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9 stories in the last 30d

Risky Bulletin: Russia tells data centers to deploy drone defenses

Russia ordered data center operators to deploy drone strike defenses under a Putin decree allowing temporary state takeover of unprotected critical infrastructure.

The Russian government instructed data center operators to deploy protections against drone strikes under a presidential decree signed by Putin that allows temporary state administration of critical infrastructure operators failing to defend against Ukrainian hacks and drone strikes. Although data centers are not formally critical infrastructure in Russia, the decree applies to them because other sectors depend heavily on cloud services; Russia has more than 180 data centers, over 80% in the European region within range of Ukrainian strikes. The digest also reports a Dropbox breach affecting nearly 5,000 accounts via the Lenovo ID integration, spyware attacks on at least 14 Serbians using NoviSpy or Pegasus, and a password recovery attack targeting hundreds of thousands of X accounts tied to the new X Money service. Other items include a 14-hour compromise of Coder's Cloudflare infrastructure delivering malicious Terraform modules, donor data breaches at Davayte and You Are Not Alone via the Stripe/WooCommerce integration, a $2.5M Aquifer crypto heist, and a TVING breach exposing data of almost 40 million accounts.

Risky Business News · 13d agoPolicy & legal

LinkedIn fights for the right to tell customers when the feds want their data

Microsoft's chief legal officer argues federal subpoenas for LinkedIn user data should carry narrower scope and that secrecy orders must become the exception.

Microsoft chief legal officer Jon Palmer said federal courts and Congress must curb overly broad US government subpoenas for LinkedIn user data that arrive with secrecy orders preventing customer notification. The company is asking courts to enforce meaningful limits on demand scope and secrecy, invoking Fourth and First Amendment arguments. Palmer cited House legislation passed August 31 to rein in secret surveillance, while LinkedIn simultaneously faces user privacy lawsuits, one dismissed with leave to amend by Judge Vince Chhabria.

CSO Online · 18h agoPolicy & legal

FTC rescinds policy requiring health apps to notify customers after a breach

The FTC unanimously rescinded its 2021 policy statement that required health and fitness apps to notify users after health-data breaches.

The FTC voted to rescind a September 2021 Biden-era policy statement that extended federal health-data breach notification rules to health apps, fitness trackers, and connected devices, which had exposed violators to fines of $43,792 per violation per day. The 2021 statement, adopted in a divided 3-2 vote under then-chair Lina Khan, cited HIPAA coverage gaps for consumer health applications. The commission said the statement provided minimal benefit, was superseded by rulemaking, and aligns with the White House deregulatory agenda.

CyberScoop · 7d agoPolicy & legal

Arrested man allegedly impersonated NSA elite hacking unit, Supreme Court chief justice

Colorado man Joshua Culver indicted for impersonating NSA's Tailored Access Operations chief and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in Indiana court cases.

Joshua Culver, also known as Maverick Young, was arrested in Colorado after a July Indiana indictment on four counts of falsely impersonating an officer of the court and one count of using a forged judge's signature. He allegedly posed as an NSA officer in September to pressure the Tippecanoe County sheriff's office, and later presented a forged document purportedly from the head of the Tailored Access Operations unit demanding case dismissal and warrant quashing. The indictment also alleges he used a forged signature of Chief Justice John Roberts on a dismissal order in Grant County, Indiana.

CyberScoop · 22d agoPolicy & legal2

‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

White House launches Watershed 250, a six-month Texas pilot using volunteer vendor cyber and AI tools to harden water utility defenses.

The Office of the National Cyber Director and Texas Cyber Command will oversee the six-month Project Watershed 250 pilot to improve water sector cybersecurity through industry-donated red teaming, system hardening and AI tooling. Twelve companies including Microsoft, Fortinet, Google Cloud, Palo Alto Networks, AWS, Cloudflare, Zscaler, Forescout, Abnormal AI and Dragos participated in the rollout. Officials cited recent attacks including an Iranian-backed campaign against 30 water systems in 12 states and a 2024 incident in Muleshoe, Texas. Some water-security professionals criticized the program as lacking dedicated funding.

CyberScoop · 16d agoPolicy & legal1

Eight years later, federal authorities re-up charges against alleged Iranian hackers at Mabna Institute

US prosecutors unsealed a superseding indictment charging 17 Iranians in the Mabna Institute's state-sponsored theft of 31.5 terabytes from universities and companies.

The superseding indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York charges 17 people affiliated with Tehran's Mabna Institute, adding eight defendants to the 2018 indictment of nine. The institute allegedly compromised over 100,000 professor email accounts worldwide, including 8,000 accounts at 144 US universities, and stole at least 31.5 terabytes of academic journals, dissertations, and e-books. US universities spent approximately $3.4 billion procuring the stolen data, and victims also included at least five federal and state agencies, 42 US companies, and 11 foreign companies including HBO. The State Department's Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $10 million for information on four of the defendants.

CyberScoop · 29d agoPolicy & legal

FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

FBI officials said AI is accelerating adversary capabilities while its new cyber strategy emphasizes continuous patching, cyber hygiene, and AI-enabled defense.

At the Billington CyberSecurity Summit and ahead of a new FBI cyber strategy, deputy assistant director Jason Bilnoski said AI is boosting the speed and capability of both criminal and nation-state attackers, while stressing that basic controls like MFA would still prevent most attacks. Colleen Ferranti urged a shift from quarterly Patch Tuesday cycles to continuous, risk-based patching as AI accelerates vulnerability discovery. The strategy pledges AI-enabled triage, malware analysis, attribution support, agentic AI adoption, expanded Computer Network Operations, ICS Coordinators in every field office, and a pledge on victim relief and privacy.

CyberScoop · 8d agoPolicy & legal

A California county wants to hire Tina Peters to help run its elections

Shasta County, California plans to hire Tina Peters, convicted of stealing voting system software, as assistant registrar of voters.

Shasta County registrar of voters Clint Curtis said he plans to hire former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters as assistant registrar after Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted her nine-year sentence for seven felonies, including identity theft, breaking into an election office, and stealing voting system software. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff asked California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to provide maximum oversight to prevent Peters from improperly accessing ballots, voting systems, or data of over 100,000 registered voters. The county board of supervisors recently censured Curtis after investigations found he was verbally abusive or physically threatening toward staff.

CyberScoop · 28d agoPolicy & legal

Risky Bulletin: Russia starts blocking DoH and DoT

Russian users report blocks on DoH and DoT servers, including Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and Google 8.8.8.8, in an apparent censorship crackdown.

Russian internet users began reporting failures connecting to DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS servers, suggesting a government crackdown on the two privacy protocols. The blocks reportedly cover Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and Google's 8.8.8.8 resolvers; Roskomnadzor has not officially confirmed the action. The agency tested a similar block in March on Beeline's network and had named DoH for blocking as early as 2021. The bulletin also briefly notes state-sponsored phishing of EU officials, a DDoS against Norway's Digdir, the ReliaQuest/ShinyHunters dispute, and older ransomware and breach disclosures.

Risky Business News · 22d agoPolicy & legal1