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Manoj Balachandran shared this“A 46-year-old Romanian national found guilty of hacking into an Oregon state government office and other cyberattacks was sentenced on Tuesday to 56 months in prison. Catalin Dragomir pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of obtaining information from a protected computer in February. The sentencing is a big win for prosecutors, who have rarely nabbed hackers accused of breaching municipal government offices. Dragomir was arrested in Romania in November 2024 and brought to the U.S. last year to face charges for hacking into the network belonging to Oregon’s Office of Emergency Management. He had faced up to seven years in prison.”Romanian national sentenced to more than 4 years for hacking Oregon government systemsRomanian national sentenced to more than 4 years for hacking Oregon government systems
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“AI, which makes so many things easier, is also helping criminals commit cybercrime. That’s one of several trends showing up in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s latest report on internet crime complaints. As cybercrime continues to soar, young people and crypto investors are being hit harder, and more scammers are impersonating government officials. Here are four big takeaways from the report: Cybercriminals embrace AI The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center says it received more than 22,000 complaints of scams related to AI last year, with the victims’ losses totaling around $893 million. This is the first year the FBI has broken out data for AI-related crimes. With AI, fraudulent communications “can look very official and very legitimate to even the most trained individuals,” says Michael Machtinger, deputy assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division. The criminals, like everyone else, are still trying to figure out how best to use AI through trial and error. That means they are only going to get more creative and more dangerous, says Jake Braun, executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. “The AI companies like to say that today’s AI is the worst AI you will ever use. What’s also true is that these are the lowest number of AI complaints we are ever going to see,” says Braun, who previously served in the White House as acting principal deputy national cyber director. Teens are a prime target The FBI received more than 31,000 complaints of internet crimes against people under age 20 last year, up 74% from 2024 and about three times the number in 2015. Younger people, who have been steeped in technology their entire lives, “live online. They trust what they do,” says Ade Clewlow, associate director and senior adviser at cybersecurity consulting firm NCC Group. “They think other people will be the victims, but actually, as we’ve seen, they are just as susceptible as anyone else.” Scammers tend to heavily frequent social media, where many young people in particular spend significant time, says Judson Dressler, director of the risk operations center at Resilience, a cyber risk company in San Francisco. Often, criminals will use young people as a way to gain access to other potential victims in their networks, including their parents.”Four Big Takeaways From the FBI’s Report on Internet CrimeFour Big Takeaways From the FBI’s Report on Internet Crime
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“Huawei Technologies said it has developed a workaround that will allow it to make chips on par with leading products manufactured by Intel and other top global companies by 2031, the latest effort by the Chinese company to overcome U.S. semiconductor technology barriers. Huawei said its approach would allow it to make more-advanced chips without the one-of-a-kind machines its rivals use—equipment the U.S. has blocked it from accessing. The Shenzhen, China-based company expects to design high-end chips by 2031 that match the transistor density of those manufactured with a 1.4-nanometer process. The 1.4-nanometer level is considered the next frontier for cutting-edge chips, which Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics are aiming to mass produce within the next few years using specialized machines manufactured by ASML of the Netherlands. If Huawei is able to produce these high-end chips at scale, it would overturn a prevailing belief in the industry that advanced manufacturing technologies and machinery are necessary to make top-of-the-line chips—removing an obstacle for China in its tech rivalry with the U.S. It could also make Huawei’s chips cheaper to produce than rivals’. “Our solution is feasible and affordable,” He Tingbo, president of Huawei’s chip arm, said Monday at an event in Shanghai. Huawei said its approach focuses on improving computing efficiency, such as by stacking multiple layers of circuits within a single chip and reducing the time it takes to move data among them. “Whether Huawei will gain a distinct advantage here remains to be seen, but it’s at least an alternative path forward, a breakthrough Huawei managed to find while facing supply chain challenges,” said Lian Jye Su, a Singapore-based analyst at research firm Omdia. The context The U.S. has blacklisted Huawei since 2019 and has restricted China’s access to advanced semiconductor technologies since 2022. That has forced Huawei to develop its own alternatives. Huawei has since become a central player in Beijing’s national push for technological self-sufficiency, helping build China’s domestic semiconductor supply chain. Huawei and Nvidia are often pitted against each other as proxies in the escalating rivalry between Beijing and Washington. The Chinese company has increasingly leaned on alternative designs, advanced packaging techniques and its networking technology to boost the computing performance of its hardware to catch up with its American counterparts.Huawei Says It Has Workaround to Match Leading ChipsHuawei Says It Has Workaround to Match Leading Chips
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“U.S.military aircraft, including both drones and crewed surveillance planes, have been conducting intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance flights around Cuba since February, as President Trump ramps up pressure on the Communist government. The aircraft, which generally launch from a naval station in Jacksonville, Fla., have spent more than 150 hours circling the island since Feb. 4, based on the available flight-position data. The surveillance flights over Cuba are notable given Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. mount a “friendly takeover” of the country, and the U.S. government’s recent indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro. While these tracking records provide significant insight, they offer an incomplete perspective on U.S. operations near the island, as military assets frequently disable their broadcasting systems or transmit location data only for specific segments of their missions. The first flight recorded off the coast of Cuba was on Feb. 4. Seven other flights along the northern and western Cuba coastlines were conducted during this month. Similar flights were also seen close to the coast of Venezuela prior to the U.S. incursion. The data shows no recorded flights in March.”See the U.S. Surveillance Flights Off the Coast of CubaSee the U.S. Surveillance Flights Off the Coast of Cuba
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“SpaceX has created a space-based internet that connects the world, is developing data centers that will harness the Sun to power a truth-seeking AI, and hopes to bring manufacturing to the Moon and civilization to other planets. To sell shares in what is expected to be the largest initial public offering ever, however, it will rely on a surprisingly low-tech, incredibly manual process. Bankers will make phone calls to feverishly allocate some $80 billion worth of shares and pair buyers and sellers. It’s a process that hasn’t fundamentally changed since the IPO boom of the 1980s. They do this even for the biggest, most-technologically savvy companies heading to the public markets. OpenAI is preparing to file confidentially for an IPO in the coming days, and Anthropic is also eyeing a market debut later this year. SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Over the next 21 days, SpaceX and the 23 investment banks working as its underwriters face the unprecedented task of assigning value to a company whose mission is “to extend the light of consciousness to the stars,” divvying out shares to actual humans and then making sure the shares don’t crash to earth on the first day of trading. Nasdaq is expected to practice with mock openings to make sure its technology platform is prepared for the big expected volumes. Anticipated for June 12, the IPO will be so big that SpaceX shares aren’t expected to even open for trading. “SpaceX Is Aiming for Civilization on Mars. Its IPO Couldn’t Be More Old School.SpaceX Is Aiming for Civilization on Mars. Its IPO Couldn’t Be More Old School.
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“Today, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against Leonard Pick, 62, of Palm Beach Shores, Florida, and Brian Kent, 59, of Tampa, Florida, for orchestrating a bribery and major fraud conspiracy that corrupted the competitive procurement process for a Department of War technology innovation lab in the Pacific. The defendants’ alleged conduct specifically affected the construction and operation of the U.S. Army Pacific Command’s Hawaii-Pacific Innovation Campus, which was intended to be a hub for testing new technologies for the Department of War. The indictment, filed in the District of Hawaii on May 14 and unsealed today, alleges that, from January 2021 to October 2022, Pick and Kent conspired to bribe a U.S. Army employee with approximately $1.25 million over five years and fraudulently inflated government contracting costs to include the U.S. Army employee’s bribe payments. The indictment further alleges that, from approximately September 2020, up to and including October 2022, defendant Kent further defrauded the government by inflating government contract costs to include approximately $680,000 in payments intended for and sent to Kent’s personal consulting business. “When defense contractors obtain government-funded work through bribery and fraud, they rob our military and the American people of the benefits of a fair, competitive procurement process,” said Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Daniel W. Glad of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “The Antitrust Division and its partners in the Procurement Collusion Strike Force will vigorously prosecute those that seek to profit at the expense of American taxpayers.” “Government contracts must be awarded based on fair competition, not secret bribes hidden in inflated costs,” said Acting Director of Criminal Enforcement Paul V. Courtney of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Those who corrupt the procurement process and defraud the American taxpayer should know this: we will find you, prosecute you, and hold you accountable.”Two Defense Contractors Arrested for Bribery and Major Fraud Conspiracy Scheme Affecting Department of War Technology Innovation ContractsTwo Defense Contractors Arrested for Bribery and Major Fraud Conspiracy Scheme Affecting Department of War Technology Innovation Contracts
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“Two engineers who built the core of the massively popular OpenClaw AI agent have a stark warning: The artificial intelligence supposedly capable of replacing well-paid software developers is flooding the world with bad, potentially even dangerous, code. It’s a phenomenon they call “vibe slop”—a combination of “vibe coding,” creating software with AI tools by describing it in plain English, and “AI slop,” the endless, low-value AI-generated content all over social media. Vibe slop happens when coders replace the hard work of designing and testing a system with the shortcut of prompting AI to whip it up, they say, and the resulting software won’t stand the test of time. It’s become a big enough problem that the world’s main repository of open-source code—GitHub—has instituted new policies and features to combat it. “You have infrastructure that’s falling apart, and you have software that’s now very, very buggy compared to before,” says Mario Zechner, creator of Pi, the agentic harness inside OpenClaw. “We can play this game for a couple more months, or maybe even years, but eventually it will catch up to us.” Zechner and his partner in making Pi, Armin Ronacher, aren’t saying AI is never useful. Both use it to handle drudge work in their own projects. And they believe in it enough to have crafted an AI coding tool now used by millions. Their core message: These systems are supposed to make senior engineers so productive that companies can lay off junior engineers, but in reality, many companies are trading near-term productivity for long-term woes. Not only does the pipeline of junior talent dry up, but residual effects include buggy software, service outages, security vulnerabilities and mounting technical debt. Humans out of the loop As independent programmers with stature but no dependencies on Big Tech, the pair are sounding off in a debate now raging across the software universe—right at a time when two giants, OpenAI and Anthropic, are looking ahead to their IPOs. Boosters say AI can revolutionize how companies handle decades of legacy code, and it has in some cases. And even developers who aren’t unleashing AI on their company’s core software report finding a happy medium, using AI for creating software tests or quick prototypes. Many in top AI labs insist that AI itself is a solution for evaluating and improving AI-generated code, without humans going over every last line.”The AI Superstars Who Say a ‘Vibe Slop’ Crisis Is ComingThe AI Superstars Who Say a ‘Vibe Slop’ Crisis Is Coming
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“Tulsi Gabbard resigned Friday as director of national intelligence, capping a tumultuous tenure in which she was largely sidelined from President Trump’s national-security operations, including in Venezuela and Iran. In a letter Friday to Trump later posted on social media, Gabbard says she is resigning because her husband, Abraham Williams, “has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.” “I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” Gabbard wrote. Gabbard said her last day would be June 30, staying on temporarily to help ensure “no disruption in leadership or momentum.” Trump, in a social-media post, said, “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.” He noted that that Aaron Lukas, Gabbard’s deputy, would serve as the acting director. Gabbard’s departure comes as Trump is considering fresh strikes on Iran if mediators don’t reach a deal to end Tehran’s nuclear work, or at least extend the cease-fire to hold more discussions. Gabbard wasn’t a significant part of conversations about the Iran war before it began in February, officials previously told The Wall Street Journal. She often diverged from administration talking points about the war, saying the U.S. and Israel had differing objectives and that Tehran made no efforts to rebuild its nuclear program since American attacks on three nuclear sites last year.”
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Manoj Balachandran shared this“The Trump administration is awarding $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-computing companies in deals that include U.S. government equity stakes, the Commerce Department said. The move accelerates the administration’s plans to boost the nascent industry, which has attracted a wave of investment from investors and businesses in recent months. The department has agreed to give $1 billion of the package to International Business Machines IBM 12.43%increase; green up pointing triangle, a leader in the race to build computers that use quantum mechanics to solve problems much faster than traditional supercomputers. Coupled with advances in artificial intelligence, quantum computing has the potential to turbocharge scientific research, making it an economic and national-security priority for President Trump. IBM and other companies are working to develop specialized chips for quantum computing, a focus for the government in its bid to spur domestic supply chains. IBM said it is investing $1 billion of its own cash alongside the award to set up what it said is the nation’s first specialized quantum chip manufacturing facility. The company is establishing a new business focused on the effort that will receive the government investment. Shares of the company added 12%. The chip maker GlobalFoundries GFS 14.92%increase; green up pointing triangle is receiving $375 million in funding and giving the government a roughly 1% stake in the company. It is also setting up a new business focused on quantum. The rest of the companies are expected to receive $100 million, except for the startup Diraq, which is slated to get $38 million. Several companies pursuing various approaches to quantum are slated to be awarded funds, including the publicly traded firms D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing and Infleqtion. The deals still need to be completed. GlobalFoundries surged 15% on Thursday, while shares of the smaller publicly traded companies receiving funding—D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing and Infleqtion—added roughly 30% or more.”Exclusive | U.S. to Award Quantum-Computing Firms $2 Billion and Take Equity StakesExclusive | U.S. to Award Quantum-Computing Firms $2 Billion and Take Equity Stakes
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisWant to boost your OT/ICS cybersecurity knowledge? With a free CPE (Continuing Professional Education) unit? Preview my new Getting Started in OT/ICS Cybersecurity course! https://lnkd.in/eBpr5j-n The 2026 updated version of Getting Started in OT/ICS Cybersecurity is here! The original version has been viewed by over 125,000 people! The course that helps people understand how to secure OT/ICS. The course that helps people get jobs in OT/ICS. The course that helps people build their OT/ICS cybersecurity programs. I've collected the entire course in one place. Updated all of the materials. -> Labs -> Slides -> Videos -> Infographics -> Reference materials And so much more! You can also receive 1 CPE certificate for completing the free preview! Check out the first module at https://lnkd.in/eBpr5j-n. The course will also be coming to YouTube soon! Though there are no certificates for YouTube, since there's no way to guarantee that someone does the appropriate level of work. P.S. Let me know what you think about the new format and preview! 🔔 Follow Mike Holcomb for more OT/ICS cybersecurity ♻️ Useful? Save for later. Share to help others! 📩 Join 8,000+ others on my newsletter - https://lnkd.in/ePTx-Rfw 📽️ FREE videos for learning OT/ICS cyber - https://lnkd.in/eif9fkVg
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisWe don’t do a lot of “launches” at Dragos; in fact this is our first real one. June 23rd something special is coming. Sign up for the live webinar and reveal: https://lnkd.in/e98F5Gdh Oh and if you’re in New York the 22nd we’ll have an evening social event and Times Square event 23rd 8am (spoiler alert)
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Manoj Balachandran liked this⤵️Manoj Balachandran liked thisNSA Launches New Reference Webpage For Zero Trust Implementation Guidelines (ZIG)NSA Launches New Reference Webpage For Zero Trust Implementation Guidelines (ZIG)
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisIt is with profound sadness that ISSA International mourns the passing of Dr. Eric Cole, a towering figure in the cybersecurity community and a longtime friend to our organization through his work with the SANS Institute. As CFO and Treasurer of ISSA International, I have had the privilege of witnessing firsthand how Dr. Cole’s contributions have strengthened our global community of information security professionals. His decades of service—as an instructor, curriculum leader, author, and thought leader—have educated and inspired countless practitioners, executives, and students worldwide. Through SANS, Dr. Cole didn’t just teach technical skills; he instilled a mindset of excellence, vigilance, and ethical responsibility that has elevated the entire InfoSec profession. Dr. Cole’s impact extended far beyond the classroom. His work bridging intelligence community expertise, enterprise security leadership, and practical training helped shape modern cyber defense strategies. He had an extraordinary ability to translate complex threats into actionable insights, empowering organizations and individuals alike to stay ahead of evolving risks. Generations of security professionals owe their careers, certifications, and confidence in the field to his mentorship and guidance. On a personal note, I am deeply saddened by this loss. Dr. Cole touched the lives of so many in our community—not only through his technical brilliance but through his generosity, passion, and unwavering commitment to raising the bar for all of us. His legacy will continue to live on in every professional who applies the principles he championed, in every course that carries his influence, and in every organization made more secure because of the knowledge he shared so freely. To his family, colleagues at SANS, and all those who knew him: our thoughts and deepest condolences are with you during this difficult time. The InfoSec community has lost a true giant, but his light and lessons will guide us for years to come. Rest in peace, Dr. Cole. Thank you for everything you gave to our profession and our community.
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisA week ago, MAPS teams got something most of us weren't expecting: Time. For months, most teams have been operating in deadline mode. Build. Review. Fix. Repeat. Now Amendment 8 has pushed the deadline out another month. The question is what you do with that time. Some teams will use it to add more content. Some teams will use it to chase another capability. Some teams will use it to keep tweaking narratives that were already good enough. Personally, I think the highest-value thing you can do right now is pressure test what you've already built. Can someone who wasn't involved in writing the proposal: • Follow your logic? • Validate your scoring? • Find inconsistencies? • Spot compliance issues? • Identify points you're assuming you'll receive but may not actually get? Every MAPS package I've reviewed has had issues. After staring at the same proposal for months, everyone develops blind spots, even the highest performing teams. The Army only gets one version of your submission. You should know how it scores before they do. I'm continuing to conduct MAPS mock evaluations with Spettro through June. If you'd like an independent review before final submission, reach out to me or Sandra James, APMP with Spettro, LLC
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisThere you have it! The NTSB pulled its ENTIRE public investigation database offline — thousands of aviation cases, gone dark — and they still have no timeline to bring it back. Why? Because one guy with no audio background reconstructed protected cockpit voice recordings from a fatal crash using free, off-the-shelf AI. Not a nation-state. Not a team of researchers. Not classified tools. A turbine company owner. Ten minutes. Software anyone can download. He cracked the spectrogram images the NTSB had published from UPS Flight 2976 — the crash in Louisville that killed all 15 people aboard — and turned them back into audio the law says you are never allowed to release. Let that sink in. For years the NTSB published spectrograms as "safe" disclosures. Technical sound-maps. Stripped of the actual voices. The entire legal framework rested on one assumption: you can't release what you don't publish. AI just deleted that assumption permanently. Because here's what the agency didn't understand about its own data: the spectrogram WAS the audio. Just in a different format. A format AI can now read out loud. And it's not one crash. The NTSB has been publishing these images across dozens — likely hundreds — of historical investigations. Every one of them is now potentially reconstructible. The agency built the vulnerability itself, by being transparent, years before the tool existed to exploit it. I have seen this before. Government publishes data under the rules of a world that no longer exists. The technology moves. The threat model the lawyers wrote in 2009 doesn't survive contact with 2026. And the people in charge are still issuing statements while a hobbyist runs circles around the entire federal archive. The Chairwoman called the reconstructions "deeply troubling" and "offensive to victims." She's right. But "deeply troubling" is not a plan. "We aim to restore access soon" is not a plan. That's a press release. What's the actual policy? How many archived cases are exposed? When does the data come back? Silence. Meanwhile every day that docket stays dark, airlines, manufacturers, and safety researchers are flying blind. The NTSB's whole value is open data — it's how the industry finds the pattern that kills people BEFORE it kills more of them. Lock it down and you don't just protect privacy. You slow down every safety fix in commercial aviation. So now they're stuck between two bad options: keep the archive open and let anyone reconstruct protected audio, or keep it closed and let recurring hazards hide longer. The capability is free. It's getting better every week. And almost nobody in charge has wrapped their head around what it can already do — today — to the data they put online a decade ago. Time to wake up! Read the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/eADvqM5K Thoughts?
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisCurrent Situation: The countdown is on for TechNet Cyber 2026! If cybersecurity, AI, critical infrastructure protection, digital transformation, and warfighter readiness are on your radar, this is the place to be. Join me along with government, military, industry, and academic leaders as we tackle this year’s theme: “Dominating the Digital Battlespace: Confidence, Speed, Precision.” I’ll be there engaging with thought leaders, moderating discussions, and exploring the technologies, partnerships, and strategies shaping the future fight. If you’re attending, let me know. I’d love to connect, share insights, and continue building the relationships that make our community stronger. AFCEA International S,ee you in Baltimore! #TechNetCyber #AFCEA #Cybersecurity #Leadership #Innovation #Warfighter #RelationshipsMatter
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisGuess who won a leadership award? And no I didn’t buy it lol…
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Manoj Balachandran liked thisManoj Balachandran liked thisCapability Statements focus on you. RFIs focus on the federal buyers' needs. Your RFI response helps an agency decide: • Acquisition strategy • Set-aside approach • Scope task areas One is marketing - all about you. One is market research - all about the buyer's needs Join me (on 6/1) for live training, "Why RFIs Matter More Than Capability Statements" You'll learn: • How RFIs connect directly to agency needs and priorities • What happens to an RFI response when you submit it • When Capability Statements are most helpful Put 𝐑𝐅𝐈𝐬 𝐑𝐨𝐜𝐤 in comments if you want the link to the training. ___________________________________ 🔥 Join 30,012 others and subscribe to my GovCon newsletter | https://lnkd.in/es6qfwgk 👀 Follow me (Neil McDonnell) on LinkedIn™ and hit the 🔔 on my profile to see more government contracting content like 46,811 other people do.
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Amit Yoran
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Calling it like I see it on all issues cyber. Views expressed are my own. They have and will continue to get me in hot water from time to time. Oh well. <br><br>On the work front leading Tenable which empowers organizations to understand and reduce their cyber exposures and risk. We employ some of the greatest minds in security to provide our customers the agility they require.
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Muhammad Zahid CPEng ACE-DE CEA CCDE CCIE-RS-EI-DC PMP SCF ITIL SPSP SPSX CISO
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