Newsletter Archives

• CIA Malware Cyberweapon – Another SMB “Tool”

  Posted on June 2, 2017 at 03:37 CDT by Kirsty • Comment in the Forums

  Catalin Cimpanu, on bleepingcomputer.com, has posted an article about one of the recent Wikileaks Vault 7 series of dumps.

  “CIA Malware Can Switch Clean Files With Malware When You Download Them via SMB” looks at another CIA cyberweapon.

  Codenamed Pandemic, this is a tool that targets computers with shared folders, from where users download files via SMB.

  The way Pandemic works is quite ingenious and original, and something not seen before in any other malware strain.

   
  Dan Goodin, on arstechnica.com, says:

  Like previous Vault 7 releases, today’s leak is a critical blow to US intelligence interests. But it’s nowhere near as grave as the Shadow Brokers leaks.

   
  Wikileaks Vault 7: Pandemic

  Other smb, WikiLeaks

• Open source slammed in US government sponsored meeting

  Posted on August 27, 2011 at 09:04 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Last year, the US govt sponsored a meeting with Thai govt agency heads in Chiang Mai. In the meeting, the Microsoft rep “expressed concern over the [Thai government’s] Creative Economy policy of promoting the “open source” software model over the “commercial source” model as a means to curb piracy.”

  In the same meeting, the Business Software Alliance rep “urged the [Thai government] not to favor open source over commercial source. He argued that (1) the open source model has been shown to have an insignificant impact on reducing software piracy; and (2) by focusing on an open source policy, the [Thai government] signals the market to stunt the development of commercial source software, which in turn undermines Thailand’s ability to fully service market needs.”

  Our tax dollars at work, eh?

  Wikileaks cable. See paragraphs 9 and 10.

  Microsoft News open source, WikiLeaks

• Has “Anonymous” (of WikiLeaks fame) been identified?

  Posted on December 12, 2010 at 14:32 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Fascinating series of clues, which will be immediately recognized by those of you who were around several years ago, when I talked a lot about people leaving metadata accidentally in their Word documents.

  Press release purporting to be from Anonymous: http://dump.no/files/467072ba2a42/ANONOPS_The_Press_Release.pdf

  Initial analysis by Paul Rankin: http://praetorianprefect.com/archives/2010/12/anonymous-releases-very-unanonymous-press-release/

  More detailed analysis by Praetorian Security Group:

  http://praetorianprefect.com/archives/2010/12/the-anonymous-pr-guy-and-a-greece-connection/

  Fascinating…

  Other Anonymous, WikiLeaks

• WikiLeaks takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’

  Posted on December 9, 2010 at 21:26 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  I’m astounded at how WikiLeaks has stayed up, despite the head-on attack from many different fronts.

  See the Brave New World of Internet survival on my InfoWorld Tech Watch blog.

  Other WikiLeaks