Takeaways from the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack

If you feel like you’ve read a lot about ransomware in recent months, it’s because these attacks have indeed intensified. In 2020, ransomware attacks surged by 150 percent, with the average payment size increasing by more than 170 percent. Some of the notable victims include United Health Service...

Adobe Patches Five Critical Illustrator CC Flaws

Adobe has released patches for five critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Illustrator CC, its popular vector graphics editor tool, which if exploited could enable arbitrary code execution. Overall Adobe patched nine vulnerabilities as part of its regularly-scheduled updates on Tuesday, including five...

Security Watch: Elon Musk's NeuraLink Links Brains to iPhones via Bluetooth

Technologist Elon Musk has unveiled a plan for embedding Bluetooth-enabled implants into a human brain, to enable disabled persons to regain motor and cognitive function. IT experts however noted that along with FDA approval, the idea faces hurdles in the form of significant scrutiny on the...

Microsoft Management Console Bugs Allow Windows Takeover

A Windows interface that allows system administrators to configure and monitor systems from an admin level has several vulnerabilities that would allow an attacker to install malicious payloads and even take over a target, privileged machine. The bugs are grouped under one umbrella CVE-2019-0948...

Malware That Targets Both Microsoft, Apple Operating Systems Found

Researchers came across a malicious Word document last week that doesn’t discriminate between OS platforms. The malicious Word document is designed to spread malware on either Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, depending on where it’s opened. Like many other strains of malware these days, the sample,...

Microsoft Invents New Way To Measure Online Safety (And Finds That Consumers Stink At It)

Computer users are taking steps to mitigate online security threats, but still only score a paltry 34 out of 100 – a solid “F” – according to a new study by Microsoft. The study, sponsored by Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group TwC, introduces a new metric, the Microsoft Computing Safety Inde...

Microsoft Addresses 3 Zero-Days & 3 Critical Bugs for March Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has addressed 71 security vulnerabilities in its scheduled March Patch Tuesday update – only three of which are rated critical in severity. The other 68 are all rated “important.” Three of the bugs are listed as publicly known zero-days, but none of them are listed as having been...

Microsoft Issues Windows 10 Workaround Fix for ‘SeriousSAM’ Bug

A privilege escalation bug, affecting versions of Windows 10, received a workaround fix by Microsoft Wednesday to prevent attackers from accessing data and creating new accounts on compromised systems. The bug, dubbed SeriousSAM, affects the Security Accounts Manager SAM database in all versions ...

Metamorfo Banking Trojan Abuses AutoHotKey

The Metamorfo banking trojan is abusing AutoHotKey AHK and the AHK compiler to evade detection and steal users’ information, researchers have warned. AHK is a scripting language for Windows originally developed to create keyboard shortcuts i.e., hot keys. According to the Cofense Phishing Defense...

ThreatList: DDoS Attack Sizes Drop 85 Percent Post FBI Crackdown

The average size of distributed denial of service DDoS attacks decreased significantly, dropping by 85 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. Researchers with NexusGuard said in a Tuesday report shared with Threatpost, that the number of DDoS attacks also dipped significantly, sinking by almost 1...

Intel Sued Under Wiretapping Laws for Tracking User Activity on its Website

Intel is being sued under a Florida state wiretapping law for using software on its website to capture keystrokes and mouse movements of people that visit it. The case is one of many that private citizens have brought against companies to dispute their use of session-replay technology. A...

Microsoft Issues Out-Of-Band Security Update For Office, Paint 3D

Microsoft has released an out-of-band security update for Microsoft Office, Office 365 ProPlus and Paint 3D. The applications are affected by multiple Autodesk vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could enable remote code execution. The flaws, all rated “important” in severity, are tied to six CVE...

Cisco Patches Six Critical Bugs in UCS Gear and Switches

Cisco Systems is warning of six critical vulnerabilities impacting a wide range of its products, including its Unified Computing System server line and its small business 220 Series Smart switches. In all instances of the vulnerabilities, a remote unauthenticated attacker could take over targeted...

New Drupalgeddon Attacks Enlist Shellbot to Open Backdoors

Researchers are warning of a new wave of cyberattacks targeting unpatched Drupal websites that are vulnerable to Drupalgeddon 2.0. What’s unique about this latest series of attacks is that adversaries are using PowerBot malware, an IRC-controlled bot also called PerlBot or Shellbot. Researchers a...

Publicly Attacked Microsoft IIS Zero Day Unlikely to be Patched

Microsoft is unlikely to patch a zero-day vulnerability in an older version of its Internet Information Services IIS webserver that’s been publicly attacked since last July and August. Two researchers from the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou posted a proof-of-concept exploit for...

Local Windows Admins Can Hijack Sessions Without Credentials

A researcher has exposed how attackers with local admin privileges could use native command-line Windows tools to hijack other users’ sessions without credentials. Researcher Alexander Korznikov on Friday published a report in which he describes how he could, locally and remotely via Remote Deskt...

Cobalt Strike Usage Explodes Among Cybercrooks

The use of Cobalt Strike – the legitimate, commercially available tool used by network penetration testers – by cybercrooks has shot through the roof, according to Proofpoint researchers, who say that the tool has now “gone fully mainstream in the crimeware world.” The researchers have tracked a...

Six Flags to Pay $36M Over Collection of Fingerprints

Theme park operator Six Flags has agreed to pay $36 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its acquisition of the fingerprint data of visitors to its theme parks. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in the case Rosenbach v. Six Flags that collecting biometric data at premises’ gates by scanni...

Ryuk Ransomware Gang Uses Zerologon Bug for Lightning-Fast Attack

The Ryuk threat actors have struck again, moving from sending a phishing email to complete encryption across the victim’s network in just five hours. That breakneck speed is partially the result of the gang using the Zerologon privilege-escalation bug CVE-2020-1472, less than two hours after the...

Adobe Warns of Critical Flaws in Flash Player, Framemaker

Adobe released patches for four critical flaws in Flash Player and in its Framemaker document processor as part of its regularly scheduled updates. The bugs, if exploited, could enable arbitrary code-execution. In Tuesday’s June Adobe security updates, critical flaws tied to three CVEs were patch...

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...

'Ultimate' MiTM Attack Steals $1M from Israeli Startup

Hackers pulled off an elaborate man-in-the-middle campaign to rip off an Israeli startup by intercepting a wire transfer from a Chinese venture-capital firm intended for the new business. New research by Check Point Software details how the security vendor uncovered the wire-transfer heist, in...

'USBAnywhere' Bugs Open Supermicro Servers to Remote Attackers

Authentication vulnerabilities in the baseboard management controllers BMCs of Supermicro X9-X11 servers have been discovered that allow a remote attacker to easily connect to a server and mount any virtual USB device of their choosing. The bugs, collectively dubbed USBAnywhere, allow an attacker...

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...

Norsk Hydro Calls Ransomware Attack 'Severe'

Aluminum giant Norsk Hydro has fallen victim to a serious ransomware attack that has forced it to shut down or isolate several plants and send several more into manual mode, the company said on Tuesday morning. Oslo, Norway-based Norsk Hydro, one of the world’s largest makers of aluminum, employs...

Creaky Old WannaCry, GandCrab Top the Ransomware Scene

What’s old in ransomware is new again. Or, more accurately, never really went away. New analysis shows that for a years-old malware, WannaCry is still a viciously active pest. The self-propagating ransomware cryptoworm that’s been parasitizing victims since 2017 was the top most detected ransomwa...

FBI Clears ProxyLogon Web Shells from Hundreds of Orgs

The Feds have cleared malicious web shells from hundreds of vulnerable computers in the United States that had been compromised via the now-infamous ProxyLogon Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities. ProxyLogon comprises a group of security bugs affecting on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange...

CISA Orders Fed Agencies to Patch Exchange Servers

Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement about active cyber-espionage campaigns that are exploiting four serious security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server, the U.S. government is mandating patching for the issues. The news comes as security firms report escalating numbers of relat...

Forbes Becomes Latest Victim of Magecart Payment Card Skimmer

The payment card-siphoning Magecart group has struck again; this time injecting web-skimming scripts into the subscription website for the Forbes print magazine as well as a slew of others over the past week. Scroll down for our exclusive podcast on Magecart The script, which has since been...

News Wrap: Amazon Echo Privacy, Facebook FTC Fines and Biometrics Regulation

Data privacy has been an outstanding theme this past week, and the Threatpost team discussed the biggest privacy related news. In the news wrap podcast for April 26, the team discussed the backstories behind several reports from the week, including: Facebook potentially facing Federal Trade...

Exchange Servers Speared in IcedID Phishing Campaign

The ever-evolving banking trojan IcedID is back again with a phishing campaign that uses previously compromised Microsoft Exchange servers to send emails that appear to come from legitimate accounts. Attackers also are using stealthy new payload-delivery tactics to spread the modular malware...

Agencies Warn on Satellite Hacks & GPS Jamming Affecting Airplanes, Critical Infrastructure

In a warning to aviation authorities and air operators on Thursday, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency EASA warned of satellite jamming and spoofing attacks across a broad swath of Eastern Europe that could affect air navigation systems. The warning came in tandem with a separate alert fro...

Millions of Android Users Scammed in SMS Fraud Driven by Tik-Tok Ads

Threat actors are using malicious Android apps to scam users into signing up for a bogus premium SMS subscription service, which results in big charges accruing on their phone bills. Jakub Vavra from the threat operations team of security firm Avast uncovered the campaign, which he dubbed UltimaS...

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...

Gaming Giant Capcom Hit By Ragnar Locker Ransomware: Report

Video game giant Capcom has reportedly been hit by a ransomware attack that affected access to certain systems – including email and file servers – and encrypted 1 terabyte TB of sensitive data. The Japanese video game developer and publisher has developed a number of multi-million selling game...

Black Hat USA, DEF CON 28 Go Virtual

Cybersecurity conferences Black Hat USA and DEF CON 28 will not be held in person this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The conferences will both instead be transformed into completely virtualized events. Both back-to-back annual conferences were set to take place in Las Vegas this year; Bla...

Bit-and-Piece DDoS Method Emerges to Torment ISPs

A pioneering distributed denial-of-service DDoS attack pattern has emerged, targeting internet service providers ISPs with something researchers have dubbed the bit-and-piece “Mongol” attack. The approach involves spreading out junk traffic across large numbers of IP addresses in order to evade...

Latest MS Patches Causing Black Screen of Death

The IDG News Service is reporting that Microsoft’s latest round of security patches appears to be causing some PCs to seize up and display a black screen, rendering the computer useless. The problem affects Microsoft products including Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems. From the article:...

UPDATED: Mass Attacks Exploiting 0-Day in Microsoft Video DLL

There is a widespread attack underway against an unpatched vulnerability in the Msvidctl DLL, with attackers using thousands of newly compromised Web sites to exploit victims’ PCs via drive-by downloads. The attacks are using Internet Explorer as the attack vector and are pushing a Trojan...

Safari Zero-Day Used in Malicious LinkedIn Campaign

Threat actors used a Safari zero-day flaw to send malicious links to government officials in Western Europe via LinkedIn before researchers from Google discovered and reported the vulnerability. That’s the word from researchers from Google Threat Analysis Group TAG and Google Project Zero, who...

WordPress File Management Plugin Riddled with Critical Bugs

A critical cross-site scripting XSS bug impacts WordPress sites running the Frontend File Manager plugin and allows remote unauthenticated users to inject JavaScript code into vulnerable websites to create admin user accounts. The bug is one of six critical flaws impacting the WordPress plugin...

Mom & Daughter Duo Hack Homecoming Crown

A 17-year-old high school senior along with her mother, Laura Rose Carroll, were arrested this week, charged with accessing student records in a fraudulent attempt to rig her school’s Homecoming Queen election. Carroll worked as an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School in the Escambia...

Apple Bug Allows Code Execution on iPhone, iPad, iPod

Apple has updated its iOS and iPadOS operating systems, which addressed a wide range of flaws in its iPhone, iPad and iPod devices. The most severe of these could allow an adversary to exploit a privilege-escalation vulnerability against any of the devices and ultimately gain arbitrary...

Amazon Plans Ring Facial Recognition-Based 'Watch List', Report

UPDATE Amazon is planning to use facial recognition software and its Ring smart home security devices to create an artificial-intelligence enabled “neighborhood watch list,” according to reports. According to internal documents reviewed by The Intercept, the “watch list” would automatically alert...

Gamification Can Transform Company Cybersecurity Culture

Chief information security officers CISOs of Global 2000 enterprises have one of the toughest jobs in the world, defending their organization’s cyberspace and being the guardian of its assets and private information. But CISOs also have a second, even bigger problem: Their own company employees...

Match, Tinder Swipe Right For Privacy Red Flags, Say Experts

Over 70 percent of subscribers across Match.com express concern about the amount of data they share with the platform, according to a ProPrivacy.com survey. But despite those concerns, users of the service do it anyway and also remain unaware of just how much data the company collects and how the...

Google Calendar Attacks Target Unwitting Mobile Users

UPDATE A sophisticated cyberattack is targeting Gmail users through fraudulent, unsolicited Google Calendar notifications. The campaign takes advantage of a common default feature for people using Gmail on their smartphone: Calendar invites automatically pop up on phones, prompting users to accep...

Data Breaches of the Week: Tales of PoS Malware, Latrine Status

The data-breach onslaught continued this week with casualties sprinkled across the globe. Victims included retailers, banks and one state-owned gas station. The theme this was the Indian subcontinent, with consumers in Pakistan and India feeling the main brunt of the proceedings. A point-of-sale...

EternalRomance Exploit Found in Bad Rabbit Ransomware

One day after clear ties were established between the Bad Rabbit ransomware attacks and this summer’s NotPetya outbreak, researchers at Cisco today strengthened that bond disclosing that the leaked NSA exploit EternalRomance was used to spread the malware on compromised networks. This contradicts...

Raccoon Stealer Bundles Malware, Propagates Via SEO

Criminals behind the Raccoon Stealer platform have updated their services to include tools for siphoning cryptocurrency from a target’s computer and new remote access features for dropping malware and scooping up files. The stealer-as-a-service platform, whose customers are typically rookie...