Forced retirements of leading officials within the U.S. Cyber Command with Lt. Gen. Charles Moore, who served as Gen. Paul Nakasone's second in command being the most recent have hindered the digital warfare unit's growth and prompted calls for changes to the military's rotation system in an effort to bolster the retention of skilled cyber practitioners amid the ongoing cyber talent shortfall, CyberScoop reports.
The Cyber Command has needed to adapt to a constantly rotating staff due to the manpower needs of other military services, said sources close to the matter.
"What that means in cyberspace is by the time someone is just getting up to speed, its time for them to leave. That hurts the cyber mission," said former National Security Agency Deputy Director and Acting Chief Operating Officer Rick Ledgett.
Former Cyberspace Solarium Commission Executive Director Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery noted that creating a Cyber Force within the military could help address the constant workforce rotation in the Cyber Command.
Ukrainian hacktivist operation IT Army has taken responsibility for a significant distributed denial-of-service attack against Russian local airline booking system Leonardo, which is used by over 50 Russian carriers, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
New attacks with the updated SysUpdate toolkit have been deployed by Chinese advanced persistent threat operation Budworm, also known as APT27, Emissary Panda, Bronze Union, Lucky Mouse, Iron Tiger, and Red Phoenix, against an Asian government and a Middle East-based telecommunications provider, reports The Hacker News.
Forty-five malicious NPM and PyPI packages have been deployed by threat actors to facilitate extensive data theft operations as part of a campaign that commenced on Sept. 12, according to BleepingComputer.