Talos takes home top research honors at Virus Bulletin conference
Summary: Cisco Talos researchers Paul Rascagneres and Warren Mercer received the Péter Ször Award at the Virus Bulletin conference for their article on the Sea Turtle DNS hijacking campaign, which Virus Bulletin calls the best piece of technical security research published each year. The research described a state-sponsored actor that modified DNS name records to send users to actor-controlled servers, compromising at least 40 organizations across 13 countries, primarily in the Middle East and North Africa, with activity possibly beginning as early as January 2017.
What's compelling: Sea Turtle compromised a country's code top-level domain registry to reach additional government entities, and DHS warned on Jan. 24 that attackers could use redirected traffic to obtain encryption certificates and reuse them inside an organization's own domains - so the trust anchor itself, not just the endpoint, is the target.
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