Research Saturday
Recent Episodes
The playbook for outpacing China.
This week, N2K's very own Brandon Karpf sits down with Kevin Lentz, Team Leader of the Cyber Pacific Project at the Global Disinformation Lab, and they discuss the recent threatcasting report "Cyber Competition in the Indo-Pacific Gray Zone 2035." This report, developed using the Threatcasting Method, examines how the U.S. and Indo-Pacific allies can coordinate their cyber defense efforts in response to future competition with China. It presents findings, trends, and recommendations based on twenty-five scenarios simulated by a cross-functional group of experts to anticipate and address emerging threats over the next decade.
Tim Peck, a Senior Threat Researcher at Securonix, is discussing their work on "Threat actors behind the DEV#POPPER campaign have retooled and are continuing to target software developers via social engineering." The DEV#POPPER campaign continues to evolve, now targeting developers with malware capable of operating on Linux, Windows, and macOS systems. The threat actors, believed to be North Korean, employ sophisticated social engineering tactics, such as fake job interviews, to deliver stealthy malware that gathers sensitive information, including browser credentials and system data.
Robert Duncan, VP of Product Strategy from Netcraft, is discussing their work on "Mule-as-a-Service Infrastructure Exposed." Netcraft's new threat intelligence reveals the intricate connections within global fraud networks, showing how criminals use specialized services like Mule-as-a-Service (MaaS) to launder scam proceeds. By mapping the cyber and financial infrastructure, including bank accounts, crypto wallets, and phone numbers, Netcraft exposes how different scams are interconnected and identifies weak points that can be targeted to disrupt these operations. This insight provides an opportunity to prevent fraud and protect against financial crimes like pig butchering, investment scams, and romance fraud.
Essential tools with critical security challenges.
Snir Ben Shimol from ZEST Security on their work, "How we hacked a cloud production environment by exploiting Terraform providers." In this blog, ZEST discusses the security risks associated with Terraform providers, particularly those from community sources. The research highlights the importance of carefully vetting providers, regular scanning, and following best practices like version pinning to mitigate potential vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructure management.
Shachar Menashe, Senior Director of Security Research at JFrog, is talking about "When Prompts Go Rogue: Analyzing a Prompt Injection Code Execution in Vanna.AI." A security vulnerability in the Vanna.AI tool, called CVE-2024-5565, allows hackers to exploit large language models (LLMs) by manipulating user input to execute malicious code, a method known as prompt injection. This poses a significant risk when LLMs are connected to critical functions, highlighting the need for stronger security measures.
