IN Other News highlights a busy week, led by OFAC designation of two cryptocurrency wallets tied to Iran’s Central Bank, with Tether freezing about $344 million in USDT across the addresses and roughly $370 million having accumulated through nearly 1,000 transactions since March 2021.
Finnish authorities arrested 19-year-old Peter Stokes, a dual US-Estonian citizen, alleged by US prosecutors in Chicago to be a key member of the Scattered Spider group, with extradition sought to face counts including wire fraud, conspiracy and computer intrusion. The round‑up also notes a major ADT data leak claim, with Have I Been Pwned verifying exposure of around 5.5 million unique email addresses alongside names, addresses, and in some cases partial SSNs.
CISA warns of a critical vulnerability in GRASSMARLIN, an NSA‑originated open‑source ICS mapping tool that reached end‑of‑life in 2017, meaning there will be no official patches. The NHS warns that evaluating a SOC by ticket volumes and log counts can lead to perverse outcomes, urging instead a focus on time to detect and time to respond and advocating red or purple team exercises to validate high‑value threat hunting.