Research Saturday

Researchers at Symantec recently published their findings on an active attack group named Leafminer that's targeting government organizations and businesses in the Middle East region. 

Vikram Thakur is a technical director at Symantec, and he joins us to share what they've found.

The research can be found here:

https://www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/leafminer-espionage-middle-east

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Threat researcher Marcelle Lee from LookingGlass Cyber Solutions joins us to share her research on the growing threat of ATM hacks in the U.S. 

The research can be found here:

https://www.lookingglasscyber.com/blog/atm-hacking-you-dont-have-to-pay-to-play/

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Threat intelligence firm Recorded Future recently published research describing espionage activities originating from servers at a major Chinese university, coinciding with international economic development efforts.

Winnona DeSombre and Sanil Chohan are authors of the report, Chinese Cyberespionage Originating from Tsinghua University Infrastructure, along with their colleague Justin Grosfelt.

The research can be found here:

https://www.recordedfuture.com/chinese-cyberespionage-operations/

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Researchers at Bitdefender have been tracking a bit of complex rootkit malware called Zacinlo that they suspect has been operating virtually undetected for over six years. Bogdan Botezatu is a senior cyber security analyst with Bitdefender, and he describes what they've found.

Research link:

https://labs.bitdefender.com/2018/06/six-years-and-counting-inside-the-complex-zacinlo-ad-fraud-operation/

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Researchers at Symantec have been tracking a wide-ranging espionage operation that's targeting satellite, telecom and defense companies. 

Jon DiMaggio is a senior cyber intelligence analyst at Symantec, and he takes us through what they've discovered.

The research can be found here:

https://www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/thrip-hits-satellite-telecoms-defense-targets

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Researchers at McAfee recently discovered code execution vulnerabilities in the default settings of the Cortana voice-activated digital assistant in Windows 10 systems. 

Steve Povolny is head of advanced threat research at McAfee and he shares their findings.

The research can be found here:

https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/want-to-break-into-a-locked-windows-10-device-ask-cortana-cve-2018-8140

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Researchers at Defiant recently analyzed a malware family they named "BabaYaga," which has the curious behavior of clearing out other malware and keeping infected sites up to date.

Brad Hass is a senior security analyst at Defiant, and he guides us through their findings.

The research can be found here:

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2018/06/babayaga-wordpress-malware/

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Researchers Gang Wang and Hang Hu from Virginia Tech recently conducted an end-to-end measurement on 35 popular email providers and examining user reactions to spoofing through a real-world spoofing/phishing test. Gang Wang joins us to share the sobering results.

End-to-End Measurements of Email Spoofing Attacks

https://people.cs.vt.edu/gangwang/usenix-draft.pdf

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Andy Bochman is senior grid strategist for Idaho National Lab’s National and Homeland Security directorate. Today we’re discussing the research the INL has been doing, developing new approaches to protecting mission critical systems.

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Sellers of malware on Dark Web forums often use No Distribute malware scanning tools to help verify the effectiveness of their wares, while preventing legitimate virus scanning tools from adding the malware to their database.

Daniel Hatheway is a Senior Security Analyst at Recorded Future, and he takes us through their recently published research, Uncover Unseen Malware Samples with No Distribute Scanners. 

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