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ANCHORAGE (BLOOMBERG) – The first high-level talks between the United States and China since President Joe Biden took office descended immediately into bickering and recriminations, with each side sharply criticising the other over human rights, trade and international alliances. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began his remarks at the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, by…

The Justice Department has charged a Swiss hacker with computer intrusion and identity theft, just over a week after the hacker took credit for helping to break into the online systems of a U.S. security-camera startup. An indictment against 21-year-old Till Kottmann was brought Thursday by a grand jury in the Seattle-based Western District of…

Chinese nation-state hackers have been linked to an attack on the Parliament of Finland that took place last year and led to the compromise of some parliament email accounts. “Some parliament e-mail accounts may have been compromised as a result of the attack, among them e-mail accounts that belong to MPs,” Parliament officials said at…

US and Chinese diplomats met for a second day Friday in Anchorage to discuss relations after a clash in opening statements that laid out the two superpowers’ competing views of the world and spelled a difficult period ahead. The two sides lashed out at each other over human rights and geopolitical ambitions before television cameras…

Cybercrime , Endpoint Security , Fraud Management & Cybercrime Supply Chain Attack Hits Development Environment Akshaya Asokan (asokan_akshaya) • March 19, 2021     Hackers used Trojanized Xcode projects to install backdoors on developers’ devices as part of a supply chain attack, security firm Sentinel Labs reports. Xcode is Apple’s integrated development environment for macOS….

Business Continuity Management / Disaster Recovery , Endpoint Security , Governance & Risk Management Audit Recommends Energy Department Implement Better Protections Scott Ferguson (Ferguson_Writes) • March 19, 2021     The U.S. electrical grid’s distribution systems that deliver electricity directly to customers are increasingly vulnerable to cyberthreats, and the Department of Energy needs to do…

Distribution systems within the U.S. electrical grid are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack, a government watchdog said in a report released Thursday. In the report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that the Department of Energy’s cybersecurity strategy has predominantly focused on generation and transmission systems. The watchdog recommended further attention to risks facing distribution systems,…

Microsoft Tuesday issued instructions and a one-click tool to small businesses with on-premises Exchange servers to patch the vulnerability first disclosed by the company March 2, and which criminals have been using to spy on victims’ communications as well as gain access to other parts of their networks. “We realized that there was a need…

Attacks employing the TrickBot malware continue, leveraging phishing emails as the initial infection vector, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warn. In a joint advisory published on Wednesday, the two agencies revealed that a sophisticated group of cybercrime actors is leveraging a traffic infringement phishing scheme to lure…

Cybercrime , Endpoint Security , Fraud Management & Cybercrime Supply Chain Attack Hits Development Environment Akshaya Asokan (asokan_akshaya) • March 19, 2021     Hackers used Trojanized Xcode projects to install backdoors on developers’ devices as part of a supply chain attack, security firm Sentinel Labs reports. Xcode is Apple’s integrated development environment for macOS….