Telegram CEO Fingers China State Actors for DDoS Attack

The chief executive of secure messaging app Telegram is pointing the finger squarely at China as the culprit responsible for the distributed denial of service DDoS attack that it suffered on Wednesday. The company announced the attack on Twitter, warning that users may be experiencing connection...

Calibration Attack Drills Down on iPhone, Pixel Users

A proof-of-concept for a new type of privacy attack, dubbed “calibration fingerprinting,” uses data from Apple iPhone sensors to construct a globally unique fingerprint for any given mobile user. Researchers said that this provides an unusually effective means to track people as they browse acros...

Cisco Service Provider, WebEx Bugs Offer Up Remote Code Execution

Cisco is warning of critical remote code-execution RCE vulnerabilities in the Cisco Prime Infrastructure PI and Evolved Programmable Network EPN Manager, which is used by telcos, mobile carriers, cable companies and ISPs to manage their hardware infrastructure. The vendor also issued estimated...

Osiris Banking Trojan Displays Modern Malware Innovation

After staying dormant for few years, the Kronos banking trojan resurfaced in July in a form dubbed Osiris. A wider analysis of how the banking trojan is evolving shows innovative development on the part of its authors, with an eye to broader malware trends. Osiris first appeared in July in three...

Microsoft Patches Three Vulnerabilities Under Attack

Microsoft today patched a zero-day Word vulnerability that has been publicly attacked along with deploying fixes for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge and Windows 10. In all, nine Microsoft products received updates totaling 45 unique CVEs. Three of the vulnerabilities among Tuesday’s updates,...

Microsoft Patches Critical Bug in Windows TCP/IP Stack

Microsoft has patched a serious vulnerability in the Windows TCP/IP stack that, under some conditions, could enable an attacker to run code on remote machines. The flaw lies in the way that the stack handles large amounts of specially formatted packets sent to a vulnerable machine. Microsoft...

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 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...

Magento Sites Vulnerable to RCE Stemming From Magmi Plugin Flaws

Researchers have disclosed two flaws that could enable remote code execution attacks on the Magento Mass Import Magmi plugin, an open source database client that imports data into Magento. Magmi is a Magento database client written in PHP, which is used to perform raw bulk operations on the model...

Virus Bulletin 2019: VoIP Espionage Campaign Hits U.S. Utilities Supplier

LONDON — A recent attack aimed at a U.S.-based oil, gas and chemical supplier leverages the company’s use of the enterprise-class Asterisk open-source PBX software, used for VoIP services. According to research from Check Point, presented here at Virus Bulletin 2019 on Friday, the attack was firs...

Thousands of PCs Affected by Nodersok/Divergent Malware

New malware identified by Microsoft and Cisco Talos has affected thousands of PCs in the United States and Europe and turns systems into proxies for performing malicious activity, the companies said. The fileless threat—called Nodersok by Microsoft and Divergent by Cisco Talos—has many of its own...

Police Use of Facial Recognition is Just Fine, Say Most Americans

Despite the appetite for dystopian surveillance dramas on TV and in film, most Americans actually do trust law enforcement to not abuse facial recognition technology, according to a new survey. According to the Pew Research Center, a full 56 percent said that they trust police and officials to us...

iPhone Zero-Days Anchored Watering-Hole Attacks

A total of 14 iPhone vulnerabilities – including two that were zero-days when discovered — have been targeted by five exploit chains in a watering hole attack that has lasted years. The watering holes deliver a spyware implant that can steal private data like iMessages, photos and GPS location in...

HTTP Bugs Open Websites to DoS Attacks

Eight bugs in the implementation of HTTP/2, the most recent version of the HTTP protocol, can be exploited to launch denial of service attacks. The flaws were found in vendor server configurations ranging from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apache. Bugs are similar in nature and can be exploited b...

Cerberus Enters the Android Malware Rental Scene

A never-before-seen Android banking trojan, dubbed Cerberus, is being rented out on underground forums by a threat group that likes to engage with the defense community publicly via Twitter. According to a Tuesday posting from ThreatFabric, Cerberus isn’t based on the leaked Anubis source code th...

New SWAPGS Side-Channel Attack Bypasses Spectre and Meltdown Defenses

Millions of newer Intel microprocessors manufactured after 2012 are vulnerable to a new type of side-channel attack dubbed SWAPGS. SWAPGS is similar to existing side-channel attacks such as Spectre and Meltdown and similarly could allow a hacker to gain access to sensitive data such as passwords...

YouTuber PewDiePie Promoted Via 50K Hacked Printers

A hacker claims to have commandeered 50,000 printers globally in order to print pamphlets promoting YouTube star “PewDiePie.” The alleged widespread hack sheds light on just how insecure printers are, and how precarious printer vulnerabilities could be when they offer an easy route into the...

Icefog Targeted APT Attacks Hit South Korea, Japan

An espionage campaign featuring precise targeting of victims and malware that allows the attackers one-on-one interaction with compromised systems has been uncovered. Government agencies, manufacturers, high tech companies and media organizations in South Korea and Japan have been the primary...

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...

Russia May Use Ransomware Payouts to Avoid Sanctions

Russia may ramp up ransomware attacks against the United States as a way to ease the financial hurt it’s under due to sanctions, U.S. federal authorities are warning. Those sanctions have been levied against the nation and Vladimir Putin’s government due to its invasion of Ukraine. The Financial...

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...

Magecart Goes Server-Side in Latest Tactics Changeup

Magecart Group 12, known for skimming payment information from online shoppers, was fingered for last September’s gonzo attack on more than 2,000 e-Commerce sites, and now researchers have issued a report explaining how they did it, detailing a new technical approach. The skimmers are still “very...

How to Get into the Bug-Bounty Biz: The Good, Bad and Ugly

Zero-day disclosures, those known bugs without a fix, can have potentially catastrophic results. One of the best ways to combat them is by discovering them before the bad guys do. Some of the biggest tech brands on the planet have been pummeled by a rash of high-profile zero-day exploits. In the...

EvilQuest Mac Ransomware Has Keylogger, Crypto Wallet-Stealing Abilities

A rare new ransomware strain targeting macOS users has been discovered, called EvilQuest. Researchers say the ransomware is being distributed via various versions of pirated software. EvilQuest, first discovered by security researcher Dinesh Devadoss, goes beyond the normal encryption capabilitie...

Critical Adobe Flaw Fixed in Out-of-Band Security Update

Adobe has released an out-of-band patch for a critical vulnerability in its Creative Cloud Desktop Application for Windows. The flaw can be exploited by an attacker to delete specific arbitrary files on the victim’s system. Creative Cloud acts as a central console for desktop users to quickly...

Mozilla Bug Bounty Program Doubles Payouts, Adds Firefox Monitor

Mozilla is bumping up its bug bounty payouts and has added new websites and services – including the recently deployed Firefox Monitor– to its bug bounty program in hopes of attracting more researchers to sniff out vulnerabilities. The browser-maker is doubling bug bounty payouts for most of its...

Cisco Warns of Critical Nexus 9000 Data Center Flaw

A critical vulnerability in Cisco’s software-defined networking SDN software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to connect to a vulnerable data-center switch and take it over, with the privileges of the root user. The bug CVE-2019-1804, which has a CVSS severity rating of 9.8 out of...

Apple Fixes Pesky FaceTime Bug in iOS 12.1.4 Update

Apple has patched a major flaw in its Group FaceTime feature that allowed callers to eavesdrop on people they called even if they never picked up. It also said it would pay a reward to the teen that identified the bug. The update comes along with a slew of other fixes in its release of iOS 12.1.4...

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 ...

Google Research Pinpoints Security Soft Spot in Multiple Chat Platforms

Google Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich outlined what she believes is a common theme when it comes to serious vulnerabilities impacting leading chat platforms. The research, published Tuesday, identifies a common denominator within chat platforms, called “calling state machine”, which...

Vancouver Metro Disrupted by Egregor Ransomware

The threat actors behind the Egregor ransomware are showing a prolificacy in their early months of activity. On the heels of targeting struggling U.S. retailer Kmart, the Egregor gang also disrupted the Vancouver metro system with a ransomware attack. Translink, the Canadian city’s public...

Clever Phishing Attack Bypasses MFA to Nab Microsoft Office 365 Credentials

A new phishing campaign can bypass multi-factor authentication MFA on Office 365 to access victims’ data stored on the cloud and use it to extort a Bitcoin ransom or even find new victims to target, security researchers have found. Researchers at Cofense Phishing Defense Center discovered the...

BlueKeep Flaw Plagues Outdated Connected Medical Devices

While Microsoft issued patches for the infamous BlueKeep vulnerability almost a year ago, researchers warn that almost half of connected medical devices in hospitals run on outdated Windows versions that are still vulnerable to the remote desktop protocol RDP flaw. Researchers said they found tha...

Dexphot Malware Hijacks 80K+ Devices to Mine Cryptocurrency

Microsoft is warning of malware, Dexphot, that has infected more than 80,000 machines, sucking up their CPU power in order to mine cryptocurrency. Researchers first discovered Dexphot in October 2018 and saw its activity peak during July. They said that the malware has a complex attack chain and...

Chrome Bug, Not Avid Software, Causes Damage to MacOS File Systems

Researchers have tracked a problem that caused corruption to the file systems of macOS users to a bug in a Google Chrome update after users originally feared it was a problem with Avid Media Composer. People using the Avid software for video editing on macOS platforms posted warnings Tuesday on...

1B Mobile Users Vulnerable to Ongoing ‘SimJacker’ Surveillance Attack

A vulnerability discovered in mobile SIM cards is being actively exploited to track phone owners’ locations, intercept calls and more – all merely by sending an SMS message to victims, researchers say. Researchers on Thursday disclosed what they said is a widespread, ongoing exploit of a SIM...

Critical Rockwell Automation Bug in Drive Component Puts IIoT Plants at Risk

A critical denial-of-service DoS vulnerability has been found in a Rockwell Automation industrial drive, which is a logic-controlled mechanical component used in industrial systems to manage industrial motors. The vulnerability was identified in Rockwell Automation’s PowerFlex 525 drive component...

Year-Old Critical Vulnerabilities Patched in ISP Broadband Gear

Patches for three critical vulnerabilities impacting broadband gateways made by Advanced Digital Broadcast ADB have been released to the public, nearly two years after the bugs were first found. Issues range from a privilege escalation flaw, an authorization bypass vulnerability and a local...

Details Surface on Stuxnet Patch Bypass

It took 10 hours to find what had eluded others for close to five years. German computer science student Michael Heerklotz spent the Christmas holiday reading Countdown to Zero Day, a narrative on the discovery and impact of Stuxnet, the computer worm considered one of the first cyberweapons, and...

Microsoft Plans Record-Breaking Patch Tuesday

This month’s batch of security patches from Microsoft will be a record-breaking one: 16 bulletins addressing a whopping 49 security vulnerabilities. According to the company’s advance notice, four of the 16 bulletins will be rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest severity rating. Microsoft rates a...

Reporting Mandates to Clear Up Feds’ Hazy Look into Threat Landscape – Podcast

You know that hazy window that’s been obscuring the cyber threat landscape, leaving the feds squinting to try to see what’s really going on? The government has recently pulled out some squeegees. Case in point: the government spending deal that President Biden signed into law on Friday. The bill...

Zero-Click Flaws in Widely Used UPS Devices Threaten Critical Infratructure

Three critical security vulnerabilities in widely used smart uninterruptible power supply UPS devices could allow for remote takeover, meaning that malicious actors could cause business disruptions, data loss and even physical harm to critical infrastructure, researchers have found. Researchers a...

Security Bug Allows Attackers to Brick Kubernetes Clusters

A vulnerability in one of the Go libraries that Kubernetes is based on could lead to denial of service DoS for the CRI-O and Podman container engines. The bug CVE-2021-20291 affects the Go library called “containers/storage.” According to Aviv Sasson, the security researcher at Palo Alto’s Unit 4...

Millions of Unpatched IoT, OT Devices Threaten Critical Infrastructure

Thousands of organizations remain at risk from the URGENT/11 and CDPwn collections of vulnerabilities, which affect operational technology OT gear and internet of things IoT, respectively. Unfortunately, there has been a rampant lack of patching, researchers said. According to researchers at Armi...

Billions of Devices Impacted by Secure Boot Bypass

Billions of Windows and Linux devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks stemming from a bug in the GRUB2 bootloader, researchers are warning. GRUB2 which stands for the GRand Unified Bootloader version 2 is the default bootloader for the majority of computing systems. Its job is to manage part of th...

Hackers Turn to OpenDocument Format to Avoid AV Detection

Attackers have a new obfuscation technique that uses the OpenDocument file format for sneaking payloads past antivirus software. Past macro-based attacks have relied on malware hitching a ride with .docx, .zip, .jar and many other file formats. But researchers at Cisco Talos said that because the...

Apple Transparency Report Now Includes App Store Takedown Requests

For the first time Apple added to its transparency report the number of App Store takedown requests it has received from governments. The report, released Tuesday, also puts some hard numbers on how often law enforcement and governments request device and user data. App Takedown Request Apple’s...

Malspam Emails Blanket LokiBot, NanoCore Malware With ISO Files

An ongoing spam campaign has been spotted using ISO disk image file attachments to disguise various information-stealing trojans, including LokiBot and NanoCore. Researchers said that they first spotted the malware-laced spam emails being distributed in April 2019. Spam sent to victims claim to b...

Irked Researcher Discloses Facebook WordPress Plugin Flaws

UPDATE A WordPress security researcher claims he has found two WordPress plugins developed by Facebook called Facebook for WooCommerce and Messenger Customer Chat. The researcher claims both have cross-site request forgery flaws. The researcher published the bugs on the Plugin Vulnerabilities...