RatVermin Spyware Targets Ukraine Gov Agencies

Researchers have uncovered an ongoing spear-phishing campaign, targeting the Ukraine government and military with emails aiming to distribute the RatVermin malware, which carries out various info-gathering activities. Researchers said that an infrastructure analysis of the attack indicates that t...

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...

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’...

New Adobe Flash Exploit Found in Angler, Fiesta EKs

Two notorious exploit kits are already seeding vulnerable websites with exploits for a Flash Player vulnerability that was patched in last week’s Adobe security bulletin. French researcher Kafeine told Threatpost that the most likely scenario is that a skilled coder found a way to reverse-enginee...

Ken "Skywing" Johnson joins Microsoft security team

Microsoft has hired yet another well-known security researcher to join its ever-growing team of exploit and defense experts. This time it’s Ken Johnson, known in the hacker world as Skywing. Johnson is known as an expert on debugging and reverse engineering, and has done a tremendous amount of wo...

Microsoft researching new (secure) browser

Microsoft’s research unit is investing resources in a new Web browser that could eventually signal a shift away from the ubiquitous Internet Explorer. According to a research paper released this week, the project is called Gazelle and is positioned as a secure web browser constructed as a...

Starlink Successfully Hacked Using $25 Modchip

A Belgian security researcher has successfully hacked the SpaceX operated Starlink satellite-based internet system using a homemade circuit board that cost around $25 to develop, he revealed at Black Hat. Lennert Wouters revealed a voltage fault injection attack on a Starlink User Terminal UT—or...

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...

Magecart Credit-Card Skimmer Adds Telegram as C2 Channel

The e-commerce card-skimming landscape has a new wrinkle: Cybercriminals affiliated with the Magecart collective are using encrypted messaging service Telegram as a channel for sending stolen credit-card information back to its command-and-control C2 servers. That’s according to researchers who...

Former Uber CSO Charged With Paying ‘Hush Money’ in 2016 Breach Cover-Up

A former Uber security executive has been charged for his role in the cover-up of a massive 2016 data breach, in which attackers accessed the company’s Amazon Web Services accounts and stole data associated with 57 million passengers and drivers. The U.S. State Attorney for the Northern District ...

IBM AI-Powered Data Management Software Subject to Simple Exploit

The IBM’s next-gen data-management software suffers from a shared-memory vulnerability that researchers said could lead to other threats — as demonstrated by a new proof-of-concept exploit for the bug. The IBM Db2 is a family of hybrid data-management products containing artificial intelligence,...

Lawsuit Claims Google Collects Minors’ Locations, Browsing History

Google was slapped with a lawsuit this week that alleges that it has been covertly collecting data of students via its G Suite for Education program, which offers its productivity services to students for free. Google’s G Suite for Education program formerly known as Google Education offers free...

Public Bug Bounty Takes Aim at Kubernetes Container Project

A public bug-bounty program for the Kubernetes container technology framework has just launched, backed by Google, HackerOne and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation CNCF. The Kubernetes container-orchestration system was originally built by Google for automating application deployment, scaling...

ToTok Returned to Google Play Despite ‘Spy Tool’ Claims

Mobile application ToTok has been reinstated to the Google Play app ecosystem, after it was removed last month due to claims that it was being used for government espionage. ToTok, a social app that was released in 2019 and has been downloaded by millions, gained rapid popularity in the United Ar...

Innovative PureLocker Ransomware Emerges in Targeted Attacks

The PureLocker ransomware – so-called because it’s written in the PureBasic programming language – has been spotted being used in targeted attacks against both Windows and Linux-based production servers at enterprises. Researchers said it shows unusual characteristics that underscore the innovati...

Arcane Stealer V Takes Aim at the Low End of the Dark Web

A general-purpose info-stealing malware is poised to make a splash in cybercrime circles, thanks to its market niche: It’s positioned as an ideal tool for low-skilled adversaries looking to get some skin in the game without having a lot of expertise. According to the Fidelis Threat Research Team...

MegaCortex Ransomware Revamps for Mass Distribution

A dangerous enterprise-focused ransomware, MegaCortex, has been retooled to become a weapon for wide-scale attacks. Previously used only in manual, post-network-exploitation, targeted campaigns on carefully selected targets, MegaCortex now has a second variant that adds automation to the kill...

Preinstalled Mobile Security App on Xiaomi Handsets Delivered Vulnerabilities, Not Protection

Preinstalled apps on mobile phones can be just as annoying as crapware found on new PCs. Now a report from security experts at Check Point Research suggest those preinstalled mobile apps may be more than just annoying – they can also be a security risk. Check Point found that a security app calle...

Microsoft: Russia's Fancy Bear Working to Influence EU Elections

As the May elections for European Parliament loom, Russia-linked APT groups are amping up their efforts to target journalists, think-tanks, non-governmental organizations and other members of civil society, according to Microsoft. The tech giant said on Tuesday that it has observed a recent serie...

Microsoft Mitigation Bypass Bounty Winner James Forshaw

Give James Forshaw a good logic bug over a memory-corruption vulnerability any day of the week. The British researcher says he would rather manipulate weaknesses in code to climb out of an application sandbox than turn a fuzzer against a piece of software and spot a memory leak. But incentivized ...

New Trojan For Mac Used In Attacks On Tibetan NGOs

The security firm Alienvault reports that its own research on phishing attacks against non governmental organizations supporting the Tibetan Government in Exile is now being used as bait in a new round of phishing attacks on those same NGOs. The firm warned the public on Monday about a round of...

JBoss Worm Exploiting Old Bug to Infect Unpatched Servers

There is a new worm circulating right now that is compromising servers running older versions of the JBoss Application Server and then adding them to a botnet. The worm also attempts to install a remote access tool in order to give the attacker control over the newly infected server. The worm has...

Microsoft Tries to Boost SDL Adoption

Microsoft is trying to boost adoption of the software security practices in its Security Development Lifecycle by releasing a revised set of instructions to make implementation of the process easier and faster. At the Black Hat DC conference on Tuesday, the company announced the release of its...

Microsoft Takes Aim at Malvertising Threat

Less than a week after a malicious advertising attack against the New York Times ad servers, Microsoft filed five civil lawsuits against companies allegedly using online advertising to serve malware. The lawsuits allege that individuals using the business names “Soft Solutions,” “Direct Ad,”...

iPhone Users Urged to Update to Patch 2 Zero-Days

Apple is urging macOS, iPhone and iPad users immediately to install respective updates this week that includes fixes for two zero-days under active attack. The patches are for vulnerabilities that allow attackers to execute arbitrary code and ultimately take over devices. Patches are available fo...

Attackers Use Public Exploits to Throttle Atlassian Confluence Flaw

Threat actors are using public exploits to pummel a critical zero-day remote code execution RCE flaw that affects all versions of a popular collaboration tool used in cloud and hybrid server environments and allows for complete host takeover. Researchers from Volexity uncovered the flaw in...

The Art of Non-boring Cybersec Training–Podcast

Log4j, ransomware, cloud vulnerabilities, phishing: Cyber threats are manifold. They all pale, however, in comparison to the security black holes that walk around on two legs. Studies have shown that nearly all successful breaches stem from human error, be it failure to install security patches...

Upgraded Cerberus Spyware Spreads Rapidly via MDM

A newly discovered variant of the Cerberus Android trojan has been spotted, with vastly expanded and more sophisticated info-harvesting capabilities, and the ability to run TeamViewer. It was spotted by researchers being used in a targeted campaign on a multinational conglomerate. Unusually, the...

Cryptomining Crook Steals Game Developer’s Identity to Carry Out Dirty Work

A 29-year-old cybercriminal assumed the guise of a prominent California video-game developer and eSports tournament organizer to throw authorities off his cryptomining track, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday. Matthew Ho, a citizen of Singapore, allegedly used the developer’s stole...

New Bug Found in NSA’s Ghidra Tool

A medium severity bug reported on Saturday impacts Ghidra, a free, open-source software reverse-engineering tool released by the National Security Agency earlier this year. The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to compromise exposed systems, according to a NIST National Vulnerability Databas...

SAS 2019: Triton ICS Malware Hits A Second Victim

SINGAPORE – The group behind the Triton malware, which first came to light after a disruptive critical-infrastructure attack on Saudi oil giant Petro Rabigh in 2017, has found a second victim. According to researchers at FireEye, the cybercriminals behind Triton, also called Trisis, have once aga...

ThreatList: Porn-Focused Malware Triples, Dark Web Loves It

Credential-stealing malware targeting premium accounts on adult websites almost tripled in 2018, corresponding with a rise in the number of offers related to stolen porn credentials on Dark Web markets. That’s according to Thursday research from Kaspersky Lab, which found that the malware is...

Patch Tuesday Returns; Microsoft Quiet on Postponement

Patch Tuesday returned today as expected after last month’s postponement with a giant release of fixes that includes patches for vulnerabilities disclosed and exploited since the last set of updates in January. Microsoft, however, was relatively silent on the reasons why the February updates were...

Microsoft Extends SHA-2, TLS Support for Windows

One by one, tech companies have been tossing aside the SHA-1 cryptographic algorithm like the unreliable collision-prone mess that it is. Microsoft was among the first to steer its customers away from SHA-1 and established an internal edict that its developers would no longer use it for...

IE to Block Older ActiveX Controls, Starting with Java

Next week’s Microsoft Patch Tuesday security bulletins will not only bring nine new security bulletins but also an update to Internet Explorer that blocks outdated ActiveX controls, starting with Java. Notifications will flag the older ActiveX controls and users will have the option to update the...

Microsoft Agrees to Modify Windows 8 Following EU Complaint

Microsoft announced Wednesday it will tweak the release of its forthcoming Windows 8 operating system to comply with the European Commission, which argues that in its current state, the software fails to offer customers a browser choice screen to let them “easily choose their preferred web...

Researcher Shows Killbit is No Defense on MsVidCtl Flaw

Ryan Smith, one of the researchers who found the bug in the Microsoft MsVidCtl DLL that the vendor is rushing to patch this week, has posted a short video demonstration of a technique that bypasses the stop-gap solution of preventing the vulnerable ActiveX control from loading. In the demo, Smith...

Critical Firefox Zero-Day Bugs Allow RCE, Sandbox Escape

Mozilla has released an emergency update for its Firefox browser that addresses two critical security vulnerabilities that cybercriminals have actively exploited in the wild as zero days. Both are use-after-free bugs, which are memory-corruption issues that occur when an application continues to...

FreakOut Botnet Turns DVRs Into Monero Cryptominers

Threat group FreakOut’s Necro botnet has developed a new trick: infecting Visual Tools DVRs with a Monero miner. Juniper Threat Labs researchers have issued a report detailing new activities from FreakOut, also known as Necro Python and Python.IRCBot. In late September, the team noticed that the...

Fujitsu SaaS Hack Sends Govt. of Japan Scrambling

Threat actors have stolen files from several official government agencies of Japan by hacking into Fujitsu’s software-as-a-service SaaS platform and gaining access to its systems. The Japan-based tech giant temporarily disabled ProjectWEB enterprise after learning of the attack, which is known to...

Silver Peak SD-WAN Bugs Allow for Network Takeover

Silver Peak’s Unity Orchestrator, a software-defined WAN SD-WAN management platform, suffers from three remote code-execution security bugs that can be chained together to allow network takeover by unauthenticated attackers. SD-WAN is a cloud-based networking approach used by enterprises and...

Microsoft IE Browser Death March Hastens

As the death of the once dominant Internet Explorer IE draws closer, Microsoft is quickly pounding more nails into the browser’s coffin. On Monday, Microsoft hastened its IE-to-Edge browser-transition strategy and announced new controls for users and IT staff when it comes to how the lame-duck...

Netgear Won't Patch 45 Router Models Vulnerable to Serious Flaw

UPDATE Netgear will not patch 45 router models that are vulnerable to a high-severity remote code execution flaw, the router company revealed last week. However, the company says that routers that won’t receive updates are outdated or have reached EOL End of Life. The remote code execution...

New Android Spyware Tools Emerge in Widespread Surveillance Campaign

Researchers have uncovered a surveillance campaign, dating back to at least 2013, which has used a slew of Android surveillanceware tools to spy on the Uyghur ethnic minority group. The campaign uses three never-before-seen Android surveillanceware tools, dubbed SilkBean, GoldenEagle and...

Fake Skype, Signal Apps Used to Spread Surveillanceware

Cybercriminals are increasingly peddling booby-trapped version of popular apps such as Skype and Signal that contain surveillanceware. Apurva Kumar, security intelligence engineer at Lookout, said that one such surveillanceware family that’s been spotted using this tactic is Monokle, a...

Malware Risks Triple on WFH Networks: Experts Offer Advice

Home office networks are 3.5 times more likely than corporate networks to be infected by malware, according a report from BitSight. That statistic comes into sharp focus as the coronavirus pandemic forces companies to shift to a work-from-home workforce. Those home networks that remote workers ar...

Flaws Riddle Zyxel’s Network Management Software

Security researchers are warning that networking hardware vendor Zyxel and its Cloud CNM SecuManager software is chock-full of unpatched vulnerabilities that kick open the doors for hackers to exploit. In all, researchers have identified 16 vulnerabilities, ranging from multiple backdoors and...

Wacom Tablet Data Exfiltration Raises Security Concerns

The Wacom digital drawing tablet appears to be silently exfiltrating user data, according to an investigation by software engineer Robert Heaton – and the company responded on Friday, downplaying the report. However, security researchers say the tablets still pose a risk and a privacy problem...

Apple Tackles Over a Dozen Bugs in its Catalina 10.15 Update

Apple wasted little time snuffing out bugs in its macOS Catalina operating system. On Tuesday, Apple rolled out 16 patches addressing a wide range of Catalina bugs in components such as CoreAudio, IOGraphics and WebKit. The security fixes are exclusively for macOS 10.15; so pre-Catalina releases ...

Virus Bulletin 2019: Magecart Infestations Saturate the Web

LONDON — Magecart, the digital card-skimming collective, is now so ubiquitous that its infrastructure is flooding the internet. In a paper presented at Virus Bulletin 2019 this week in London, Jordan Herman and Yonathan Klijnsma of RiskIQ said that there are now 573 known C2 domains for the group...