Hackers for Hire
Bottom Line Up Front The investigation into the hacking of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ phone demonstrates how private firms have developed sophisticated electronic espionage […] More
Posts Tagged ‘cyber espionage’
Iranian Hackers Indicted and Sanctioned for State-Sponsored IP Theft
Today, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed indictments for nine Iranian hackers and the U.S. Treasury sanctioned these same individuals as well as one entity, […] More
Outing Spooks: “Doxing” in the Cyber-Hack Era
Revealing the identities of intelligence officials – a practice known as doxing – could become more common among nation-states, directed in particular at the clandestine […] More
Cyber Enabled Information War Challenges Our Grip on Reality
One of the opening rounds of an information war between the Kremlin and a democratic country came from Melvin Redick, a fake Facebook account designed […] More
Network Take: U.S. Kaspersky Ban Sends Serious Signal to Russia
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a binding directive compelling all federal civilian departments and agencies to identify and develop a plan […] More
The United States of Cyber Debility
Americans are suffering from an undiagnosed condition. Overwhelmed and outmatched by the allure, complexity, and insecurity of networked technologies, we’ve been left confused and compromised […] More
The CIA’s Officer of the Future
Few were paying attention, but the CIA did something groundbreaking in 2015. For the first time since before man walked on the moon, the Agency […] More
Chinese Industrial Spies Cast a Wider Net
One of the emerging trends in today’s expanding cyber espionage landscape has been China’s emergence as the leading practitioner of economic cyber espionage. What does […] More
Chinese Cyber-Spies Target Asian Neighbors
It has been three years since the Obama Administration publically indicted five Chinese military officials for hacking U.S. companies, a move that prompted negotiations to […] More
China Reaches into its Cyber Toolkit to Wage Economic Warfare
When Beijing got the word that the United States was accelerating the deployment of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea […] More
Camouflaged Aggression: A Strategic Shift in Russia’s Cyber Activity
Russian cyber operations are widely discussed and reported on today. Conversations frequently range from how the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to […] More
When States Pretend to be Terrorists or Hacktivists in Cyberspace
False flag operations have been routine ploys in espionage and warfare for centuries. Now they have turned up in cyber operations. The Cipher Brief spoke […] More
Looking for a Smoking Gun Behind a False Flag Attack
How can a government, or a company, determine who launched a cyber attack? Attribution becomes even more difficult when the attackers disguise themselves as others. […] More
How Spy Agency Hackers Pose As – Anybody
A false flag operation – pretending to be someone else while conducting spycraft or warfare – is an age-old tactic. With the advent of cyber […] More
China Pivots its Hackers from Industrial Spies to Cyber Warriors
China continues to deploy military equipment to contested islands in the South China Sea, raising concerns among regional players and U.S. forces stationed in the […] More
Why Beijing is Curbing Industrial Spying on the West
In September 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama reached an agreement that neither nation would “conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of […] More
Moscow Eyes the French Elections
With just a few weeks left until French voters head to the polls, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen made her way to Moscow for […] More
Jumping the Air Gap: How to Breach Isolated Networks
Connectivity continues to enmesh businesses, governments, societies and people – a trend that will only accelerate with the growth of public cloud services and devices […] More
Covertly Removing Data From Air-Gapped Networks
In the world of network security, the term air gap refers to a situation in which the computer network is physically separated from other networks, […] More
Tallinn Manual 2.0: Stepping Out of the Fog in Cyberspace
Cyberspace is often portrayed as a new domain of international relations – a Wild West where there are no rules or guiding principles to govern […] More
A Reference for Cyber Operations
NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence last month published the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations, a follow-on project […] More
Existing International Law Applies Online and Offline
A group of international law experts met in Tallinn, Estonia, after the 2007 onslaught of cyber attacks against sites in the country, to create the […] More
The Cyber Arms Race
Back in August, The Cipher Brief sat down with Leo Taddeo, Chief Security Officer for Cryptzone, to discuss the cyber threats posed by Russia and […] More
The Perils of Connectivity: Cyber Insecurity in 2016
Editor’s Note: Over the coming days, The Cipher Brief presents some of our most incisive coverage on key issues of 2016 and a look ahead […] More