A week in security (September 30 – October 6)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, Malwarebytes renewed its pledge to fight stalkerware for National Cybersecurity Awareness NCSA and Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We also looked into what security orchestration is and reported about partnering with security firm, HYAS, to determine the...

Influence Operations Kill Chain

Influence operations are elusive to define. The Rand Corp.'s definition is as good as any: "the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent." Basically, we know it when we see it, from bots...

The Unsexy Threat to Election Security

Much has been written about the need to further secure our elections, from ensuring the integrity of voting machines to combating fake news. But according to a report quietly issued by a California grand jury this week, more attention needs to be paid to securing social media and email accounts...

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 investigation shows Russian disinformation campaigns have global reach

A little background: on July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot from the sky on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur above the Ukraine. The plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile, and as a result, all 298 people on board were killed. At that time, there was a revolt of pro-Russia...

Building Resilience to Foreign Interference, Misinformation Activities

As part of the effort to Protect2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA is working with national partners to build resilience to foreign interferences, particularly information activities e.g., disinformation, misinformation. The Department of Homeland Security DHS views...

Fake News and Pandemics

When the next pandemic strikes, we'll be fighting it on two fronts. The first is the one you immediately think about: understanding the disease, researching a cure and inoculating the population. The second is new, and one you might not have thought much about: fighting the deluge of rumors,...

5,000 Twitter Accounts Linked to Disinformation Campaigns

Twitter has removed six sets of accounts that the site has deemed to be devoted to coordinated, state-backed propaganda activities – totaling about 5,000 accounts in all. “We believe that people and organizations with the advantages of institutional power and which consciously abuse our service a...

A week in security (June 10 – 16)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we revealed to readers the mindset of security pros as to why they lack confidence in their ability to prevent their organizations getting breached. We also reported on Maine Governor Janet Mills implementing the state’s own privacy protections, how Apple can bette...

Jigsaw Bought a Russian Twitter Troll Campaign as an Experiment

In a controversial move, the Alphabet-owned tech firm played both sides of an online argument in Russia with the aim of testing disinformation-for-hire services...

Framing the Problem: Cyber Threats and Elections

This year, Canada, multiple European nations, and others will host high profile elections. The topic of cyber-enabled threats disrupting and targeting elections has become an increasing area of awareness for governments and citizens globally. To develop solutions and security programs to counter...

Towards an Information Operations Kill Chain

Cyberattacks don't magically happen; they involve a series of steps. And far from being helpless, defenders can disrupt the attack at any of those steps. This framing has led to something called the "cybersecurity kill chain": a way of thinking about cyber defense in terms of disrupting the...

Breaking the Bank: Weakness in Financial AI Applications

Currently, threat actors possess limited access to the technology required to conduct disruptive operations against financial artificial intelligence AI systems and the risk of this targeting type remains low. However, there is a high risk of threat actors leveraging AI as part of disinformation...

A Hidden Nest Secure Mic, Facebook's Dead VPN, and More Security News This Week

The 2020 disinformation campaigns have started, DrainerBot is coming for your smartphone's battery, and more security news this week...

Microsoft: Russia's Fancy Bear Working to Influence EU Elections

As the May elections for European Parliament loom, Russia-linked APT groups are amping up their efforts to target journalists, think-tanks, non-governmental organizations and other members of civil society, according to Microsoft. The tech giant said on Tuesday that it has observed a recent serie...

Facebook Boots Hundreds of Iran-Linked Accounts For Spreading Misinformation

Facebook has booted hundreds of Iran-linked pages, groups and accounts from its social media platform that it claimed were promoting misinformation. According to Facebook, it removed 783 pages, groups and accounts that engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that were misleading users about...

Google Search Results Spoofed to Create Fake News

UPDATE A spoofing technique that creates fake Google search results has been uncovered, which could be used in political influence campaigns or for other nefarious purposes. In this age of fake news, people are more wary than ever of efforts to sway public opinion using disinformation – this has...

First Annual Cyberwarcon

Cyberwarcon is a brand new event organized yesterday in Arlington, Virginia, and delivered eight hours of fantastic content. "CyberwarCon is a one-day conference in the Washington D.C. area focused on the specter of destruction, disruption, and malicious influence on our society through cyber...

Information Attacks against Democracies

Democracy is an information system. That's the starting place of our new paper: "Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy." In it, we look at democracy through the lens of information security, trying to understand the current waves of Internet disinformation attacks. Specifically, we wanted to...

U.S. Elections True Test for Facebook’s Disinformation Crackdown

As the U.S. midterm elections commence on Tuesday, all eyes are on Facebook and other social-media companies to see how they continue to crack down on misinformation and other political meddling efforts on their platforms. Facebook for its part on Monday evening said it has barred an additional 1...

Facebook Expands Efforts to Squash Voter Suppression

Facebook plans to expand its content-policing on its site, aiming to crack down on profiles and pages that it deems are aimed at voter suppression ahead of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Specifically, social-media giant will penalize those that spread disinformation about voting requirements wi...