On February 24th, between the hours of 5 a.m and 9 a.m, tens of thousands of KT-SAT SATCOM terminals suddenly stopped working in several European countries, notably Ukraine and Germany [1]. Resulting in the loss of internet for tens of thousands of people and the disconnection of 5,800 wind turbines in Germany. This outage occurred at …
Category Archives: CPSC 329/602 W22
Another Russian Cyber Attack!
While it is true that this attack was carried out while being funded by the Russian government, it was an attack that occurred back in May 2021 while only just recently being reported on so it would have little to do with the recent political conflicts involving Russia. The FBI and the CISA (Cybersecurity and …
Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Drone in Modern Warfare
During the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, there are photographs showing what appears to be KUB-BLA, a type of Russian “Suicide” drone that boast the ability of self-flying and facial recognizing the target by artificial intelligence [1]. It raises concern about the possibility that AI will play a greater role in making lethal decisions …
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All Your Base (Should) Belong to You
With the adoption of cloud computing, developers are now able to cut costs when it comes to servers. Cloud computing can be more beneficial than on premise servers since companies only pay for what they need while a third party deals with the maintenance of the server (1). However, following a study done by Check …
All My Apes Gone
With the NFT market being worth more than $10 billion, it has definitely gained the attention of a lot of people. From NFTs being talked about on the news, to celebrities, public figures and giant companies supporting or even starting NFT projects, it would make sense why hackers and malicious actors have decided to exploit …
Game company Ubisoft hit with ‘cyber security incident’.
“Incident” The French game company Ubisoft, which titles include the popular video game series Far Cry and The Prince of Persia, confirmed that it had suffered a ‘cyber security incident’ [1] that was first reported by The Verge on March 10, and confirmed by Ubisoft on March 11 [2]. Ubisoft is a gaming company that …
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Germany’s Cyber Security Authority Warns Against Using Anti-Virus Software From Kaspersky
On March 15, 2022, Germany’s cyber security authority, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), has warned against using anti-virus software from Russian headquartered company Kaspersky. The BSI recommends replacing applications from the portfolio of anti-virus software from Kaspersky with alternative products. https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/Service-Navi/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Presse2022/220315_Kaspersky-Warnung.html Who is Kaspersky? Kaspersky is a major multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider; however, since it is based in Moscow, Russia, the BSI has …
Russia issues its own TLS certificate to bypass sanctions
In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many Western countries have imposed sanctions prohibiting companies from conducting business in Russia, including public third-party certificate authorities (CA), which issue Digital Certificates and manage the public keys and credentials for data encryption for the end user. One of such Digital Certificates is the Transport Layer Security (TLS), …
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NetWalker and the rise of RaaS
Ransomware-as-a-service, or RaaS, is a business model in which developers sell ransomware to a network of affiliates who may lack the resources or experience to create their own malware. Profits are then split between the two groups. Although such services are typically accessed via the dark web, they operate similarly to legitimate software services, with …
War censorship exposes Putin’s leaky internet controls
President Vladimir Putin was attempting to make Russia’s internet a strong tool of surveillance and social control, similar to China’s so-called Great Firewall, long before waging war on Ukraine. As a result, Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov was frightened when Western tech corporations began breaking relations with Russia following its invasion. He’d spent years exposing …
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