China

Pierluigi Paganini October 02, 2012
Chinese cyber attack against White House Office

The news is circulating on internet creating great concern, once again Chinese hackers have hit an infrastructure of a foreign state, once again we are speaking of cyber espionage but this time the victim is excellent because they were able to access the White House Military Office. The Washington Free Beacon announced the cyber attack […]

Pierluigi Paganini September 16, 2012
Microsoft distrupts Nitol botnet, malware hidden in supply chain

The malware diffusion is assuming dimension difficult to control, no matter if we are facing with a state-sponsored attack or with a cyber scam, malicious agents are around us, they have infected a huge quantity of machines with dramatic consequences. But what’s happen if we discover the malware inside the controller of ordinary object that […]

Pierluigi Paganini September 09, 2012
Elderwood project, who is behind Op. Aurora and ongoing attacks?

Today, I would like to discuss the real effects of a cyber attack. We have recently introduced the direct and indirect effects of several cyber espionage campaigns, such as Flame and Gauss, but we have never approached the problem from a future projection, examining the possible impacts of an incident many years after it. Symantec researchers published an analysis […]

Pierluigi Paganini August 02, 2012
Malware & cyber espionage, ongoing attacks on sensitive information

Malware once were used primarily to destroy the victim’s PC, but the scenario has completely changed today. While surviving the need of wanting to harm with malicious software, for example in the development of cyber weapons, the current trend is to develop agents that serve primarily to the function of spying. Cybercrime, governments, and groups […]

Pierluigi Paganini July 30, 2012
South Korea, another data breach. How is changing the hacking world?

Browsing the internet is easy to find information regarding date breach by hackers against large companies that fail to protect their facilities exposing the information of their customers and employees. Yesterday Anonymous group has released more than 400K record of the Australian AAPT company stolen during a recent attack, meanwhile this morning I read about […]

Pierluigi Paganini July 16, 2012
Government cyber strategies to mitigate growing cyber threats

In the last decade we have observed the raise of cyber attacks, no matter their purpose, cyber warfare or cyber espionage for military or private business, they have demonstrated how much dangerous is a cyber offensive. The U.S.’s leading cyberwarrior has estimated that private businesses are losing hundreds of billions to cyber espionage and cybercrimes, […]

Pierluigi Paganini July 05, 2012
Who really takes advantage of the operations of Anonymous?

I desire to tribute another article to the group that catch the  worldwide attention of security community, Anonymous. Few years to consolidate its image become one of the most debated phenomenon on internet, many consider the collective a threat, many other the expression of a dissent to listen. Both interpretations are correct, but let’s think […]

Pierluigi Paganini July 02, 2012
Drones vulnerable to hijacking, concerns on security and privacy

Last week a saw a satellite image taken by Google Earth related to a mysterious vehicle, apparently an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), parked at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. “Skunk Works” LM’s Advanced Development Program Facility is where some of the most futuristic and secret projects are developed. The image was dated […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 30, 2012
Dalai Lama + Mac OS X = APT with Tibet malware

Another excellent discovery of the active experts of Kaspersky Labs that have identified a new variant of the malware used in Tibet against Uyghur hacktivists, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. The instance of Tibet malware detected infects OS X machines and is spread following a consolidated schema for politically motivated […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 25, 2012
The ‘cyber war’ era began long ago

Article published on The Malta Indipendent by Ron Kelson, Pierluigi Paganini, Benjamin Gittins, David Pace  US military strategist John Boyd states: “War comprises acts of physical, biological, psychological, social, cultural and other destruction at all levels, for example, intrapsychic, interpersonal, intergroup, interorganisational, and international.” Cyber warfare is combat in cyberspace and includes computers, the Internet and the […]