Anti-Vaxxer Hijacks QR Codes at COVID-19 Check-In Sites

Quick-response QR codes used by a COVID-19 contact-tracing program were hijacked by a man who simply slapped up scam QR codes on top to redirect users to an anti-vaccination website, according to local police. He now faces two counts of “obstructing operations carried out relative to COVID-19 und...

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;...

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...

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...

AWS Cryptojacking Worm Spreads Through the Cloud

A cryptomining worm from the group known as TeamTNT is spreading through the Amazon Web Services AWS cloud and collecting credentials. Once the logins are harvested, the malware logs in and deploys the XMRig mining tool to mine Monero cryptocurrency. According to researchers at Cado Security, the...

Fake AVG: Scam Software Cops Name and Logo of Real AV

We’ve noted for a while that the practices of rogue antivirus software have started to mimic those of legitimate antivirus software vendors. But a new version of FakeXPA scareware take things a bit further: posing as a legitimate commercial AV package, AVG Antivirus 2011. Microsoft’s Malware...

Malformed URL Prefix Phishing Attacks Spike 6,000%

Researchers from GreatHorn report they have observed a nearly 6,000-percent jump in attacks using “malformed URL prefixes” to evade protections and deliver phishing emails that look legit. They look legit, that is, unless you look closely at the symbols used in the prefix before the URL. “The URL...

Sodinokibi Ransomware Behind Travelex Fiasco: Report

The Sodinokibi ransomware strain is apparently behind the New Year’s Eve attack on foreign currency-exchange giant Travelex, which has left its customers and banking partners stranded without its services. The criminals behind the attack are demanding a six-figure sum in return for the decryption...

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...

Houzz Urges Password Resets After Data Breach

Interior decorating website Houzz on Friday issued a notice that user data – including usernames, passwords and IP addresses – had been accessed by an “unauthorized third party.” Houzz connects consumers to varying home-goods departments or professionals for purchasing furniture. The Palo Alto,...

Potent Emotet Variant Spreads Via Stolen Email Credentials

Emotet’s resurgence in April seems to be the signal of a full comeback for what was once dubbed “the most dangerous malware in the world,” with researchers spotting various new malicious phishing campaigns using hijacked emails to spread new variants of the malware. The “new and improved” version...

Heather Mills Gets An Apology and 'Substantial' Settlement in Spyware Case

The 2010-2011 News of the World phone hacking scandal – in which it was revealed that the tabloid dropped malware on celebrity targets’ phones in order to gather dirt for news stories – is still playing out in court. The latest is a settlement for a “substantial” sum paid to Heather Mills and her...

Deepfake Attacks Are About to Surge, Experts Warn

Artificial intelligence and the rise of deepfake technology is something cybersecurity researchers have cautioned about for years and now it’s officially arrived. Cybercriminals are increasingly sharing, developing and deploying deepfake technologies to bypass biometric security protections, and ...

Cisco Warns of Severe DoS Flaws in Network Security Software

Cisco has stomped out a slew of high-severity vulnerabilities across its lineup of network-security products. The most severe flaws can be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to launch a passel of malicious attacks — from denial of service DoS to cross-site request forgery CSRF. The...

Unusual Linux Ransomware Targets NAS Servers

A rare instance of ransomware targeting Linux-based file storage systems network-attached storage servers, specifically has been spotted, spreading via 15 separate but related campaigns. The adversaries behind the effort are continuing their depredations on an ongoing basis, according to...

MobOk Malware Hides in Photo Editors on Google Play, Siphons Cash

A powerful money-siphoning malware known as MobOk has been found hiding in seemingly legitimate photo editing apps available on the Google Play store. The Pink Camera and Pink Camera 2 apps, now removed, had been installed around 10,000 times, according to researchers at Kaspersky. They included...

IoT Piranhas Are Swarming Industrial Controls

Full transparency: Curtis Simpson, CISO at Armis, the enterprise IoT security company, was fundamentally a black hat at the age of 12, before he even knew what a black hat was. One day he got flooded over IRC and was fascinated: What just happened? And how did it happen? He’s since spent the vast...

JBS Paid $11M to REvil Gang Even After Restoring Operations

JBS Foods paid the equivalent of $11 million in ransom after a cyber-attack that forced the company to shut down some operations in the United States and Australia over the Memorial Day weekend. The company made the payment to cybercriminals to ensure the protection of its data and mitigate any...

COVID-19 Results for 25% of Wyoming Accidentally Posted Online

The Wyoming Department of Health WDH said on Wednesday it accidentally posted COVID test results of state residents onto their public-facing storage buckets. The WDH said in a public advisory that an employee fumbled the health information of about 164,021 Wyoming residents and of people from oth...

Post Grid WordPress Plugin Flaws Allow Site Takeovers

Two high-severity vulnerabilities in Post Grid, a WordPress plugin with more than 60,000 installations, opens the door to site takeovers, according to researchers. To boot, nearly identical bugs are also found in Post Grid’s sister plug-in, Team Showcase, which has 6,000 installations. The issues...

Hackers Sell Data from 26 Million LiveJournal Users on Dark Web

A database containing credentials from more than 26 million LiveJournal accounts has been leaked online and is being sold on the Dark Web and hacker forums. The data contained in the files appears to be from a 2014 incident in which 33 million accounts were hacked, according to a published report...

Cisco ‘Critical Update’ Phishing Attack Steals Webex Credentials

An ongoing phishing campaign is reeling in victims with a recycled Cisco security advisory that warns of a critical vulnerability. The campaign urges victims to “update,” only to steal their credentials for Cisco’s Webex web conferencing platform instead. The campaign is looking to leverage the...

Google Chrome Affected By Magellan 2.0 Flaws

Researchers have disclosed five recently-patched vulnerabilities in the Google Chrome browser that could be exploited by an attacker to remotely execute code. The vulnerabilities, dubbed Magellan 2.0 by the Tencent Blade team of researchers who discovered them, exist in the SQLite database...

Buggy Phishing Kits Allow Criminals to Cannibalize Their Own

They say it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, but in cybercrime terms, perhaps it should be called a “phish-eat-phish” situation. Researchers recently discovered that several widely used phishing kits harbor vulnerabilities that can be exploited by other criminals to hijack operations – and...

Malware Makers Using ‘Exotic’ Programming Languages

Malware authors are increasingly using rarely spotted programming languages such as Go, Rust, Nim and DLang in order to create new tools and to hinder analysis, researchers have found. Use of those four languages is escalating in the number of malware families being identified, according to a...

Stalkerware Volumes Remain Concerningly High, Despite Bans

Tens of thousands of mobile users were infected by the class of software known generically as stalkerware last year. According to just-published research by Kaspersky, 2020 lockdowns related to the global COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on installations, but the scourge of privacy-busting software...

RCE 'Bug' Found and Disputed in Popular PHP Scripting Framework

Versions of the popular developer tool Zend Framework and its successor Laminas Project can be abused by an attacker to execute remote code on PHP-based websites, if they are running web-based applications that are vulnerable to attack. However, those that maintain Zend Framework emphasize that t...

Colossal Intel Update Anchored by Critical Privilege-Escalation Bugs

A massive Intel security update this month addresses flaws across a myriad of products – most notably, critical bugs that can be exploited by unauthenticated cybercriminals in order to gain escalated privileges. These critical flaws exist in products related to Wireless Bluetooth – including...

Millions of Thunderbolt-Equipped Devices Open to 'ThunderSpy' Attack

A new attack enables bad actors to steal data from Windows or Linux devices equipped with Thunderbolt ports – if they can get their hands on the device for just five minutes. The attack, called “Thunderspy,” specifically targets Thunderbolt technology, which is a hardware interface developed by...

Microsoft Patches 26 Critical Bugs in Big March Update

Microsoft tackled 115 bug fixes as part of its March Patch Tuesday update – 26 rated critical and 88 rated medium severity. The bugs patched span its product catalog, from Azure DevOps to Windows 10. This month’s haul is notable in its quantity and that there are only a few stand-out bugs causing...

‘WannaCry Hero’ Avoids Jail Time in Kronos Malware Charges

Marcus Hutchins, the researcher hailed for squashing the WannaCry ransomware outbreak in May 2017, has been spared jail time over the creation of the infamous Kronos banking malware. The 25-year-old British researcher was sentenced on Friday to time served and one year of supervised release over...

Pair of Cisco Bugs, One Unpatched, Affect Millions of Devices

Cisco has disclosed an unpatched, high-severity vulnerability that impacts millions of devices, in the logic that handles access control to one of the hardware components in Cisco’s proprietary Secure Boot implementation. Cisco has also disclosed a similarly widely-impacting high-severity bug tha...

EnemyBot Malware Targets Web Servers, CMS Tools and Android OS

A rapidly evolving IoT malware dubbed “EnemyBot” is targeting content management systems CMS, web servers and Android devices. Threat actor group “Keksec” is believed behind the distribution of the malware, according to researchers. “Services such as VMware Workspace ONE, Adobe ColdFusion,...

PHP Infiltrated with Backdoor Malware

The PHP project on Sunday announced that attackers were able to gain access to its main Git server, uploading two malicious commits, including a backdoor. They were discovered before they went into production. PHP is a widely used open-source scripting language often used for web development. It...

Florida Water Plant Hack: Leaked Credentials Found in Breach Database

Researchers say they found several stolen and leaked credentials for a Florida water-treatment plant, which was hacked last week. Researchers at CyberNews said they found 11 credential pairs linked to the Oldsmar water plant, in a 2017 compilation of stolen breach credentials. Meanwhile, they als...

Celeb SIM-Swap Crime Ring Stole $100M from U.S. Victims

A posse of alleged SIM-swapping cybercriminals has been rounded up across Europe by law-enforcement after the crooks finagled more than $100 million from U.S. celebrities and their families. Eight people in the U.K. were arrested in connection with the crime ring, in addition to individuals in...

Apple Pushes Back Against Zero-Day Exploit Claims

Apple has pushed back against claims that two zero-day bugs in its iPhone iOS have been exploited for years, saying it’s found no evidence to support such activity. Apple officials made the statement in response to a widely disseminated report published Wednesday by ZecOps, which claimed that two...

Critical Cisco 'CDPwn' Protocol Flaws Explained: Podcast

Researchers on Wednesday disclosed five critical vulnerabilities in Cisco Discovery Protocol CDP, the Cisco Proprietary Layer 2 network protocol that is used to discover information about locally attached Cisco equipment. Researchers say that the vulnerabilities, which they collectively call CDPw...

Evernote Critical Flaw Opened Personal Data of Millions to Attack

UPDATE A critical flaw in the popular note-taking Evernote extension could have allowed attackers to steal personal data – including emails and financial transactions – of millions. Specifically impacted was the Evernote Web Clipper extension for the Chrome browser, which lets users capture...

ThreatList: Credential-Sniffing Phishing Attacks Erupted in 2018

Phishing attacks have continued to grow over the past year – but now, it appears that more bad actors are launching these tricky attacks in hopes of scooping up credentials, rather than a previously-popular goal of infecting victims’ devices with malware. The new trend was outlined by Proofpoint...

TrickBot Takes a Break, Leaving Researchers Scratching Their Heads

The group behind the TrickBot malware is back after an unusually long lull between campaigns, according to researchers — but it’s now operating with diminished activity. They concluded that the pause could be due to the TrickBot gang making a large operational shift to focus on partner malware,...

Bugs Lurking in Cisco UC Provisioning Platform

The Akkadian Provisioning Manager, which is used as a third-party provisioning tool within Cisco Unified Communications environments, has three high-severity security vulnerabilities that can be chained together to enable remote code execution RCE with elevated privileges, researchers said. They...

Various Malware Lurks in Discord App to Target Gamers

A rise in online gaming, tied to pandemic-mandated social distancing, has led to a spike in criminals targeting the demographic. The latest effort to exploit the trend is malicious files planted inside the Discord platform designed to trick users into downloading malware-laced files. Researchers...

SideWinder APT Targets Nepal, Afghanistan in Wide-Ranging Spy Campaign

The SideWinder advanced persistent threat APT group has mounted a fresh phishing and malware initiative, using recent territory disputes between China, India, Nepal and Pakistan as lures. The goal is to gather sensitive information from its targets, mainly located in Nepal and Afghanistan...

Xiaomi M365 Electric Scooter Hacked and Remotely Controlled

A serious design flaw in a popular electric scooter has allowed researchers to hack into it when they were up to 100 meters away – and ultimately force it to brake or speed up. Researchers at Zimperium on Tuesday released a proof-of-concept PoC for the attack, which impacts Xiaomi M365 scooters...

Medusa Malware Joins Flubot’s Android Distribution Network

Flubot, the Android spyware that’s been spreading virally since last year, has hitched its infrastructure wagon up to another mobile threat known as Medusa. That’s according to ThreatFabric, which found that Medusa is now being distributed through the same SMS-phishing infrastructure as Flubot,...

Hybrid, Older Users Most-Targeted by Gmail Attackers

Users whose personal details have been exposed by a third-party breach, Australians, older folks and those who use both desktops and mobile devices are at the highest risk of becoming the victim of a malicious email attack, according to Google and researchers from Stanford, who teamed up to...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday Update Fixes 17 Critical Bugs

Microsoft’s November Patch Tuesday roundup of security fixes tackled an unusually large crop of remote code execution RCE bugs. Twelve of Microsoft’s 17 critical patches were tied to RCE bugs. In all, 112 vulnerabilities were patched by Microsoft, with 93 rated important, and two rated low in...

Why This New Cybergang is Heralding a New Age For BEC

A newly-uncovered business email compromise BEC cybergang, dubbed Silent Starling, has found success using a tricky technique to swindle funds from more than 500 organizations worldwide. The West African cybergang has been using a method that researchers with Agari – who discovered them in late...