Attacking Machine Learning Systems

The field of machine learning (ML) security—and corresponding adversarial ML—is rapidly advancing as researchers develop sophisticated techniques to perturb, disrupt, or steal the ML model or data. It’s a heady time; because we know so little about the security of these systems, there are many opportunities for new researchers to publish in this field. In many ways, this circumstance reminds me of the cryptanalysis field in the 1990. And there is a lesson in that similarity: the complex mathematical attacks make for good academic papers, but we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that insecure software will be the likely attack vector for most ML systems…

February 6, 2023
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Hackers Use RMM Software to Breach Federal Agencies

Cybercriminals recently breached U.S. federal agencies using remote monitoring and management (RMM) software as part of a widespread campaign. The malicious campaign began in June 2022 or earlier and was detected a few months later, according to an advisory from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the […]

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January 28, 2023
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US Cyber Command Operations During the 2022 Midterm Elections

The head of both US Cyber Command and the NSA, Gen. Paul Nakasone, broadly discussed that first organization’s offensive cyber operations during the runup to the 2022 midterm elections. He didn’t name names, of course:

We did conduct operations persistently to make sure that our foreign adversaries couldn’t utilize infrastructure to impact us,” said Nakasone. “We understood how foreign adversaries utilize infrastructure throughout the world. We had that mapped pretty well. And we wanted to make sure that we took it down at key times.”

Nakasone noted that Cybercom’s national mission force, aided by NSA, followed a “campaign plan” to deprive the hackers of their tools and networks. “Rest assured,” he said. “We were doing operations well before the midterms began, and we were doing operations likely on the day of the midterms.” And they continued until the elections were certified, he said…

January 25, 2023
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