Since the end of the year is quickly approaching, it is undoubtedly a good time to look back at what the past twelve months have brought to us… And given that the entire cyber security profession is about protecting various systems from “bad things” (and we’ve all correspondingly seen more than our share of the “bad”), I thought that it might be pleasant to look at a few positive background trends that have accompanied us throughout the year, without us necessarily noticing…

It should be mentioned that all the following charts are based on data gathered from Shodan using my TriOp tool, which means that they are certainly not exact. Nevertheless, the data is undoubtedly good enough to show us the general trends. 

The first positive trend that deserves a mention is the overall decrease in the number of industrial control systems accessible from the global internet. Although, based on Shodan data, there still appear to be more than 100 thousand public IP addresses that expose a system that may be classified as ICS on one or more ports, the number has fallen by more than 10% since the beginning of the year…

Two other positive trends worth mentioning are related to the support of SSLv2 and SSLv3 on port 443.

While, at the beginning of the year, there were almost 2 million web servers that supported SSLv3, at the time of writing there seem to be only a little more than 1 million of them still left on the public internet.

The situation has similarly improved in terms of public IP addresses exposing web servers that still support SSLv2. In January, there were more than 320 thousand such servers, while now only about 145 thousand of them seem to remain in December (unsurprisingly, a significant percentage of these servers seem to be located in Kazakhstan, which is something we’ve discussed previously[1]).

Although, as cyber security professionals, we have to – by necessity – focus mostly on unpleasant trends (such as those related to rising numbers of zero-day vulnerabilities discovered each year, or the continuously increasing impacts of attacks), it is good to notice from time to time that “in the background”, some things are getting better… Even if the improvements are only small, they do still count in the long run.

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Jan Kopriva

LinkedIn

Nettles Consulting

BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg asked Vladimir Putin about his plans for the future of the country, during the president’s annual end-of-year televised event.

The Russian leader responded by saying he’s calling for greater respect from other Western leaders.

“Western politicians created the current situation with their own hands”, Putin said, adding that “they constantly talk about preparing for war with Russia”.

The president also said that plans to attack Europe are “nonsense”.

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been sentenced to further jail terms following a fraud case involving state gifts.

They were convicted of breaking Pakistan’s rules on gifts after Bibi was given a luxury jewellery set by Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman during a 2021 state visit.

The pair are already serving time in prison for earlier convictions, and the new sentences – 10 years for criminal breach of trust and seven years for criminal misconduct, and a fine – will reportedly run concurrently to their earlier terms.

Khan has described the charges as politically motivated and his lawyer told BBC News his team plan to challenge the verdict.

Speaking to the BBC after the sentencing, the former prime minister’s lawyer, Salman Safdar, said Khan and his wife had not been present for the hearing.

Mr Safdar said their legal team had only been informed about the sentencing late on Friday night, after normal court hours.

They planned to mount a challenge to the verdict in the high court, Mr Safdar said.

This case is the latest in a series of charges laid against the cricket star-turned-politician, who has been detained since August 2023. In January, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison over a separate corruption case.

He has faced charges in more than 100 cases, ranging from leaking state secrets to selling state gifts. The BBC has been unable to confirm the exact number brought against him.

The jewellery case, referred to as Toshakhana 2 in Pakistan, concerns a Bulgari jewellery set given to Bushra Bibi by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a state visit in 2021, according to court documents.

Under Pakistan’s rules on state gifts, these items go to Pakistan’s Toshakana department (state treasury), but politicians are able to purchase the items back.

Khan is alleged to have asked a private firm to undervalue the jewellery set, before purchasing it back at a significantly reduced price.

In addition to their jail terms, the pair were handed a fine of over 16 million Pakistani rupees (£42,600).

Khan has previously been acquitted in a separate Toshakhana case.

The former leader still has other cases outstanding against him.

These include terrorism charges relating to violent protests that took place on 9 May 2023, when he was previously arrested.

Khan was Pakistan’s prime minister until April 2022 when he was ousted in a vote of no confidence.

Although he has not been seen in public, his social media accounts have continued to operate with messages attributed to him on X often appearing after jail visits.

These have been highly critical of Pakistan’s current government and its politically powerful army Chief Field Marshall Asim Munir, including posts calling him a tyrannical dictator.

In November, he was denied any visitors for nearly a month.

After campaigning by his family and party, his sister was allowed to visit in early December; a few hours after she saw him, his account posted a comment credited to Khan calling the Field Marshall Asim Munir a “mentally unstable person”.

Khan has not been allowed any family visits since.

According to an official at the jail, Khan and his wife were present when the verdict was announced but no journalists were allowed to observe.

The judgement states the judge was lenient in sentencing because of Khan’s “old age”.