Researchers call for a determined path to cybersecurity

Despite our continuous research efforts to detect cyberattacks and enable defense, we often feel that we, as members of a global community, are failing to achieve an adequate level of cybersecurity. This is threatening the proper development and use of information technologies and digital assets,...

Firing of CISA Chief Christopher Krebs Widely Condemned

Government officials and cybersecurity experts alike condemned President Trump’s firing of Christopher Krebs by tweet Tuesday, as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA became the latest victim of the president’s housecleaning efforts after his failed bid at a...

Apple Lets Some of its Big Sur macOS Apps Bypass Firewall and VPNs

Apple is facing the heat for a new feature in macOS Big Sur that allows many of its own apps to bypass firewalls and VPNs, thereby potentially allowing malware to exploit the same shortcoming to access sensitive data stored on users' systems and transmit them to remote servers. The issue was firs...

Rapid7 Announces Improvements to Goals and SLAs in InsightVM

We know that proving the efficacy of your vulnerability management program is no easy task. But with the Goals and SLAs feature in InsightVM, you can ensure you’re making and tracking progress toward your goals and service-level agreements SLAs at an appropriate place, as well as maintaining...

Ransomware Takes Down Network of French IT Giant

French IT giant Sopra Steria was hit with a cyber attack this week that disrupted the business of the firm and is widely believed to be the work of the threat actors behind Ryuk ransomware. The company revealed the attack in a brief press statement released Oct. 22, two days after officials said...

Vulnerability Remediation vs. Mitigation: What’s the Difference?

Vulnerability management programs look different depending on the available resources and specific risks your organization faces. While both identifying and evaluating possible threats are important steps, the most time-consuming step is actually treating the vulnerability. Here’s where remediati...

U.S. Voter Databases Offered for Free on Dark Web, Report

UPDATE Personal information for several million American voters has turned up on a Russian underground cybercrime forum, according to reports – and users are purportedly looking to monetize it using a recently launched State Department program meant to prevent election-meddling. The personal...

Making Connections to Sustainable Action During a Pandemic

There is no question that this year has brought disruption to life as we know it. As the world around us is changing, our concept of normalcy does too. Now, more than ever, it is critical that Akamai continue business as usual, providing fast, intelligent, and secure experiences for our customers...

COVID-19 Has United Cybersecurity Experts, But Will That Unity Survive the Pandemic?

The Coronavirus has prompted thousands of information security professionals to volunteer their skills in upstart collaborative efforts aimed at frustrating cybercriminals who are seeking to exploit the crisis for financial gain. Whether it's helping hospitals avoid becoming the next ransomware...

Social Engineering Based on Stimulus Bill and COVID-19 Financial Compensation Schemes Expected to Grow in Coming Weeks

Given the community interest and media coverage surrounding the economic stimulus bill currently being considered by the United States House of Representatives, we anticipate attackers will increasingly leverage lures tailored to the new stimulus bill and related recovery efforts such as stimulus...

Monitoring ICS Cyber Operation Tools and Software Exploit Modules To Anticipate Future Threats

There has only been a small number of broadly documented cyber attacks targeting operational technologies OT / industrial control systems ICS over the last decade. While fewer attacks is clearly a good thing, the lack of an adequate sample size to determine risk thresholds can make it difficult f...

Necurs Botnet in Crosshairs of Global Takedown Offensive

A New York State court issued an order this week giving Microsoft control of the U.S.-based infrastructure used by the notorious Necurs botnet in an effort to stop the world’s most prolific and globally dispersed spam and malware infrastructure. The move came after Microsoft and partners across 3...

U.S. Finance Sector Hit with Targeted Backdoor Campaign

The financial services sector in the U.S. found itself under a barrage of cyberattacks last month, all bent on delivering a powerful backdoor called Minebridge. The attack chain employed a known method called “VBA Stomping” to avoid detection. According to researchers at FireEye, the campaigns,...

Four More Years… of Remediation

Last week, I read a blog from Brian Krebs about how a recent study showed that ransomware data breaches at hospitals are tied to an uptick in fatal heart attacks. Whenever I see an article with “fatal” and “cyber” in the title, I usually use it as a proof point for why we need less FUD in the...

‘Wildly Different’ Privacy Regulations Causing Compliance Chaos

From the General Data Protection Regulations GDPR to the California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA, the security landscape is becoming increasingly fraught with regulatory efforts. While privacy regulation has positive implications for data security, companies are finding themselves struggling to stay...

ENFUSE 2019: Security Regulations, Insider Threats, and IoT Privacy Risks

LAS VEGAS – From insider threats, Internet of Things insecurity, to medical device hacking, ENFUSE 2019 broke down the top privacy and security issues help desks are seeing today. It also tackle what regulatory efforts are being developed to address those threats. Threatpost editor Lindsey...

Insider Threats, a Cybercriminal Favorite, Not Easy to Mitigate

LAS VEGAS – Insider threats are an ongoing top danger for companies — but when it comes to mitigation efforts, incident-response teams face an array of challenges. Discussions with various incident-response teams revealed that between 25 to 30 percent of data breaches involved an external actor...

MESSAGETAP: Who’s Reading Your Text Messages?

FireEye Mandiant recently discovered a new malware family used by APT41 a Chinese APT group that is designed to monitor and save SMS traffic from specific phone numbers, IMSI numbers and keywords for subsequent theft. Named MESSAGETAP, the tool was deployed by APT41 in a telecommunications networ...

Backdoor Found in Utility for Linux, Unix Servers

In an unnerving twist, when a critical zero-day vulnerability was reported in a Unix administration tool, called Webmin, it was revealed the flaw was no accident. According to researchers, the vulnerability was a secret backdoor planted in the popular utility nearly a year before its discovery. T...

Why Cities Are a Low-Hanging Fruit For Ransomware

Ransomware attacks against local governments and cities are repeatedly making headlines, with crippling results on city operations and budgets. Last month, the Florida city of Riviera Beach paid hackers $600,000 after being hit by a ransomware attack that downed its computer systems for three...