Tag Archive for: NextGen

The War for Headspace: NextGen cyberattacks aim to manipulate people’s minds 

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For thousands of years, the only two domains of war were land and sea. Nations fought battles with rudimentary weapons that were blunt, inaccurate or massive (siege weapons).

It was in World War I that a new domain – air – was added. Forty-three years later, in April 1961, space became the fourth domain when the Soviet Union launched Vostok 1 and Yuri Gagarin.

It would take another 50 years to add the next domain. In 2011, the United States Department of Defense officially incorporated cyberspace as the fifth domain of war. The advance of technology brought the ability to wage war and terrorism to our front door.

But it’s the next domain where future wars will begin. It’s a domain not constrained to a single geography, nation, or political party. This domain gets shaped throughout a lifetime, augmented by rapid technological change, and fueled by recent developments in generative AI.

The next domain is headspace. It’s where countries will wage the war for the mind. And someone will win before the first shots get fired. In this war, shaping the narrative will be as crucial as shaping the battlefield is to military planners. The ability to influence perception will become more valuable than the ability to tell the truth.

Disinformation has emerged as a new kind of warfare. Adversaries are leveraging it to erode truth and influence people to think and act in ways they might not have conceptualized. They are fueling Intimidation of those voicing opinions. And online violence has spilled over into real-world violence on a global scale.

The nature of the threat and the vectors of attacks are no longer just about ones and zeros. It’s evolving to the manipulation of perception to achieve a goal. It’s so vital to national security the Pentagon was exploring the ability to counter opinion and influence actions three months after 9-11.

Originally called the Office of Strategic Influence, it was a short-lived program that never got traction, especially after allegations of planting news stories, including false ones, around the globe.

Deceptions like these are not new tactics. During the Cold War, the ability to manipulate, influence, deceive, coerce and persuade the press was a staple,…

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Decoding Cuba Ransomware: An opportunity for next-gen data governance

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BlackBerry’s recent post on the Cuba ransomware group paints a vivid picture of the cybersecurity scene, replete with challenges, yet ripe with opportunities. While threat actors such as Cuba demonstrate remarkable adaptability, they unwittingly underscore the indispensable need for robust data governance.

Modern cyber threat actors, as evident from the operations of the Cuba ransomware group, have refined their strategies into an art form that seamlessly melds the old with the new, the tried with the avant-garde. When dissecting the potency of tools like BUGHATCH and BURNTCIGAR in tandem with their more contemporary brethren, we see the duality that characterizes contemporary cyberattacks.

The synthesis of established techniques with nascent tactics is not haphazard: it results from meticulous orchestration. These hackers create a dangerous combination by taking advantage of known software problems, like the one in Veeam. They seek to cripple organizations both in terms of data access and operational functionality. The outcome? Enterprises caught off-guard, struggling to retrieve their data, and grappling with downtime, often find themselves in a cyber quagmire, battling both loss of trust and financial repercussions.

But the narrative doesn’t end there. With every move the threat actors make, they also unintentionally expose facets of their operational psyche. For instance, the decision to circumvent Russian-configured systems isn’t just a mere tactical choice. It’s a window into their risk calculus, possibly hinting at geographical affiliations or a deliberate bid to avoid specific geopolitical entanglements. Similarly, linguistic missteps aren’t just errors, they’re breadcrumbs that when pieced together can lead us to just what these threat actors are trying to do.

For astute organizations, these are more than just isolated incidents: they’re invaluable insights, fragments of a larger puzzle. By harnessing the power of digital forensics, companies can trace the lineage of an attack, dissect its trajectory, understand its origin, and predict potential future vectors. Coupled with robust threat intelligence, this twin-pronged strategy transforms seemingly innocuous clues into…

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SiriusXM, MyHyundai Car Apps Showcase Next-Gen Car Hacking

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At least three mobile apps tailored to allow drivers to remotely start or unlock their vehicles were found to have security vulnerabilities that could allow unauthenticated malicious types to do the same from afar. Researchers say securing APIs for these types of powerful apps is the next phase in preventing connected car hacking.

According to Yuga Labs, car-specific apps from Hyundai and Genesis, as well as the SiriusXM smart vehicle platform (used by various automakers, including Acura, Honda, Nissan, Toyota and others), could have allowed attackers to intercept traffic between the apps and vehicles made after 2012.

Hyundai Apps Allow Remote Car Control

When it comes to the MyHyundai and MyGenesis apps, an investigation of the API calls that the apps make showed that owner validation is done through matching up the driver’s email address with various registration parameters. After playing around with potential ways to subvert this “pre-flight check,” as the researchers called it, they discovered an avenue of attack:

“By adding a CRLF character at the end of an already existing victim email address during registration, we could create an account which bypassed the … email parameter comparison check,” they explained in a series of tweets detailing the weaknesses. From there, they were able to gain complete control over the apps’ commands — and over the car. In addition to starting the car, attackers could set the horn off, control the AC, and pop the trunk, among other things.

They were also able to automate the attack. “We took all of the requests necessary to exploit this and put it into a python script which only needed the victim’s email address,” they tweeted. “After inputting this, you could then execute all commands on the vehicle and takeover the actual account.”

“Many car hacking scenarios are the result of an API security issue, not an issue with the mobile app itself,” Scott Gerlach, co-founder and CSO at StackHawk, says. “All of the sensitive data and functions of a mobile app reside in the API an app talks to, so that’s what needs to be secure. The upside is this is a very targeted type of attack and would be difficult to mass execute. The downside is it’s still highly…

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Next-gen wireless networks could be designed with built-in defenses against ‘metasurface-in-the-middle’ attack — ScienceDaily

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Crafty hackers can make a tool to eavesdrop on some 6G wireless signals in as little as five minutes using office paper, an inkjet printer, a metallic foil transfer and a laminator.

The wireless security hack was discovered by engineering researchers from Rice University and Brown University, who will present their findings and demonstrate the attack this week in San Antonio at ACM WiSec 2022, the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual conference on security and privacy in wireless and mobile networks.

“Awareness of a future threat is the first step to counter that threat,” said study co-author Edward Knightly, Rice’s Sheafor-Lindsay Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “The frequencies that are vulnerable to this attack aren’t in use yet, but they are coming and we need to be prepared.”

In the study, Knightly, Brown University engineering Professor Daniel Mittleman and colleagues showed an attacker could easily make a sheet of office paper covered with 2D foil symbols — a metasurface — and use it to redirect part of a 150 gigahertz “pencil beam” transmission between two users.

They dubbed the attack “Metasurface-in-the-Middle” as a nod to both the hacker’s tool and the way it is wielded. Metasurfaces are thin sheets of material with patterned designs that manipulate light or electromagnetic waves. “Man-in-the-middle” is a computer security industry classification for attacks in which an adversary secretly inserts themself between two parties.

The 150 gigahertz frequency is higher than is used in today’s 5G cellular or Wi-Fi networks. But Knightly said wireless carriers are looking to roll out 150 gigahertz and similar frequencies known as terahertz waves or millimeter waves over the next decade.

“Next-generation wireless will use high frequencies and pencil beams to support wide-band applications like virtual reality and autonomous vehicles,” said Knightly, who will present the research with co-author Zhambyl Shaikhanov, a graduate student in his lab.

In the study, the researchers use the names Alice and Bob to refer to the two people whose communications are hacked. The eavesdropper is called Eve.

To mount the attack, Eve first…

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