Podcast: Insider Attacks May Soon Cost Less Than Malware-based Equivalent

As it becomes more difficult and expensive to infiltrate environments via malware, cybercriminals may start turning in the future to a more viable and less costly alternative: Insider threats. This podcast is brought to you by Code42. Threatpost talks to Tim Brown, vice president of security at...

Black Hat 2019: Microsoft Protocol Flaw Leaves Azure Users Open to Attack

LAS VEGAS – A path-traversal vulnerability in Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol RDP leaves unpatched Azure customers open to attack. The flaw could allow for a virtual machine VM escape in Microsoft’s Hyper-V Manager, part of its Azure cloud platform. Researchers with Check Point at a Wednesday...

Oracle Warns of New Actively-Exploited WebLogic Flaw

Oracle said that a critical remote code execution flaw in its WebLogic Server is being actively exploited in the wild. The remote code execution flaw CVE-2019-2729 impacts a number of versions of Oracle’s WebLogic Server, used for building and deploying enterprise applications. The vulnerability...

Critical RCE Bug in Cisco WebEx Browser Extensions Faces 'Ongoing Exploitation'

A critical vulnerability in Cisco WebEx browser extensions that could allow unauthenticated remote code-execution RCE on targeted machines is being actively exploited in the wild. The news comes just days after Cisco issued a flurry of 24 different patches for its IOS XE operating system and warn...

Insider Threats Get Mean, Nasty and Very Personal

SAN FRANCISCO – Companies keep watchful eyes on disgruntled employees who are insider threat risks. But Code42’s CISO Jadee Hanson said distraught employees, that are particularly vulnerable to outside ploys, should be equally scrutinized. Hanson said factors such as terminal illnesses, divorce o...

RSAC 2019: Container Escape Hack Targets Vulnerable Linux Kernel

Researchers at CyberArk have created a proof-of-concept attack that allows adversaries to bypass container security, escape the container and compromise an entire host system. However, the attack scenario is limited, in that a successful attack depends on unpatched vulnerabilities to be present i...

Google Play Cracks Down on Malicious Apps

Google Play is ramping up its offensive against malicious apps, which have continued to plague the official app store for Android devices over the years. In a Wednesday post, Andrew Ahn, product manager at Google Play, said that the number of app submissions that were rejected on the app...

Intel Details CPU ‘Virtual Fences’ Fix As Safeguard Against Spectre, Meltdown Flaws

Intel introduced hardware-based protections to its new chips to protect against the Spectre and Meltdown flaws that rocked the silicon industry when the vulnerabilities were made public in early 2018. Spectre and Meltdown, which account for three variants of a side-channel analysis security issue...

Windows XP End of Life a Security Milestone

Forget for a moment the impending cryptoapocalypse because of aging and/or subverted encryption standards and algorithms. Microsoft this week put out the word on the scourge that is Windows XP. The latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report goes to great pains to encourage users to move off th...

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...

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...

The 5 Most-Wanted Threatpost Stories of 2021

As 2021 draws to a close, and the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, it’s time to take stock of what resonated with our 1 million+ monthly visitors this year, with an eye to summing up some hot trends gleaned from looking at the most-read stories on the Threatpost site. While 2020 was all about...

Kaseya Patches Zero-Days Used in REvil Attacks

Kaseya made good on its promise to issue patches by July 11. On Saturday, the company behind the Virtual System/Server Administrator VSA platform that got walloped by the REvil ransomware-as-a-service RaaS gang in a massive supply-chain attack released urgent updates to address critical zero-day...

Microsoft, Adobe Exploits Top List of Crooks’ Wish List

A year-long study into the underground market for exploits in cybercriminal forums shows that crooks are salivating for Microsoft bugs, which are far and away the most requested and most sold exploits. According to researchers see chart below Microsoft products made up a whopping 47 percent of th...

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...

Black Hat USA 2020: Critical Meetup.com Flaws Reveal Common AppSec Holes

Critical flaws in the popular Meetup platform were revealed Monday as part of research unleashed at this week’s Black Hat USA 2020. The flaws, which have been patched, enable the full takeover of Meetup “Groups” by threat actors, who can also redirects payments and carryout other malicious action...

Emerging APT Mounts Mass iPhone Surveillance Campaign

A recently discovered, mass-targeted watering-hole campaign has been aiming at Apple iPhone users in Hong Kong – infecting website visitors with a newly developed custom surveillance malware. The bad code – the work of a new APT called “TwoSail Junk” – is delivered via a multistage exploit chain...

No 'Silver Bullet' Fix for Alexa, Google Smart Speaker Hacks

Researchers this week disclosed new ways that attackers can exploit Alexa and Google Home smart speakers to spy on users. The hacks, which rely on the abuse of “skills,” or apps for voice assistants, allow bad actors to eavesdrop on users and trick them into telling them their passwords over the...

Twitter Uses Phone Numbers, Emails to Sell Ads

Twitter has acknowledged that user phone numbers and email addresses gathered for security purposes, as part of its two-factor authentication policy, may have been used to sell ads. It calls the move an accident. The revelation is being widely criticized for its obvious breach of user privacy,...

WhatsApp Flaw Opens Android Devices to Remote Code Execution

A security researcher has identified a flaw in the popular WhatsApp messaging platform on Android devices, which could allow attackers to launch privilege elevation and remote code execution RCE attacks on victims. Exploiting the flaw—described in a Wednesday post on GitHub by a Singapore-based...

Defense Takeaways from Three Adversary Playbooks

In these days of advanced threats, the perimeter defense strategy – though still useful and necessary – is incomplete. IT security teams need as much information about existing threats as possible, so they know what to look for and how to position proactive countermeasures. Creating and using...

Mobile Risks Boom in a Post-Perimeter World

Cybercriminals are now taking a mobile-first approach to hacking the enterprise. Case in point, last month a half-billion Apple iOS users were stung by an attack exploiting an unpatched bug in Chrome for iOS. Crooks managed to hijack user session and redirect traffic to malicious websites...

Facebook Boots Hundreds of Iran-Linked Accounts For Spreading Misinformation

Facebook has booted hundreds of Iran-linked pages, groups and accounts from its social media platform that it claimed were promoting misinformation. According to Facebook, it removed 783 pages, groups and accounts that engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that were misleading users about...

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...

Scareware and Phishing Scams Play on Windows 8 Launch

Windows 8 isn’t yet a week old, but the scammers and phishing crews already are taking their swings at it, setting up new campaigns based on the shiny new operating system. Security researchers have identified a new scareware campaign playing off of the Windows 8 launch, as well as a phishing ema...

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...

Revamped Pwn2Own to Offer $105K in Prizes, Cash From Google for Chrome 0-Days

The Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest conference has become one of the landmark events on the calendar each year, as researchers gather with nervous vendors in a tiny room to see who can own which browser on which platform and how quickly. But this year’s contest will have a much different look...

Microsoft Battles Alureon Rootkit

For the second month in a row, Microsoft has tried to eradicate a mutating rootkit that has blocked some Windows users from installing security updates. Read the full article. Computerworld...

Karakurt Ensnares Conti, Diavol Ransomware Groups in Its Web

Researchers have found financial and technological links between the Karakurt cybercriminal group and two high-profile ransomware actors that signal a shift in business operations and an expansion of opportunities for the threat actors to target victims, they said. Karakurt—a financially motivate...

Chinese APT Combines Fresh Hodur RAT with Complex Anti-Detection

The Chinese advanced persistent threat APT Mustang Panda a.k.a. Temp.Hex, HoneyMyte, TA416 or RedDelta has upgraded its espionage campaign against diplomatic missions, research entities and internet service providers ISPs – largely in and around Southeast Asia. For one thing, the APT has deployed...

Nosy Ex-Partners Armed with Instagram Passwords Pose a Serious Threat

Breakups can be traumatic in all sorts of ways. Now we know they can pose a serious cybersecurity threat too. A new survey found that an alarming number of people are still accessing their exes’ accounts without their knowledge — a handful for malicious reasons. The survey conducted during Novemb...

Critical VMware Zero-Day Bug Allows Command Injection; Patch Pending

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is warning of a zero-day bug affecting six VMware products including its Workspace One, Identity Manager and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. The critical unpatched bug is a command injection vulnerability. In a separate VMware advisory,...

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...

Fitbit Spyware Steals Personal Data via Watch Face

A wide-open app-building API would allow an attacker to build a malicious application that could access Fitbit user data, and send it to any server. Kev Breen, director of cyber threat research for Immersive Labs, created a proof-of-concept for just that scenario, after realizing that Fitbit...

Critical Cisco ‘CDPwn’ Flaws Affect Millions of Devices

Cisco is issuing patches for five critical vulnerabilities that have been discovered in Cisco Discovery Protocol CDP, the info-sharing layer that maps all Cisco equipment on a network. Researchers at Armis say that the vulnerabilities, which they disclosed on Wednesday and collectively dubbed...

Google Adds Password Checkup Feature to Chrome Browser

Google will soon alert Chrome browser users of weak or compromised passwords. The checks will be in real time as Chrome users visit a password protected website. Bad passwords will trigger a red dialogue box alerting users to take action to better protect their account. The move integrates a...

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...

Cisco Patches Critical Flaw In ASR 9000 Routers

Cisco has rushed out patches for a critical vulnerability in its ASR 9000 routers that could give remote, unauthenticated attackers access to the devices – as well as the power to launch denial-of-service DoS attacks against them. The flaw is specifically in Cisco Aggregation Services Routers ASR...

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...

Some ASUS Updates Drop Backdoors on PCs in 'Operation ShadowHammer'

A supply-chain attack dubbed “Operation ShadowHammer” has been uncovered, targeting users of the ASUS Live Update Utility with a backdoor injection. The China-backed BARIUM APT is suspected to be at the helm of the project. According to Kaspersky Lab, the campaign ran from June to at least Novemb...

August 2013 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Updates

Microsoft took less than a month to incorporate an Oracle Outside In patch and fix a critically rated remote code execution bug in Exchange Servers. The Microsoft patch is among three critical bulletins—eight overall—released today as part of its August 2013 Patch Tuesday security updates. Oracle...

Hackers for Hire: Adversaries Employ ‘Cyber Mercenaries’

A for-hire cybercriminal group is feeling the talent-drought in tech just like the rest of the sector and has resorted to recruiting so-called “cyber-mercenaries” to carry out specific illicit hacks that are part of larger criminal campaigns. Dubbed Atlas Intelligence Group A.I.G., the cybergang...

Third Log4J Bug Can Trigger DoS; Apache Issues Patch

No, you’re not seeing triple: On Friday, Apache released yet another patch – version 2.17 – for yet another flaw in the ubiquitous log4j logging library, this time for a DoS bug. Trouble comes in threes, and this is the third one for log4j. The latest bug isn’t a variant of the Log4Shell...

Millions of Connected Cameras Open to Eavesdropping

Millions of connected security and home cameras contain a critical software vulnerability that can allow remote attackers to tap into video feeds, according to a warning from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA. The bug CVE-2021-32934, with a CVSS v3 base score of 9.1 has be...

NSA Warns: Patched VMware Bug Under Active Attack

Active attacks against a flaw in VMware’s Workspace One Access continue, three days after the vendor patched the vulnerability and urged customers to fix the bug classified as a zero-day at the time. Now the U.S. National Security Agency NSA has escalated concerns and on Monday warned that foreig...

Cisco Patch-Palooza Tackles 29 High-Severity Bugs

Cisco Systems released a barrage of patches, Thursday, aimed at fixing bugs in the networking giant’s ubiquitous IOS operating system. The patches plug holes in a wide range of products and address denial-of-service, file overwrite and input validation attacks. The advisory was planned and part o...

MFA Bypass Bugs Opened Microsoft 365 to Attack

Bugs in the multi-factor authentication system used by Microsoft’s cloud-based office productivity platform, Microsoft 365, opened the door for hackers to access cloud applications via a bypass of the security system, according to researchers at Proofpoint. The flaws exist in the implementation o...

Samsung Quietly Fixes Critical Galaxy Flaws Allowing Spying, Data Wiping

Researchers have disclosed a slew of critical-severity, patched flaws in flagship Samsung smartphones – including the Galaxy S7, S8 and S9 models. The vulnerabilities specifically stem from Samsung’s “Find My Mobile” service, a feature built into the smartphones allowing users to locate their...

ZLoader-Laced Emails Masquerade As CVs From Job-Seekers

Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the massive uptick in unemployment across the U.S. in a recent spear-phishing campaign, which purports to be CVs sent from job-seekers – but actually spreads banking credential-stealing malware. Researchers recently uncovered emails that distributed maliciou...

SAS@Home Virtual Summit Showcases New Threat Intel, Industry Changes

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force in-person cybersecurity event cancellations, Kaspersky is forging ahead with a virtual security summit, SAS@home. Topics on the agenda include threat intel on advanced persistent threats APTs, new vulnerability research, and topics related to a...