This is a great paper on the risks of malicious servers when using password managers: https://zkae.io/. I understood about 2% of it.

You have to dig down in the paper to see that there was pretty good engagement from the password manager developers, once contact was established. That's encouraging, particularly in the light of recent reputational damage suffered by LastPass, and doubts about its future under private equity ownership.

#crypto #passwordmanager #lastpass #dashlane #bitwarden #1password

Great teardown of the Notepad++ breach by Rapid7: https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/tr-chrysalis-backdoor-dive-into-lotus-blossoms-toolkit/

Definitely worth checking your logs for these IoCs. Stealth level is high. Standard AV is unlikely to detect.

#malware #stateactor #lotusblossom #notepadplusplus

Oof. With my legal background, this one hits close to home! 😬

The ICO fined a law firm after data breach and subsequent leak to dark web. Identities of protected victims and witnesses were exposed. All attackers gained access to an old, supposedly archived case management system. (Why was this online?)

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/ethics/dark-web-data-leak

Given the size of the fine (£60k), I would guess this was not a large law firm. Some of the affected individuals may sue, so that's probably not the end of the matter.

#databreach #law #lawfirm #ico #darkweb #exfiltration

Boo. 🙁👎

"an autistic man ... was told he had to stop stacking shelves at a Waitrose store where he had worked as a volunteer for years"

"his placement was stopped when the firm's head office was asked about the possibility of paid work"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c205le1e27zo

Hooray! 🙂👍

"Asda have offered him two five-hour paid shifts a week"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98n53dpzx6o

Asda wins this particular PR skirmish. 🤔

#autism #diversity #inclusion #PR #Waitrose #Asda

Some pretty sane recommendations about password requirements from NIST. Don't make it hard for your users!

NIST Special Publication 800-63B
https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp800-63b.html

It's always sad to see a well-functioning venture killed by friendly fire. I joined the UK's CISP (Cybersecurity Information Sharing Partnership) circa 2017. At that time, CISP had been running for four years.

At its heart, it was an active forum, peopled by information security professionals from diverse public and private sectors in the UK. Was it perfect? No. But professionally, it was an invaluable resource. I found it particularly helpful when investigating issues specific to the legal and maritime sectors, while I managed cybersecurity at international law firm Hill Dickinson. Importantly, much of the information I received and shared on CISP was not available anywhere else, not least information covered by amber/red TLP ratings.

In late 2023, NCSC replaced the forum software with an all-new site based on Microsoft SharePoint. Like many CISP members I was more than willing to attempt to use the new platform. But it quickly became apparent that it was impossible to communicate with the ease we'd previously enjoyed. SharePoint is not forum software.

Active use of CISP evaporated. And today, NCSC has given notice that CISP will be mothballed.

Sad as I am to have lost such a valuable resource (in 2023), I would like to thank all the wonderful people at NCSC that made it happen, and who successfully evangelised its merits. I know your resources are stretched thinly and there's no blame here. If you are ever tasked with recreating the original CISP magic though, count me in.

#CISP #NCSC #eulogy

This is super-super niche, but I just made a little launcher for Visual Studio Code workspaces. Very helpful for quickly opening workspaces based on Windows and/or WSL.

Free & open source: https://github.com/robpomeroy/vscode-launcher

#VSCode #WSL #Windows #Development