Short Takes – 12-18-23

Microsoft Seized the Us Infrastructure Of The Storm-1152 Cybercrime Group. SecurityAffairs.com article. Pull quote: ““As we’ve said before, no disruption is complete in one day. Going after cybercrime requires persistence and ongoing vigilance to disrupt new malicious infrastructure. While today’s legal action will impact Storm-1152’s operations, we expect other threat actors will adapt their techniques as a result.””

Helping Ukraine Is Forcing the United States to Produce More Weapons. Hudson.org article. Pull quote: “Below are several more highlights that show how supporting Ukraine is pushing the American defense industrial base to produce high quantities of weapons in a short amount of time.” Much (most?) of the ‘military aid’ being sent to Ukraine is money spent in facilities in the US.

Voyager 1 In Trouble as Engineers Scramble to Debug Issue with Flight Data System. Hackaday.com article. Pull quote: “This situation is not unlike a similar situation on Voyager 2 back in 2010 when the returned data showed a data pattern shift. Here resetting the memory of the FDS resolved the garbled data issue and the engineers could breathe a sigh of relief. This time the fix does not appear so straightforward, as a reset of the FDS on Voyager 1 did not resolve the issue with, forcing the team to consider other causes. What massively complicates the debugging is that each transmission to and from the spacecraft takes approximately 22.5 hours each way, making for an agonizing 45 hour wait to receive the outcome of a command.”

QNAP VioStor NVR vulnerability actively exploited by malware botnet. BleepingComputer.com article. Pull quote: “Since version 5.0.0 was released nearly a decade ago, it is deduced that the Infected Slurs botnet targets legacy VioStor NVR models that never updated their firmware after initial setup.”

Americans abandoning neighborhoods due to rising flood risk, study finds. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: “That report emphasized the spreading danger of doom loops across the country, in particular as insurance companies withdraw from areas facing climate risks, leading to a cycle of declining home values, leading to fewer new loans being made to buy, build or fix up local houses.”

Congress stares down brutal January. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: “As members note, the coming political season has already created issues for lawmakers as it has truncated the 2024 congressional calendar. The Senate is set to only be in session for 29 weeks next year, compared to the 34 weeks that were slated for 2023.”

Bird Flu Is Still Causing Havoc. Here’s the Latest. NYTimes.com article. Pull quote: ““We’re worried about these viruses jumping into mammals and then maybe more specifically into humans,” Dr. Poulson said. “I just always like to point out that wildlife is important for its own sake. And this has proved to be a really devastating virus to mammalian and avian species.””

A top-secret Chinese spy satellite just launched on a supersized rocket. ArsTechnica.com article. Pull quote: “Although Chinese officials did not disclose the exact capabilities of Yaogan-41, it would almost certainly have the sensitivity to continually track US Navy ships and allied vessels across a wide swath of the Indo-Pacific. Aside from its use of the larger payload fairing, the Long March 5 rocket used to launch Yaogan-41 can haul approximately 31,000 pounds (14 metric tons) of payload mass into the orbit it reached on Friday's launch.”

After Weeks of Warnings, Iceland Volcano Erupts in Plumes of Fire. NYTimes.com article. Pull quote: “But after volcanologists had a chance to fly over the site of the eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula, the immediate situation did not appear as dire as initially feared, though the size of the eruption was larger than anticipated and the direction of the lava’s flow still unpredictable.”