Security News

Russia's ambassador to Estonia today compared Ukraine's participation in NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence intel-sharing cyberdefense hub to an attempt at blackmail. Although being accepted as a contributing participant, this does not make Ukraine a NATO member, but it will most likely tighten collaboration and will also allow it to gain access to NATO members' cyber-expertise and share its own.

While Ukraine is yet to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the country has been accepted as a contributing participant to the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. Although this does not make Ukraine a NATO member, it will likely tighten collaboration and allow it to gain access to NATO member nations' cyber-expertise and share its own.

L3Harris Technologies with a team of leading international defense and technology companies, is developing surveillance concepts for NATO to replace the organization's aging Airborne Warning and Control System fleet by 2035. The team is developing "System of systems" options for surveillance and control capabilities for NATO's Alliance Future Surveillance and Control program.

A communiqué issued at the conclusion of the NATO summit has called for China to observe the laws of cyberspace, and set out new standards by which members of the alliance will consider cyberattacks. The document treats both Russia and China as threats.

A critical vulnerability discovered in a firewall appliance made by Germany-based cybersecurity company Genua could be useful to threat actors once they've gained access to an organization's network, according to Austrian cybersecurity consultancy SEC Consult. Genua Genugate is a firewall designed for protecting internal networks against external threats, segmenting internal networks, and protecting machine-to-machine communications.

The international information security community is filled with smart people who are not in a military structure, many of whom would be excited to pose as independent actors in any upcoming wargames. Including them would increase the reality of the game and the skills of the soldiers building and training on these networks.

NATO said Saturday it was checking its computer systems after a massive cyberattack on US government agencies and others that Washington blamed on Moscow. "At this time, no evidence of compromise has been found on any NATO networks. Our experts continue to assess the situation, with a view to identifying and mitigating any potential risks to our networks," a NATO official told AFP. Microsoft said Thursday its anti-virus software detected intrusions in dozens of networked systems, most of them in the United States, via software supplied by US tech company SolarWinds.

NATO needs a new strategic concept adjusted to the global rise of new technologies, terrorism and China to replace a plan developed a decade ago, the head of the alliance said on Wednesday. Stoltenberg urged the Western defensive alliance of 30 states to "Develop common principles and standards for new technologies" to meet security challenges related to "Disruptive technologies" using big data and cyber telecommunications.

While some security researchers see Zebrocy as a separate adversary, others have shown connections between various threat actors operating out of Russia, including a link between GreyEnergy and Zebrocy attacks. Lures employed in these attacks had a NATO-related theme, a recurring motif in APT28 campaigns - the adversary used a similar theme in attacks in 2017.

The influence campaign does not merely spread false news content on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as other disinformation campaigns have done. "We have dubbed this campaign 'Ghostwriter,' based on its use of inauthentic personas posing as locals, journalists, and analysts within the target countries to post articles and op-eds referencing the fabrications as source material to a core set of third-party websites that publish user-generated content," according to FireEye researchers in a Thursday analysis.