Unpatched iPhone Bug Allows Code Execution

A vulnerability in Apple iOS opens the door to remote code execution RCE, researchers found. The assessment is a revision from a previous understanding of the flaw that viewed it as a low-risk and somewhat wacky denial-of-service DoS problem affecting iPhone’s Wi-Fi feature. Apple fixed the...

5 Fundamental But Effective IoT Device Security Controls

As the pandemic continues to fuel the shift to remote work, numerous manufacturers have capitalized on this movement to create a multitude of handy internet of things IoT devices. While these devices may make our home and work lives more convenient, they greatly expand the attack surface for...

Google Chrome 87 Closes High-Severity 'NAT Slipstreaming' Hole

Google has released patches for several high-severity vulnerabilities in its Chrome browser with the rollout of Chrome 87 for Windows, Mac and Linux users. Overall, Google fixed 33 vulnerabilities in its latest version, Chrome 87.0.4280.66, which is being rolled out over the coming days. This...

Animal Jam Hacked, 46M Records Roam the Dark Web

The company behind the wildly popular kids’ game Animal Jam has announced that hackers stole a menagerie of account records during a breach of a third-party vendor’s server in October — more than 46 million of them, in fact. The company, WildWorks, said that it was unaware that the data had been...

Cloudflare Axes Google reCAPTCHA Due to Privacy, Price

Cloudflare is nixing Google’s reCAPTCHA tool and replacing it with what the network services company’s CEO calls “a better CAPTCHA” service, hCaptcha. Google’s reCAPTCHA is a type of CAPTCHA an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart” that uses...

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...

NSO Group President Defends Controversial Tactics

In a rare public appearance by Shiri Dolev, the president of the secretive NSO Group Technologies, the company leader vented over what she called “false myths” about the firm. Dolev also took indirect aim at secure messaging platforms, offered by the likes of Facebook, explaining surveillance...

SDKs Misused to Scrape Twitter, Facebook Account Info

Twitter and Facebook are warning of software development kits SDKs that could be embedded within a mobile application and used to harvest personal user information. The SDKs, which the tech giants said are maintained by oneAudience and MobiBurn, could be used by mobile app developers to craft...

Office 365 Admins Targeted in Ongoing Phishing Scam

A phishing campaign that uses legitimate organizations’ Office 365 infrastructure to send emails has emerged onto the cyberscam scene. According to Michael Tyler at PhishLabs, cybercriminals are looking to compromise Microsoft Office 365 administrator accounts to send out phishing lures – thus...

James Clapper: Lessons Learned in a Post-Snowden World

LAS VEGAS – The 2013 leaks by Edward Snowden highlight holes in the U.S. government around transparency and proactively dealing with insider threats, former national intelligence director James Clapper acknowledged. The U.S. intelligence community needs to be more transparent with the public, whi...

Threat Actor Impersonates USPS to Deliver Backdoor Malware

A new threat actor has been found impersonating the U.S. Postal Service USPS and other government agencies to deliver and install backdoor malware to various organizations in Germany, Italy and the United States, according to new research. The campaigns, which researchers from cybersecurity firm...

BEC Scam Costs Media Giant Nikkei $29 Million

Media conglomerate Nikkei Inc. has fallen victim to a business email compromise BEC scam that fleeced the company out of $29 million. Nikkei is Japan’s largest financial media organization and lends its name to Japan’s premier stock index, which is the equivalent of the Dow Jones Industrial Avera...

FunkyBot Malware Intercepts Android Texts, 2FA Codes

An Android malware dubbed “FunkyBot” has started making the scene in Japan, operated by the same attackers responsible for the FakeSpy malware. It intercepts SMS messages sent to and from infected devices. According to FortiGuard Labs, the malware named after logging strings found in the...

Adult Content Site Exposed Personal Data of 1M Users

The personal information more than a million users of popular adult website Luscious, including email addresses that sometimes indicated full names, were found exposed in an unsecured Elasticsearch database. The website, which focuses on anime-themed, user-uploaded adult content, has over 1 milli...

Zebrocy: A Russian APT Specializing in Victim Profiling, Access

Zebrocy, the Russian speaking threat group that shares similarities and overlaps with both the Sofacy and BlackEnergy APTs, is once again roaming the wide plain of government, foreign-affairs and military targets. Researchers have spotted the group using a new first-stage malware dropper in recen...

Top UK Official Derides Huawei Claiming it has ‘Bad Security’

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – A top official at the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK set his sights on Huawei, the telecom equipment giant, in an opening keynote session at the GSMA’s Mobile360 Security for 5G conference on Tuesday. Ian Levy, technical director at the agency, took the stage fo...

Joomla and WordPress Found Harboring Malicious Redirect Code

Security researchers are warning owners of Joomla and WordPress websites of a malicious redirect script that is pushing visitors to malicious websites. On Thursday, Eugene Wozniak, a security researcher with Sucuri, published a report outlining a rogue hypertext access .htaccess injector found on...

Shadow App Development: Insider Threat or Opportunity?

The demand for software within an enterprise is relentless. The typical enterprise is running hundreds of applications—perhaps thousands if it’s a global organization. And with the rapid digitalization of business processes underway, the amount of software in use in the typical business is only...

Threatlist: IMAP-Based Attacks Compromising Accounts at 'Unprecedented Scale'

Attackers mounting password-spraying campaigns are turning to the legacy Internet Message Access Protocol IMAP to avoid multi-factor authentication obstacles – thus more easily compromising cloud-based accounts. That’s according to researchers with Proofpoint, who found that in the past half year...

February 2014 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Bulletins

The expected continued respite from deploying Internet Explorer patches was apparently a mirage as Microsoft changed course from last Thursday’s advance notification and added two more bulletins to the February 2014 Patch Tuesday security updates, including the first IE rollup of 2014. IE had...

Microsoft Reveals Blue Hat Prize Finalists

Microsoft has announced the three finalists for its $200,000 Blue Hat Prize contest and all three of the researchers in the running for the win submitted technologies designed to defeat ROP return-oriented programming exploits. Each of the entrants takes a different tack with his ROP defense and ...

Microsoft accused of downplaying IIS flaw

A security researcher from nCircle is accusing Microsoft of gamesmanship in its description of an unpatched IIS vulnerability in the way the WebDAV extension decodes a requested URL. The end result is that a successful exploit would allow a hacker to bypass authentication and gain unauthorized...

FTC to Go After Companies that Ignore Log4j

The Federal Trade Commission FTC will muster its legal muscle to pursue companies and vendors that fail to protect consumer data from the risks of the Log4j vulnerabilities, it warned on Tuesday. “The FTC intends to use its full legal authority to pursue companies that fail to take reasonable ste...

Kaseya Obtains Universal Decryptor for REvil Ransomware

Kaseya has obtained a master decryptor key for the REvil ransomware that locked up the systems of at least 60 of its customers in a spate of worldwide cyberattacks on July 2. The attacks, which exploited now-patched zero-days in the Kaseya Virtual System/Server Administrator VSA platform, affecte...

NPM Package Steals Chrome Passwords

A credentials-stealing code bomb that uses legitimate password-recovery tools in Google’s Chrome web browser was found lurking in the npm open-source code repository, waiting to be planted within the sprawling galaxy of apps that pull code from that source. Researchers caught the malware filching...

Unpatched, Critical RCE Bug Allows Utility Takeovers

A critical remote code-execution RCE vulnerability in Schneider Electric programmable logic controllers PLCs has come to light, which allows unauthenticated cyberattackers to gain root-level control over PLCs used in manufacturing, building automation, healthcare and enterprise environments. If...

Cisco BPA, WSA Bugs Allow Remote Cyberattacks

A set of high-severity privilege-escalation vulnerabilities affecting Business Process Automation BPA application and Cisco’s Web Security Appliance WSA and could allow authenticated, remote attackers to access sensitive data or take over a targeted system. The first two bugs CVE-2021-1574 and...

How To Defend the Extended Network Against Web Risks

Smart cybercriminals are going after web servers and browsers, more so than after individuals. Unfortunately, these types of attacks often go ignored, as they’re harder to test for in terms of pen-testing. With much of the world now working remotely, this threat has intensified. Attackers use...

Record Levels of Software Bugs Plague Short-Staffed IT Teams in 2020

2020 is shaping up to be a banner year for software vulnerabilities, leaving security professionals drowning in a veritable sea of patching, reporting and looming attacks, many of which they can’t even see. A trio of recent reports tracking software vulnerabilities over the past year underscore t...

Apple Patches Bugs Tied to Previously Identified Zero-Days

Apple has patched three previously identified zero-day vulnerabilities in its iPhone, iPod and iPad devices potentially related to a spate of related flaws recently discovered by the Google Project Zero team that also affect Google Chrome and Windows. Apple this week released iOS 14.2 and iPadOS...

Researchers Warn of Flaw Affecting Millions of IoT Devices

Researchers are urging connected-device manufacturers to ensure they have applied patches addressing a flaw in a module used by millions of Internet-of-Things IoT devices. If exploited, researchers speculated that the flaw could allow attackers to knock out a city’s electricity or even overdose a...

UPDATED: Garmin Suffers Reported Ransomware Attack

Garmin, maker of fitness trackers, smartwatches and GPS-related products, has reportedly suffered a widespread ransomware attack — though the facts around the cause remain unconfirmed for now. The manufacturer tweeted on Thursday that its Garmin Connect service is down; Garmin is a free app for...

Facebook Privacy Glitch Gave 5K Developers Access to ‘Expired’ Data

Facebook is facing yet another privacy faux pas in how its users’ data is collected and used by third-party apps. The social media giant said that it recently discovered that 5,000 developers received data from Facebook users — long after their access to that data should have expired. In 2018, on...

Revamped HawkEye Keylogger Swoops in on Coronavirus Fears

There’s a new variant of the HawkEye keylogging malware making the rounds, featuring expanded info-stealing capabilities. Its operators are looking to capture the zeitgeist around the novel coronavirus. It’s being distributed using spam that purports to be an “alert” from the Director-General of...

Card Skimmer Hits Australian Bushfire Donation Site

Concerned global citizens making donations to help fight the massive Australia bushfires have been caught up in a Magecart attack, after one of the groups implanted a payment-card skimmer on the check-out page of a legitimate online donation site. Researchers ran across the Magecart script, named...

Top Zero Days, Data Breaches and Security Stories of 2019: News Wrap

From data breaches and the ransomware epidemic to new regulation and an outcry around data privacy, 2019 has been a wild ride for the infosec community. Threatpost breaks down the top news stories, trends and topics for this year. Listen to the full podcast or download direct. For a lightly-edite...

Download: 2019 Security Team Assessment Template

As a security professional, it is critical that you assess the performance of your security team and keep in-the-know regarding your current security posture, in addition to planning ahead. ‘The Ultimate 2019 Security Team Assessment Template‘ is a first-of-its-kind tool that encapsulates all the...

Insider Threats, a Cybercriminal Favorite, Not Easy to Mitigate

LAS VEGAS – Insider threats are an ongoing top danger for companies — but when it comes to mitigation efforts, incident-response teams face an array of challenges. Discussions with various incident-response teams revealed that between 25 to 30 percent of data breaches involved an external actor...

City of Johannesburg, on Second Hit, Refuses to Pay Ransom

The city of Johannesburg, South Africa, is refusing to pay a ransom of four Bitcoins to a hacker group who accessed the city’s network and stole sensitive data, threatening to release it if the ransom wasn’t paid. It’s the second time in several months that the city has been hit with a cyberattac...

China's Sway Over Tech Companies Tested with Apple, Blizzard

At least two American tech companies, Apple and gaming giant Blizzard, have come under fire – from different quarters – for wading into waters surrounding the Hong Kong protests that have been ongoing since June. The situation is shaping up to be a test for the American tech sector’s commitment t...

HP Touchpoint Analytics Opens PCs to Code Execution Attack

A security flaw, discovered in an open-source software program that is a key component of HP’s TouchPoint Analytics service, is opening up a wide swath of HP computers to attack. The vulnerability, if exploited by local attackers with administrative privileges, can allow them to execute arbitrary...

Microsoft Blacklists Dozens of New File Extensions in Outlook

Microsoft is banning almost 40 new types of file extensions on its Outlook email platform. The aim is to protect email users from what it deems “at-risk” file attachments, which are typically sent with malicious scripts or executables. The move will prevent users from downloading email attachment...

Apple Sues Corellium Over iOS 'Replica' Security Testing Software

Apple has sued startup Corellium for copyright infringement, alleging that the company has developed “exact digital replicas” of its iPhone operating system without authorization – from the code down to the graphical user interface. While details about Florida-based Corellium on its website are...

Clickjacking Evolves to Hook Millions of Top-Site Visitors

Clickjacking, where links on a website redirect unknowing users to spam, advertising or malware, has been around for decades. However, new tactics that defy the best mitigation efforts of browsers has led to it affecting millions of internet users browsing the web’s top sites, researchers found i...

Tips for Successful Zero-Trust Implementation

The zero-trust concept is often and pithily summarized as “trust no one, verify everything.” No enterprise can stave off the myriad of cyberthreats as long as they assume that any individual element can be trusted as secure. No traffic, whether internal or external, can automatically be deemed...

Why Cities Are a Low-Hanging Fruit For Ransomware

Ransomware attacks against local governments and cities are repeatedly making headlines, with crippling results on city operations and budgets. Last month, the Florida city of Riviera Beach paid hackers $600,000 after being hit by a ransomware attack that downed its computer systems for three...

Visitor Kiosk Access Systems Riddled with Bugs

Visitor-management systems protect business against physical threats such as unwanted and unidentified guests. But many of these lobby-based perimeter checkpoints are opening up companies to a bevy of cyber-threats. On Monday, IBM’s penetration testing team, X-Force Red, released a report that...

Energy, Nuclear Targeted with Template Injection Attacks

Days after news broke last week that advanced, persistent threat actors penetrated nuclear facilities, researchers are explaining techniques used by adversaries to gain toeholds in similar targets in energy. Cisco Talos reported Friday that email-based attacks, leveraging template injection...

Microsoft Patches Two Critical Vulnerabilities Under Attack

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday update today included a massive 95 fixes that tackle vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Skype, Internet Explorer and its Edge browser. Twenty-seven of Microsoft’s patches fix remote code execution issues, allowing attackers to remotely take control of a victim’s PC...

Latest Tax Scams Include Phishing Lures, Malware

Microsoft warned Monday this year’s crop of tax scams are using social engineering attacks based on fear to spread Zdowbot and Omaneat banking Trojans and collect personal info via spoofed tax sites linked to from phishing campaigns. The warning comes with less than a month before the April 18 ta...