WordPress Sites Worldwide Hit with 'Call-Girl' Search-Engine Pollution

A web spam campaign that targets Koreans is creating problems for site administrators all around the world. Hackers are compromising vulnerable Korean-language WordPress websites, but are also polluting search engine results for non-hacked sites globally. Researchers at Sucuri initially uncovered...

Remote Code Implantation Flaw Found in Medtronic Cardiac Programmers

A flaw in Medtronic’s CareLink 2090 and CareLink Encore 29901 programmers, which are portable computer systems used to manage implanted cardiac devices in clinical settings, would have allowed remote code implantation over Medtronic’s dedicated Software Deployment Network SDN. The programmers are...

ShadowBrokers' Windows Zero-Days Already Patched

Hours after what was thought to be a damaging release of NSA hacking tools for Windows systems, Microsoft quelled some anxiety with a late-night statement on Friday that most of the vulnerabilities disclosed by the ShadowBrokers had already been patched. The biggest surprise was that the most...

Researcher Says 5 Million Machines Exposing RDP Service Online

With exploit code for the MS12-020 RDP vulnerability available in various places, the question now becomes, if a worm or large-scale attack appears, how big is the target base? As it turns out, it’s pretty big. As in, five million machines big. Dan Kaminsky, a network security researcher, last we...

Barracuda Networks Launches Bug Bounty Program

Following the lead of Mozilla and Google, Barracuda Networks is launching a bug bounty program that will pay out cash rewards for vulnerabilities found in the company’s own products. The move by Barracuda, a maker of mail security and data protection products, is the first such bug bounty program...

Microsoft warning to XP users: Update Flash Player Now

Microsoft has shipped a security advisory with an urgent message for Windows XP users: Update your Flash Player immediately. The Adobe Flash Player 6 that ships by default in Windows XP is vulnerable to multiple code execution vulnerabilities that could lead to PC takeover attacks, according to t...

Microsoft spars with researcher over security patch

One of the patches released by Microsoft last week is not providing protection against the vulnerability it was meant to fix, according to a researcher who today accused Microsoft of making functionality a higher priority than security. According to Tyler Reguly, a senior security engineer at...

UK Cops Collar 7 Suspected Lapsus$ Gang Members

City of London Police have arrested seven people suspected of being connected to the Lapsus$ gang. The bust came within hours of Bloomberg having published a report about a teenage boy living at his mother’s house near Oxford, England who’s suspected of being the Lapsus$ mastermind. The police...

Google Patches Critical Wi-Fi and Audio Bugs in Android Handsets

Google patched ten critical bugs as part of its December Android Security Bulletin. The worst of the bugs was tied to the Android media framework component and gives attacker remote control of vulnerable handsets. Google did not reveal the technical specifics of the critical flaw, tracked as...

Zappos Offers Users 10% Discount in 2012 Breach Settlement

Online retailer Zappos will give customers a 10 percent discount to its online store as settlement for a 2012 data breach that affected 24 million customers, while lawyers in the case will win $1.6 million in fees. The news shows customers once again getting the short end of the stick when it com...

Linux Command-Line Editors Vulnerable to High-Severity Bug

A high-severity bug impacting two popular command-line text editing applications, Vim and Neovim, allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary OS commands. Security researcher Armin Razmjou warned that exploiting the bug is as easy as tricking a target into clicking on a specially crafted text fil...

Mozilla Confirms Premium Firefox Browser With Security Features

Mozilla Corporation is launching a premium version of the Firefox browser that will tout improved security features such as virtual private network and secure cloud storage, according to CEO Chris Beard. In a Friday interview with German media publication T3N, Beard said that the premium service,...

Cybercrime Gang Behind GozNym Banking Malware Dismantled

The cybercrime network behind the GozNym malware, used to siphon $100 million out of its victims, has been dismantled in a massive international investigation, according to authorities. Europol said on Thursday that they are charging 10 members of the GozNym criminal network with spreading the...

Inside the 1,000 Red October Cyberespionage Malware Modules

The Red October espionage malware campaign is providing security researchers with a deep dive into the complexity of targeted attacks, which in this case made use of more than 1,000 malware modules for everything from reconnaissance on targets to exfiltration of data to command and control server...

Microsoft Warns Users About ChapCrack Tool Availability

Microsoft is warning customers about the availability of the ChapCrack tool that Moxie Marlinspike built to crack the VPN credentials for systems built on MS-CHAPv2 protocol. The company said that while it’s not aware of any active attacks using the tool, customers can protect themselves by...

New Flaw in Microsoft Office Web Components Under Attack

From SearchSecurity Robert Westervelt Microsoft issued an advisory Monday, warning of a new vulnerability in Office Web Components being actively targeted by attackers. The Office Web Components allow users to view spreadsheets, charts and databases on the Web. Microsoft said the vulnerability is...

Cyberattackers Cook Up Employee Personal Data Heist for Meyer

Meyer Corp., maker of Farberware and the largest cookware and bakeware distributor in the U.S., has begun notifying 2,747 employees that a cyberattack that occurred on Oct. 25 compromised their personal data. Meyer filed a notice with the state of Maine disclosing the breach, which it discovered ...

Windows 10 Drive-By RCE Triggered by Default URI Handler

Researchers have discovered a drive-by remote code-execution RCE bug in Windows 10 via Internet Explorer 11/Edge Legacy – the EdgeHTML-based browser that’s currently the default browser on Windows 10 PCs – and Microsoft Teams. According to a report posted Tuesday by Positive Security, the...

Fortress Home Security Open to Remote Disarmament

A pair of vulnerabilities in the Fortress S03 WiFi Home Security System could allow cyberattackers to remotely disarm the system, leaving homes open to unlawful entry. The Fortress platform is a consumer-grade home security system that allows users to mix and match various sensors, IP cameras and...

Microsoft Warns of 25 Critical Vulnerabilities in IoT, Industrial Devices

Security researchers at Microsoft are warning the industry about 25 as-yet undocumented critical memory-allocation vulnerabilities across a number of vendors’ IoT and industrial devices that threat actors could exploit to execute malicious code across a network or cause an entire system to crash...

PGMiner, Innovative Monero-Mining Botnet, Surprises Researchers

An innovative Linux-based cryptocurrency mining botnet has been uncovered, which exploits a disputed PostgreSQL remote code-execution RCE vulnerability to compromise database servers. The malware is unusual and completely novel in a host of ways, researchers said. According to researchers at Palo...

QNAP High-Severity Flaws Plague NAS Systems

QNAP Systems is warning of high-severity flaws that plague its top-selling network attached storage NAS devices. If exploited, the most severe of the flaws could allow attackers to remotely take over NAS devices. NAS devices are systems that consist of one or more hard drives that are constantly...

Nation-State Attackers Actively Target COVID-19 Vaccine-Makers

Three nation-state cyberattack groups are actively attempting to hack companies involved in COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research, researchers said. Russia’s APT28 Fancy Bear, the Lazarus Group from North Korea and another North Korea-linked group dubbed Cerium are believed to be behind the...

Sophisticated Android Ransomware Executes with the Home Button

A fresh variant of a sophisticated Android ransomware known as MalLocker locks up mobile devices – surfacing its ransom note when a user hits the Home button. According to research from Microsoft, MalLocker is spreading via malicious website downloads disguised as popular apps, cracked games or...

Retail Org Cyberattacks Set to Soar 20% in 2019 Holiday Season

As cybercriminals grow more sophisticated and holiday shoppers continue to flock online, researchers warn internet-based retailers could face a 20 percent uptick in cyberattacks this holiday season compared to last year. In the report titled “Holiday Season Cyber Heists”, released Thursday mornin...

Email Voted a Weak Link for Election Security, with DMARC Lagging

As the 2020 Presidential election looms closer in the United States, a key focus will be on securing election infrastructure to prevent tampering. In a recent analysis, researchers found that email remains a potential weak link, with most counties failing to implement DMARC protections. DMARC whi...

ThreatList: Healthcare Breaches Spike in October

October experienced a 44.44 percent month-over-month increase in healthcare data breaches, resulting in 661,830 healthcare records exposed or stolen during the month. That’s according to the Health and Human Services HHS Office for Civil Rights’ monthly report reported via HIPAA Journal. The...

Black Friday Shoppers Targeted By Scams and Fake Domains

Black Friday and Cyber Monday-related scams are nothing new — but researchers warn that this year, they are seeing an uptick in scams using more sophisticated methods to lure users to hand over their payment data. Research released Tuesday by ZeroFOX uncovered some of the threats that attackers a...

Ransomware Attack Downs Hosting Service SmarterASP.NET

SmarterASP.NET, a popular web hosting provider with more than 440,480 customers, has been hit with a ransomware attack that took down its customers’ websites that were hosted by the company. The company on Monday said it is in the process of recovering impacted data. SmarterASP.NET offers shared...

Vulnerabilities in D-Link, Comba Routers Can Leak Credentials

Researchers have discovered vulnerabilities in D-Link and Comba Telecom routers that can leak passwords for the devices and have the potential to affect every user on networks that use them for access. Trustwave SpiderLabs Security Researcher Simon Kenin discovered the vulnerabilities—two in a...

LenovoEMC Storage Gear Leaks Sensitive Financial Data

Researchers are warning of a vulnerability in LenovoEMC storage hardware and legacy Iomega-branded network attached storage NAS appliances that could lead to a breach of data stored on the devices. The bug, disclosed Tuesday by Lenovo, is rated high-severity and can be triggered via specially...

Verizon Data Breach Report: Espionage, C-Suite and Cloud Attacks on the Rise

Corporate espionage is on the rise as a motivation for cyberattacks, with a full quarter of all network compromises associated with reconnaissance and data exfiltration in the last 12 months. However, financially motivated attacks aren’t going anywhere; social-engineering attacks aimed at stealin...

ThreatList: Exploit Kits Still a Top Web-based Threat

What we can glean from a 2018 roundup of current web-threats is old vulnerabilities die hard. In a report, released by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, researchers said so far this year cybercriminals are targeting unpatched PCs with ancient CVEs and well-known exploit kits. Here is a ThreatList from...

New Mirai Variant Roars into Action With 54 Hour DDoS Attacks

A variant of the Mirai malware pummeled a U.S. college last month with a marathon 54-hour long attack. Researchers say this latest Mirai variant is a more potent version of the notorious Mirai malware that made headlines in October, targeting DNS provider Dyn and the Krebs on Security website. Th...

Microsoft Re-Releases Broken Security Patch MS14-045

Microsoft today re-released security bulletin MS14-045, which was pulled shortly after the August Patch Tuesday updates because a number of users reported crashes and blue screens. The patch was removed from Windows Update on Aug. 15, three days after it was released as part of Microsoft’s monthl...

Microsoft EMET 5.0 Technical Preview Released

SAN FRANCISCO – Enterprises beat up by wave after wave of Java exploits and calls to disable the platform may soon have some relief in sight. Microsoft’s free Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit will soon have a new feature that allows users to configure where plug-ins, especially those target...

Microsoft Finally Shuts Door on ATL Bugs

Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer brings word that this week’s record-setting batch of patches from Microsoft actually closed the book on the vexing ATL code library issues that first surfaced in July 2009. Keizer quotes Ryan Smith, one of the hackers credited with discovering the flaw, as saying that...

Android Patches Actively Exploited Zero-Day Kernel Bug

Among Google’s November Android security updates is a patch for a zero-day weakness that “may be under limited, targeted exploitation,” the company said. Out of this month’s batch of 39 patches, 18 of them plug flaws in the framework and system components and another 18 address vulnerabilities in...

VMware Sounds Ransomware Alarm Over Critical Severity Bug

VMware patched a critical bug impacting its vCenter Server platform with a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. The company said the flaw could allow a remote attacker to exploit its products and take control of a company’s affected system. VMware went a step further on Tuesday, calling on IT securi...

Microsoft Implements Windows Zerologon Flaw 'Enforcement Mode'

Microsoft is taking matters into its own hands when it comes to companies that haven’t yet updated their systems to address the critical Zerologon flaw. The tech giant will soon by default block vulnerable connections on devices that could be used to exploit the flaw. Starting Feb. 9, Microsoft...

Cloud Attacks Are Bypassing MFA, Feds Warn

The Feds are warning that cybercriminals are bypassing multi-factor authentication MFA and successfully attacking cloud services at various U.S. organizations. According to an alert issued Wednesday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, there have been “several recent...

German COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Vulnerability Allowed RCE

A security vulnerability in the infrastructure underlying Germany’s official COVID-19 contact-tracing app, called the Corona-Warn-App CWA, would have allowed pre-authenticated remote code execution RCE. Researcher Alvaro Muñoz wrote in a report this week that he and his team at GitHub Security La...

Spear-Phishing Attack Spoofs EE To Target Executives

Researchers warn of an ongoing spear-phishing attack mimicking a well-known telecommunications company, EE, to snatch up corporate executives’ credentials and payment details. Highly targeted emails have been sent to a few executives – including one at a leading financial firm – purporting to be...

200K Sign Petition Against Equifax Data Breach Settlement

Consumers are furious over what they view as an unfair settlement between the U.S. government and Equifax over the latter’s now-infamous 2017 data leak–so much so that more than 200,000 of them so far have signed a petition against the deal. “Don’t let Equifax escape liability” is the title of th...

News Wrap: Emotet's Return, U.S. Vs. Snowden, Physical Pen Testers Arrested

From the re-emergence of an infamous malware, to a new lawsuit against Edward Snowden, Threatpost editors Lindsey O’Donnell and Tara Seals break down this week’s top news. Top stories include: Emotet, the notorious banking trojan, is back after a summer hiatus. The U.S. sued Edward Snowden over h...

Mattress Company Leaks Data Records of 387K Customers

A Wisconsin mattress company leaked the records of 387,000 customers online in a database that lacked password protection, a security researcher has found. The incident once again demonstrates the potential security consequences of failing to take even the simplest security measures to protect...

Telnet Backdoor Opens More Than 1M IoT Radios to Hijack

Imperial Dabman IoT radios have a weak password vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to achieve root access to the gadgets’ embedded Linux BusyBox operating system, gaining control over the device. Adversaries can deliver malware, add a compromised radio to a botnet, send custom audio...

Google Announces DNS over HTTPS 'General Availability'

Google announced general availability of its Public DNS-over-HTTPS service Wednesday, based on the Internet Engineering Task Force’s RFC 8484 standard. The move is a culmination of three years of Google fine-tuning DNS over HTTPS, otherwise known as DoH. “Today we are announcing general...

Mobile-First Phishing Kit Targets Verizon Customers

As people increasingly go mobile-first in their work and personal lives, cybercrime is keeping up: The latest is a phishing kit that specifically targets Verizon Wireless customers in the U.S. According to Jeremy Richards, a researcher at Lookout Security, the kit pushes phishing links to users v...

Army Research Lab Releases Dshell Forensics Framework

The U.S. Army has released to open source an internal forensics analysis framework that the Army Research Lab has been using for some time. The framework, known as Dshell, is a Python tool that runs on Linux and its designed to help analysts investigate compromises within their environments. The...