Widespread hacking continued to be on everyone's minds this week, as countless companies and organizations continued to struggle with a slew of major hacks. Now that Microsoft's patches have been out for awhile, an array of nation state and criminal actors are getting more aggressive about exploiting a set of Microsoft Exchange Server bugs that were already under active attack by the Chinese group Hafnium. Meanwhile, the White House is mulling a response to Russia's recent, high-profile SolarWinds espionage campaign that compromised data at numerous United States government agencies and private companies around the world. For the Biden administration, the risk is that too strong a retaliation could erode norms and be seen as hypocritical given that the US and virtually every government engages in digital espionage.
Criminal hackers have also continued their extortion rampage related to a breach of the network equipment and firewall maker Accellion. The world of digital chess is in an uproar, and stooping to digital harassment, over accusations from a Twitch and YouTube chess star that an upstart challenger cheated in a match the master lost. And Google researchers developed a proof-of-concept browser exploit to raise awareness about the threat speculative execution attacks, like those exploiting the infamous “Spectre” vulnerability, still pose to the web three years later.
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