Here's a short overview of the most interesting cybernews that made headlines this week.

Supply chain compromises are an increasing threat that impacts a range of sectors, with threat actors leveraging access to support several motivations including financial gain (such as with the Kaseya ransomware attack) and espionage. Throughout 2020, an operation attributed to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR) by the U.S.

In the DevOps and DevSecOps Introduction, What is DevOps, we reviewed how our security teams overlay onto DevOps for visibility and increased security throughout the software lifecycle. This article explores DevSecOps during the planning phase of the project and why it’s important for developers to be trained on how to help protect the software they are writing from Free Open-Source Software “FOSS” risks and supply chain attacks.

In the world of heinous and sophisticated crimes, cryptography is the next-gen solution needed to resolve the concern. Whitebox cryptography combines encryption and obfuscation methods to embed secret keys in application code. The aim is to combine code and key in such a way that an attacker cannot distinguish between the two and the new "white-box" program can be safely executed in an insecure environment.

Since 2009, more than 12 years ago, all major Linux distributions have been incorporating a high severity security hole that remained unnoticed until just recently. The vulnerability and exploit, dubbed “PwnKit” (CVE-2021-4034), uses the vulnerable “pkexec” tool, and allows a local user to gain root system privileges on the affected host. Polkit (formerly PolicyKit) is a component for controlling system-wide privileges in Unix-like operating systems.

Cryptocurrency mining has become very popular among malicious actors that aim to profit by exploiting cloud attack surfaces. Exposed Docker APIs have become a common target for cryptominers to mine various cryptocurrencies. According to the Google Threat Horizon report published Nov. 29, 2021, 86% of compromised Google Cloud instances were used to perform cryptocurrency mining.

Threat actors go to great lengths to hide the intentions of the malware they produce. For instance, binaries are often encrypted or packed. Typically, encrypting binaries is enough to thwart automated analysis platforms such as Cuckoo or other automated malware sandboxes. The implication is that automated detection of malicious programs might not be successful.

Today’s privacy and security conversations often happen in silos, but key privacy principles from decades ago remind us that they are intertwined, especially in the face of today’s risks. January 28, 2022, marks 15 years since the first Data Protection Day was proclaimed in Europe and 13 years since Data Privacy Day was first recognized by the United States. Since then, dozens more countries recognize the day, including Canada and Israel.

Before we talk about design patterns for Open Policy Agent (OPA) (what they are, why they’re beneficial, what their key ideas are, and how you might try to see them in action with sample data/apps in Styra Declarative Authorization Service (DAS) Free), it’s helpful to start with some background. When we designed the OPA at Styra, we aimed to make it flexible enough to solve every authorization and policy problem in the cloud-native space (and beyond).

Building an application security program can be overwhelming. The steady stream of content encouraging teams to shift left is inspiring, but it doesn’t help you get started. Looking toward organizations with mature AppSec initiatives can make the gap seem insurmountable — all while an actionable plan remains elusive. Like anything else in software development, application security is a journey. A journey that’s much more enjoyable with some guiding principles.