Japan last month, held cyber defense exercises with five Pacific island nations in an effort to shore up cybersecurity defenses in the region.  The cybersecurity exercise event, held in Guam in mid-February, was a first for Japan.  Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications led the event, including government officials and network providers from Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau, with Fiji and Tonga on-site observers.

German authorities recently announced that they have taken down a major online marketplace for drugs, cybercrime services, and fraudulently obtained credit card data.  Investigators seized the Nemesis Market platform’s server infrastructure in Germany and Lithuania and cryptocurrency worth 94,000 euros ($102,000).  The authorities noted that the seizure followed an investigation in cooperation with the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation.

Sangeetha Ganesan of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at the R.M.K College of Engineering and Technology in Tamil Nadu, India, explains how JavaScript, a popular web development programming language, allows access to a variety of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and sensors. He points out that the prevalence of this language raises privacy concerns as malicious third parties discover and exploit vulnerabilities.

Researchers at Colorado State University have released a new paper detailing vulnerabilities found in commercial trucking systems. The exploitation of these vulnerabilities could enable hackers to take control of, steal data from, or disrupt entire fleets by spreading malware between vehicles. The study delves into the trucking industry's cybersecurity gaps through Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs). This federally mandated supplemental system tracks hours of service compliance and other metrics for later inspection and is closely linked to vehicle control systems.

Cybersecurity researchers at Florida International University (FIU) warn that websites requesting access to a user's files may be able to bypass antivirus software and launch ransomware attacks. According to a study conducted by the FIU College of Engineering and Computing, free photo editors, tax document assistants, and other online apps that request permission to access a user's media can encrypt and control files. Attackers could then demand a ransom for the files' safe return. The hack is said to work on all three major PC operating systems: Windows, Linux, and macOS.

The ZHAW School of Engineering is part of the EU Horizon "NATWORK" project aimed at developing a cost-effective, energy-efficient, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based 6G cybersecurity and resilience framework with a holistic approach on which intelligent networks and services can be built across sectors. The project's ZHAW team is tasked with developing intelligent and resource-optimized cybersecurity schemes in the edge-to-cloud continuum for future networks.

Researchers have discovered new phishing attacks aimed at delivering the information stealer known as "StrelaStealer." According to a new report published by Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42, the campaigns impact over 100 EU and US organizations. These campaigns involve spam emails with attachments that eventually launch the StrelaStealer DLL payload. To avoid detection, attackers change the initial email attachment file format from one campaign to the next, preventing detection by previously generated signatures or patterns.

A team of researchers, with members from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has launched a new research project aimed at improving network security using tools that analyze information and identify malicious content for subsequent filtering. The two-year DANGER cybersecurity project focuses on cybersecurity for the detection, analysis, and filtering of fake or malicious content in hyperconnectivity environments. This article continues to discuss the DANGER project's objectives. 

The "SmokeLoader" malware has been used in a series of phishing campaigns by financially motivated hackers, primarily against the Ukrainian government and administration organizations. The Ukrainian SSSCIP State Cyber Protection Center (SCPC), in collaboration with Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42, has been tracking phishing campaigns linked to the distribution of the SmokeLoader malware.