Pacific Rim

Mentioned 2 times across 1 podcast this week

This Week's Pulse

The Pacific Rim region is currently the focal point of a sophisticated, multi-year cyber espionage campaign attributed to China. Jack Rhysider of Darknet Diaries reports that this operation targeted Sophos firewalls with relentless precision, noting that "the threat actors had figured out what the hotfix did to make it impossible for the Ragnarak attack to work, and they had done a workaround."

The impact of these intrusions has been severe, extending beyond mere data theft to the total termination of technology product lines. Rhysider highlights that "Sophos just decided to kill that product altogether" following the exploitation of their Cyberoam hardware. He attributes the findings to French investigators who explicitly identified APT31 as the state-sponsored culprit.

While the digital theater remains chaotic, broader geopolitical events continue to shape the Pacific Rim. With the recent establishment of the Melanesian Ocean Corridor and ongoing APEC health initiatives, security analysts are watching to see if diplomatic cooperation can mitigate the risks posed by state-aligned hackers. The recent East Pacific Rise earthquake serves as a reminder that the region's instability is as much geological as it is political.

Where it's discussed

174: Pacific Rim

Darknet Diaries

Jack Rhysiderneutralfrom “The Pacific Rim Campaign Incident Response

A geographical region used by the Sophos team as a naming convention for their internal attack codenames.

Within about, I don't know, six to eight weeks after the hotfixes were rolled out, um, the threat actors had figured out what the hotfix did to make it impossible for the Ragnarak attack to work, and they had done a workaround. They had just, you know, bounced

Jack Rhysidernegativefrom “The Pacific Rim Cyber Espionage Campaign

A long-running cyber attack campaign attributed to the Chinese government and military.

Wow, so after the threat actors found an exploit in the Cyberoam product and were actively exploiting that, Sophos just decided to kill that product altogether. Now, Andrew tells us it's because it was already on its way of being killed, but I don't want to di