Cybersecurity & Technology - International Studies of Strategic and Geopolitics

GuLoader Malware Utilizing New Techniques to Evade Security Software

27Dec

By ISSGNo Comments

Cybersecurity, Cybersecurity & Technology

GuLoader Malware Utilizing New Techniques to Evade Security Software

Cybersecurity researchers have exposed a wide variety of techniques adopted by an advanced malware downloader called GuLoader to evade security software. "New shellcode anti-analysis technique attempts to thwart researchers and hostile environments by scanning entire process memory for any virtual machine (VM)-related strings," CrowdStrike researchers Sarang Sonawane and Donato Onofri said in a technical write-up published last week. GuLoader, also called CloudEyE, is a Visual Basic Script (VBS) downloader that's used to distribute remote access trojans such as Remcos on infected machines. It was first detected in the wild in 2019. In November 2021, a JavaScript malware strain dubbed RATDispenser emerged as a conduit for dropping GuLoader by means of a Base64-encoded VBScript dropper. ...

Data governance, AI among the past year’s analytics trends

27Dec

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Data Governance, Cybersecurity & Technology

Data governance, AI among the past year’s analytics trends

Organizations recognized data governance as an enabler of self-service BI and a way to keep data safe as well as that AI is best used to augment humans rather than replace them. Data governance was one of the major trends that shaped analytics in 2022. Data governance isn't glamorous like augmented intelligence, machine learning or natural language processing. It's the grunt work of analytics. But after many organizations suddenly realized the importance of data-informed decision-making at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic -- and have continued to recognize its value as world events like the war in Ukraine and repeated supply chain disruptions have resulted in ongoing economic uncertainty -- data governance is starting to be a critical need. Some organizations hastily deployed a...

The PLA’s Strategic Support Force and AI Innovation

26Dec

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Technology and Innovation

The PLA’s Strategic Support Force and AI Innovation

In recent years, as progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has accelerated, nearly every major power has pledged to develop advanced AI capabilities and effectively integrate AI into their armed forces. Yet none have pursued those efforts as purposefully as China. Not only has Beijing issued an ambitious plan to make China the world’s leading AI power by 2030, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has unveiled an aggressive innovation-driven strategy for the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Likewise, Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the CCP, has consistently emphasized China’s commitment to AI development and “intelligent warfare”– most recently in his landmark report this fall to the 20th Party Congress. If China’s strategic ambitions for AI are clear, ho...

NATO approves 2023 strategic direction for new innovation accelerator

26Dec

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Military Technology

NATO approves 2023 strategic direction for new innovation accelerator

On 12 December 2022, the Board of Directors of NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) agreed that energy resilience, secure information sharing and sensing and surveillance will be the priority areas of focus for DIANA’s work on Emerging and Disrupting Technologies (EDTs) in 2023. The three areas make up the backbone of DIANA’s Strategic Direction for 2023. The Strategic Direction will drive the identification of DIANA’s first defence and security challenges, for which dual-use technological solutions must be found. “This strategic direction gives the DIANA Executive clear guidance on the development of pilot programmes that we will launch in Spring 2023. These programmes will benefit both civilian and military communities” commented David Van Weel, DIANA’s i...