The Cybersecurity (CS) Digest is a curated bi-weekly news summary for cybersecurity professionals. It is transmitted in an HTML-formatted email and provides links to articles and news summaries across a spectrum of cybersecurity topics.

CSIAC ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Register for CSIAC Webinar, Thursday, Sep 19 @ 13:00 EDT: Open Innovation Campus (OIC) - CSIAC

This webinar will provide an overview of the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) Information Directorate's planned development of the new Open Innovation Campus (OIC) initiative. The groundbreaking OIC concept will establish a collaborative environment to support the investigation of cutting edge technologies to identify and develop potential solutions for difficult technical challenge problems. This novel infrastructure and business construct will foster the growth of a Quantum Information Science and Artificial Intelligence hub. The Center will provide an ecosystem where the top researchers, scientists and engineers from government, industry and academia can collaborate on developing future transformational strategic capabilities for the Nation's defense. The OIC will be an "outside the fence" facility that will open potential relationships with non-traditional as well as international partners.
Tags: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Open Innovation Campus (OIC), Quantum Information Science

RECENT HEADLINES:

Spouse of Ring Exec Among Lawmakers Trying to Weaken Calif. Privacy Law - Arstechnica

The California legislature worked through the summer to finalize the text of the state's landmark data privacy law before time to make amendments ran out on Friday. In the Assembly (California's lower house), Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin has been a key voice and vote backing motions that would weaken the law, and a new report says her reasoning may be very, very close to home.
Tags: Amazon Ring, Data Privacy, Legislation

North Korean Government Hackers Sanctioned by U.S. Treasury - Cyber Scoop

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced Friday it is sanctioning three North Korean hacking groups it says are backed by Kim Jong-un's regime, including the well-known Lazarus Group. The office also identifies two sub-groups of Lazarus Group, Bluenoroff and Andariel.
Tags: Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), North Korea

Russia Reportedly Breached Encrypted FBI Comms in 2010 - Engadget

On Dec. 29, 2016, the Obama administration announced that it was giving nearly three dozen Russian diplomats just 72 hours to leave the United States and was seizing two rural East Coast estates owned by the Russian government. As the Russians burned papers and scrambled to pack their bags, the Kremlin protested the treatment of its diplomats, and denied that those compounds - sometimes known as the "dachas" - were anything more than vacation spots for their personnel.
Tags: FBI, Russian Interference

Faster Wi-Fi Officially Launches Today - The Verge

The next generation of Wi-Fi has been trickling out over the past year, but this week, its launch is going to accelerate. The Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that oversees implementation of the Wi-Fi standard, is launching its official Wi-Fi 6 certification program. That might sound boring, but it means the Wi-Fi 6 standard is truly ready to go, and tech companies will soon be able to advertise their products - mostly brand new ones - as certified to properly support Wi-Fi 6.
Tags: Mobile Security, Wi-Fi 6

The US Government Will Spend $1B on AI Next Year – Not Counting the Pentagon - Defense One

The federal government plans to spend almost $1 billion in nondefense artificial intelligence research and development in fiscal 2020, according to a supplemental report to the president's budget request.
Tags: Artificial Intelligence (AI), US Government

The Air Force Will Let Hackers Try to Hijack an Orbiting Satellite - Wired

At the Defcon hacking conference next year, the Air Force will bring a satellite for fun and glory.
Tags: Air Force, Defcon

Business Email Compromise Is a $26 Billion Scam Says the FBI - Bleeping Computer

FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) says that Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams are continuing to grow every year, with a 100% increase in the identified global exposed losses between May 2018 and July 2019.
Tags: Data Privacy, Email Compromise

51 Major CEOs Ask Congress for Federal Privacy Law Blocking State Rules - The Hill

Fifty-one chief executives at major U.S. corporations, including Amazon, AT&T and IBM, are urging Congress to pass federal consumer privacy legislation that would block states from implementing their own regulations on data privacy.
Tags: Data Privacy, Legislation

Deterrence in Cyberspace Requires Multifaceted Approach - Defense

Defending in cyberspace is only half the battle. Making it clear to adversaries that the United States is capable of engaging in damaging cyberattacks of its own is a way of deterring adversaries from acting in the first place, a senior Defense Department official told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Tags: Cyber Defense, Cyberwarfare

The NetCAT is Out of the Bag: Intel Chipset Exploited to Sniff SSH Passwords as They’re Typed Over the Network - The Register

It is possible to discern someone's SSH password as they type it into a terminal over the network by exploiting an interesting side-channel vulnerability in Intel's networking technology, say infosec gurus.
Tags: NetCAT, Side-Channel Vulnerability, SSH

Simjacker Attack Exploited in the Wild to Track Users for at Least Two Years - ZDNet

Security researchers have disclosed today an SMS-based attack method being abused in the real world by a surveillance vendor to track and monitor individuals.
Tags: Mobile Security, SMS-based Attack

SECDEF Cybersecurity Interest Items:

Joint Statement on Advancing Responsible State Behavior in Cyberspace - U.S. Dept. of State

The following text is a joint statement affirmed by these countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Assume Networks Are Compromised, DOD Official Urges - U.S. Dept of Defense

No matter how secure a computer network or the environment it's used in may seem to be, users should just assume it's compromised, the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering said.

CSIAC Supported Communities

CSIAC supports several communities of practice, such as the Cyber Community of Interest (COI) Group and research & development working groups.

Technical Resources, Policy and Guidance

This list of related sites provides additional sources to pursue the topic of Cybersecurity. The sites include Government organizations, including federal agencies, Department of Defense and military service agencies, commercial organizations, and academic institutions.

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