Linux Devices Under Attack by New FreakOut Malware

Researchers are warning a novel malware variant is targeting Linux devices, in order to add endpoints to a botnet to then be utilized in distributed-denial-of-service DDoS attacks and cryptomining. The malware variant, called FreakOut, has a variety of capabilities. Those include port scanning,...

Aliens and UFOs: A Final Frontier for Social Engineers

Buried deep within the most recent round of COVID-19 stimulus legislation was a little provision with potentially explosive consequences: The Pentagon has six months to release a full report on what they know about the existence of what they term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena UAP — or UFOs to the...

Zoom Takes on Zoom-Bombers Following FTC Settlement

Zoom has once again upped its security controls to prevent “Zoom-bombing” and other cyberattacks on meetings. The news comes less than a week after Zoom settled with the Federal Trade Commission over false encryption claims. Two of the new features allow moderators to act as “club bouncers,” givi...

U.S. Nuclear Contractor Hit with Maze Ransomware, Data Leaked

A U.S. military contractor involved in the maintenance of the country’s Minuteman III nuclear arsenal has been hit by the Maze ransomware, according to reports – with the hackers making off with reams of sensitive information. The company, Westech International, has a range of contracts with the...

Building for Billions: Addressing Security Concerns for Platforms at Scale

Security operations once consisted of a multitude of manual operations based around alerts, thresholds and severity levels. As systems scale and platforms continue to grow, how do you keep up with the growing requirements to secure these transactions and the networks they are built upon?...

Adobe Fixes 'Important' Flaws in ColdFusion, After Effects and Digital Editions

Adobe released security patches for vulnerabilities in its ColdFusion, After Effects and Digital Editions applications. If exploited, the flaws could enable attackers to view sensitive data, gain escalated privileges, and launch denial-of-service attacks. Each of the bugs were rated...

TrickBot Adds Custom, Stealthy Backdoor to its Arsenal

The Russian-speaking cybercriminals behind the TrickBot malware have developed a stealthy backdoor dubbed “PowerTrick,” in order to infiltrate high-value targets. According to research from SentinelLabs, released on Thursday, PowerTrick is designed to execute commands and return the results in...

Echobot IoT Botnet Casts a Wide Net with Raft of Exploit Additions

A variant of the Mirai Internet of Things IoT botnet known as “Echobot” has added 13 more vulnerability exploits to its bag of infiltration tricks, according to researchers. These target a range of devices, including routers, firewalls, IP cameras, server management utilities, a programmable logi...

.WAVs Hide Malware in Their Depths in Innovative Campaign

UPDATE Audio .WAV files are the latest hiding place for obfuscated malicious code; a campaign has been spotted in which malicious content was secretly woven throughout the file’s audio data. The embedded code consists of two different payloads: A XMRig/Monero CPU cryptominer and Metasploit code...

Malvertising Attack Hijacks 1B+ Sessions With Webkit Exploit

Researchers have discovered a new wave of attacks launched by the threat group eGobbler where victims are redirected to websites with malicious payloads. Security experts believe eGobbler was behind this year’s prolific Easter malvertising attack. This time, more than 1 billion ad impressions wer...

Malicious App on Google Play Tallies 100 Million Downloads

Call it the case of a good app gone bad! For some time, a handy PDF creator and optical character recognition OCR app available via Google Play offered users utility and convenience. The app, downloaded more than 100 million times, is called CamScanner and allows Android phone owners to snap a...

Large-Scale Government Hacks Hit Russia, Bulgaria

A pair of notable hacks on government targets have come to light: One, an attack affecting nearly the entire country of Bulgaria; and two, a hack of Russia’s main security agency FSB that represents the largest data heist ever experienced there. In Bulgaria, cybercriminals were able to infiltrate...

How to Model Risk in an Apex Predator Cyber-World

The threat-intelligence researchers at Alphabet’s Chronicle have borrowed the apex predator concept from ecology to describe today’s multi-organizational, multinational threat actors — the evolution of which could provoke an overhaul of risk analysis and management. However, it’s important to kee...

Windows 10 Update Bricks PCs, Microsoft Offers Workarounds

Microsoft has acknowledged that a Windows 10 bug is causing some users’ systems to freeze after using their System Restore feature. The issue arose after users complained that when they updated Windows 10 and attempted to restart their system, they were met with a “Stop error” that blocked them...

Financial Apps are Ripe for Exploit via Reverse Engineering

A white hat hacker reverse engineered 30 mobile financial applications and found sensitive data buried in the underlying code of nearly all apps examined. With this information a hacker could, for example, recover application programming interface API keys and use them to attack the vendor’s...

Uber Deployed 'Surfcam Spyware' in Australia to Crush the Competition – Report

A rogue employee at rideshare behemoth Uber created and deployed a piece of information-gathering software in order to help his company get a leg up on the local competition in Australia, according to a report. The so-called “secret spyware program” was dubbed Surfcam, and was developed by the...

Cardinal RAT Resurrected to Target FinTech Firms

A malware family called Cardinal RAT has reappeared, after two years of silence, in a series of attacks that have been targeting Israel-based financial technology firms. After Cardinal RAT was first detected in 2017, the malware disappeared for two years. But now, in this latest campaign,...

RSA Conference 2019: How to Defend Against an AI vs AI Flash War

SAN FRANCISCO – As perimeter cyber defenses adopt new strategies such artificial intelligence and machine learning, security experts predict adversaries will adopt similar techniques when it comes to an attack chain. Derek Manky, chief of security insights at Fortinet, said that “black-hat...

Lenovo Watch X Riddled with Security Vulnerabilities

Researchers are raking the Lenovo Watch X over the security coals in a report that blasts the device for shipping with a half dozen “disturbing” privacy and security vulnerabilities. The budget $50 smartwatch was introduced in June 2018 and was initially praised for its design, features and...

“Unbreakable” Smart Lock Tapplock Issues Critical Security Patch

Tapplock, a smart padlock that received positive reviews and media hype when it was released earlier this year, has issued a critical patch after researchers discovered several security issues enabling them to easily hack into and unlock the device. The $100 lock is Bluetooth-based and can be...

Patch Released for Critical Apache Struts Bug

The Apache Software Foundation has patched a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting all versions of the popular application development framework Struts since 2008. All web applications using the framework’s REST plugin are vulnerable. Users are advised to upgrade their Apache...

ZeroAccess Returns, Resumes Click-Fraud Activity

Long thought dead, the peer-to-peer P2P ZeroAccess botnet has resurfaced, and as of just a few weeks ago, has returned to propagating click-fraud scams. Researchers with Dell’s SecureWorks revealed Wednesday that they witnessed the botnet restart itself from March 21 to July 2, 2014 and that...

Bypass Demonstrated for Microsoft Use-After-Free Mitigation in IE

For a long time, Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday security bulletins have periodically addressed use-after free vulnerabilities, the latest class of memory corruption bugs that have already found their way into a number of targeted attacks. Microsoft has implemented mitigations to address memory...

FreeBSD Patches TCP Processing DoS Vulnerability

FreeBSD has patched a denial-of-service vulnerability that could affect a host of third-party packages built atop the UNIX-like operating system. The vulnerability—found in the way FreeBSD processes TCP packets—was discovered by a member of Juniper Networks’ incident response team. FreeBSD’s...

Microsoft Reads User Email without Warrant

Late last week it emerged that Microsoft had searched through the contents of a French blogger’s Hotmail account in order to track down the source of a leak of proprietary information from the Redmond, Wash., tech giant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and transparency advocates have expressed...

Pwn2Own IE Vulnerabilities Missing from Microsoft Patch Tuesday Updates

UPDATE – In an unexpected turn, Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday security updates released today did not include patches for Internet Explorer vulnerabilities used during the Pwn2Own contest one month ago. The popular hacker contest attracted researchers from all over who were targeting all the...

Six Security Flaws Fixed in BIND 9.9.2

A new version of the BIND DNS server software is available, fixing six security vulnerabilities and a long list of other bugs. BIND 9.9.2-P1 is mainly a security update and most of the issues it fixes are crashes and not remote code execution flaws. BIND is the overwhelming leader in market share...

The Ryan & Roel Show Episode 7

Emergency IE Patch – Fri, January 9, 2009 Ryan and Roel dissect the latest wave of malware attacks against Microsoft Internet Explorer browser and discuss the company’s plans to ship an emergency out-of-band update. Download episode...

Facebook’s In-app Browser on iOS Tracks ‘Anything You Do on Any Website’

Users of Apple’s Instagram and Facebook iOS apps are being warned that both use an in-app browser that allows parent company Meta to track ‘every single tap’ users make with external websites accessed via the software. Researcher Felix Krause, who outlined how Meta tracks users in a blog posted...

Critical Cisco Contact Center Bug Threatens Customer-Service Havoc

A critical security bug affecting Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise UCCE portfolio could allow privilege-escalation and platform takeover. Cisco UCCE is an on-premises customer-service platform capable of supporting up to 24,000 customer-service agents using channels that include inbound...

Zero Day in Ubiquitous Apache Log4j Tool Under Active Attack

An excruciating, easily exploited flaw in the ubiquitous Java logging library Apache Log4j could allow unauthenticated remote code execution RCE and complete server takeover — and it’s being exploited in the wild. The flaw first turned up on sites that cater to users of the world’s favorite game,...

FBI: Cybercriminals Eyeing Broadcast Disruption at Tokyo Olympics

The Tokyo Olympics, set to open Friday night, are already being targeted by threat actors — however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Division has issued a chilling warning the Games’ TV broadcast is likely to be plagued by attacks, since it will be the only way to view events now that...

Adobe Patches Slew of Critical Security Bugs in Bridge, Photoshop

Adobe has released security patches tackling four critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Bridge, along with other critical and important-rated updates for bugs in Adobe Digital Editions, Adobe Photoshop and RoboHelp. In all, Adobe fixed 10 security holes in its products during its scheduled April...

Chinese Hackers Hijacked NSA-Linked Hacking Tool: Report

New research has found evidence that a Chinese-affiliated threat group APT31 has hijacked a hacking tool previously used by the Equation Group which has been tied to the U.S. National Security Agency, or NSA. The tool in question, dubbed “Jian,” is used to exploit a local privilege-escalation LPE...

NSA Mass Surveillance Program Illegal, U.S. Court Rules

A U.S. federal appeals court ruled that the controversial National Security Agency NSA mass surveillance program exposed in 2013 was illegal – and may have even been unconstitutional. The call comes seven years after former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden outed the mass surveillan...

Twitter Confirms it was Hacked in an Unprecedented Cryptocurrency Scam

Twitter locked down thousands of verified accounts belonging to elite Twitter users and high-profile companies Wednesday afternoon in an effort to prevent hackers from perpetrating a massive cryptocurrency scam. The accounts fell victim to a compromise of the company’s internal systems by a group...

Ransomware Gang Arrested for Spreading Locky to Hospitals

A cybercriminal gang have been arrested for spreading the Locky ransomware among hospitals, among other crimes. In an operation spearheaded by Romania’s law enforcement department, four people have been taken into custody after their houses were raided – three in Romania and one in neighboring...

Zoom Scrutinized As Security Woes Mount

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is demanding more information about how Zoom secures user data. The inquiry comes amidst mounting public scrutiny of the web conferencing platform’s data privacy and security policies. In a Monday letter, James questioned whether Zoom’s security...

FTCODE Ransomware Now Steals Chrome, Firefox Credentials

FTCODE, a PowerShell-based ransomware that targets Italian-language users, has added new capabilities, including the ability to swipe saved web browser and email client credentials from victims. Samples of the ransomware, which has been around since 2013, were recently observed in September 2019...

Mozilla Updates Firefox Browser: Zero-Day Bug Patched, Fingerprinting Nixed

UPDATE Mozilla patched a critical vulnerability actively being exploited in the wild with its latest update to the Firefox browser. Mozilla said in a security bulletin Wednesday that it was “aware of targeted attacks in the wild that were abusing the flaw. A successful attack “could make it...

267M Facebook Users’ Phone Numbers Exposed Online

A database exposing the names, phone numbers and Facebook user IDs of millions of platform users was left unsecured on the web for nearly two weeks before it was removed. Security researcher Bob Diachenko, who along with Comparitech discovered the unsecured Elasticsearch database, believe it...

Rooster Teeth Attack Showcases New Magecart Approach

The online store for the Rooster Teeth video-streaming service has been hit with a malicious web redirect attack by Magecart, which allowed the cybercriminals to harvest users’ payment-card details. The attack marks a slight departure from the group’s typical tactics. Rooster Teeth, which offers...

APT33 Mounts Focused, Highly Targeted Botnet Attacks Against U.S. Victims

The Iran-linked, espionage-focused advanced threat group known as APT33 has been spotted using more than a dozen obfuscated botnets to carry out narrowly targeted attacks against government and academic targets in the Middle East, the U.S. and Asia. Each botnet, linked to its own...

Google Play Malicious Apps Racked Up 335M+ Installs In September

Despite Google’s stepped up efforts to ban malicious apps hosted on Google Play 172 harmful apps – installed 335 million times by users – have been discovered on the platform in September alone. ESET researcher Lukas Stefanko said on Tuesday that the majority of those 172 malicious apps were...

Popular Samsung, LG Android Phones Open to 'Spearphone' Eavesdropping

A new way to eavesdrop on people’s mobile phone calls has come to light in the form of Spearphone – an attack that makes use of Android devices’ on-board accelerometers motion sensors to infer speech from the devices’ speakers. An acronym for “Speech privacy exploit via accelerometer-sensed...

Apple Issues Silent Update Removing Zoom's Hidden Server

Apple has pushed a silent update to Mac users that removes a hidden web server from Zoom users’ machines. The Zoom web- and video-conferencing service has come under scrutiny for its handling of a zero-day bug CVE-2019–13450 found by researcher Jonathan Leitschuh, which would allow an attacker to...

Post-Ransomware Attack, Florida City Pays $600K

A Florida city, hit by a ransomware attack that crippled its computer systems for three weeks, voted this week to pay the attackers the requested ransom of $600,000. Riviera Beach, a city in Florida populated by 35,000, was hit by the ransomware attack May 29 after a city employee clicked on a...

Grindr Poses National Security Risk, U.S. Gov Says

UPDATE The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States CFIUS has named the ownership of popular gay dating app Grindr a national security risk, according to a report. Grindr describes itself as “the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.” A...

Gamers Beware: Nvidia Fixes High-Severity GeForce Experience Bug

Nvidia, a maker of gaming-friendly graphics processing units GPU, has patched a high-severity vulnerability in its GeForce Experience software, which could lead to code execution or denial-of-service of products if exploited. The vulnerability CVE‑2019‑5674 has a CVSS score of 8.8, making it high...

IDenticard Zero-Days Allow Corporate Building Access, Location Recon

UPDATE Most denizens of corporate America are pretty familiar with building security, and the requirement to swipe a badge to enter a building or an office suite; and as a result, most workers likely go about their day feeling secure that their stuff is physically secure from outsiders...