Bluetooth Spoofing Bug Affects Billions of IoT Devices

A team of academic researchers have discovered a Bluetooth Low Energy BLE vulnerability that allows spoofing attacks that could affect the way humans and machines carry out tasks. It potentially impacts billions of Internet of Things IoT devices, researchers said, and remains unpatched in Android...

CWT Travel Agency Faces $4.5M Ransom in Cyberattack, Report

CWT, a giant in the corporate travel agency world with a global clientele, may have faced payment of $4.5 million to unknown hackers in the wake of a ransomware attack. Independent malware hunter @JAMESWT tweeted on Thursday that a malware sample used against CWT formerly known as Carlson Wagonli...

Fake iOS Jailbreak Site Lures in Apple Users

Bad actors are taking advantage of a recently-disclosed iOS bug with a fake website claiming to give iPhone users the ability to jailbreak their phones. In reality, researchers warn, the site ultimately enables attackers to conduct click fraud. A jailbreak, a method to escape Apple’s limitations ...

Breached Passwords Still in Use By Hundreds of Thousands

Hundreds of thousands of web visitors continue utilizing passwords that have previously been compromised. Worse, they are reusing the breached credentials for some of their most sensitive financial, government and email accounts. That’s according to a new Google study released this week, which wa...

Critical RCE Flaw in Palo Alto Gateways Hits Uber

A remote code-execution RCE vulnerability has been uncovered in the GlobalProtect portal and GlobalProtect Gateway interface security products from Palo Alto Networks. It’s an unusual zero-day case, having been previously unknown but inadvertently fixed in later releases — but some large companie...

Iran-Linked APT34 Invites Victims to LinkedIn for Fresh Malware Infections

A recent phishing campaign by Iran-linked threat actor APT34 made use of a savvy approach: Asking victims to join their social network. According to FireEye, the adversaries masqueraded as a Cambridge University lecturer, including setting up a LinkedIn page, in order to gain victims’ trust. From...

Adult Sites Lack Privacy, Open the Door for Harassment and Tracking

An analysis of 22,500 porn sites found that third-party tracking of users is rampant, privacy policies are difficult to understand and a majority fail to implement basic HTTPS encryption. In all, it’s a recipe for enabling sexual violence and shaming, according to an academic paper released this...

Implementing Bug Bounty Programs: The Right and Wrong Approaches

While bug-bounty programs may seem like a cure-all solution for companies looking discover vulnerabilities in their systems more efficiently, the fact remains that a program could overwhelm a firm’s internal security team and cause other major headaches if implemented the wrong way. “You have to...

Google July Android Security Bulletin Fixes 3 Critical RCE Bugs

Google has released fixes for three critical remote code execution bugs in the media framework of its Android operating system. These flaws could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. The flaws are part of Google’s July Android Security Bulletin, which included fixes for 12 critical...

Intel VISA Tech Can Be Abused, Researchers Allege

UPDATE Researchers allege that a technology in Intel microchips could potentially be activated and abused by bad actors – giving them complete access to all data across an affected device. The Intel technology is called Visualization of Internal Signals Architecture VISA, and is used for...

Google Play Touts Certs in Quest For Enterprise Security

Google is now touting three new security certifications for Managed Google Play, which the company hopes will serve as a badge of security honor for companies thinking about using its enterprise-focused app marketplace. The move comes as Google continues to try to amp up efforts around the securi...

Google Releases Supplemental Patch for Dirty Cow Vulnerability

Google’s November Android Security Bulletin, released Monday, patched 15 critical vulnerabilities and addressed 85 CVEs overall. But conspicuously absent is a fix for the Linux race condition vulnerability known as Dirty Cow Copy-on-Write that also impacts Android. While Google didn’t issue an...

Upatre Downloader Spreading Dyreza Banking Trojan

The Upatre downloader is the vehicle that has driven numerous banking Trojan and ransomware attacks to the front door of countless victims at great cost. Microsoft on Thursday warned of a wire-transfer spam campaign that it’s spotted that is spreading Upatre and eventually loading the dangerous...

Free COFEE Helps Law Enforcement Forensics

Microsoft has announced plans to give away free versions of its COFEE Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor utility to help law enforcement agencies in cyber-crime investigations. COFEE uses digital forensic technologies to help investigators gather evidence of live computer activity at the...

Moobot Botnet Chews Up Hikvision Surveillance Systems

Although a patch was released in September, any still-vulnerable Hikvision IP Network Video Recorder NVR products are being actively targeted by the Mirai-based botnet known as Moobot. FortiGuard Labs has released a report detailing how the Moobot botnet is leveraging a known remote code executio...

Guess Fashion Deals With Data Loss, Post-Ransomware

A February ransomware attack on fashion label Guess linked to Colonial Pipeline attackers DarkSide is still causing damage. Guess has started sending letters to 1,300 employees and contractors who had their personal and banking data exposed during the breach. The letter, published by...

Embryology Data Breach Follows Fertility Clinic Ransomware Hit

A fertility clinic serving the Atlanta area has been hit with a ransomware attack that also exposed private health information for 38,000 of its patients. Reproductive Biology Associates RBA, along with its affiliate My Egg Bank North America, is a well-known pioneer in in-vitro fertilization IVF...

Intel Plugs 29 Holes in CPUs, Bluetooth, Security

Intel has unleashed 29 security advisories to plug up some serious bugs in the BIOS firmware for Intel processors, as well as in its Bluetooth products, Active Management Technology tools, the NUC Mini PC line, and, ironically, in its own security library. Details about the advisories can be foun...

Apple Patches Zero-Day MacOS Bypass Bug

Apple patched a zero-day vulnerability in its MacOS that can bypass critical anti-malware capabilities and which a variant of the notorious Mac threat Shlayer adware dropper already has been exploiting for several months. Security researcher Cedric Owens first discovered the vulnerability, tracke...

Nefilim Ransomware Gang Hits Jackpot with Ghost Account

A Nefilim ransomware attack that locked up more than 100 systems stemmed from the compromise of an unmonitored account belonging to an employee who had died three months previously, researchers said. Nefilim a.k.a. Nemty is a ransomware strain that emerged in 2020, with its operators adopting the...

Sunburst's C2 Secrets Reveal Second-Stage SolarWinds Victims

More information has come to light about the Sunburst backdoor that could help defenders get a better handle on the scope of the sprawling SolarWinds espionage attack. The campaign is known to have affected six federal departments, Microsoft, FireEye and dozens of others so far. Sunburst, a.k.a...

Variant of Paradise Ransomware Targets Office IQY Files

A new variant of the Paradise ransomware attacks rarely-targeted Microsoft Office Excel IQY files, providing a new and relatively inobtrusive way to infiltrate and hijack an organization’s network, researchers have found. Lastline Labs’ James Haughom discovered the variant in December in a spam...

Microsoft Patches RCE Bug Actively Under Attack

A critical bug in a Microsoft scripting engine, under active attack, has been patched as part of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday security roundup. The vulnerability exists in Internet Explorer and allows an attacker to execute rogue code if a victim is coaxed into visiting a malicious web page, or, if...

Popular File-Sharing Service WeTransfer Used in Malicious Spam Campaigns

Hackers are abusing the popular file-sharing service called WeTransfer to circumvent defensive email gateways that are designed to block spam messages with malicious URLs. Researchers have observed an uptick in attacks targeting banking, power and media industries using this technique. The hack...

Turla APT Returns with New Malware, Anti-Censorship Angle

The Turla APT has revamped its arsenal in 2019, creating new weapons and tools for targeting government entities. It’s now using booby-trapped anti-internet censorship software as an initial infection vector, suggesting Turla is going after dissident or other civil-society targets. The...

How Decoding Network Traffic Can Save Your Data Bacon

The number of breaches impacting corporate networks has reached epidemic proportions. This year is currently on track to break all records for breaches. Already this year there have been 1,900 reported breaches in just the past three months, according to Risk Based Security. One of the troubling...

Cisco Patches High-Severity Flaws in IP Phones

Cisco Systems is urging customers to update several models of their IP phones after issuing patches for five high-severity flaws found in its popular business-focused IP phones. Impacted are Cisco’s IP Phone 8800 series, which are business desk phones that have HD video included and its IP Phone...

Mirai Variant Goes After Enterprise Systems

Researchers have discovered a new variant of the infamous Mirai IoT botnet, which has been sniffing out and targeting vulnerabilities in enterprise wireless presentation and display systems since January. Palo Alto Network’s Unit 42 researchers said that the newest variant of Mirai is notably...

Siemens Warns of Critical Remote-Code Execution ICS Flaw

Siemens has released 16 security advisories for various industrial control and utility products, including a warning for a critical flaw in the WibuKey digital rights management DRM solution that affects the SICAM 230 process control system. SICAM 230 is used for a broad range of industrial contr...

Active Scans Target Vulnerable Cisco Routers for Remote Code-Execution

UPDATE Malicious scanning activity targeting Cisco Small Business RV320 and RV325 Dual Gigabit WAN VPN routers is underway, with a swell of opportunistic probes looking for vulnerable devices ramping up since Friday. According to Bad Packets Report’s honeypot data, cyberattackers are targeting a...

Windows Update for Business Uproots Patch Tuesday

Scheduled patch deliveries are so last decade—and thankfully, it looks like they’re over when it comes to Microsoft Patch Tuesday. Microsoft this week at its Ignite event introduced its new security update scheme called Windows Update for Business, which debuts in Windows 10 with several new...

Microsoft Online Services Bug Bounty Program Launches

Microsoft had always rejected the possibility of a full-scale bug bounty, relying instead on solid relationships it spent the better part of a decade fostering with researchers worldwide who submit vulnerabilities to the Microsoft Security Research Center MSRC. Yet in the past couple of years, th...

Alureon Rootkit Morphs Again, Adds Steganography

The Alureon rootkit has become not just a major headache for its victims, with its insidious infection routines and persistence once on a machine. But it also has proved to be a challenge for researchers engaged in trying to identify new versions and unwind its new tactics and techniques. The...

Microsoft Says IE8 Weakness Not an Exploitable Flaw

Microsoft on Friday said that a weakness in Internet Explorer 8 identified by security researcher Ruben Santamarta recently is not an exploitable vulnerability, but rather a “technique for bypassing ASLR.” ASLR Address Space Layout Randomization is a memory protection that, along with DEP Data...

Millions of Routers Exposed to RCE by USB Kernel Bug

Millions of popular end-user routers are at risk of remote code execution RCE due to a high-severity flaw in the KCodes NetUSB kernel module. The module enables remote devices to connect to routers over IP and access any USB devices such as printers, speakers, webcams, flash drives and other...

Next-Gen Maldocs & How to Solve the Human Vulnerability

Any cybersecurity attack — whether it be a breach, an incident or any form of compromise — starts with hackers getting in through the door. Threat actors and adversaries rely on gaining code execution on a target system which they can then leverage to do more damage—a phase commonly referred to a...

Unpatched Windows 10 Zero-Day Allows Privileged File Access

An unpatched Windows security vulnerability could allow information disclosure and local privilege escalation LPE, researchers have warned. The issue CVE-2021-24084 has yet to get an official fix, making it a zero-day bug – but a micropatch has been rolled out as a stop-gap measure. Security...

Six Malicious Linux Shell Scripts Used to Evade Defenses and How to Stop Them

Siddartha Sharma and Adhokshaj Mishra Evasive techniques used by attackers, date back to the earlier days, when base64 and other common encoding schemes were used. Today, attackers are adopting new Linux shell script tactics and techniques to disable firewalls, monitoring agents and modifying...

On the Taxonomy and Evolution of Ransomware

Given the frequency with which “ransomware” appears in news articles, it may be worthwhile to take a step back and actually consider what the term means. Any malware or attack that culminates in extorting ransom from the victim is commonly referred to as ransomware. The general idea is to encrypt...

Critical Cisco SD-WAN, HyperFlex Bugs Menace Networks

Cisco has addressed two critical security vulnerabilities in the SD-WAN vManage Software, one of which could allow an unauthenticated attacker to carry out remote code execution RCE on corporate networks or steal information. The networking giant also disclosed a denial-of-service issue in vManag...

EFF Talks the Corporate Surveillance of Consumers

You can’t protect your privacy if you don’t know how it’s being violated. That’s the essence of a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that shines a bright disinfecting light on how corporations are collecting data on consumers. Think Facebook-like data collection on steroids and you begi...

Linux Webmin Servers Under Attack by Roboto P2P Botnet

Vulnerable Linux Webmin servers are under active attack by a newly-discovered peer-to-peer P2P botnet, dubbed Roboto by researchers. The botnet is targeting a remote code-execution vulnerability CVE-2019-15107 in Webmin, a web-based system configuration tool for Linux servers. CVE-2019-15107 was...

Kronos Banking Trojan Surfaces After Years of Silence

The Kronos banking trojan is back from the malware dustbin. After years of lying dormant, hackers have reworked the underlying code and are actively targeting victims in Germany, Japan and Poland. The latest variant has incorporated a new command-and-control feature designed to work with the Tor...

New Unpatched Flaw Surfaces in SQL Server

There is an unpatched flaw in Microsoft SQL Server that could enable an attacker to access users’ passwords on the database server. The vulnerability is in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008. The SQL Server vulnerability was discovered last fall by database-security vendor Sentrigo, which then report...

Russia Leaks Data From a Thousand Cuts–Podcast

Information about nuclear plants and air force capabilities. Conti ransomware gang crooks conjecturing that the National Security Agency NSA was maybe behind the mysterious, months-long TrickBot lull. Doxxed data about 120K Russian soldiers. Those are just some of the sensitive, valuable data...

Hades Ransomware Gang Exhibits Connection to Hafnium

The Hades ransomware gang has several unique characteristics that set it apart from the rest of the pack, according to researchers – including potentially having more than extortion on the to-do list. The group appears to use multiple nation-state tools and techniques. The researchers said that i...

Mimecast: SolarWinds Attackers Stole Source Code

Hackers who compromised Mimecast networks as part of the SolarWinds espionage campaign have swiped some of the security firm’s source code repositories, according to an update by the company. The email security firm initially reported that a certificate compromise in January was part of the...

Blue Mockingbird Monero-Mining Campaign Exploits Web Apps

A Monero cryptocurrency-mining campaign has emerged that exploits a known vulnerability in public-facing web applications built on the ASP.NET open-source web framework. The campaign has been dubbed Blue Mockingbird by the analysts at Red Canary that discovered the activity. Research uncovered th...

Trend Micro Fixes Critical Flaws Under Attack

Trend Micro has released security updates patching five vulnerabilities in its endpoint security solutions, Apex One and OfficeScan XG for Windows. Specifically, Apex One 2019 and OfficeScan XG SP1 and XG are affected by four critical-severity and one high-severity flaws. Two of these...

Firefox 69 Release Kills Default Tracking Cookies, Flash Support

Mozilla has released its latest Firefox browser iteration, Firefox 69, which by default blocks third-party cookies and cryptominers; it also disables default support for Adobe Flash Player. In addition, the browser has squashed several critical and high-severity vulnerabilities. Mozilla has long...