cyber weapon

Pierluigi Paganini February 27, 2013
Stuxnet was dated 2005, Symantec discovered earlier version 0,5

Rivers of words have been written on the popular Stuxnet virus, there have been many hypotheses, sometimes contradictory, about its paternity but the only certainty seemed to be the date of its creation, but suddenly the certainty as happens in the best thriller movies has been called into question. The authors of Stuxnet, the malware […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 11, 2013
SCADA and critical infrastructures, in … security

According last report published by The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA)   “ENISA Threat Landscape – Responding to the Evolving Threat Environment” that summarizes principal cyber threats, critical infrastructures represent privileged targets for emerging trends. Different agents such as terrorists, state-sponsored hackers or hacktivists could be interested in attack control systems within a critical […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 03, 2013
Hackers, a need for cyber security

Ten years, that is the time interval that has totally changed the worldwide perception for the role of hacker, these specialists were once seen as shady individuals to avoid, today they are highly sought professionals in both private business and government sectors. Which are the reasons for their success? The world has acquired awareness on […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 19, 2012
Iran, the cyber shooting range, new malware detected

On December 16th the Iranian Maher center issued an advisory warning of a new “targeted data wiping” malware discovered during an investigation. First analysis of the center revealed that the malicious code has a simple as efficient design that allow it to wipe files on different drives in various predefined times. The malware wipes disk partitions […]

Pierluigi Paganini November 25, 2012
W32.Narilam, the malware that hit databases in the Middle East

Symantec has published an interesting alert on a new agent named W32.Narilam that has been designed to damage corporate databases. Recently we have always thought to malware as dangerous agents used to steal information such as banking credentials or to be used in cyber espionage operation. This is one of the different ways to monetize the […]

Pierluigi Paganini November 23, 2012
The Flame is “ignited” between the U.S. and France

French weekly news magazine L’Express has reported that offices of France’s former president Sarkozy were hit by a cyber espionage campaign back in May 2012. Few days before the second round of the presidential election won by Hollande the President’s office was infected by Flame malware, within the compromise PCs also the one of Sarkozy’s […]

Pierluigi Paganini November 13, 2012
Reflections on Infomation Warfare Conference 2012

Last week I attended the third Annual Information Warfare Conference, an interesting opportunity to understand the evolution of cyber warfare scenario specifically for my Italian context. One of the main reflection raised is the limited knowledge on the social-economic impact of the concept of cyber weapon, the majority of governments are currently working to improve […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 16, 2012
Flame, miniFlame, the mystery of an on going cyber espionage campaign

Last May The Iranian Computer Emergency Response Team (MAHER) detected a new targeted malware which hit the country, that has been named Flame, also known as Flamer or Skywiper, due the name of  its main attack module. MAHER wasn’t the only one to detect the agent, also Kaspersky Lab and CrySyS Lab identified the new dangerous malware, recognized […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 08, 2012
Why do we need hackers today?

In the last decade the role of hacker is deeply changed, these strange characters were once kept away from government affairs, but the scenario is reversed, there has been an unprecedented technological evolution and principal countries have discovered a new way of making war, a new way of spying. Today the hacker is the most […]

Pierluigi Paganini August 19, 2012
Shamoon Malware, cyber espionage tool, cyber weapon or …

Shamoon is a new threat that scares security experts, it is able to destroy files on victim’s PC and overwrite the master boot record of its disks. The cyberspace has no peace, every time a malware or a botnet is detected and neutralized a new cyber threat is coming, this time a new agent scare […]