Trump axes TSA chief who led pipeline, airline, rail cybersecurity rules

Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske — who spearheaded the development of cybersecurity directives for the pipeline, aviation, and rail sectors under the Biden administration — has been ousted by President Donald Trump, who had appointed Pekoske to the post in 2017, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Source: SCWORLD

Trump Fires Cyber Safety Board Investigating Salt Typhoon Hackers

Chris Krebs just got let go for the second time by President Trump.

In its first full day, the Trump administration axed all advisory committee members within the Department of Homeland Security, including the people that make up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB). The CSRB was actively working on investigating Salt Typhoon, the Chinese state-sponsored hacking group responsible for breaches of at least nine telecommunications networks in the past several months.

Source: DarkReading

Trump Pardons Ross Ulbricht, Creator of Silk Road Dark Web Marketplace

President Trump announced Tuesday that he signed a full pardon for Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder who was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of running the dark web marketplace used to deal drugs.

Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 of seven drug and conspiracy charges for his role in creating Silk Road, including drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering. Ulbricht, who operated the site under the alias “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was also accused of soliciting multiple murders for hire, according to the Associated Press.

Source: Rolling Stone

Record-Breaking DDoS Cyberattack Reaches 5.6 Tbps, Cloudflare Reports

Cloudflare has mitigated the biggest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on record, according to a new report.

The DDoS attack, which hit an East Asia based telecoms firm last year, reached 5.6 terabits per second (Tbps) and lasted for 80 seconds. It was comprised from a botnet of 13,000 devices taken over by the Mirai malware, according to Cloudflare’s blog.

Source: Forbes

Cyber Insights 2025: APIs – The Threat Continues

APIs are easy to develop, simple to implement, and frequently attacked. They are  prime and lucrative targets for cybercriminals. 

If this is the connected world, it is APIs that provide the connection points. Application programming interfaces allow different applications to share and reuse data. Since both connecting and sharing are increasing, so too is the use of APIs.

Source: Security Week

PNGPlug Loader Delivers ValleyRAT Malware Through Fake Software Installers

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a series of cyber attacks that have targeted Chinese-speaking regions like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China with a known malware called ValleyRAT.

The attacks leverage a multi-stage loader dubbed PNGPlug to deliver the ValleyRAT payload, Intezer said in a technical report published last week.

Source; The Hacker News

Mac users targeted with new malware, so be on your guard

Mac users are once again being targeted with powerful malware as hackers try to steal their login information, sensitive data, and cryptocurrencies.

Software developer Ryan Chenkie spotted the malicious campaign on Google, noting threat actors have been running malicious advertising campaigns on Google’s network promoting a fake version of Homebrew, an open source package manager for macOS and Linux.

Source: TechRadar