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There were 94 total losses reported around the shipping world in 2017, down 4 percent year-on-year, according to Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE’s (AGCS) Safety & Shipping Review 2018.

The report indicates that large shipping losses have declined by more than a third (38%) over the past decade and that the downward trend continued into 2017, marking the second lowest losses in 10 years after 2014.

However, Allianz stressed that the sinking of the oil tanker Sanchi and the impact of the NotPetya malware on harbor logistics underline that the shipping sector is being tested by a number of traditional and emerging risk challenges.

Microsoft Put Off Fixing Zero Day for 2 Years — Krebs on Security.


A security flaw in the way Microsoft Windows guards users against malicious files was actively exploited in malware attacks for two years before last week, when Microsoft finally issued a software update to correct the problem.

One of the 120 security holes Microsoft fixed on Aug. 11’s Patch Tuesday was CVE-2020–1464, a problem with the way every supported version of Windows validates digital signatures for computer programs.

It would be heartening to think that cybersecurity has advanced since the 1990s, but some things never change. Vulnerabilities that some of us first saw in 1996 are still with us.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the news. Last month, Virginia-based cybersecurity firm GRIMM announced that they had found a vulnerability that affects many Netgear home WiFi routers. The cause? Outdated firmware that allows remote users to access the administrative systems in these routers.

If you think this exploit sounds like a 1990s-standard input overflow flaw, well done. That’s exactly what it is. As Nichols put it in his very detailed blog post: “1996 called, they want their vulnerability back.”

The Vatican and the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong have been the targets of alleged Chinese state-backed hackers, it has emerged, just weeks before talks intended to improve relations between the two sides.

According to the U.S.-based cyber attack monitoring group Recorded Future, RedDelta, allegedly backed by the Chinese state, began attacking the Vatican in May ahead of upcoming talks in September to renew a landmark 2018 deal that helped thaw diplomatic relations.

Recorded Future said that the Hong Kong Study Mission to China — a key link between the Vatican and China — and the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions also were targeted.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Chinese government-linked hackers targeted biotech company Moderna Inc, a U.S.-based coronavirus vaccine research developer, this year in a bid to steal data, according to a U.S. security official tracking Chinese hacking.

China on Friday rejected the accusation that hackers linked to it had targeted Moderna.

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department made public an indictment of two Chinese nationals accused of spying on the United States, including three unnamed U.S.-based targets involved in medical research to fight the novel coronavirus.

Safe Messaging

Cybersecurity experts have long warned that quantum computers, whenever it is that they become useful, will render useless most conventional forms of encryption. This new satellite experiment, which is described in research published in the journal Nature, suggests that it may be possible to send secure messages yet.

“A remarkable feature of the entanglement-based quantum cryptography as we demonstrated here is that such security is ensured even if the satellite is controlled by an adversary,” University of Science and Technology physicist Jian-Wei Pan told Space.com.