Postmortem on U.S. Census Hack Exposes Cybersecurity Failures

Threat actors exploited an unpatched Citrix flaw to breach the network of the U.S. Census Bureau in January in an attack that was ultimately halted before a backdoor could be installed or sensitive data could be stolen, according to a report by a government watchdog organization. However,...

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...

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...

Dell, HP Memory-Access Bugs Open Attacker Path to Kernel Privileges

Vulnerabilities in Dell and HP laptops could allow an attacker to access information and gain kernel privileges via the devices’ Direct Memory Access DMA capability. DMA is a processing-efficiency approach for peripherals such as PCI cards or network interface cards that, as the name suggests,...

Cisco Starts Patching Firmware Bug; Millions of Devices Still Vulnerable

Cisco has issued a handful of firmware releases for a high-severity vulnerability in Cisco’s proprietary Secure Boot implementation that impacts millions of its hardware devices, across the scope of its portfolio. The patches are the first in a planned series of firmware updates that will roll ou...

Hacking Team Flash Zero Day Weaponized in Exploit Kits

Handlers for three major exploit kits have managed to utilize in short order a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player uncovered among the 400 Gb of data stolen from Hacking Team. Experts, including French researcher Kafeine and a number of others from security companies, revealed last night...

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...

How I Got Here: Katie Moussouris

Dennis Fisher talks with Katie Moussouris of Microsoft about her childhood exploits with Commodore 64 programming, ignoring her Barbies, growing up as a hacker, her days as a pen tester and the challenges of working on security at Microsoft. Download: 12moussouris.mp3 Microsoft image via Robert...

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...

Scenes from Black Hat USA 2013

!More from Wednesday’s Legal Access Panel Briefinghttps://media.threatpost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/103/2013/08/07043123/panel.j...

Yandex Pummeled by Potent Meris DDoS Botnet

Technical details tied to a record-breaking distributed-denial-of-service DDoS attack against Russian internet behemoth Yandex are surfacing as the digital dust settles. A massive botnet, dubbed Mēris, is believed responsible, flooding Yandex with millions of HTTP requests for webpages at the sam...

Bizarro Banking Trojan Sports Sophisticated Backdoor

A never-before-documented Brazilian banking trojan, dubbed Bizarro, is targeting customers of 70 banks scattered throughout Europe and South America, researchers said. According to an analysis from Kaspersky released Monday, Bizarro is a mobile malware, aimed at capturing online-banking credentia...

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...

Ransomware Attack Topples Telemarketing Firm, Leaving Hundreds Jobless

A ransomware attack reportedly caused an Arkansas-based telemarketing company to temporarily suspend its operations, leaving hundreds of employees unsure that they still had jobs days before Christmas. The Heritage Company, a 61-year-old telemarketing firm that works with nonprofit organizations,...

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...

Adobe Unscheduled Update Fixes Critical ColdFusion Flaws

Adobe has issued an unscheduled security update that fixes two critical flaws in its ColdFusion product. The critical vulnerabilities could enable an attacker to either execute arbitrary code or bypass access control on impacted systems. Overall, Adobe released three patches – one for an...

Malicious Ad Blockers for Chrome Caught in Ad Fraud Scheme

Google has removed two malicious ad blockers from its Chrome Web Store after a researcher discovered they were carrying out ad fraud and deceived Chrome users by using names of legitimate and popular blockers. Researcher Andrey Meshkov from rival ad blocker maker AdGuard discovered that the...

Cybercriminals Adding Sophistication to BEC Threats

Cybercriminals are boosting their game and employing new tactics to move up the chain of command with more sophisticated business email compromise BEC threats that pose a greater threat to organizations, according to a new report. Advanced BEC attacks–including impersonation attacks and CEO...

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...

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...

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...

Creaking Patch Tuesday's Viability Rests with Quality, Speed

Today is Patch Tuesday, the 11-year-old procession of security bulletins from Microsoft streamed out automatically to consumers of Windows Update, and pulled en masse by enterprise admins worldwide needing to test each for compatibility. This is how it’s been done since shortly after Bill Gates’...

Ryan Naraine on Exploit Mitigations and the MS12-020 RDP Bug

Dennis Fisher talks with Ryan Naraine about whether exploit mitigations such as ASLR and DEP really make any difference in preventing browser attacks and the seriousness of the MS12-020 RDP vulnerability that was patched during March’s Patch Tuesday release. Podcast audio courtesy of sykboy65...

Colonial Pipeline Shells Out $5M in Extortion Payout, Report

Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, reportedly paid $5 million to criminals behind a ransomware attack that has sent fuel prices spiking up and down the East Coast. Sources familiar with the payout told Bloomberg that representatives of Colonial Pipeline paid the...

TikTok Flaw Lay Bare Phone Numbers, User IDs For Phishing Attacks

A vulnerability in the popular TikTok short-form video-sharing platform could have allowed attackers to easily compile users’ phone numbers, unique user IDs and other data ripe for phishing attacks. TikTok, owned by ByteDance, has more than 800 million active users worldwide. The vulnerability,...

Smart Doorbell Disaster: Many Brands Vulnerable to Attack

Smart doorbells, designed to allow homeowners to keep an eye on unwanted and wanted visitors, can often cause more security harm than good compared to their analog door bolt alternatives. Consumer-grade digital doorbells are riddled with potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities ranging from...

News Wrap: Microsoft Sway Phish, Malicious GIF and Spyware Attacks

Threatpost editors Tom Spring, Tara Seals and Lindsey O’Donnell-Welch talk about the biggest news stories of the week ended May 1, including: A “PhantomLance” espionage campaign discovered targeting specific Android victims, mainly in Southeast Asia — which could be the work of the OceanLotus APT...

High-Severity Flaws Plague Intel Graphics Drivers

Intel has issued security patches for six high-severity vulnerabilities in its Windows graphics drivers which, if exploited, could enable escalation of privilege, denial of service DoS and information disclosure. The graphics driver is software that controls how graphic components work with the...

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: Amidst Data Breaches, Account Creation Fraud Soars in 2019

The first half of 2019 saw a 13 percent increase in fraudulent activity compared to the previous six months, with a spike in June representing the highest-volume bot attack that’s been recorded since 2016, according to an analysis from LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The firm’s report, with data glean...

Microsoft Offers $30K Rewards For Chromium Edge Beta Flaws

Microsoft is calling on researchers to help sniff out any security glitches in the beta version of its new Chromium-based Edge browser before officially pushing it live. The tech company has been working to build a new version of Edge based on Google’s open-source Chromium code, as opposed to its...

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...

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...

Chinese Spies Stole NSA Cyberweapons Long Before Shadow Brokers Leak

Hacking tools allegedly developed by the National Security Agency NSA were being used in the wild by at least one APT long before the Shadow Brokers released the now-infamous trove of U.S. cyberweapons, new analysis suggests. According to researchers at Symantec, an attack group affiliated with t...

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...

Elasticsearch Elastichoney Honeypot Shows 8,000 RCE Attacks

Hackers have taken an interest in Elasticsearch, a popular enterprise search engine. A researcher based in Texas, whose own Elasticsearch server was hacked, today published results collated from a honeypot he built to get a sense of how widespread attacks are against the vulnerability that did in...

FireSheep Fallout: Microsoft Adds HTTPS Option for Hotmail

Three weeks after researchers unveiled a plugin that allows Firefox Web browser users to snoop on the Webmail and social networking sessions of those around them, Microsoft has announced an option that will allow users of its Hotmail Web e-mail program to browse securely. The company said on...

Microsoft Sees Rampant Log4j Exploit Attempts, Testing

No surprise here: The holidays bought no Log4Shell relief. Threat actors vigorously launched exploit attempts and testing during the last weeks of December, Microsoft said on Monday, in the latest update to its landing page and guidance around the flaws in Apache’s Log4j logging library. “We have...

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...

Raft of Exim Security Holes Allow Linux Mail Server Takeovers

A veritable cornucopia of security vulnerabilities in the Exim mail server have been uncovered, some of which could be chained together for unauthenticated remote code execution RCE, gaining root privileges and worm-style lateral movement, according to researchers. The Qualys Research Team has...

2021 Healthcare Cybersecurity Priorities: Experts Weigh In

Healthcare cybersecurity is in triage mode. As systems are stretched to the limits by COVID-19 and technology becomes an essential part of everyday patient interactions, hospital and healthcare IT departments have been left to figure out how to make it all work together, safely and securely. Most...

Nvidia Warns Windows Gamers of GeForce NOW Flaw

Nvidia is red-flagging a high-severity flaw in its GeForce NOW application software for Windows. An attacker on a local network can exploit the flaw in order to execute code or gain escalated privileges on affected devices. GeForce NOW is the brand used by Nvidia for its cloud-based gaming servic...

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...

Google Rolls Out Fixes for High-Severity Android System Flaws

Google has released patches addressing high-severity flaws in its System component. The flaws could be remotely exploited to gain access to additional permissions. Overall, 50 flaws were patched as part of Google’s October security update for the Android operating system, released on Monday. As...

$100K Paid Out for Google Cloud Shell Root Compromise

Google has awarded its inaugural annual top prize for the Google Cloud Platform GCP, for vulnerabilities found in the Google Cloud Shell. The find — a container escape that leads to host root access and the ability to use privileged containers — has earned $100,000 for Dutch researcher Wouter ter...

Exploit Fully Breaks SHA-1, Lowers the Attack Bar

A proof-of-concept attack has been pioneered that “fully and practically” breaks the Secure Hash Algorithm 1 SHA-1 code-signing encryption, used by legacy computers to sign the certificates that authenticate software downloads and prevent man-in-the-middle tampering. The exploit was developed by...

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...

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...

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...