Reuters reports that the US retaliated for Iranian kinetic strikes against Saudi oil facilities with cyberattacks against Iranian information operators.
China's Comac C919 airliner was built from industrial espionage, a report from CrowdStrike concludes. The complex operation was the work of Turbine Panda, a unit of the MSS Jiangsu Bureau, the Chinese intelligence service widely believed responsible for the 2015 breach of the US Office of Personnel Management. The campaign on behalf of Comac was long-running, patient, and multi-faceted, encompassing "forced technology transfer, joint ventures, physical theft of intellectual property from insiders, and cyber-enabled espionage."
The C919 sports subsystems derived from the Franco-American CFM Leap-1 engine, and from suppliers that include Aircelle, Michelin, Honeywell, Liebherr, Parker Aerospace, GE, Rockwell Collins, Eaton, Crane AE, and Kidde. French, German, British, and especially American companies are among the involuntary contributors to the program.
Digital Shadows warns that typosquatting will prove a widespread and probably effective influence tactic in the 2020 US elections.
Flashpoint looks into the criminal-to-criminal market's pricing structure.
Pitney Bowes recovers from its ransomware infestation.
Wichita attorney Brad "the Bull" Pistonik has taken a guilty plea to three counts of being an accessory after the fact to "making an extortionate threat over the Internet," the Wichita Eagle reports. The misdemeanors will earn him no jail time, but he will pay a $375,000 fine and $55,200 in restitution. The incident arose from Mr. Pistonik's retention of reputation management services that allegedly threatened sites that had posted discreditable material about the accident attorney.