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Exclusive: NSA to host a hacker reunion in bid to rebuild secretive unit

NSA will host a reunion of former Tailored Access Operations hackers as it moves to rebuild and rebrand the elite unit.

The invitation-only event at Fort Meade, spearheaded by Deputy Director Tim Kosiba, a former TAO technical director, will tour the new TAO building and pitch alumni to return. TAO, credited with contributions to Stuxnet and once grown to over 2,000 personnel, was renamed Computer Network Operations about a decade ago, and the recent reshuffle undid some of those changes after NSA lost roughly 2,100 staff (8% of its workforce) last year.

The Record · 21d agoIndustry

Hacker Conversations: Vinnie Liu, Performer Turned Ringmaster

SecurityWeek interviews Bishop Fox CEO Vinnie Liu, recruited by the NSA at 17 in 1999, on hacker ethics, intent, and his career.

SecurityWeek's Hacker Conversations series profiles Vinnie Liu, who was recruited by the NSA in 1999 at age 17 via an IRC contact and later became CEO of security consulting firm Bishop Fox. The interview covers his white-hat philosophy that hacking for fun differs from hacking to harm, the moral development he attributes to parents and educators, and the industry's shift from the NSA to commercial firms like @stake after its 2000 acquisition of L0pht Heavy Industries. The piece is biographical and opinion-oriented with no incident, vulnerability, or research content.

SecurityWeek · 6d agoIndustry

Supply Chain Attacks in 2026: Why Threat Intelligence Is the Only Early Warning System That Works

Cyble argues supply chain attacks are a primary breach vector, citing Verizon DBIR third-party figures and CISA SBOM guidance to pitch its TPRM platform.

Cyble's vendor blog frames third-party compromise as a first-order breach risk, citing Verizon's 2026 DBIR finding that third parties were involved in 48% of breaches, up 60% year over year. It recounts the Cl0p campaigns against Progress MOVEit Transfer (CVE-2023-34362), which affected over 2,700 organizations and 93 million people, and Fortra GoAnywhere (CVE-2023-0669) with roughly 130 claimed victims. It also highlights CISA and NSA's 2026 Minimum Elements for a Software Bill of Materials covering open-source, AI, and SaaS components. The piece concludes by promoting Cyble's Third-Party Risk Management platform.

Cyble · 14d agoIndustryCVE-2023-34362CVE-2023-0669

Why federal cyber defense demands an offense-driven mindset

Opinion piece argues federal agencies should prioritize exploitability and autonomous penetration testing over static CVSS-based patching, citing CISA's BOD 26-04 and NSA's CAPT program.

The author argues that static CVSS-driven patching leaves federal agencies exposed because vulnerable does not equal exploitable, and adversaries chain misconfigurations and stolen credentials instead of burning zero-days. The piece cites CISA's BOD 26-04 and the NSA's Continuous Autonomous Penetration Testing (CAPT) program, which logged 28,282 completed pentests across 822 Defense Industrial Base organizations and closed 71% of critical findings within 30 days. It recommends defining risk by exploitability and mission impact and augmenting human pentesting with autonomous validation and verification.

CyberScoop · 8d agoIndustry

America’s cyber strategy overlooks the infrastructure that actually keeps the military moving

Op-ed argues US cyber strategy underweights Iranian threats to ports, rail, utilities and other commercial infrastructure sustaining military operations.

The author, a former Navy intelligence officer, argues that a prolonged Iran conflict means sustained Iranian cyber operations targeting many smaller systems like water utilities, manufacturers and transportation providers. He cites mapping of 130 documented techniques across five Iranian threat groups and warns destructive attacks such as wipers and ransomware could hit the defense industrial base. The piece urges defensive wargames now and flags the pause in CMMC implementation as particularly concerning.

CyberScoop · 2h agoIndustry

How to level up from security pro to security leader

Career advice piece argues aspiring CISOs must pair technical depth with business fluency, communication, and cross-department influence.

The article offers guidance for security professionals moving into CISO and security leadership roles, drawing on interviews with CISOs at ExtraHop, BlueVoyant, Infosys, and others. It emphasizes translating technical risk into business priorities, building trust across departments, and understanding how the company makes money. An analysis of CISO job postings found employers value communication skills, regulatory knowledge, and business education over mastery of specific security platforms.

CSO Online · 3d agoIndustry

12 Best Ransomware Protection Solutions Compared (2026): Features & Pricing

GBHackers compares 12 ransomware protection solutions for 2026, recommending layered stacks of EDR prevention, managed detection, containment, and guaranteed recovery.

The editorial comparison argues no single product stops ransomware, recommending a layered strategy across prevention, early detection, blast-radius containment, and clean recovery. CrowdStrike and SentinelOne are named best-in-class EDR, Huntress and Sophos MDR for managed 24/7 coverage, ColorTokens for microsegmentation containment, and Rubrik and Acronis for guaranteed recovery. The guide notes ransomware is now professionalized with double extortion and encryption sprints measured in minutes.

GBHackersupdated · 3h agofirst · 6d agoIndustry 12 sources1

Mandiant Founder Kevin Mandia Joins Amazon Board

Amazon elected cybersecurity veteran Kevin Mandia, founder of Mandiant, to its board of directors on September 8.

Amazon appointed Kevin Mandia to its board, citing the need for cybersecurity expertise as AI-era risks evolve. Mandia founded and led Mandiant, which was acquired by Google in 2022 and folded into Google Cloud, and currently runs security firm Armadin as CEO while serving as general partner at Ballistic Ventures. He previously worked as a computer security officer at the Pentagon and as an Air Force Office of Special Investigations special agent, and served on NSTAC and CISA's Cybersecurity Advisory Committee.

SecurityWeek · 6d agoIndustry1

In most cities, nobody owns the whole network

Former Waco CIO argues cellular-connected water controllers sit outside scanned networks, and accountability plus operating-budget funding—not technology—block segmentation.

Writing as Waco, Texas's former CIO, the author describes July water-sector intrusions that CISA linked to over 100 compromised systems, typically controllers on public cellular links absent from asset lists. The FBI and EPA reported incidents at utilities in at least seven states since July 27, and a Clayton County, Georgia pump station failure triggered a boil-water advisory. He argues accountability and funding—using mechanisms like the Texas Water Development Board's new cybersecurity scoring criteria—are the binding constraints, citing Waco's 43-day segmentation of five treatment plants with operating funds.

CyberScoop · 9d agoIndustry in the wild

Why judgment is emerging as cybersecurity’s defining skill

CyberScoop op-ed argues CISOs should grant AI autonomy based on reversibility and blast radius rather than model confidence, and measure analyst overrides of AI recommendations.

A CyberScoop op-ed contends that as AI takes over analysis and recommendations in security operations, human judgment about context, reversibility and blast radius becomes the defining skill. The author argues autonomy decisions should rest on how reversible and impactful an action is rather than model confidence, citing examples such as patching vendor-certified medical devices and a service account whose 3 a.m. login spikes were normal quarterly-close activity. It also urges leaders to measure analyst approvals, edits and rejections of AI recommendations, and review latency, instead of automation rates or mean time to resolution.

CyberScoop · 13d agoIndustry1

Drowning in CVEs and thirsty for answers? Try CTEM

Sponsored Register piece argues traditional vulnerability management cannot scale with CVE volume and promotes Continuous Threat Exposure Management via Horizon3's NodeZero.

The sponsored article cites surging CVE volumes, CVSS triage shortcomings, NVD backlog, and AI-driven discovery accelerating an asymmetric vulnerability cycle. It outlines Gartner's five CTEM steps - scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization - and describes how Horizon3's NodeZero automated pentesting validates exploitable attack paths with evidence. Horizon3 says NodeZero uses a deterministic machine learning expert system rather than general LLMs, limiting generative AI to scoped tasks via AWS Bedrock.

The Register · Security · 13d agoIndustry

The Collective Cyber Defense letter wrote your next vendor questionnaire

Op-ed argues the 200-company Collective Cyber Defense letter's three endorsed metrics should become standard vendor procurement questions.

More than 200 companies including Microsoft, Google, AWS, CrowdStrike, Anthropic and Okta signed an August 27 open letter calling for faster cyber defenses against AI-enabled attacks. The letter endorses three measurable metrics: coverage, containment speed, and verified remediation. The author turns those into five concrete procurement questions buyers should pose at vendor renewals, while noting the letter contains no deadlines, dollar figures or measurable targets.

CyberScoop · 16d agoIndustry

100-plus companies call for ‘global surge’ in AI

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, AWS and 100+ organizations sign open letter urging a 'global surge' in AI-powered cyber defenses.

More than 100 companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Capital One, Mastercard, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks and Proofpoint signed an open letter published Thursday calling for accelerated cybersecurity defenses as AI capabilities advance. The letter argues a shrinking 'defenders' window' exists to fix accumulated weaknesses such as excessive permissions, misconfigurations and unpatched legacy systems before AI-enabled attacks grow more widespread. It asks governments to coordinate cross-border defense and fund protection of critical infrastructure, and asks frontier AI labs to provide model access, funding and support. It references a June US executive order creating the Gold Eagle AI threat-sharing clearinghouse.

CyberScoop · 19d agoIndustry