This week in Infosec

Liberated from the “today in infosec” Twitter account.

5th June 1991: Philip Zimmermann sent the first release of PGP to 2 friends, Allan Hoeltje and Kelly Goen, to upload to the Internet.

Read his story about the release, including his disclosure of how little he understood about Usenet and what newsgroups even were. 

http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PGP_10thAnniversary.html

PGP Marks 30th Anniversary

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1269043313404862465  

7th June 1989: The beta release of the Bourne Again SHell (Bash) was announced as version 0.99. 2 months later Shellshock was introduced into the Bash source code and persisted in subsequent versions for over 25 years.

https://groups.google.com/g/gnu.announce/c/hvhlR1Vn1P0/m/NYwp-4_0CaUJ?pli=1

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1269788726156124160 

9th June 1993: The first DEF CON hacker conference was held at the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Initially planned by Jeff Moss as a farewell party for a hacker friend, about 100 people attended. It has since grown to become a 4-day conference with 30,000 attendees.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1270389947753627648

Rant of the Week

There was widespread panic on Tuesday after a major Internet outage knocked dozens of websites offline.

Amazon, Reddit and Twitch were all affected, as were the Guardian, the New York Times and the Financial Times.

Additionally, the UK government website crashed – on the day that Britons aged 25–29 were invited to book their COVID-19 vaccines.

Despite initial speculation that the outage was the result of a cyber attack – with ‘#cyberattack’ trending on Twitter – the true cause of the incident was less sensational, although nonetheless concerning.

What caused the Internet to crash?

Websites begin to work again after major outage

Billy Big Balls of the Week

Alleged drug syndicates, contract killers and weapons dealers thought they were using high-priced, securely encrypted phones that would protect them as they openly discussed drug deals by text message and swapped photos of cocaine-packed pineapples. What they were really doing, investigators revealed Tuesday, was channeling their plots straight into the hands of U.S. intelligence agents.

An international coalition of law enforcement officials announced they had ensnared alleged criminals around the world after duping them into using phones loaded with an encrypted messaging app controlled by the FBI.

Street value of cocaine

ANOM: Hundreds arrested in massive global crime sting using messaging app

FBI-controlled Anom app ensnares scores of alleged criminals in global police sting

Trojan Shield: How the FBI Secretly Ran a Phone Network for Criminals

ANOM: Alleged drug kingpin told to hand himself in after being tricked into spreading fake phone app

Industry News

Biden Expands Trump’s Investment Ban on Chinese Firms

More US Kids Warned About Internet Than Unsafe Sex

US to Treat Ransomware Like Terrorism

Hacker Group Gunning for Musk

French Antitrust Regulator Slaps $268 Million Fine on Google

Microsoft Fixes Seven Zero-Days This Patch Tuesday

A Third of Execs Plan to Spy on Staff to Guard Trade Secrets

JBS Admits Paying REvil Ransomware Group $11 Million

Schools Forced to Shut Following Critical Ransomware Attack

Tweet of the Week

https://twitter.com/Eskenzi/status/1402684475243438081

https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1402695107640393729

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