Lights Out in Isfahan

Iranian security company Amnpardaz Soft published an intriguing report on 28 December 2021 concerning a firmware-level rootkit in HP Integrated Lights Out (iLO) products. While frustratingly containing no Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) – not so much for defensive purposes, but for validating research and independently analyzing artifacts – the report Read more

Diving Deeper Into Vulnerabilities

While the end of 2020 was dominated by Nobelium’s supply chain intrusions, 2021 closes with continued worry and response over vulnerabilities in the widely-deployed Log4j library. Starting in earnest on 10 December 2021 with public disclosure of CVE-2021-44228, information security practitioners and security program managers have subsequently dealt with a Read more

Why Do We Fight?

One of the penultimate, and more poignant, episodes of the television series Band of Brothers was “Why We Fight.” The episode highlighted how, although the members of the unit followed through the series faced multiple trials and setbacks, the discovery of concentration camps emphasized the necessity for continuing the struggle Read more

The Enigmatic Energetic Bear

“Energetic Bear” (also known as Dragonfly, Crouching Yeti, etc. etc.) has been in the news lately given a recent series of intrusions targeting local government and critical infrastructure entities in the United States. While the group has gained attention recently, its activities go back at least a decade with the Read more

That Crazy Cozy Bear

On 16 July 2020, the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), with support and contributions from the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the United State’s National Security Agency (NSA), released a report tying recent intrusions in vaccine research organizations (as well as other industries) to Russian-linked adversary APT29. Read more

The Unbearable Frequency of PewPew Maps

I recently made a joke online relative to a major – and very respected, if geopolitically controversial – security company advertising its revised “Cyberthreat Real-Time Map”. As many members of the security community are aware, “threat maps” – referred to derisively as “pewpew” maps – are heavy on eye-candy but Read more