Hello from Infiltrate 2013

Today is the second and last day of Infiltrate 2013 which is taking place in Miami Beach.
It’s my first time at Infiltrate and so far I’ve been really enjoying the conference.

The opening keynote by Chris Eagle definitely set the tone for the rest of the con, with a very clear focus on offense.
Chris shared his own view on various issues concerning how the US Armed Forces – and the Navy in particular – deal with educating people on cyber.
One of the bits I found particularly interesting was the title 10 issue. Many of the experts creating cyber-tools, which would make them best equipped to handle them, are civilians.
However under title 10 only military personnel can actually ‘pull the trigger’. You can see how this can be problematic.

An additional issue raised was the problem of getting – and retaining – people who are well-trained. One suggestion was to have the military pay for people’s education and have them serve a few years in return. This is similar to what the USAF does with the pilots it trains.
This is something I’ve suggested as well and frankly I think this approach can’t arrive soon enough.

Greg Hoglund is going to close the conference talking about the issues around “Hacking Back” and Active Defense.
There’s been quite a lot of talk about these topics as of late. It was one of the major topics at the Suits & Spooks conference which took place in D.C. a few months ago.
Surely we’ll be revisiting these topics some more at the bar tonight.

Kaspersky researchers have discovered new Mirage Kitten attacks using previously undocumented malware families: NodeRabbit in Node.js and PollCat in JavaScript.

Our experts discovered a new CoolClient backdoor variant with a kernel-mode rootkit driver that hides malicious processes, files, and network connections from security tools and threat analysts.

Kaspersky experts break down a new Armored Likho campaign that poses as a fundraising efforts and delivers a new Still Toolkit aimed at stealing Telegram data and eavesdropping on victims.

Kaspersky researchers reveal previously undocumented malware attributed to Mirage Kitten (UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm, Nimbus Manticore): NightLedger backdoor, ArcBridge, and BridgeHead tunneling tools.