Shades of BlueKeep: Wormable Remote Desktop Bugs Top August Patch Tuesday List

Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday release contains updates for 93 CVEs, including 29 that are rated critical in severity. The highest priority of these include four critical remote code-execution RCE vulnerabilities in Remote Desktop Services RDS and a critical RCE flaw in Microsoft Word. Also, tw...

Decryptor Keys Published for Maze, Egregor, Sekhmet Ransomwares

The shackles have been broken for victims of Maze/Egregor/Sekhmet ransomware: On Wednesday, decryption keys were released for all three ransomware strains in a forum post. The liberator, using the handle “Topleak,” described themselves as the developer of the three ransomwares. It’s been lovely,...

Lenovo, HP, Dell Peripherals Face Unpatched Firmware Bugs

Fresh firmware vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi adapters, USB hubs, trackpads and cameras are putting millions of peripheral devices in danger of a range of cyberattacks, according to research from Eclypsium. TouchPad and TrackPoint firmware in Lenovo Laptops, HP Wide Vision FHD camera firmware in HP...

Intel ZombieLoad Side-Channel Attack: 10 Takeaways

Intel on Tuesday revealed a new class of speculative execution vulnerabilities, dubbed Microarchitectural Data Sampling MDS, which impact all its modern CPUs. The flaws all ultimately depend on different ways of executing side channel attacks to siphon data from impacted systems – and result in...

Second Try at LSASS Patch Addresses Vulnerability

Microsoft’s second try at patching a vulnerability in a critical Windows process apparently is more successful than its first attempt. Yesterday, as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday release of security bulletins, Microsoft sent out an update that fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability in the...

Former Researcher Iceman Sentenced to 13 Years

A former security researcher turned criminal hacker has been sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for hacking into financial institutions and stealing credit card account numbers. Max Ray Butler, who used the hacker pseudonym Iceman, was sentenced Friday morning in U.S. District Court in...

DoppelPaymer Gang Leaks Files from Illinois AG After Ransom Negotiations Break Down

The ransomware gang identified as DoppelPaymer has leaked a substantial collection of files from the Illinois Office of the Attorney General OAG on a server controlled by the cybercriminal group. The move came after ransom negotiations between the two parties broke down following a ransomware...

From PowerShell to Payload: An Analysis of Weaponized Malware

UPDATE Click, and boom, your network is compromised. All a hacker needs is one successful exploit and you could have a very bad day. Recently we uncovered one artifact that we would like to break down and showcase. We will get “into the weeds” here and really deep-dive on the technical details, s...

Critical Remote Code-Execution Bugs Threaten Global Power Plants

Siemens industrial equipment commonly found in fossil-fuel and large-scale renewable power plants are riddled with multiple security vulnerabilities, the most severe of which are critical bugs allowing remote code-execution. The affected product is SPPA-T3000, a distributed control system used fo...

Apple Patches Intel Side-Channel Bugs; Updates iOS, macOS and More

Apple has rolled out 173 patches across in various products across its hardware portfolio, including for dangerous bugs in macOS for laptops and desktops, iPhone, Apple TV and Apple Watch. The update also includes a patch for the side-channel vulnerabilities in Intel chips disclosed on Tuesday,...

Phishing Campaign Targeted Those Aiding Ukraine Refugees

Cyberattackers used a compromised Ukrainian military email address to phish EU government employees who’ve been involved in managing the logistics of refugees fleeing Ukraine, according to a new report. Ukraine has been at the center of an unprecedented wave of cyberattacks in recent weeks and...

Actively Exploited Microsoft Zero-Day Allows App Spoofing, Malware Delivery

Microsoft has addressed a zero-day vulnerability that was exploited in the wild to deliver Emotet, Trickbot and more in the form of fake applications. The patch came as part of the computing giant’s December Patch Tuesday update, which included a total of 67 fixes for security vulnerabilities. Th...

Chase Bank Phish Swims Past Exchange Email Protections

Threat actors are impersonating Chase Bank in two phishing attacks that can slip past Microsoft Exchange security protections in an aim to steal credentials from victims — by spoofing real-life customer scenarios. Researchers from Armorblox recently discovered the attacks, one of which claims to...

Adobe Patches Flash Zero Day Exploited by Black Oasis APT

Adobe today released an out-of-band Flash Player update addressing a zero-day vulnerability being exploited by a little-known Middle Eastern APT group. The group known as Black Oasis was, as recently as this month, using exploits for the flaw to drop FinSpy as a payload. Sold by the controversial...

Stuxnet LNK Exploits Still Widely Circulated

One of the alleged mandates around the development of the Stuxnet worm was that malware’s numerous components—which included a handful of zero days—should never escape the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Iran. Eight years later, evidence continues to mount as to how that mandate was...

US Military Ties Prolific MuddyWater Cyberespionage APT to Iran

U.S. Cyber Command has confirmed that MuddyWater – an advanced persistent threat APT cyberespionage actor aka Mercury, Static Kitten, TEMP.Zagros or Seedworm that’s historically targeted government victims in the Middle East – is an Iranian intelligence outfit. The link has been suspected, and no...

Phishing Campaign Dangles SharePoint File-Shares

Attackers are using spoofed sender addresses and Microsoft SharePoint lures in a new phishing campaign that is “sneakier than usual” and can slip through the usual security protections in its aim to fool people into giving up their credentials, Microsoft researchers discovered. Microsoft Security...

80% of Net Neutrality Comments to FCC Were Fudged

Broadband providers and a 19-year-old college student were among those who successfully hijacked public comments during a crucial decision-making process in 2017 to overturn net neutrality by flooding the Federal Communications Commission FCC with fraudulent comments indicating their position on...

WordPress Plugin WP Statistics Patches XSS Flaw

WordPress plugin WP Statistics has patched a cross-site scripting XSS vulnerability that could allow for full website takeover, if the website is operating under certain non-default settings. WP Statistics gives website owners a tool to analyze site statistics, such as the number of visitors on t...

Zero-Day No More: Windows Bug Gets a Fix

The local privilege-escalation LPE zero-day bug in Microsoft Task Scheduler, disclosed by SandboxEscaper on Twitter in late May by way of making public a fully functioning exploit, now has a micropatch. The interim fix, from 0patch, was issued Tuesday to address the vulnerability. The bug would...

Linux Kernel Flaw Allows Remote Code-Execution

Millions of Linux systems could be vulnerable to a high-impact race condition flaw in the Linux kernel. Kernel versions prior to 5.0.8 are affected by the vulnerability CVE-2019-11815, which exists in the rdstcpkillsock in net/rds/tcp.c. “There is a race condition leading to a use-after-free UAF,...

Microsoft Settles With Kelihos Botnet Defendant, Says He Didn't Run the Network

Microsoft on Friday said it has reached a settlement with a Russian programmer it named as a defendant in a lawsuit related to the operation of the notorious Kelihos botnet. The company said that it no longer believes Andrey N. Sabelnikov was the operator of the botnet, but was instead responsibl...

Yandex Data Breach Exposes 4K+ Email Accounts

Yandex – one of Europe’s largest internet companies – is warning of a data breach that compromised 4,887 email accounts. The breach stems from an insider threat. Yandex is the most-used search engine in Russia – and the fifth most-popular search engine worldwide. Beyond its search engine, Yandex’...

Annoyingly Believable Tax Refund Scam Targets Mobile

A text message-based tax scam is making the rounds in the U.K., in a probable harbinger of things to come as the U.S. tax season gets underway in earnest. SMS messages are going out to unsuspecting U.K. citizens claiming to be from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs HMRC, the country’s...

China's APT3 Pilfers Cyberweapons from the NSA

The advanced persistent threat APT group known as APT3, which researchers across the board link to the Chinese government, has built a full in-house battery of exploits and cybertools collectively dubbed “UPSynergy.” An analysis of the toolkit has uncovered a geopolitical cat-and-mouse spy game: ...

Infosecurity Europe: Cryptojacking is Making a Comeback

LONDON, UK – With cryptocurrency prices skyrocketing, the threat of cryptomining malware, used to mine various types of cryptocurrencies, is continuing to worry the security industry. Case in point: Recently researchers uncovered the Nansh0u campaign, a cryptojacking campaign that mines an...

Firefox and Edge Fall to Hackers on Day Two of Pwn2Own

Hackers took down the Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge browsers on Thursday at Pwn2Own, the annual hacking conference held in tandem with CanSecWest, as the competition continued for a second day. The dynamic hacking duo of Amat Cama and Richard Zhu, which make up team Fluoroacetate, had anothe...

Attacks on New Microsoft Zero Day Using Multi-Stage Malware

Attackers exploiting the Microsoft Windows and Office zero day revealed yesterday are using an exploit that includes a malicious RAR file as well as a fake Office document as the lure, and are installing a wide variety of malicious components on newly infected systems. The attacks seen thus far a...

Security Camera Firm Arlo Zaps High-Severity Bugs

Two high-severity vulnerabilities in Arlo Technologies’ wireless home security camera gear have been patched. The flaws, which indirectly impact Arlo’s popular fleet of wireless home security cameras, are limited to adversaries with local network and physical access to Arlo Base Stations. Both...

Lapsus$ ‘Back from Vacation’

The Lapsus$ data extortionists are back from a week-long “vacation,” they announced on Telegram, posting 70GB worth of data purportedly stolen from software development giant Globant. “We are officially back from a vacation,” the gang wrote on their Telegram channel, posting images of exfiltrated...

DarkHotel APT Targets Wynn, Macao Hotels to Rip Off Guest Data

An advanced persistent threat APT group has been targeting luxury hotels in Macao, China with a spear-phishing campaign aimed at breaching their networks and stealing the sensitive data of high-profile guests staying at resorts, including the Grand Coloane Resort and Wynn Palace. A threat researc...

‘Privateer’ Threat Actors Emerge from Cybercrime Swamp

A new type of cybercriminal is emerging in a cyber-threat landscape that’s historically been dominated by either state-sponsored threat actors or financially-motivated criminals that are hunted and prosecuted by law enforcement. Dubbed “privateers” by researchers at Cisco Talos Intelligence, thes...

Fake Jason Statham Bilks a Fan Out of Serious Money

English actor Jason Statham – a.k.a. “the Transporter” – is cozying up to people who like his Facebook page – or at least, someone purporting to be him is. A fraudster managed to bilk a vulnerable and unsuspecting Statham fan out of a “significant amount” of money after approaching her while she...

Google Play Bitten by Sharkbot Info-stealer ‘AV Solution’

Researchers have found the info-stealing Android malware Sharkbot lurking unsuspected in the depths of the Google Play store under the cover of anti-virus AV solutions. While analyzing suspicious applications on the store, the Check Point Research CPR team found what purported to be genuine AV...

Critical Security Bug Can Knock Smart Meters Offline

Critical security vulnerabilities in Schneider Electric smart meters could allow an attacker a path to remote code execution RCE, or to reboot the meter causing a denial-of-service DoS condition on the device. Schneider Electric’s PowerLogic ION/PM smart meter product line, like other smart meter...

Samsung Screwed Up Encryption on 100M Phones

Samsung shipped an estimated 100 million smartphones with botched encryption, including models ranging from the 2017 Galaxy S8 on up to last year’s Galaxy S21. Researchers at Tel Aviv University found what they called “severe” cryptographic design flaws that could have let attackers siphon the...

Mac Malware Targets Apple’s New M1 Processor

Three months after Apple launched its new M1 system-on-a-chip SoC, cybercriminals have developed what may be the first malicious macOS application targeting the mobile giant’s first in-house silicon. Click to Register The recently uncovered malicious application, called GoSearch22, natively runs ...

Critical Steam Flaws Could Let Gamers Crash Opponents’ Computers

Game developer Valve has fixed critical four bugs in its popular Steam online game platform. If exploited, the flaws could allow a remote attacker to crash an opponent’s game client, take over the computer – and hijack all computers connected to a third-party game server. Steam is utilized by mor...

Windows Users at Risk From High-Severity Intel Software Flaw

Intel is warning of a high-severity vulnerability existing in its software that identifies the specification of Intel processors in Windows systems. The flaw could have an array of malicious impacts on affected systems, such as opening systems up to information disclosure or denial of service...

Hacked Hair Straighteners Can Threaten Homes

Researchers have found a way to successfully hack connected hair straighteners to turn them on and increase the heating element up to its maximum temperature—causing a serious fire hazard for unsuspecting owners. Pen Test Partners decided to put the Glamoriser hair straightener through its securi...

Naikon APT Hid Five-Year Espionage Attack Under Radar

After five years under the radar, the Naikon APT group has been unmasked in a long-term espionage campaign against several governments in the Asia-Pacific region. The Chinese APT group was first uncovered by Kaspersky researchers in 2015, in attacks against top-level government agencies around th...

22 Critical Flaws Patched in Adobe Photoshop

Adobe has patched 22 critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Photoshop CC, its photo editing application, which the company warns can enable arbitrary code execution. Overall, Adobe issued patches for 119 important and critical vulnerabilities in August, including 25 critical bugs across several...

Microsoft Patches A Pair of Zero-Days Under Active Attack

Microsoft has addressed 77 vulnerabilities in its July Patch Tuesday update, with 15 of them rated as critical and two known to be under active exploit; and Adobe issued a small group of updates, with surprisingly none for Acrobat Reader or Flash. Eleven of the critical bugs are for scripting...

New FormBook Dropper Harbors Obfuscation, Persistence

Researchers are warning that a future data-theft attack may be brewing after discovering a new sample of the FormBook malware, with a never-before-seen dropper — i.e. a malicious file that is used in the initial infection stage and installs malware on the system. FormBook, a browser form-stealer...

Microsoft Exchange Servers Face APT Attack Tsunami

Recently patched Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities are under fire from at least 10 different advanced persistent threat APT groups, all bent on compromising email servers around the world. Overall exploitation activity is snowballing, according to researchers. Microsoft said in early March that ...

Adobe Critical Code-Execution Flaws Plague Windows Users

Adobe has issued patches for a slew of critical security vulnerabilities, which, if exploited, could allow for arbitrary code execution on vulnerable Windows systems. Affected products include Adobe’s Framemaker document processor, designed for writing and editing large or complex documents;...

6 Cyber-Defense Steps to Take Now to Protect Your Company

The headlines feel like Groundhog Day, if each of Bill Murray’s repeated days grew increasingly threatening: Ransomware attacks rise again. Ransomware attacks up over last quarter. Ransomware attacks tower over previous year. You get the idea. And yet again, a new report from Ivanti sends a clear...

Critical Bugs in Utilities VPNs Could Cause Physical Damage

Remote code-execution vulnerabilities in virtual private network VPN products could impact the physical functioning of critical infrastructure in the oil and gas, water and electric utilities space, according to researchers. Researchers at Claroty found that VPNs used to provide remote access to...

Tackling the Collaboration Conundrum

It’s 8 a.m. and you’ve just polished off a full cup of dark-roast coffee to jump-start your day. After booting up your PC, you instinctively open up Outlook, along with Slack or Teams or TeamViewer. While chatting with a co-worker, you recall that you need to send administrative credentials to he...

Nvidia Warns Windows Gamers of Serious Graphics Driver Bugs

Graphics chipmaker Nvidia has fixed two high-severity flaws in its graphics drivers. Attackers can exploit the vulnerabilities to view sensitive data, gain escalated privileges or launch denial-of-service DoS attacks in impacted Windows gaming devices. Nvidia’s graphics driver also known as the G...