Newsletters

The EU and US are taking very different approaches to the introduction of liability for software products. While the US kicks the can down the road, the EU is rolling a hand grenade down it to see what happens. 

Under the status quo, the software industry is extensively protected from liability for defects or issues and this results in systemic underinvestment in product security. Authorities believe that by making software companies liable for damages when they peddle crapware, those companies will be motivated to improve product security. 

Introducing software liability is a big idea of the Biden administration's 2023 Cyber Security Strategy. Per the strategy:

Apple has put forward a proposal to gradually reduce the lifespan of TLS certificates from the current 398 days to only 45.

The planned move will take place across four phases between September next year and April 2027.

TLS lifespan will be reduced to 200 days in September 2025, to 100 in September 2026, and just 45 in April 2027.

The European Union has updated its product liability law to cover software and associated risks, like security flaws and planned obsolescence.

The new EU Directive on Liability for Defective Products [PDF] replaces one of the EU's oldest directives and will provide consumers with the legal tools to hold companies liable in court if they sell defective products.

The biggest change to the old directive is the addition of software products to the list of covered goods.

The US government has charged two members of the Anonymous Sudan hacking group after the FBI secretly seized server infrastructure and disrupted its operations in March this year.

The indictment names two brothers—Ahmed Omer, 22, and Alaa Omer, 27—as the two main individuals behind the group's operations.

The two are accused of launching thousands of DDoS attacks against government agencies, hospitals, critical infrastructure, and private businesses all over the world.

Several strands of evidence suggest Russia's use of cybercriminals to support its war effort in Ukraine is now planned and deliberate rather than ad hoc and opportunistic. 

Russia's strategy to harness cybercriminal resources has evolved over the duration of the war. Prior to the conflict, connections between the Russian state and cybercriminals appeared to be opportunistic and based on relationships and connections between individuals.

However, a Mandiant report from April this year suggested that Sandworm (aka Unit 74455 of the GRU), was acquiring tools and bulletproof hosting services from criminal marketplaces. Now Russian intelligence services are taking the next logical step and are directly acquiring people from the criminal talent pool.  

The Chinese government has put out another report of questionable quality this week, claiming that the US is trying to smear poor lil' China as a bad cyber actor.

Beijing officials say that the US is actually the country behind most cyber espionage operations today, and they possess a "cyber weapon" that can mislead investigators and frame other states for its intrusions.

The report [English PDF] is the third in a series of reports that China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) has published on the topic this year, after previous reports in April and July.

Meta has taken down a network of fake accounts engaged in a disinformation campaign targeting Moldova a week before the small Eastern European country is set to hold presidential elections and a referendum to join the EU.

The network used fake accounts to manage pages that posed as "independent" news entities.

They posted content primarily in Russian that criticized the country's current president Maia Sandu, Moldova's pro-EU politicians, and the country's ever-increasing closer ties to neighboring Romania.

Dutch authorities will have to replace tens of thousands of insecure road traffic lights over the next six years by 2030.

Officials are taking this extreme and very expensive step after a security researcher found a vulnerability that could allow threat actors to change traffic lights on demand.

The issue was discovered earlier this year by Alwin Peppels, a security engineer for Dutch security firm Cyber Seals.

A new report highlights the need to crack down on Telegram’s role as a massive enabler of transnational criminal organisations. It says Telegram is used to facilitate criminal activity ranging from cyber-enabled fraud and illegal gambling to money laundering and criminal marketplaces that sell malware, stolen data and even murder for hire. 

The report, authored by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, examined the criminal adoption of technology and described the rapid evolution of the criminal ecosystem in Southeast Asia. 

It noted criminal groups started out running illegal or under-regulated gambling facilities, particularly in weakly governed regions including locations in Myanmar. These groups developed money laundering capabilities to handle the cash their activities generated. 

The European Council adopted on Tuesday a new sanctions framework designed to counter Russia's hybrid attacks against EU member states.

The new framework expands the type of actions the EU can leverage sanctions against the Russian government, organizations, and individuals involved in the Kremlin's ever-increasing aggression.

It's been expanded to cover: