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 Bulletin: White House lets private companies carry out offensive cyber ops
A White House memo directs DHS to create a program letting vetted private companies conduct US-government-directed offensive cyber operations against cybercrime.
A presidential memo tasks the DHS National Coordination Center with building a program, under DOJ and DHS oversight, through which private-sector companies can conduct offensive cyber operations against large-scale cybercrime organizations. Requirements include secure facilities, vetted personnel, a $1 million escrow for damages, and written approvals co-signed by DHS and DOJ executive directors. The program must launch within 60 days, around October 11, expanding a March executive order targeting scam compounds, ransomware, and other large-scale cybercrime.