can’t deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine — and shouldn’t even try (TheHill) In order to deter Moscow, the U.S. must have the military capability to defeat Russia swiftly and decisively and the political resolve to do so.

Austin Rejects ‘Red Lines’ for Taiwan, Ukraine (Defense One) As crises loom, defense secretary reveals a bit of his diplomacy-first thinking.

Listen to The Daily: Why does American military assistance to Ukraine matter? (New York Times) President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to send Russian troops to encircle the Ukrainian border was inspired by a fear: that Ukraine is allying too closely with the West, buying American arms and taking advice from U.S. military officials. But why is that military assistance so important to Ukraine — and so threatening to Russia?

Florida National Guard troops are somehow caught up in Russia’s showdown with Ukraine (Task & Purpose) Red Storm Rising.

Canadian spy agency targeted foreign hackers to ‘impose a cost’ for cybercrime – National (Global News) Canadian electronic spy agency confirms for the first time they’ve taken action against foreign-based cybercriminals, as they warn ransomware attacks are on the rise.

China calls on Canada to ignore Huawei risks ‘invented’ by US (The Times of India) US News: MONTREAL: A senior Chinese diplomat called on Ottawa Tuesday to ignore national security risks that had been “invented” by the United States concernin.

China’s ambassador warns Canada against Huawei 5G ban (South China Morning Post) Cong Peiwu says that a ban would ‘send a strong signal’ to Chinese investors and companies that Canada was not conducive to business.

A ‘whole of society’ approach to cyber may be on the horizon (ComputerWeekly.com) Nominet Cyber managing director David Carroll reflects on the NCSC’s latest annual review amid 2021’s fast-evolving threat landscape

Fearing misuse, Israel tightens supervision of cyber exports (The Week) The move follows a series of scandals involving Israeli spyware company NSO Group

Israel exports arms endangering human rights because it serves our interests, top defense official admits (haaretz.com) A closed conference offered a rare insight into the relations between the state and the defense export industry. Top defense official at the event: ‘We should have defended NSO rather than caving to the Americans’

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 (US House of Representatives) SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘‘National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022’’. SEC. 2. ORGANIZATION OF ACT INTO DIVISIONS; TABLE OF CONTENTS. (a) DIVISIONS.—This Act is organized into six divisions as follows: (1) Division A—Department of Defense Authorizations. (2) Division B—Military Construction Authorizations. (3) Division C—Department of Energy National Security Authorizations and Other Authorizations. (4) Division D—Funding Tables. (5) Division E—Department of State Authorization (6) Division F—Other Non-Department of Defense Matters.

House Approves $778 Billion Defense Bill (Wall Street Journal) The legislation includes military justice overhaul and Afghanistan commission, but lawmakers dropped a proposal to have women register for the selective service.

Cyber incident reporting mandates suffer another congressional setback (CyberScoop) House and Senate negotiators have excluded provisions from a must-pass defense bill that would have mandated many companies to report major cyberattacks and ransomware payments to federal officials.

CISA cyber incident reporting requirements trip on defense bill finish line (Federal News Network) Cyber incident reporting requirements for critical infrastructure companies and other federal cybersecurity provisions were left out of this year’s NDAA.

Language requiring companies to report cyberattacks left out of defense bill (TheHill) Legislation mandating cyber incident reporting for certain critical organizations was left out of the compromise version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that the House is set to vote on

Biden’s cyber leaders go to Silicon Valley for more help fighting hackers (POLITICO) As cyber threats from countries like Russia multiply, officials met with corporate executives to pitch their vision for “operational collaboration.”

The Urgency of the Moment for Congress on AI and National Security (The Cipher Brief) ODNI’s Corin Stone writes in the last of her series on the adaptation of Artificial Intelligence by the IC that Congress has a role to play

New FISMA guidance strikes familiar cyber tune, but can OMB change out the instruments? | Federal News Network (Federal News Network) The Office of Management and Budget released the annual Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) guidance with a focus on risk-based, data-drive decisions.

The Airforce First Chief Software Officer Talks About That Cyber Threat Future For The U.S. (Forbes) Those able to combine physical and virtual have been able to dominate traditional thinking and established norms in transformative ways, This is the new world order, the new way business will happen.

Keeping the Wrong Secrets (Foreign Affairs) How Washington misses the real security threat.

Jessica Rosenworcel confirmed by Senate to lead the FCC (The Verge) She is the first female chair in the 86-year history of the FCC.

Biden Nominee Withdraws Name to Lead OCC Banking Watchdog (Bloomberg) Biden criticizes ‘personal attacks’ against his OCC nominee. White House to restart search after another failed candidate.

Litigation, Investigation, and Law Enforcement

Text Provider Mitto Faces Swiss Probe Over Phone-Monitoring Report (Bloomberg) Mitto AG executive allegedly ran secret surveillance service. Inquiry follows investigative report by Bloomberg News.

Google Sues Two Russians for Alleged Organized Crime Scheme (Bloomberg) Complaint says the two created a sophisticated ‘botnet’. Glupteba sells stolen logins, credit cards, Google says.

Microsoft Whac-A-Moles Websites of Chinese Hackers APT15 (‘NICKEL’) (Security Boulevard) Microsoft issued another of its “look how clever we are” press releases, claiming to have thwarted Chinese hackers it codenames NICKEL.

Microsoft says it took over servers being used by China-based hacking group Nickel (The Verge) Hackers targeted government agencies and human rights groups.

DOJ Announces New Initiative to Use False Claims Act to Enforce Compliance with Data Privacy and Security Laws and Contract Requirements (JD Supra) The Department of Justice recently announced the launch of its new Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative (the “Initiative”) which intends to use the False…

Alleged ransomware affiliate arrested for healthcare attacks (BleepingComputer) A 31-year old Canadian national has been charged in connection to ransomware attacks against organizations in the United States and Canada, a federal indictment unsealed today shows.

Defendant in Case Brought by Durham Says New Evidence Undercuts Charge (New York Times) Lawyers for Michael Sussmann, accused by the Trump-era special counsel of lying to the F.B.I., asked for a quick trial after receiving what they said was helpful material from prosecutors.

Reality Winner and the debate over the Espionage Act (CBS News) When government insiders leak classified information to the media, prosecutors do not consider whether the act benefited the public interest. Should they?