Wednesday’s sentencing of one-time Trump fixer Michael Cohen to 36 months of prison continues a frenetic pace of revelations around the Russia probe. Nearly every single day since Thanksgiving has brought fresh developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election. Even as the president continues to rail about the “Witch Hunt” on Twitter, Mueller’s strategy looks like anything but. Nearly every defendant he’s targeted has pleaded guilty, meaning he’s moving against people with overwhelming evidence. Those targets have mostly, in turn, cooperated—naming more alleged crimes and suspects. Similarly, in the one instance he has been forced to go to trial, Mueller prevailed handedly, winning convictions against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in every category of charges he brought. Mueller has also assiduously handed off certain crimes to other prosecutors, be it identity theft … [Read more...] about 9 Trumpworld Figures That Should Fear Mueller the Most
Security
If China Hacked Marriott, 2014 Marked a Full-on Assault
The massive data breach that affected 500 million Marriott customers feels like a recent event, given that the company just discovered and disclosed it over the last four months. But it's important to remember that the attack began much earlier, especially as Reuters and others have reported that state-sponsored Chinese hackers were behind it. If that attribution holds up, China's broader hacking campaign against the US in 2014 will go down as a historic assault. China's role in the Marriott hack remains unconfirmed, but the accusation comes amid already heightened tensions between the United States and China over trade and intellectual property theft. The Department of Justice is expected to announce indictments against a new wave of Chinese hackers soon. "These are exactly the targets I would select." Crane Hassold, Former FBI Analyst If China did perpetrate the Marriott hack in 2014, though, that would make it just one of several devastating, roughly concurrent cyberattacks … [Read more...] about If China Hacked Marriott, 2014 Marked a Full-on Assault
Microsoft patches ‘dangerous’ zero-day already being exploited by hacking groups
MICROSOFT HAS FLUNG OUT patches for 39 vulnerabilities, including a zero-day bug that has already been exploited by hacking groups. This vulnerability in kernel image ntoskrnl.exe was reported to Microsoft on 29 October by security vendor Kasperky Lab. Listed as CVE-2018-8611 and classified as 'important', it is a local privilege escalation bug. Kaspersky Lab researchers say it has already been exploited by hacking groups FruityArmor and SandCat. "CVE-2018-8611 is an especially dangerous threat - a vulnerability in the Kernel Transaction Manager driver. It can also be used to escape the sandbox in modern web browsers, including Chrome and Edge, since syscall filtering mitigations do not apply to ntoskrnl.exe system calls," the company says. Kaspersky continues: "This vulnerability successfully bypasses modern process mitigation policies, such as Win32k System call Filtering that is used, among others, in the Microsoft Edge Sandbox and the Win32k Lockdown Policy employed in the Google … [Read more...] about Microsoft patches ‘dangerous’ zero-day already being exploited by hacking groups
Supermicro says investigation found no evidence of ‘malicious hardware’ reported by Bloomberg
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE Dec. 11, 2018 / 6:59 PM GMT By Jasmin Boyce Supermicro, the computer hardware manufacturer, said Tuesday that a third-party investigator found no evidence of malicious chips on its hardware, rebutting a report from Bloomberg that China had succeeded in compromising the company’s widely used motherboards. Three Supermicro executives — CEO Charles Liang; David Weigand, chief compliance officer; and Raju Penumatcha, chief product officer — posted the “security update” in a letter on the company’s website. “Today’s announcement should lay to rest the unwarranted accusations made about Supermicro’s motherboards,” the letter states. “Recent reports in the media wrongly alleged that bad actors had inserted a malicious chip or other hardware on our products during the manufacturing … [Read more...] about Supermicro says investigation found no evidence of ‘malicious hardware’ reported by Bloomberg
Supermicro: Third-Party Investigation Disproves Bloomberg’s ‘Big Hack’ Claims
Supermicro has reassured shareholders that a third-party investigation refuted a report from Bloomberg saying its motherboards had been compromised by Chinese intelligence agencies. The company said "the investigations firm found absolutely no evidence of malicious hardware on our motherboards," and with that being the case, it believes "today's announcement should lay to rest the unwarranted accusations" made about its products. The claim that Supermicro's motherboards were compromised was published shortly after a Bloomberg Businessweek feature story entitled "The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies." Bloomberg said in its followup report that a telecommunications company security expert named Yossi Appleboum "provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery" after "The Big Hack" was published. Those reports were published on October 4 and 9. Supermicro CEO Charles Liang released a statement refuting Bloomberg's reporting … [Read more...] about Supermicro: Third-Party Investigation Disproves Bloomberg’s ‘Big Hack’ Claims