Adam Janofsky
Editorial Director, The Record by Recorded Future
Articles By This Author
Teenage Twitter hacker pleads guilty, will serve 3 years in prison
A teenager who was arrested in July and accused of being the “mastermind” behind a high-profile attack involving Twitter agreed to plead guilty on Tuesday to fraud charges in Florida. Graham Ivan Clark, now 18, will serve a three-year prison sentence, followed by three years of probation. The agreement’s six years of total supervision are the maximum allowed under the state’s “youthful offender” laws, though if Clark violates his probation he could face a minimum ten-year sentence in adult prison…
Double extortion is becoming ransomware’s new normal
According to an analysis of data collected by Recorded Future, the number of victims posted to ransomware extortion sites quadrupled from November to December last year, and has remained at high levels in 2021. What started as a novelty at the beginning of last year has grown into an everyday occurrence that ensnares dozens of companies every week. Some studies suggest that this double extortion trend has reached the point where it’s more common than not in ransomware attacks. A report by cybersecurity firm Coveware found that 70% of ransomware attacks in the fourth quarter of 2020 involved the threat to release stolen data, up from 50% in the third quarter….
Cybersecurity guru Dan Geer on quantum computing, the future of security, and running a farm
For someone who thinks deeply about the future of technology, Dr. Dan Geer lives a surprisingly traditional life. In addition to working as a senior fellow at In-Q-Tel, the nonprofit venture arm of the CIA, Geer runs a small farm in a “pretty rural” part of Tennessee and his only phone is a landline. When I caught up with Geer towards the end of last year, he was in the middle of tweaking his farming plans due to disruptions from COVID-19—more of a focus on farmers’ markets, less emphasis on selling to restaurants. But our conversation quickly turned to his long career in cybersecurity, and how much has changed since he entered the field…
Cyber Command: ‘No evidence’ that SolarWinds attackers compromised DoD networks
As the Biden administration assesses the fallout from the Russia-linked hacking campaign that has been called “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” the key military command involved in the response said Wednesday that attackers did not seem to compromise Defense networks. On Wednesday, the executive director of U.S. Cyber Command, which is tasked with defending DoD networks and has also been involved in offensive cyber operations, said that while the attackers had a grasp on department infrastructure, they did not seem to successfully compromise it….
Cyberattacks targeting K-12 schools hit record levels in 2020
K-12 cybersecurity incidents have steadily climbed in recent years, but 2020 was especially bad in terms of both the quantity and severity of attacks, according to a study published Wednesday by organizations that have closely tracked such incidents since 2017. There were 160 disclosed K-12 cyber incidents in the third quarter of 2020, when schools adopted new learning platforms and deployed thousands of new devices to students and educators, compared to just 49 incidents in the first quarter of the year…
How a push to remote work could help fix cybersecurity’s diversity problem
Women are underrepresented in technology jobs, and the discrepancy is even worse for cybersecurity roles specifically. Although there’s no definitive statistics on the subject, recent studies have pegged that women account for somewhere between 11% and 20% of the cybersecurity industry. At Monday’s panel, which was hosted by seed-stage cybersecurity fund YL Ventures and held to coincide with International Women’s Day, cybersecurity executives said they had some hope that changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic could make it easier for cybersecurity teams to diversify their ranks…
White House Cybersecurity Adviser Wants a ‘Cleanliness Rating’ for Software Security
Policymakers are considering a number of changes to the nation’s cybersecurity posture as a result of the SolarWinds supply chain attack discovered late last year, including data breach notification laws and greater oversight of the nation’s critical infrastructure. In one of her first public appearances since joining the Biden White House, Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger floated another idea from an unlikely place: New York City dining establishments…
What It’s Like To Run a Tech Giant’s Security Team Without Ever Setting Foot in the Office
Mark Adams was appointed Adobe’s chief security officer about four months ago after serving in the same role for four years at Blizzard Entertainment. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, his onboarding process has been untraditional, to say the least. For one, he hasn’t had a chance yet to visit the company’s physical offices. Instead, his calendar has looked like an ultramarathon of video conferences—days with a dozen back-to-back meetings during the first month to get to know his team and understand the company’s priorities…
Cybersecurity Failings Get Top Billing Among Lawmakers and Federal Watchdogs
Federal cybersecurity is in a worse place than it was two years ago, with agencies failing to implement more than 750 recommended changes, including ones that could have prevented or helped the government respond to the recent Russian cyberattack on dozens of public and private organizations. That’s the assessment the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, gave Tuesday in its “high risk” report that it issues every two years to Congress….
China-Linked Hackers Target India’s Power Grid Amid Border Clashes
Over the course of the last year, hackers with suspected links to the Chinese government targeted a large portion of India’s power sector as the two countries engaged in border skirmishes that resulted in dozens of casualties, according to new research from Recorded Future. Ten distinct power sector organizations, including four of the country’s five Regional Load Dispatch Centres, have been identified as likely targets. The centers play a key role in operating India’s power grid by balancing electricity supply and demand…