Making Tech Headlines · Page 3
Turla Makes the Government Inbox Even More Crowded
· New York time
The Russian state-backed threat group Turla has used a malicious toolset called Cereal to intercept email on Microsoft Exchange servers at government organizations, according to security reporting. The activity puts the systems carrying official communications in focus, not just the individual accounts using them. An Exchange server can handle messages for many people, making it shared infrastructure rather than a single inbox. Interception at that level raises concerns about an unauthorized party observing correspondence intended for others. It is a different problem from receiving unwanted mail: the unwelcome participant is interested in messages already on their way. The reported activity also illustrates the importance of the environment around an account. A user may think of email as a password and a list of messages, while the organization must maintain the servers and access that make delivery possible. Those less visible components can matter greatly when an intruder reaches them. Cereal is an oddly cheerful name for a toolset described as intercepting government email. The breakfast association is about the only comforting part. An inbox already has enough people asking to be included, and this is one reader the recipients did not invite.
Read this story in the full newspaper →Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.