MacOS Malware: Myth vs. Truth – Podcast

Remember those ads with a sneezing guy in a suit who says he’s a PC and to stay away, he’s got that nasty virus that’s going around? “That’s OK,” says the young, hip guy in blue jeans: He’s a Mac. … as if any machine that runs code could possibly be immune to malware…? Boy, was that a stretch. Th...

Critical ManageEngine Desktop Server Bug Opens Orgs to Malware

A critical security vulnerability in the Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central and Desktop Central MSP platforms could allow authentication bypass, the company has warned. The bug CVE-2021-44757 could allow a remote user to “perform unauthorized actions in the server,” according to the company’s Mond...

Execs Could Face Jail Time For Privacy Violations

A new data privacy bill threatens large tech firms, like Facebook, with tough penalties – including monetary fines and up to 20 years of jail time for executives – if they violate user privacy policies. The “Mind Your Own Business Act,” proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden D-Ore. on Thursday, gives the...

News Wrap: DejaBlue Bugs and Biometrics Data Breaches

On the heels of Black Hat USA 2019 and DEF CON, Threatpost editors break down the biggest news of this past week ended Aug. 16, from Patch Tuesday craziness to publicly-exposed databases. That includes: Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday release featuring four BlueKeep-like critical remote...

StrongPity APT Returns with Retooled Spyware

UPDATE The APT group behind the sophisticated malware known as StrongPity a.k.a. Promethium has mounted a fresh spyware campaign that is still ongoing as of July 2019. The group has retooled with new malware to control compromised machines, according to researchers. “The new malware samples first...

Cisco Accidentally Released Dirty CoW Exploit Code in Software

Cisco Systems revealed in a security bulletin Wednesday that it “inadvertently” shipped in-house exploit code that was used in security tests of scripts as part of its TelePresence Video Communication Server and Expressway Series software. The code exploits the Dirty Cow vulnerability...

Badlock Bug in Samba SMB Protocol

Despite the Badlock hype machine cranked up high, we don’t know much about this impending soul-crushing vulnerability other than it could be bad, it could be in the Windows Server Message Block and it already has its own requisite logo and website. Nonetheless, we have a little more than two week...

China PLA Unit 78020 Cyberespionage Naikon APT

Chinese president Xi Jinping is supposed to have dinner this evening with U.S. president Barack Obama. Wonder if the name Ge Xing will come up? Ge Xing is the subject of a joint report published this morning by ThreatConnect and Defense Group Inc., computer and national security service providers...

Novel Attack Turns Amazon Devices Against Themselves

UPDATE Researchers from the University of London and the University of Catania have discovered how to weaponize Amazon Echo devices to hack themselves. The – dubbed “Alexa vs. Alexa” – leverages what the researchers called “a command self-issue vulnerability”: using pre-recorded messages which,...

Critical Citrix DDoS Bug Shuts Down Network, Cloud App Access

A critical security bug in the Citrix Application Delivery Controller ADC and Citrix Gateway could allow cyberattackers to crash entire corporate networks without needing to authenticate. The two affected Citrix products formerly the NetScaler ADC and Gateway are used for application-aware traffi...

Carnival Cruise Cyber-Torpedoed by Cyberattack

Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise-ship operator, has sprung another leak: For the second time in a year, attackers have breached email accounts and accessed personal, financial and health information belonging to guests, employees and crew. Carnival has quite the armada: Its cruise brand...

Apple Hurries Patches for Safari Bugs Under Active Attack

Apple issued two out-of-band security fixes for its Safari web browser, fixing zero-day vulnerabilities that “may have been actively exploited,” according to a Monday security bulletin by the company. The bugs affect sixth-generation Apple iPhones, iPads and iPod touch model hardware, released...

Cybercrooks Rake in $304M in Romance Scams

Romance scams remain the most successful fraud strategy for cybercrooks, and represents a growing sector, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Last year, romance schemes accounted for a record $304 million raked into illicit coffers, according to new data – up about 50 percent from 2019...

Wind River ‘Security Incident’ Affects SSNs, Passport Numbers

Wind River Systems, which develops embedded system software, on Friday warned of a “security incident” that had exposed personnel records. One or more files were downloaded from the company’s network on or around September 29, it said. Affected data included information maintained within the...

NVIDIA Patches Critical Bug in High-Performance Servers

NVIDIA released a patch for a critical bug in its high-performance line of DGX servers that could open the door for a remote attacker to take control of and access sensitive data on systems typically operated by governments and Fortune-100 companies. In all, NVIDIA issued nine patches, each fixin...

Critical Industrial Flaws Pose Patching Headache For Manufacturers

While patch management already presents challenges for enterprises, it’s even more of a headache for manufacturers and other industrial firms – who may even need to shut down entire factory operations in order to apply fixes. Sharon Brizinov, the principal vulnerability researcher with Claroty, h...

Microsoft Patches ‘Major’ Crypto Spoofing Bug

A major crypto-spoofing bug impacting Windows 10 users has been fixed as part of Microsoft’s January Patch Tuesday security bulletin. The vulnerability could allow an attacker to spoof a code-signing certificate, vital to validating executable programs in Windows, and make it appear as if an...

A Spate of University Breaches Highlight Email Threats in Higher Ed

Oregon State University announced Friday that hackers potentially made off with 636 student records and family records of students containing personally identifiable information PII, after a successful email attack in early May. This comes on the heels of email-based breaches at Graceland...

Adware-Ridden Apps in Google Play Infect 30 Million Android Users

More than 50 malicious apps have been discovered on the Google Play app marketplace, peddling adware to millions of Android victims. The 50 adware apps, which have been since removed, include fitness, photoshopping and gaming apps, and were installed a total of 30 million times, researchers at...

Zero-Day Flash Exploit Targeting Middle East

A zero-day vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks against Windows users in the Middle East, researchers warned Thursday. The Flash Player vulnerability CVE-2018-5002, a stack-based buffer overflow bug that could enable arbitrary code execution, was patched earlier today ...

Active DoS Exploits for MS15-034 Under Way

UPDATE – Microsoft’s characterization of MS15-034 as a remote code execution vulnerability certainly has a lot of Windows server admins on edge waiting for the other shoe to drop. In the three days since the bulletin was released warning of a critical vulnerability in the HTTP protocol stack,...

Windows XP End of Life Breeding FUD, Legit Concerns

For those of you anticipating the start of a Walking Dead-style malware apocalypse next Tuesday, calm yourselves. The official end of security support for Windows XP is upon us, but it’s important to check some anxiety at the door and keep some perspective. “I’ve been a forensics investigator 14...

Deep Dive: Protecting Against Container Threats in the Cloud

Containers are self-contained pods representing complete, portable application environments. They contain everything an application needs to run, including binaries, libraries, configuration files and dependencies Docker and Amazon Elastic, for instance, are two of the more well-known offerings...

Relentless Log4j Attacks Include State Actors, Possible Worm

Call it a “logjam” of threats: Attackers including nation-state actors have already targeted half of all corporate global networks in security companies’ telemetry using at least 70 distinct malware families — and the fallout from the Log4j vulnerability is just beginning. Researchers manning...

How MikroTik Routers Became a Cybercriminal Target

The routers leveraged by the Mēris botnet in a massive distributed denial-of-service DDoS attack against Russia’s internet giant Yandex have also been the unwitting platform for numerous cyberattacks, researchers have found. This is due to a persistent vulnerable state that’s difficult for...

Major Gaming Companies Hit with Ransomware Linked to APT27

A recent slew of related ransomware attacks on top videogame companies has been associated with the notorious Chinese-linked APT27 threat group, suggesting that the advanced persistent threat APT is swapping up its historically espionage centralized tactics to adopt ransomware, a new report says...

Microsoft Out-of-Band Security Update Fixes Windows Remote Access Flaws

Microsoft has released an out-of-band security update addressing two high-severity elevation-of-privilege EoP bugs. Both flaws exist in a service called Windows Remote Access, which provides remote-access capabilities to client applications on computers running Windows. Of note, both flaws were...

APT36 Taps Coronavirus as 'Golden Opportunity' to Spread Crimson RAT

A Pakistani-linked threat actor, APT36, has been using a decoy health advisory that taps into global panic around the coronavirus pandemic to spread the Crimson RAT. The functionalities of the Crimson RAT include stealing credentials from victims’ browsers, capturing screenshots, collecting...

MGM Grand Breach Leaked Details of 10.6 Million Guests Last Summer

A hacking forum this week published details of more than 10.6 million guests who stayed at MGM Resorts, the result of a breach due to unauthorized access to a cloud server that occurred at the famous Las Vegas hotel and casino last summer. The incident—revealed in a published report on ZDNet...

Advanced Obfuscation Marks Widespread Info-Stealing Campaign

A large-scale spam campaign bent on spreading info-stealing malware is applying advanced obfuscation techniques to get around security scanning and maximize infection rates. According to Lastline researchers, a large botnet is distributing malicious rich text format RTF documents that act as...

Hack of High-End Hotel Smart Locks Shows IoT Security Fail

LAS VEGAS – A vulnerability in a popular IoT lock key – used chiefly by a high-end hotel in Europe – allowed researchers to break into hotel rooms. The locks in question are dubbed “mobile keys” because of their reliance on mobile phones as opposed to card-based access such as those based on...

DEF CON 2019: Delta ICS Flaw Allows Total Industrial Takeover

A serious vulnerability in a commonly used Delta industrial control system has been found that could allow malicious actors on the same network complete control of the operating system. The Delta enteliBUS Manager centralizes control for various pieces of hardware often found in corporate or...

68% of Overwhelmed IT Managers Say They Can't Keep Up with Cyberattacks

IT managers feel overwhelmed by the volume of cyberattack attempts, with most of them admitting that successful hacks of their company networks are becoming the norm. That’s according to a research report The Impossible Puzzle of Cybersecurity, released Friday. In a survey of 3,100 IT managers...

Microsoft Zero-Day Patch for JET Bug Incomplete, Claims Firm

UPDATE Microsoft patched a zero-day in its JET Database Engine this week – but the patch was incomplete, according to researchers at 0patch. The company has developed a micropatch that corrects that hole, it said Friday. The memory corruption vulnerability CVE-2018-8423 could allow remote...

Darkhotel Exploits Microsoft Zero-Day VBScript Flaw

Researchers have discovered that the Darkhotel APT is exploiting a recently-patched zero-day vulnerability impacting Microsoft VBScript. Researchers at Trend Micro recently disclosed the flaw in Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Engine VBScript, an active scripting language developed by Microsoft...

Microsoft Plugs Three Zero Day Holes as Part of May Patch Tuesday

Microsoft patched three zero day vulnerabilities actively under attack today as part of its May Patch Tuesday release. Researchers with FireEye who uncovered the three vulnerabilities said the bugs were actively being exploited by threat actors Turla and APT28. Two of the zero day vulnerabilities...

Critical Apache HTTPD Server Bugs Could Lead to RCE, DoS

Don’t duck at the latest mention of Apache: Two critical bugs in its HTTP web server – HTTPD – need to be patched pronto, lest they lead to attackers triggering denial of service DoS or bypassing your security policies. Apache, the open-source software foundation behind the Log4J logging library...

LAPD Bans Facial Recognition, Citing Privacy Concerns

The Los Angeles Police Department LAPD has banned the use of commercial facial-recognition services – citing “public trust” considerations. The move comes in the wake of a report that showed that more than 25 employees of the department had performed 475 searches so far using the Clearview AI, an...

Foxit PDF Reader Vulnerable to 8 High-Severity Flaws

Patches are available for eight high-severity flaws impacting the popular PDF software Foxit Reader. The bugs, which exist on Windows versions of the software, enable a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems. This week, Foxit Software, the company behind Foxit Reader,...

UNICEF Leaks Personal Data of 8,000 Users via Email Blunder

The charity organization UNICEF inadvertently leaked the personal details of thousands of people who use its online learning portal Agora by way of an errant email sent to 20,000 inboxes. The email was accidentally sent on August 26 by UNICEF and included the names, email addresses, gender and...

Data Breach Exposes 100K U.S. Traveler Photos, License Plates

UPDATE The U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that a recent data breach exposed photos of the faces and license plates for more than 100,000 travelers driving in and out of the country. The department said Monday that the breach stemmed from an attack on a federal subcontractor. Customs and...

Sharing Threat Intelligence: Time for an Overhaul

Most organizations don’t really have a good way of sharing threat-related data outside of their own industry verticals. Sure, there are Information Sharing and Analysis Centers ISACs; i.e. FS-ISACs for the financial-services industry. But the information still tends to stay in industry-specific...

Facebook Boots 74 Cybercrime Groups From Platform

Facebook has booted more than 70 cybercrime groups off its platform that were peddling illicit services – from email spamming tools to stolen credentials and payment information sales – in plain sight. Researchers said a simple search on Facebook for keywords like “spam,” “CVV” or more returned...

IE 12 to Support HSTS Encryption Protocol

Microsoft confirmed today it will support HTTPS Strict Transport Protocol HSTS in Internet Explorer 12, bringing its browser in line with other major vendors in its support of the protocol. Browsers supporting HSTS force any sessions sent over HTTP to be sent instead over HTTPS, encrypting...

Smishing: Put Text-Based Phishing on the CISO Radar

Anyone who uses a smartphone has likely been the target of at least one smishing attack. Smishing is much like email phishing scams, but instead sends deceptive or malicious links through text messages. Like phishing, smishing tries to trick users into giving up valuable information, such as...

Bogus Android Clubhouse App Drops Credential-Swiping Malware

Researchers are warning of a fake version of the popular audio chat app Clubhouse, which delivers malware that steals login credentials for more than 450 apps. Clubhouse has burst on the social media scene over the past few months, gaining hype through its audio-chat rooms where participants can...

ADT Security Camera Flaws Open Homes to Eavesdropping

UPDATE Researchers have publicly disclosed security flaws found in ADT-owned LifeShield security cameras, which, if exploited, could have allowed a local attacker to eavesdrop on victims’ conversations or tap into a live video feed. The LifeShield brand is owned by security giant ADT. Specificall...

Black-T Malware Emerges From Cryptojacker Group TeamTNT

Researchers have discovered the latest cryptojacking malware gambit from TeamTNT, called Black-T. The variant builds on the group’s typical approach, with a few new — and sophisticated — extras. TeamTNT is known for its targeting of Amazon Web Services AWS credentials, to break into the cloud and...

TrickBot Attack Exploits COVID-19 Fears with DocuSign-Themed Ploy

Threat actors are using people’s interest in the Department of Labor’s Family and Medical Leave Act FMLA to spread what appears to be the TrickBot trojan in a new spam campaign that security researchers discovered recently. Recent analysis from spam honeypots set by IBM X-Force discovered actors...

Norman Cryptominer Employs Sophisticated Obfuscation Tactics

A never-before-seen cryptomining variant, dubbed “Norman” after one of its executable files, has been spotted in the wild using various techniques to hide and avoid discovery. The levels of obfuscation are notable for their sheer depth, according to an analysis. Varonis uncovered an initial sampl...