

DarkMatter, Quantum and APT Groups

The threat of nation state cyber attacks has garnered significant media attention over the past year. Early in 2019, we saw the U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issue an emergency directive warning about the nation-state advanced persistent threat (APT) called Sea Turtle which took advantage of a DNS security weakness. Then, Firefox denied Dark Matter Root CA status based on alleged international cyber espionage activities.





As Quantum computing became closer to a reality, Venafi speculated about how Quantum cryptography can give governments an edge against nation state attacks as well as about the geopolitical implications of quantum computers hijacking machines.



Later in the year, we saw an NSA warning of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups exploiting vulnerabilities in a few popular VPN services for cyber warfare. And early in 2020 the U.S. CISA issued another rare emergency directive about a major cryptographic flaw in Microsoft Windows that was discovered by the National Security Administration (NSA). Plus, after a drone to targeted Iranian military leader Qassem Suleimani, we warned businesses to prepare for retaliatory Iranian cyberwarfare.



And most recently, we learned that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) actually owned Crypto AG, a company trusted by government agencies and other public sector entities worldwide, and had used the company’s cryptographic offerings to acquire highly sensitive and often classified data on foreign governments across continents.



Are we in the midst of a cyber war? See what your peers think.

