This Week in Security News: IoT Threats and Risks

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, learn about the threats and risks to complex IoT environments. Also, learn about new security challenges and risks the food production...

RSA Conference 2019: NIST's Privacy Framework Starts to Take Shape

Data privacy has been thrust into the limelight with the passage of the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe last year and a string of high-profile consumer privacy snafus. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has plans to help companies address data privacy with the...

RSA Conference 2019: Data-Wiping Cyberattacks Plague Financial Firms

Over a quarter of surveyed financial institutions reported that they were targeted by destructive cyberattacks over the past year, bent on completely destroying data. That’s according to a new Carbon Black report unveiled at RSA this year. The report, “Modern Bank Heists: The Bank Robbery Shifts ...

Necurs Botnet Evolves to Hide in the Shadows, with New Payloads

Necurs, the prolific and globally dispersed spam and malware distribution botnet, has been spotted using a fresh hiding technique to avoid detection while quietly adding more bots to its web. According to research from Black Lotus Labs, which is telecom and ISP provider CenturyLink’s network...

RSAC 2019: Bronze Union APT Updates Remote Access Trojans in Fresh Wave of Attacks

The notorious Chinese-linked threat group, dubbed Bronze Union, has been spotted in a widespread 2018 campaign updating its arsenal of cyberweapons by breathing new life into old tools. The threat group was spotted in 2018 using updated source code to target data owned by political, technology,...

ATM Jackpotting Malware Hones Its Heist Tools

The WinPot ATM jackpotting malware is evolving, as its authors look to solve the obstacles that get in their way. The latest is an effort to help ATM hackers, a.k.a. jackpotters, better target their efforts in order to steal more cash in a lesser amount of time. Thieves infect ATMs through physic...

New Session Added: CISA Awareness Briefing on Chinese Malicious Cyber Activity

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has added an additional session to the virtual awareness briefing on Chinese malicious cyber activity targeting managed service providers. The briefing will be held on Thursday, February 14, 2019, from 1-2 p.m. ET. The briefing will provid...

Compromising vital infrastructure: communication

Have you ever been witness to a Wi-Fi failure in a household with school-aged children? If so, I don’t have to convince you that communication qualifies as vital infrastructure. For the doubters: when you see people risking their lives in traffic just to check their phone, you'll understand why...

The APT Name Game: How Grim Threat Actors Get Goofy Monikers

What’s in a name? When it comes to advanced persistent threat groups, it is often quite a bit. While their monikers’ may seem whimsical – Fancy Bear, Nomadic Octopus, Ocean Lotus and Darkhotel – the reality is these are not arbitrary names. In fact, many are similar to schoolyard nicknames or a...

SpeakUp Linux Backdoor Sets Up for Major Attack

LAS VEGAS — A backdoor trojan dubbed “SpeakUp” has been spotted exploiting the Linux servers that run more than 90 percent of the top 1 million domains in the U.S. It uses a complex bag of tricks to infect hosts and to propagate, which analysts say could indicate that it’s poised for a major...

Stealthy Malware Disguises Itself as a WordPress License Key

UPDATE A spam-injecting malware is targeting WordPress site owners by disguising itself as a legitimate license key for a WordPress design theme. According to analysis from Sucuri, a customer opened a malware removal ticket reporting “some weird spam URLs injected onto their WordPress website.”...

CISA Awareness Briefing on Chinese Malicious Cyber Activity

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA will conduct a series of virtual awareness briefings on Chinese malicious cyber activity targeting managed service providers MSPs. Briefings will be held from 1–2 p.m. ET on the dates listed below: Wednesday, February 6 Friday, February 22...

Hacking the GCHQ Backdoor

Last week, I evaluated the security of a recent GCHQ backdoor proposal for communications systems. Furthering the debate, Nate Cardozo and Seth Schoen of EFF explain how this sort of backdoor can be detected: In fact, we think when the ghost feature is active­ -- silently inserting a secret...

Fighting Fire with Fire: API Automation Risks

Akamai research shows that 83 percent of all traffic on the web today are API calls JSON / XML. In many cases this fast growth can be attributed to the adoption and popularity of mobile devices and the mobile app ecosystem, as well as the abuse by threat actors using bots to automate their manual...

Flexible and Powerful Reverse Proxy: Modlishka

Modlishka is a flexible and powerful reverse proxy, that will take your phishing campaigns to the next level. It was realeased with an aim to: help penetration testers to carry out an effective phishing campaign and reinforce the fact that serious threat can arise from phishing. show current 2FA...

What we learned by unpacking a recent wave of Imminent RAT infections using AMP

This blog post was authored by Chris Marczewski Cisco Talos has been tracking a series of Imminent RAT infections for the past two months following reported data from Cisco Advanced Malware Protection's AMP Exploit Prevention engine. AMP successfully stopped the malware before it was able to infe...

Binary Java Script Malicious Obfuscation Techniques

Many scams have emerged looking to infect users with malware by giving users false information claiming that their computers are infected. After such claims an alert appears requesting the client to approve the running of a javascript file. A successful attack can lead to downloading malware to t...

CVE-2018-16803

In CIMTechniques CIMScan 6.x through 6.2, the SOAP WSDL parser allows attackers to execute SQL code...

ICEPick-3PC: A Sophisticated Adware That Collects Data En Masse

A strain of malware that spreads on the web via advertising platforms has mounted a large-scale, mass data harvesting campaign, opening up thousands of Android users to follow-on attacks. Researchers said it’s likely there’s an organized crime ring operating behind the scenes. Named ICEPick‐3PC b...

Zero Trust and the Case for Application Microsegmentation

Data breaches have become incessant. Recently, a very popular airline sevices company revealed a suspected breach involving customer credit card information. Even more recently, a hospital in Indiana reported that a virus had infected some of its systems that caused the hospital to be placed on...