The US Department of Energy (DoE) recently announced plans to invest $30 million in projects aimed at securing the clean energy infrastructure against cyber threats.  Meant to support the research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of innovative cybersecurity tools, the federal funding is provided as part of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to improve the country’s energy and national security.

According to CISA, the Rapid SCADA open source industrial automation platform is affected by several vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to gain access to sensitive industrial systems, but the flaws remain unpatched.  Rapid SCADA is advertised as ideal for industrial automation and IIoT systems, energy accounting systems, and process control systems.

According to security researcher Eaton Zveare, a series of misconfigurations and security vulnerabilities allowed him to access customer information stored in an email account at Toyota Tsusho Insurance Broker India (TTIBI).  The researcher noted that the unauthorized access was possible because the TTIBI site had a dedicated Eicher Motors subdomain with a premium calculator.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released its fourth annual Year in Review, which highlights the US agency's efforts to protect the nation from cyber and physical threats as well as improve the resilience of critical infrastructure. The 2023 Year in Review delves into the agency's achievements in its cybersecurity, infrastructure security, and emergency communications missions.

The two-volume document, with the overall title "NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-55 Revision 2: Measurement Guide for Information Security," provides guidance on establishing an effective cybersecurity program as well as a flexible approach to developing information security measures to meet an organization's performance objectives. NIST is requesting public feedback on this initial public draft by March 18, 2024. The publication is designed to be used in conjunction with any risk management framework, such as NIST's Cybersecurity Framework or Risk Management Framework.

Khalifa University researchers developed a novel approach to improve Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) communication security and robustness. The team's proposed design includes a device authentication protocol to ensure that only authorized devices can connect to and communicate with the UAV system, protecting against unauthorized access and security breaches. This article continues to discuss the team's efforts to enhance UAV communication security. 

Environmental services websites are becoming major targets for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, with Cloudflare researchers reporting a 61,839 percent year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter of 2023. The significant increase in HTTP DDoS attacks against the environmental services industry coincided with the United Nations' COP28 climate conference, held in the United Arab Emirates from November 30 to December 12, according to Cloudflare's Q4 2023 DDoS report.

According to cyber threat analysts at China's Qianxin X Laboratory, over 100,000 Android TVs and set-top boxes have been infected with unknown malware. The researchers discovered a large-scale cybercrime gang based in Brazil dubbed Bigpanzi that targets Android TVs, set-top boxes, and eCos devices. The malware used by the group is preloaded with weaponization tools for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, transforming TVs into zombies in a massive botnet. Compromised devices also serve as operational nodes for illicit streaming.

Foxsemicon, one of Taiwan's largest semiconductor manufacturers has suffered a cyberattack, allegedly carried out by the LockBit ransomware gang. The hackers hijacked the company's website and left a threatening message, claiming that they had stolen its customers' personal information and would publish it on their darknet site if the company refused to pay. They claimed to have accessed five terabytes of the company's data.

Due to a high-severity vulnerability that exposed credentials, GitHub has rotated a number of its keys. The vulnerability, disclosed through its bug bounty program, would give attackers access to credentials within a production container. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) classified the flaw as an unsafe reflection exploit that could allow hackers to conduct Remote Code Execution (RCE) on compromised systems. This article continues to discuss the potential exploitation and impact of the security vulnerability as well as GitHub's response to it.