THE CYBERWIRE (Thursday, October 2, 2014) — Chinese government spyware deployed against Hong Kong protesters is found effective against jailbroken iOS devices. The governments censorship also seems to be having effect: awareness on the mainland of protests appears limited. Various Asian media report signs of low-level cyber conflict among Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, but accounts are confused and preliminary. On the subject of attack attribution, CSO debunks a Bloomberg story that Tuesday retailed threat intelligence warnings of large-scale nation-state cyber attacks. Much of apparent attack traffic seems to have been innocent research scans hitting honeypots. The industry continues to slog through Shellshock. Attackers exploiting the bug are said to be going after network-attached storage devices. Patching is very active but spotty. Several diagnostic and mitigation tools are on offer (some of them free). BadUSB was reported at Black Hat, with details withheld to keep the exploit out of criminal hands. But Derbycon presenters have posted BadUSB code to Github, whence it will shortly make its way to the black market. Dr. Web discerns a large Mac botnet. US Attorney General Holder asks US manufacturers for police-accessible cyber backdoors in their products, lest at-risk children prove beyond rescue by the authorities. Other parenting help from the police seems to have been unfortunately indiscriminate, as programs that distribute spyware so families can track kids online draw surprised (generally unfavorable) scrutiny. Russias President Putin promises to secure the Russian Internet, but censorship isnt under consideration (he says). The chair of the US House Intelligence Committee calls for more cyber offense. Todays edition of the CyberWire reports events affecting Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 15:17:18 +0000