FaceApp scares point to larger data collection problems

Last week, if you thumbed your way through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you likely saw altered photos of your friends with a few extra decades written onto their faces—wrinkles added, skin sagged, hair bereft of color. Has 2019 really been that long? Not really. The photos are the work of...

Large-Scale Government Hacks Hit Russia, Bulgaria

A pair of notable hacks on government targets have come to light: One, an attack affecting nearly the entire country of Bulgaria; and two, a hack of Russia’s main security agency FSB that represents the largest data heist ever experienced there. In Bulgaria, cybercriminals were able to infiltrate...

Kazakhstan Begins Intercepting HTTPS Internet Traffic Of All Citizens Forcefully

If you are in Kazakhstan and unable to access the Internet service without installing a certificate, you're not alone. The Kazakhstan government has once again issued an advisory to all major local Internet Service Providers ISPs asking them to make it mandatory for all their customers to install...

Hard Pass: Declining APT34’s Invite to Join Their Professional Network

Background With increasing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, we expect Iran to significantly increase the volume and scope of its cyber espionage campaigns. Iran has a critical need for strategic intelligence and is likely to fill this gap by conducting espionage against decision makers a...

Turla APT Returns with New Malware, Anti-Censorship Angle

The Turla APT has revamped its arsenal in 2019, creating new weapons and tools for targeting government entities. It’s now using booby-trapped anti-internet censorship software as an initial infection vector, suggesting Turla is going after dissident or other civil-society targets. The...

Turla renews its arsenal with Topinambour

Turla, also known as Venomous Bear, Waterbug, and Uroboros, is a Russian speaking threat actor known since 2014, but with roots that go back to 2004 and earlier. It is a complex cyberattack platform focused predominantly on diplomatic and government-related targets, particularly in the Middle Eas...

Threat Source newsletter (July 11, 2019)

Newsletter compiled by Jonathan Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week. Generally, when we write about a threat group or attack, that threat will calm down for a while. After all, it’s much for difficult...

Should governments pay extortion payments after a ransomware attack?

By Jonathan Munshaw. When it comes to ransomware attacks this year, it’s been a tale of three cities. In May, the city of Baltimore suffered a massive ransomware attack that took many of its systems down for weeks — restricting employees’ access to email, closing online payment portals and even...

Powerful FinSpy Spyware Found Targeting iOS and Android Users in Myanmar

One of the most powerful, infamous, and advanced piece of government-grade commercial surveillance spyware dubbed FinSpy—also known as FinFisher—has been discovered in the wild targeting users in Myanmar. Created by German company Gamma International, FinSpy is spying software that can target...

Powerful FinSpy Spyware Found Targeting iOS and Android Users in Myanmar

One of the most powerful, infamous, and advanced piece of government-grade commercial surveillance spyware dubbed FinSpy —also known as FinFisher —has been discovered in the wild targeting users in Myanmar. Created by German company Gamma International, FinSpy is spying software that can target...

Details of the Cloud Hopper Attacks

Reuters has a long article on the Chinese government APT attack called Cloud Hopper. It was much bigger than originally reported. The hacking campaign, known as "Cloud Hopper," was the subject of a U.S. indictment in December that accused two Chinese nationals of identity theft and fraud...

CVE-2019-11709

creationtimestamp| type| source ---|---|--- 2019-07-10 04:00:00+00:00| seen| https://www.govcert.gov.hk/en/alertsdetail.php?id=406...

The most magnificent thing about Vulnerabilities and who is behind the magic

What I like the most about software vulnerabilities is how "vulnerability", as a quality of a real object and the computer program is real, literally appears from nothing. Let's say we have a fully updated server. We turn it off, lock it in a safe and forget about it for half a year. Six months...

Sea Turtle keeps on swimming, finds new victims, DNS hijacking techniques

By Danny Adamitis with contributions from Paul Rascagneres. Executive summary After several months of activity, the actors behind the "Sea Turtle" DNS hijacking campaign are not slowing down. Cisco Talos recently discovered new details that suggest they regrouped after we published our initial...

Apple Transparency Report Now Includes App Store Takedown Requests

For the first time Apple added to its transparency report the number of App Store takedown requests it has received from governments. The report, released Tuesday, also puts some hard numbers on how often law enforcement and governments request device and user data. App Takedown Request Apple’s...

China's Border Guards Secretly Installing Spyware App on Tourists' Phones

Chinese authorities are secretly installing surveillance apps on smartphones of foreigners at border crossings in the Xinjiang region who are entering from neighboring Kyrgyzstan, an international investigation revealed. Xinjiang XUAR is an autonomous territory and home to many Muslim ethnic...

Ransomware Hits Georgia Courts as Municipal Attacks Spread

Almost every month in 2019 so far has seen reports of a local government falling prey to ransomware, but this series of attacks belies an even broader threat...

Is Your VPN Provider in a 14 Eyes Country? (What is 14 Eyes?)

By Owais Sultan The reason people have Virtual private networks VPNs is that they protect our online privacy, however, privacy is essentially non-existent if you live in a place where the government is allowed to track your online activities. This is why you need to get a good VPN, the goal is to...

Yubico Security Keys with a Crypto Flaw

Wow, is this an embarrassing bug: Yubico is recalling a line of security keys used by the U.S. government due to a firmware flaw. The company issued a security advisory today that warned of an issue in YubiKey FIPS Series devices with firmware versions 4.4.2 and 4.4.4 that reduced the randomness ...

CVE-2019-2729

creationtimestamp| type| source ---|---|--- 2019-06-19 04:00:00+00:00| seen| https://www.govcert.gov.hk/en/alertsdetail.php?id=400 2019-06-19 20:48:21+00:00| exploited| https://t.me/thehackernews/344 2019-06-19 20:49:48+00:00| seen| https://t.me/canyoupwnme/5659 2019-06-19 20:51:26+00:00|...