5 Steps to Improving Ransomware Resiliency

The ransomware landscape is evolving, and ransomware is now one of the most popular for cybercriminals and damaging types of malwares. The JBS, Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya attacks are the recent high-profile examples of the impact of ransomware and the monumental consequences it can have: Shifts...

Mysterious Custom Malware Collects Billions of Stolen Data Points

Researchers have uncovered a 1.2-terabyte database of stolen data, lifted from 3.2 million Windows-based computers over the course of two years by an unknown, custom malware. The heisted info includes 6.6 million files and 26 million credentials, and 2 billion web login cookies – with 400 million...

VMware Rolls a Fix for Formerly Critical Zero-Day Bug

VMware has patched a zero-day bug that was disclosed in late November – an escalation-of-privileges flaw that impacts Workspace One and other platforms, for both Windows and Linux operating systems. VMware has also revised the CVSS severity rating for the bug to “important,” down from critical. T...

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...

Romanian Duo Receives Jailtime For Infecting 400,000 With Malware

A Romanian duo has been sentenced to jailtime for infecting 400,000 computers with malware that stole credentials and financial information, and scammed victims out of millions of dollars. The two Romanian hackers, Bogdan Nicolescu, 37, and Radu Miclaus, 37, were sentenced to 20 years and 18 year...

Employers Beware: Microsoft Word 'Resume' Phish Delivers Malware

Employers who receive an email from someone purporting to be a job applicant, with an attached resume, could fall victim to a difficult-to-detect phishing campaign peddling a remote-access tool used often for espionage. Researchers with Cofense said they have recently spotted emails with maliciou...

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...

Researcher Says NSA's Ghidra Tool Can Be Used for RCE

Ghidra, a free, open-source software reverse-engineering tool that was released by the National Security Agency at RSA, has been found to be a potential conduit to remote code-execution. Ghidra is a disassembler written in Java; software that breaks down executable files into assembly code that c...

Thunderclap Flaws Shatter Peripheral Security

UPDATE A set of vulnerabilities collectively dubbed “Thunderclap” is putting computers at risk from weaponized peripheral devices think network cards, storage and graphics cards, and even chargers and video projectors. The flaws reside in the Thunderbolt hardware interface developed by Intel in...

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...

Threatpost Poll: Is It Impossible to Secure Mobile Devices?

Between applications and operating systems, a slew of mobile threats continue to pop up – and when it comes to security, it’s getting harder and harder for enterprises to keep up. Just in the past week, Apple patched a massive flaw in its FaceTime allowing a bad actor to eavesdrop on victims; whi...

Cisco Patches High-Severity Bug in VoIP Phones

A range of business customers could be impacted by a high-severity security flaw discovered in Cisco VoIP phones. The vendor issued a patch on Wednesday. Cisco also patched two medium-security flaws today in its FireSIGHT management platform for network security; and one medium-severity issue in...

'Dropping Elephant' APT Attackers Targets Old Windows Flaws

Don’t judge an APT by its exploits alone. That’s the takeaway from a report that details a unique advanced persistent threat that leverages a kludge of unsophisticated, outdated and rudimentary attack tools to conduct cyber espionage. The target of the attacks are government and diplomatic agenci...

Microsoft Considering Public-Key Pinning for Internet Explorer

Microsoft is considering adding public-key pinning–an important defense against man-in-the-middle attacks–to Internet Explorer. The feature is designed to help protect users against the types of MITM attacks that rely on forged certificates, which comprise a large portion of those attacks...

Oracle Patches 88 Vulnerabilities, Including Some that Allow Remote Exploits Without Authentication

Oracle yesterday released 88 security fixes for vulnerabilities — including several that allow for remote access without authentication — across its portfolio as part of its quarterly Critical Patch Update. “Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers...

By Stefan Tanase

In general, a lack of user education and strong policies regarding online security often lead to undesirable events. Whether you manage an official Twitter account or a personal one, you should know how Twitter accounts get hacked so you can protect yourself. Here are some methods:...

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...

Cisco Confirms Network Breach Via Hacked Employee Google Account

Cisco Systems revealed details of a May hack by the Yanluowang ransomware group that leveraged a compromised employee’s Google account. The networking giant is calling the attack a “potential compromise” in a Wednesday post by the company’s own Cisco Talos threat research arm. “During the...

Cisco Issues Critical Fixes for High-End Nexus Gear

Cisco Systems released six security patches tied to its high-end 9000 series networking gear ranging in importance from critical, high and medium severity. The most serious of the bugs patched by Cisco rated 9.1 out of 10 could allow a remote and unauthenticated adversary to read or write arbitra...

Google Project Zero Cuts Bug Disclosure Timeline to a 30-Day Grace Period

Google Project Zero will now give organizations a 30-day grace period to patch zero-day flaws it discovers in a new disclosure policy revealed this week aimed at speeding up the time it takes for patches to be adopted. Known for discovering a number of high-profile zero days—in Google’s own...

NVIDIA Gamers Face DoS, Data Loss from Shield TV Bugs

NVIDIA has newly disclosed three security vulnerabilities in the NVIDIA Shield TV, which could allow denial of service, escalation of privileges and data loss. The NVIDIA Shield TV is a set-top gadget that acts as a hub for the smart home, streams PC games from a gaming PC to a TV; and allows loc...

Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Confirms Cyberattack

Foxconn Technology Group confirmed Tuesday that a November cyberattack knocked some of its U.S. operations offline. The incident is reportedly a ransomware attack carried out by a cybergang attempting to extort $34 million from the global manufacturing powerhouse. “We can confirm that an...

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...

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...

Post GandCrab, Cybercriminals Scouring the Dark Web for the Next Top Ransomware

Ransomware continues to be a top threat, with Friday’s ransomware attack on 23 Texas local government and agencies and two in June on dual Florida cities – Lake City and Riviera Beach, resulting in a decision to pay off the hackers — acting as perfect examples of just how lucrative this type of...

Soaring Cryptocurrency Prices Draw Malicious Apps, Malware

The price of Bitcoin is steadily surging in May and hackers are looking to cash in on the uptick with fake cryptocurrency apps, malware and other related scams. In May 2019, Bitcoin prices climbed to their highest points this year, with the popular cryptocurrency being worth $8,300 its highest...

Extinguishing the IoT Insecurity Dumpster Fire

It’s no secret IoT security has been a dumpster fire. Last week, it was reported two million IP security cameras, baby monitors and smart doorbells have serious IoT flaws with no known patches. The list, of course, is added to a long list of IoT nightmares that have been reported over the past fi...

Wordpress Users Urged to Delete Zero-Day-Ridden Plugin

Researchers are urging WordPress site owners to delete a compromised plugin after multiple zero-day vulnerabilities were discovered being exploited by a malicious actor. Researchers at Wordfence said on Friday that flaws in the plugin, Total Donations, are being exploited by malicious actors to...

Oracle Sets All-Time Record with July Critical Patch Update

Oracle has released a massive Critical Patch Update CPU for July, addressing 334 security vulnerabilities covering a vast swathe of its enterprise portfolio. Of the 334 vulnerabilities covered this month, 61 are rated critical, with a CVSS rating between nine and 10. Oracle said in its advisory...

November 2014 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Bulletins

A busy Microsoft Patch Tuesday arrived today with an extra sense of urgency and a complication. Among 14 bulletins, four of which are rated critical by Microsoft, is a patch for the OLE zero-day vulnerability being used in a number of targeted attacks. The zero-day is being spread via email...

Microsoft Pushes Emergency Patch For ASP.NET Flaw

Microsoft has released the emergency out-of-band patch for the ASP.NET padding oracle attack, less than two weeks after a pair of researchers discussed the flaw and a reliable attack against it at a security conference in Argentina. The patch for the ASP.NET bug is only available through...

Attackers Use Event Logs to Hide Malware

Researchers have discovered a malicious campaign utilizing a never-before-seen technique for quietly planting fileless malware on target machines. The technique involves injecting shellcode directly into Windows event logs. This allows adversaries to use the Windows event logs as a cover for...

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...

Attackers Actively Exploiting Realtek SDK Flaws

Threat actors zeroing in on command injection vulnerabilities reported in Realtek chipsets just days after multiple flaws were discovered in the software developers kits SDK deployed across at least 65 separate vendors. On Aug. 16 multiple Realtek vulnerabilities were disclosed by IoT Inspector...

Kubernetes Cloud Clusters Face Cyberattacks via Argo Workflows

Kubernetes clusters are being attacked via misconfigured Argo Workflows instances, security researchers are warning. Argo Workflows is an open-source, container-native workflow engine for orchestrating parallel jobs on Kubernetes – to speed up processing time for compute-intensive jobs like machi...

Cyberattackers Exploiting Critical WordPress Plugin Bug

The Plus Addons for Elementor plugin for WordPress has a critical security vulnerability that attackers can exploit to quickly, easily and remotely take over a website. First reported as a zero-day bug, researchers said it’s being actively attacked in the wild. The plugin, which has more than...

Mimecast Confirms SolarWinds Hack as List of Security Vendor Victims Snowball

The Mimecast certificate compromise reported earlier in January is part of the sprawling SolarWinds supply-chain attack, the security firm has confirmed. Mimecast joins other cybersecurity vendors like CrowdStrike, Fidelis, FireEye, Malwarebytes, Palo Alto Networks and Qualys in being targeted in...

A Cyber 'Vigilante' is Sabotaging Emotet's Return

The banking trojan Emotet has returned after a five-month hiatus. But, in an amusing twist, one cyber vigilante is thwarting the malware’s comeback. Researchers say a mysterious vigilante is fighting the threat actors behind the malware’s comeback by replacing malicious Emotet payloads with...

Critical WordPress e-Learning Plugin Bugs Open Door to Cheating

Researchers have disclosed critical-severity flaws in three popular WordPress plugins used widely by colleges and universities: LearnPress, LearnDash and LifterLMS. The flaws, now patched, could allow students to steal personal information, change their grades, cheat on tests and more. The...

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...

Cloud Providers, CDNs Team Up to Battle Internet Routing Attacks

A group of tech giants – including Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Netflix – are banding together to battle route hijacking, route leaks and IP address-spoofing attacks targeting internet users. They’re coming together under a program was introduced this...

Ashley Madison Breach Extortion Scam Targets Hundreds

Nearly five years after the high-profile Ashley Madison data breach, hundreds of impacted website users are being targeted by a new extortion attack this past week. The 2015 data breach of the adultery website led to 32 million accounts being publicly dumped online, including victims’ names,...

Biggest Malware Threats of 2019

One out of five computer users were subject to at least one malware-class web attack in 2019. This past year cities such as New Orleans were under ransomware siege by the likes of malware Ryuk. Zero-day vulnerabilities were also in no short supply with targets such as Google Chrome and Operation...

Google Assistant Audio Privacy Controls Updated After Outcry

Google is unveiling new privacy controls for the Google Assistant virtual assistant, after the company came under fire earlier this year for eavesdropping on users’ personal audio snippets – without their permission. The tech giant on Monday promised more transparency around the audio data that i...

News Wrap: Steam Zero Day Disclosure Drama, Unix Utility Backdoor

Why did Valve-owner Steam say it made a “mistake” turning a researcher away from its bug bounty program? Who was behind a backdoor that was purposefully introduced into a utility utilized by Unix and Linux servers? And why is Facebook coming under fire for its “Clear History” feature? Threatpost...

Google Home Captures Porn and More, Unbeknownst to Users

Google Home smart speakers and the Google Assistant virtual assistant have been caught eavesdropping without permission — capturing and recording highly personal audio of domestic violence, confidential business calls — and even some users asking their smart speakers to play porn on their connect...

News Wrap: Infosecurity Europe Highlights and BlueKeep Anxiety

This week, the focus was on Infosecurity Europe, which took place in London and showcased a myriad of sessions, threat research and trends in the cybersecurity space. During the Threatpost news wrap for the week ended June 7, the team breaks down the top news from the show, as well as other...

POS Malware Found at 102 Checkers Restaurant Locations

The popular Checkers and Rally’s drive-through restaurant chain was attacked by Point of Sale POS malware impacting 15 percent of its stores across the U.S. Checkers is one of the largest drive-through restaurants in the U.S., operating in 28 states and headquartered in Tampa, Florida. The securi...