In this week’s show Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau recap all the infosec news of the last three weeks, including:


Chinese woman arrested at Mar-a-Lago being very shady
The ASUS supply chain attack
Flame-related malware lived on longer than expected
boostrap-sass Ruby gem backdoored
Latest on Norsk Hydro and other victims of the same crew
More trouble at Toyota
Huawei spanked by UK oversight panel
Exodus govvie malware affects Android and iOS
Plus much, much more


This week’s sponsor interview is with Kumud Kalia, the Chief Information and Technology Officer of Cylance. They actually dropped a really interesting product announcement at RSA a few weeks back and Kumud will be along later on to tell us about that. The tl;dr it’s an agent that models endpoint behaviour so when someone - or something - else starts using that endpoint to do things that don’t fit the user profile, action can be taken.

It’s the type of tech concept that normally belongs in academic papers, not in actual products people can actually buy. That’s an interesting chat.

Links to everything are below, and you can follow Patrick or Adam on Twitter if that’s your thing.





Show notes




Feds: Woman arrested at Mar-a-Lago had hidden-camera detector | Miami Herald




Hackers Hijacked ASUS Software Updates to Install Backdoors on Thousands of Computers - Motherboard




ASUS releases fix for Live Update tool abused in ShadowHammer attack | ZDNet




Researchers publish list of MAC addresses targeted in ASUS hack | ZDNet




Nation-state hacking kit ‘Flame’ had a second life, researchers say




Malicious remote code execution backdoor discovered in the popular bootstrap-sass Ruby gem | Snyk




Norsk Hydro ransomware incident losses reach $40 million after one week | ZDNet




Norsk Hydro will not pay ransom demand and will restore from backups | ZDNet




Arizona Beverages knocked offline by ransomware attack | TechCrunch




Ransomware Forces Two Chemical Companies to Order ‘Hundreds of New Computers’ - Motherboard




Toyota announces second security breach in the last five weeks | ZDNet




Huawei's Problem Isn't Chinese Backdoors. It's Buggy Software | WIRED




HCSEC_OversightBoardReport-2019.pdf




In issuing 5G recommendations, E.U. spurns U.S. hardline on Huawei




Bezos’ Investigator Gavin de Becker Finds the Saudis Obtained the Amazon Chief’s Private Data




NSO Group Says It Didn’t Hack Jeff Bezos On Behalf of Saudi Arabia - Motherboard




'Exodus' Spyware Posed as a Legit iOS App | WIRED




Former NSA spies hacked BBC host, Al Jazeera chairman for UAE




Lazarus rises in Israel with attempted hack of defense company, researchers say




Defense Ministry rebukes Israeli spy tech company for unlawful exports | The Times of Israel




Islamic State's collapse hastened with help of Australian cyber spies - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)




Company sues worker who fell for email scam - BBC News




Utah Just Became a Leader in Digital Privacy | WIRED




Office Depot rigged PC malware scans to sell unneeded $300 tech support | Ars Technica




Microsoft warns Windows 7 users of looming end to security updates | TechCrunch




Brace yourselves: Exploit published for serious Magento bug allowing card skimming [Updated] | Ars Technica




Warfare Plugins on Twitter: "WE ARE AWARE OF A ZERO-DAY EXPLOIT AFFECTING SOCIAL WARFARE CURRENTLY BEING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF IN THE WILD. Our developers are working to release a patch within the next hour. In the meantime, we recommend disabling the plugin. We will update you as soon as we know more."




Pipdig Update: Dishonest Denials, Erased Evidence, and Ongoing Offenses




Two serious WordPress plugin vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild | Ars Technica




Ex-NSA contractor pleads guilty to vast classified data leak, faces 9 years in prison




Report deems Russia a pioneer in GPS spoofing attacks | ZDNet




Above Us Only Stars - Exposing GPS Spoofing in Russia and Syria - Ass