Bluepurple Pulse: week ending December 12th

Germany won't be buying vulnerabilities this Christmas or ever.. pinky promise

Welcome to the weekly highlights and analysis of the blueteamsec subreddit.

Operationally this week it has been the usual operational blend and tempo.

In the high-level this week:

• Australia passed Magnitsky-style Thematic Sanctions laws - in the guise of its Autonomous Sanctions Amendment - it includes a clause for "caused, assisted with or were complicit in significant cyber activity" - ‘Magnitsky’ sanctions targeted those responsible for human rights violations or corruption and this shows where you can’t arrest them governments want to sanction - the net result is the intelligence understanding will be quite key.

• US publicly acknowledged it took offensive action to disrupt ransomware operations - General Nakasone from NSA has said:

  • “The first thing we have to do is to understand the adversary and their insights better than we’ve ever understood them before,”.. “Before, during and since, with a number of elements of our government, we have taken actions and we have imposed costs”

• What hap…