A week in security (December 17 – 23)

Last week on Labs we looked at Fuchsia OS as a possible alternative for Android, explained all the reasons why cybercriminals want to hack your phone, discussed a flaw in Twitter form that may have been abused by nation states, gave you a Christmas tech scams roundup, revealed why many online...

Congressional Report on the 2017 Equifax Data Breach

The US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has just released a comprehensive report on the 2017 Equifax hack. It's a great piece of writing, with a detailed timeline, root cause analysis, and lessons learned. Lance Spitzner also commented on this. Here is my...

Scanning for Flaws, Scoring for Security

Is it fair to judge an organization's information security posture simply by looking at its Internet-facing assets for weaknesses commonly sought after and exploited by attackers, such as outdated software or accidentally exposed data and devices? Fair or not, a number of nascent efforts are usin...

Lawsuits Aim Billions in Fines at Equifax and Ad-Targeting Companies

Equifax, Experian and Oracle are among a slate of companies whose business is consumer information, that could soon face billions of dollars in fines for improper data handling. Privacy International has filed complaints against seven corporations, consisting of data brokers Acxiom and Oracle,...

Equifax Has Chosen Experian. Wait, What?

A year after offering free credit monitoring to all Americans on account of its massive data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 148 million people, Equifax now says it has chosen to extend the offer by turning to a credit monitoring service offered by a top competitor --...

Cloud, Containers, Orchestration Big Factors in BSIMM9

As software and applications increasingly head to the cloud, traditional enterprise software security initiatives are getting turned on their head. The push to the cloud, experts say, isn’t just taking applications and services off premises: It’s redefining how DevOps and traditional IT departmen...

2018 Has Been Open Season on Open Source Supply Chains

As the number of open source components used in software supply chains shoot up, hackers are going along for the ride. Increasingly threat actors are planting bad code in open-source repositories in the hopes to harvest the flaws later when used in larger banking, manufacturing and healthcare Dev...

A week in security (September 17 – 23)

Last week, we took a look at a low level spam campaign on Twitter, explored the signs of falling victim to phishing, and examined a massive WordPress compromise. We also explained some SASL vulnerabilities and covered a breaking Emotet spam campaign. Other cybersecurity news: NewEgg attacked by...

UK Regulator Fines Equifax £500,000 Over 2017 Data Breach

Atlanta-based consumer credit reporting agency Equifax has been issued a £500,000 fine by the UK's privacy watchdog for its last year's massive data breach that exposed personal and financial data of hundreds of millions of its customers. Yes, £500,000—that's the maximum fine allowed by the UK's...

UK Regulator Fines Equifax £500,000 Over 2017 Data Breach

Atlanta-based consumer credit reporting agency Equifax has been issued a £500,000 fine by the UK's privacy watchdog for its last year's massive data breach that exposed personal and financial data of hundreds of millions of its customers. Yes, £500,000—that's the maximum fine allowed by the UK's...

In a Few Days, Credit Freezes Will Be Fee-Free

Later this month, all of the three major consumer credit bureaus will be required to offer free credit freezes to all Americans and their dependents. Maybe you've been holding off freezing your credit file because your home state currently charges a fee for placing or thawing a credit freeze, or...

Mirai, Gafgyt Botnets Return to Target Infamous Apache Struts, SonicWall Flaws

Researchers have discovered new variants for the infamous Mirai and Gafgyt IoT botnets – now targeting well-known vulnerabilities in Apache Struts and SonicWall. The new Mirai strain targets the Apache Struts flaw associated with the 2017 Equifax breach, while the Gafgyt variant uses a...

Sound, Fury, And Nothing One Year After Equifax

One year ago today, Equifax suffered what remains one of the largest and most impactful data breaches in U.S. history. Last September, it was revealed that the personal information of 145 million Americans, almost 700,000 UK citizens, and 19,000 Canadians was stolen by cybercriminals. This...

This Week in Security News: Tracking and Hacking

Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, Google revealed a secret deal with Mastercard that allows it to track what users buy offline. Also, Senate and House representatives warn th...

Active Campaign Exploits Critical Apache Struts 2 Flaw in the Wild

It was only a matter of time before attacks were seen in the wild, and now it’s happened. A known threat actor has mounted a large cryptomining campaign using the recently disclosed Apache Struts 2 critical remote code-execution vulnerability. It uses a new malware designed for persistence and...

PoC Code Surfaces to Exploit Apache Struts 2 Vulnerability

Proof-of-concept code found on the GitHub repository could allow attackers to easily take advantage of a recently identified vulnerability in the Apache Struts 2 framework. The vulnerability CVE-2018-11776, identified earlier this week, could allow an adversary to execute remote code on targeted...

Experts Urge Rapid Patching of ‘Struts’ Bug

In September 2017, Equifax disclosed that a failure to patch one of its Internet servers against a pervasive software flaw -- in a Web component known as Apache Struts -- led to a breach that exposed personal data on 147 million Americans. Now security experts are warning that blueprints showing...

New Apache Struts RCE Flaw Lets Hackers Take Over Web Servers

Semmle security researcher Man Yue Mo has disclosed a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the popular Apache Struts web application framework that could allow remote attackers to run malicious code on the affected servers. Apache Struts is an open source framework for developing web...

Worse than Equifax: Personal records of 340M people leaked online

By Waqas Last year the credit reporting firm Equifax revealed how unknown This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Worse than Equifax: Personal records of 340M people leaked online...

Vermont Librarian Wins Small-Claims Suit Against Equifax

In a David-and-Goliath moment, a 49-year-old librarian has won damages against credit giant Equifax, in the wake of its head-spinningly massive 2017 data breach. It’s a small but significant victory: a small claims court awarded $600 to Jessamyn West, native of the small town of Randolph in Orang...