Author: HackWatchit

Kent Ickler // As a start to a series on Windows Administration in the eyes of a security-conscious “Windows Guy” I invite you on configuring AD DS PSOs (Password Security Objects) and how they can be implemented in your environment to enforce acceptable password restrictions beyond what native AD GPO supports. The Arbitrary: A drive for longer passwords. About the time you’ve finished reviewing your SOX-DSS-HIPAA-Omnibus-PCI-CJIS-FBI-CIA-BYOBeer audit findings, your empathic auditor reveals the progressive requirement of a “15 character minimum password.” Possibly because last year’s policy change and enforcement of a “14 character minimum password” was too much fun to…

The Defense Department faces threat actors that are smarter, faster and more advanced than ever before. The Government Accountability Office reported that federal agencies faced 32,211 information security incidents in fiscal year 2023 — a nearly 10% increase over the previous year as noted in last year’s Federal Information Security Modernization Act annual report. But even more alarming than that is the speed and scale of attacks. Threats from hacking groups like Salt Typhoon have targeted critical infrastructure. The Chinese organization breached at least eight U.S. telecommunications providers in November of 2024 as part of an international intelligence collection campaign.…

78% of public sector organizations are operating with significant security debt, flaws left unaddressed for more than a year, according to Veracode. 55% are burdened with ‘critical’ security debt, representing long-standing vulnerabilities with severe risk potential. Public sector flaw remediation timeline based on survival analysis (Source: Veracode) Public sector security debt exceeds industry average The research reveals that public sector entities require an average of 315 days to fix half their software vulnerabilities, significantly higher than the overall average of 252 days. This 63-day delay creates substantial windows of opportunity for potential application-layer attacks and data breaches. The data further…

Cyfirma researchers this week profiled MISSION2025, a Chinese state-sponsored threat group tied to APT41. Active since at least 2012, the group runs cyberespionage and financially driven campaigns across more than 40 industries worldwide. Its operations closely track with China’s economic priorities, especially the ‘Made in China 2025’ strategy, with a focus on stealing intellectual property, conducting corporate espionage, and compromising critical infrastructure. The group operates under a long list of aliases, including APT41, BARIUM, Blackfly, Brass Typhoon, BrazenBamboo, Double Dragon, Earth Baku, Earth Freybug, Earth Longzhi, Gref, Hodoo, IQGRABBER, Mana, Mr. StealYoShoes, PassCV, RedGolf, SparklingGoblin, UNC78, UNIT2025, Winnti, and the…

We asked seven leading AI models to analyze the most plausible scenario for how the conflict between Israel and Iran will play out.

Denmark’s Ministry of Digital Government is phasing out its use of Microsoft Office… to switch to open source alternatives like LibreOffice instead. Why? Because relying too heavily on a US tech giant for your nation’s digital infrastructure is starting to feel a bit… well, risky. Denmark’s relationship with the US is under strain, following Donald Trump’s clearly stated ambition to seize control of Greenland, and recent reports of increased spying by the States on Greenland and Denmark. Sign up to our free newsletter.Security news, advice, and tips. You can’t blame Denmark for being concerned. Its government’s sensitive data is nestled…

 Carrie Roberts // ADVISORY: The techniques and tools referenced within this blog post may be outdated and do not apply to current situations. However, there is still potential for this blog entry to be used as an opportunity to learn and to possibly update or integrate into modern tools and techniques. Getting a shell using a malicious Outlook rule is an awesome tool during a pentest and great fun! Nick Landers had a great post including enough information to make this happen. Although it left a few things for the reader to figure out and there was one gotcha. In this post…

After this week’s attention to META and Yandex localhost abuses, it is time to revisit a core feature/option of protective DNS that offers a feel-good moment to those that applied this safety technique long before this abuse report came about. The in-depth report that triggered this is: Disclosure: Covert Web-to-App Tracking via Localhost on Android. I will address the META approach in a separate blog article, but here I want to focus on the Yandex approach to tracking users, specifically with the intent to bypass modern privacy standards and public policy. As with the vast majority of transactions online, including…

and medium companies achieve success in building Data and ML platforms, building AI platforms is now profoundly challenging. This post discusses three key reasons why you should be cautious about building AI platforms and proposes my thoughts on promising directions instead. Disclaimer: It is based on personal views and does not apply to cloud providers and data/ML SaaS companies. They should instead double down on the research of AI platforms. Where I am Coming From In my previous article From Data Platform to ML Platform in Toward Data Science, I shared how a data platform evolves into an ML platform.…