Toggle light / dark theme

The increase in tensions between the United States and Russia due to Moscow amassing troops on the border with Ukraine is raising concerns Russia may not only put boots on the ground but also turn to hacking operations to put pressure on the U.S. and Ukraine.

Those concerns are underlined by massive hacking efforts by Russia against Ukraine over the past few years and the ransomware attacks linked to Russian hackers against critical U.S. organizations.

“This is a Russian calling card,” Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Hill Wednesday. “I do worry that they will use their cyber and disinformation tools to try to undermine the stability of the Ukrainian economic security and national security.”

A suspected Chinese hacking campaign has breached four more US defense and technology companies in the last month, and hundreds more US organizations are running the type of vulnerable software that the attackers have exploited, according to research shared with CNN.

The apparent espionage activity, which the National Security Agency helped investigate when it emerged in recent months, is more extensive than previously known and has seen the hackers steal passwords from targeted organizations with a goal of intercepting sensitive communications.

The cybersecurity researchers in November publicly confirmed just one victimized US organization, CNN reported then, but they now say the number is at least five and could continue to grow.

NSO Group, an Israeli tech firm, developed malware to hack iPhones by creating a “computer within a computer” capable of stealing sensitive data and sitting undetected for months or even years, researchers at Google have revealed.

The malware is part of NSO Group’s Pegasus software tool, which it is thought to have sold to countries including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, India and the United Arab Emirates. US law-makers have called for sanctions against the firm.


An incredibly sophisticated piece of malware developed by the Israeli tech firm NSO Group works by creating an entirely separate computer inside the memory of an iPhone, allowing attackers to snoop and steal data.

2021 will be remembered as a significant year for the cyber security industry. With the pandemic accelerating digital transformation, the threat landscape was in constant flux. Major ransomware attacks demonstrated not just their impact on businesses, but wider society too. As we look ahead to 2022, the only constant in our industry is uncertainty in the cyber realm, but here are a few of our predictions for next year, based on trends we’re already seeing emerge.

Ransomware.

Jamie Metzl is an author specializing in topics of genetic engineering, biotechnology, and geopolitics. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
- Mizzen+Main: https://mizzenandmain.com and use code LEX to get $35 off.
- NI: https://www.ni.com/perspectives.
- GiveDirectly: https://givedirectly.org/lex to get gift matched up to $300
- Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit.
- Blinkist: https://blinkist.com/lex and use code LEX to get 25% off premium.

EPISODE LINKS:
Jamie’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamieMetzl.
Jamie’s Website: https://jamiemetzl.com/
Jamie’s lab leak blog post: https://jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sars-cov-2/
Hacking Darwin (book): https://amzn.to/3lLqLsM

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast.
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr.
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 — Introduction.
1:27 — Lab leak.
1:00:01 — Gain-of-function research.
1:09:32 — Anthony Fauci.
1:19:14 — Francis Collins.
1:23:56 — Joe Rogan, Brett Weinstein, and Sam Harris.
1:53:53 — Xi Jinping.
2:08:24 — Patient Zero.
2:21:38 — WHO
2:45:28 — Government transparency.
3:07:28 — Likelihood of a cover-up.
3:09:16 — Future of reproduction.
3:44:55 — Jon Stewart.
3:50:14 — Joe Rogan and Sanjay Gupta.
4:15:19 — Ultramarathons.
4:25:21 — Chocolate.
4:33:34 — One Shared World.
4:48:37 — Hope for the future.

SOCIAL:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman.
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman.
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman.
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman.
- Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman.
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

The U.S. government has warned for years that products from Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co. pose a national security risk. Now, a Bloomberg investigation has found a key piece of evidence explaining why. Bloomberg’s Jamie Tarabay reports on “Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia.”

Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated a new attack technique that makes it possible to leverage a device’s Bluetooth component to directly extract network passwords and manipulate traffic on a Wi-Fi chip, putting billions of electronic devices at risk of stealthy attacks.

The novel attacks work against the so-called “combo chips,” which are specialized chips that are equipped to handle different types of radio wave-based wireless communications, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE.

“We provide empirical evidence that coexistence, i.e., the coordination of cross-technology wireless transmissions, is an unexplored attack surface,” a group of researchers from the Technical University of Darmstadt’s Secure Mobile Networking Lab and the University of Brescia said in a new paper.