Czech journalists claim to have identified another local company part of the Intellexa umbrella—Czech Sigi Consulting. The company's CEO was Juval Rabin, the son of former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin.

https://www.investigace.cz/ceska-firma-intellexa-predator-spyware/

If someone comes to me today preaching about “post-quantum” security issues, I’ll remind them of the current state of security: the npm ecosystem gets abused daily, CI pipelines run left and right with full access to cloud services, so-called security devices like F5 and Ivanti are exposed (and compromised) to the internet, mailboxes get compromised just to change an IBAN in a PDF, and a simple phone call is still enough to get someone to hand over an MFA code.

But yes, by all means, let’s focus on post-quantum threats while handing AI tools SSH access like it’s a feature, not a confession.

#cybersecurity #stateoftheworld

Years ago, we've published an investigation into one core member of REvil, together with @maxzierer.bsky.social and @kaibiermann.bsky.social

Now, german authorities put out a Wanted poster for Mr. Shchukin

https://www.bka.de/DE/IhreSicherheit/Fahndungen/Personen/BekanntePersonen/CC_BW/DMS/Sachverhalt.html

Here's our reporting from back then
https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2021-10/ransomware-group-revil-member-hacker-russia-investigation

RE: https://social.heise.de/@heiseonlineenglish/116316847500488516

“Oh, we murdered 100 kids? Oh, that's unfortunate.

We just had some stale data in our Palantir Project Maven data lake that was used by our ‘highly accelerated, software-supported targeting process’. We'll clear the cache sometimes.”

I teach cybersecurity. And I genuinely don't know what to tell my students after this one. Federal reviewers spent years trying to get basic encryption documentation from Microsoft for its GCC High government cloud. They couldn't get it. One reviewer called the system a "pile of spaghetti pies," with data traveling from point A to point B the way you'd get from Chicago to New York: a bus to St. Louis, a ferry to Pittsburgh, and a flight to Newark. Each leg is a potential hijacking. They knew this. They said this out loud in writing. Then they approved it anyway in December 2024, because too many agencies were already using it. 🔐 That's not a security review. That's a hostage negotiation. Two things in this story should make every CISO and CIO uncomfortable:

🧩 Microsoft built its federal cloud on top of decades of legacy code that it apparently can't fully document itself
👮 "Digital escorts" often ex-military with minimal software engineering backgrounds are the firewall between Chinese engineers working on the system and classified U.S. networks 🤦🏻‍♂️

The scariest line in the whole ProPublica investigation isn't the "pile of shit" quote. It's this: FedRAMP determined that refusing authorization wasn't feasible because agencies were already using the product. Read that again. The security review process reached a conclusion based on sunk cost, not risk. Ex Post Facto Fallacy

If that logic holds, the compliance framework is just documentation theater. And right now, CISA is being hollowed out, so there are fewer people left to even run the theater.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/03/federal-cyber-experts-called-microsofts-cloud-a-pile-of-shit-approved-it-anyway/
#Cybersecurity #Microsoft #FedRAMP #Leadership #RiskManagement #security #privacy #cloud #infosec

Valve: “We need a credit card on file to prove you’re 18”

Me: “My account is 23 years old”

Valve: “That just proves your account is old”

Me: “A credit card just proves you know someone with a credit card”