A week in security (May 13 – 19)

Last week, Malwarebytes Labs reviewed active and unique exploit kits targeting consumers and businesses alike, reported about a flaw in WhatsApp used to target a human rights lawyer, and wrote about an important Microsoft patch that aimed to prevent a "WannaCry level" attack. We also profiled the...

4 lessons to be learned from the DOE’s DDoS attack

Analysts, researchers, industry professionals, and pundits alike have all posited the dangers of the next-generation “smart grid,” particularly when it comes to cybersecurity. They warn that without the right measures in place, unscrupulous parties could essentially wreak havoc on the bulk of...

Do DDoS attacks originate from Cloud Service Providers?

In a word, yes. Cloud service providers CSPs continue to power a growing portion of the greater Internet. According to Cisco, by 2021, 73 percent of cloud workloads are going to be CSP based, which reflects a compound annual growth rate of 27.5 percent from 2016 to 2021. Unfortunately, CSPs are...

Cloud WAAPs Are the Future of Application Security. But What Does That Mean?

Millions of Verizon FIOS broadband users vulnerable to hackers controlling and surveilling their home networks. Thousands of GPS watches whose maps were open to attackers tracking and eavesdropping on children and elderly users. A zero-day hole in Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer browsers...

Hackers Take Over IoT Devices to 'Click' on Ads

By 2025 there will be 25 billion internet of things IoT connections, according to GSMA Intelligence. And if hackers have it their way, many of those IoT devices will be hijacked and recruited into online pay-per-click advertising scams. At the Security Analyst Summit 2019, Threatpost sat down wit...

How 5G could impact cybersecurity strategy

With the recent news that South Korea has rolled out the world’s first 5G network, it’s clear that we’re on the precipice of the wireless technology’s widespread launch. Offering speeds anywhere from 20 to 100 times faster than 4G long-term evolution LTE, the next generation of wireless networks...

Deployment Diversity for DNS Resiliency

Consider Addressing Delegation Servers with Varying Network Routes Written by: Jim Gilbert and Barry Greene Don't Forget DNS Similar to diverse workforces performing at a higher level, diverse network service deployments perform at a higher level that is increasingly important as the Internet...

Botnet-led DDoS Attacks Are Hitting Record Intensities. Imperva is Mitigating All of Them.

DDoS attacks are usually ranked by the amount of bandwidth involved, such as the 2018 GitHub attack that peaked at 1.35 Terabits per second and is often cited as the largest DDoS attack ever. From Imperva’s long history of successfully mitigating DDoS attacks, we know that the TRUE measure of...

Oracle WebLogic Exploit-fest Continues with GandCrab Ransomware, XMRig

Malicious activity exploiting the recently disclosed Oracle WebLogic critical deserialization vulnerability CVE-2019-2725 is surging. Even though there’s a patch, tens of thousands of vulnerable machines represent an irresistible target for hackers, according to Unit 42 researchers at Palo Alto...

Extinguishing the IoT Insecurity Dumpster Fire

It’s no secret IoT security has been a dumpster fire. Last week, it was reported two million IP security cameras, baby monitors and smart doorbells have serious IoT flaws with no known patches. The list, of course, is added to a long list of IoT nightmares that have been reported over the past fi...

Muhstik Botnet Variant Targets Just-Patched Oracle WebLogic Flaw

UPDATE A variant of the Muhstik botnet has been uncovered in the wild, exploiting a recently-disclosed, dangerous vulnerability in Oracle WebLogic servers. The newfound samples of Muhstik are targeting the recently-patched CVE-2019-2725 in WebLogic servers, and then launching...

New Electrum DDoS botnet steals $4.6M after infecting 152,000 hosts

By Ryan De Souza The majority of the bots are located in Brazil and Peru but the number of victims is constantly increasing across diverse regions. Threat actors who previously targeted cryptocurrency wallets through Distributed Denial of Service DDoS attacks have now launched another malware...

Updated: This DDoS Attack Unleashed the Most Packets Per Second Ever. Here’s Why That’s Important.

Updated April 30, 2019 with new data from an even larger attack. Skip directly to the bottom to learn more. DDoS attacks are usually measured by the amount of bandwidth involved, such as the 1.35 Terabits per second maximum attack directed at GitHub last year, the largest DDoS attack ever at the...

Rapidly Growing Electrum Botnet Infects Over 152,000 Users; Steals $4.6 Million

An ongoing attack against Electrum Bitcoin wallets has just grown bigger and stronger with attackers now targeting the whole infrastructure of the exchange with a botnet of over 152,000 infected users, raising the amount of stolen users' funds to USD 4.6 million. Electrum has been facing cyber...

Malware Infests Popular Pirate Streaming Hardware

You get what you pay for when you pirate content. That’s the takeaway from the latest report by Digital Citizens Alliance. It found that pirating hardware, which enables free streaming copyright-protected content, comes packed with malicious malware. The devices give criminals easy access to rout...

Electrum DDoS botnet reaches 152,000 infected hosts

By Jérôme Segura, Adam Thomas, and S!Ri We have been closely monitoring the situation involving the continued attacks against users of the popular Electrum Bitcoin wallet. Initially, victims were being tricked to download a fraudulent update that stole their cryptocurrencies. Later on, the threat...

Casino Goes All In and Wins Big with Imperva Security

There’s no good time to be hit by ransom-seeking DDoS attackers. For one casino-entertainment provider, the timing was particularly bad — right before one of its largest online poker events in 2016. The casino, which generates multiple billions in revenue per year, leveraged Imperva’s emergency...

ThreatList: Bad Bots Account for a Fifth of All Web Traffic, FinServ Hit the Worst

About a fifth of all web traffic 20.4 percent comes from bad bots, which continue to attack daily in automated offensives on websites, mobile apps and APIs. That’s worse for some verticals, like the banking and finance sector, which was hit the hardest last year. That’s according to the Distil...

Electrum Bitcoin wallets under siege

By Adam Thomas and Jérôme Segura, with additional contributions from Vasilios Hioueras and S!Ri Since at least late December 2018, many users of the popular Electrum Bitcoin wallet have fallen victim to a series of phishing attacks, which we estimate netted crooks well over 771 Bitcoins—an amount...

Preparing the Internet for the Next Mega DDoS Attack

When you think of a distributed denial-of-service DDoS attack at this point in the age of the internet, you might be thinking they’re old news. But when a multi-million-dollar business can be easily taken offline by an unskilled adversary and a $5 rent-a-DDoS service, I would argue that the issue...