The Blacklynx Brief - Vol.4

Welcome to the Blacklynx Brief for the week of August 28 , 2023.

We’re a brand new publication and we need YOU (yes YOU!) to help us grow.

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Currently we’re at 92 subscribers (i’ll keep you updated on the stats - might be fun !).

We’re kicking of the newsletter with all the latest from the cyber world. Strap in !

Cybersecurity News

Belgian Government Bond Leak

There was a lot of fuss made here in Belgium on the Government Bond the Belgian government has issued last week. On the main website where you could sign up for this bond there was a serious issue in the beginning of the week. Due to some sloppy programming everybody was able to lookup the address of everyone in Belgium just by typing in someone’s name. They changed the authentication method after this. This leak was there for 12 years - it’s only due to the success of this bond that it got noticed.

We’re not alone

We have a few Dutch readers. It’s time to wipe the grin off their face because the Dutch government has the exact same issue only in the country’s land registry database, where you can perform a similar maneuver in order to find out exactly where someone lives. Here’s it’s also not clear how many years this breach was there.

Dwell Time Decreases

According to the “2023 Active Adversary Report for Tech Leaders” - a new report by Sophos, the median “attack dwell time” decreased from 10 to 8 days. “Dwell Time” is the time between the start of an attack and the moment an organization realises it’s being attacked. In 2022 this dwell time decreased from 15 to 10 days. So yes, there is progress.

For ransomware cases which made up 69% of all investigated cases, the median dwell time was five days. Because they tend to be rather disruptive and noisy they will get noticed a lot quicker. Nearly half of ransomware attacks were detected on either a Friday or a Saturday

The United States hacks QakBot

A big story this week was the news that the US Government had performed a coordinated takedown of the “Qakbot”. This is a very complex family of malware that was being used by multiple malware operations to lay the groundwork for ransomware infections. All infected computers together form a so-called “botnet”. This might be regular user’s PCs that are being used to perform malicious activities from a central console. It’s quite infamous because it’s the number one method to “load” ransomware onto a system.

You get infected by opening up dodgy attachments pretending to be legitimate and time-sensitive.

The operation was called “Duckhunt” (quack quack) and the numbers are staggering. Last year alone about 700.000 infected pc’s were found - 200.000 of them in the US.

The US government was able to seize control of this botnet and pushed an “uninstaller” to all these machines - effectively removing the malicious software from the devices. They also managed to seize about 9 million dollars in crypto payments.

Further reading

–The DOJ’s application for a search warrant application tied to Qakbot uninstall file (PDF)

–The search warrant application connected to QakBot server infrastructure in the United States (PDF)

–The government’s application for a warrant to seize virtual currency from the QakBot operators (PDF)

–A technical breakdown from SecureWorks

London’s Metropolitan Police Hack

A cyber intrusion at one of the suppliers of the London Metropolitan Police has caused the compromise of personal information of about 50.000 London police officers and personnel. The attackers have gotten their hands on names, ranks, photos and salary information. I won’t have to tell you this might be a huge nasty problem. Luckily no home addresses.

Rackspace Ransomware

It’s very seldom that we get a glimpse into what a cyber attack has really cost a company. From official filings Rackspace made ( a hosting company) we know exactly what their financial cost was in reaction to a ransomware incident they experienced last year : 10 million dollars

- www.govinfosecurity.com: Ransomware Attack Cleanup Costs: $10M So Far for Rackspace
- ir.rackspace.com: Rackspace Technology Q2 2023 Earnings Presentation - ir.rackspace.com: Form 10-Q RACKSPACE TECHNOLOGY, INC.

That’s it for this weeks cyber news - on to the AI part …

AI News

MidJourney's In-Painting Feature

MidJourney has introduced an in-painting feature that allows users to selectively modify regions of an image. For instance, you can change a character's hair color or clothing style. The feature also offers better image quality and detail when the entire image is selected for variation. MidJourney is also working on more in-painting features and a version 6 with better text understanding, controllability, and resolution. Watch it in action here

Ideogram AI Art

Ideogram AI, is the newest AI art generator tool. It’s developed by a team from Google Brain, UC Berkeley, CMU, and the University of Toronto and it allows users to add text to AI-generated images. The platform offers a variety of customization options and has been praised for its quality.

Leonardo's New Model

Leonardo AI - which is another AI graphics creation engine - has added a new model called "Anime Pastel Dream," which can generate unique and visually appealing images. The model is available under the featured models section in the Leonardo app.

AI Art and Copyright Laws

This is an important one. A U.S. federal judge has ruled that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted if it is solely machine-generated without human input. However, cases where human touch is involved in the creation process are still under consideration.

AI in Marketing

Artificial intelligence is also changing the marketing world. HubSpot has released a free report on AI trends for marketers in 2023, which covers how AI can help in content creation, data analysis, and ROI improvement. This is of course a lead magnet - so if you click this you’ll be in their sales funnel. Those marketing guys can’t help themselves.

YouTube's AI Initiatives

YouTube is partnering with Universal Music Group to explore the ethical use of AI in the music industry. They are also testing a new search feature that allows users to hum a song to identify it.

AI Speech Models

Eleven Labs has introduced a new version of their multilingual speech model, which supports nearly 30 languages. Meta has also released a seamless M4T model that offers various translation services.

OpenAI's Fine-Tuning

OpenAI has introduced fine-tuning for GPT-3.5 Turbo, allowing users to customize the model for specific use-cases. However, fine-tuning is more expensive than using the base model. So yes , there’s that !

That’s it for us this week.

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Warm regards, and see you next week !