VPN Exposes Data for 1M Users, Leading to Researcher Questioning

Free virtual private network VPN service Quickfox, which provides access to Chinese websites from outside the country, exposed the personally identifiable information PII of more than a million users in just the latest high-profile VPN security failure. The incident has some security practitioner...

Billions of Passwords Offered for $2 on Dark Web

A “compilation of many breaches” – COMB for short – has been leaked on the cyber-underground, according to researchers. The so-called COMB contains a staggering 3.27 billion unique combinations of cleartext email addresses and passwords. The trove is an aggregate database that brings together old...

SonicWall Breach Stems from ‘Probable’ Zero-Days

UPDATE SonicWall is investigating “probable” zero-day flaws in its remote access security products that have been targeted by “highly-sophisticated” attackers. The company says it is investigating the attack and will update customers within 24 hours. The security company said it is currently...

Critical, Unpatched Bug Opens GE Radiological Devices to Remote Code Execution

A pair of critical vulnerabilities have been discovered in dozens of GE Healthcare radiological devices popular in hospitals, which could allow an attacker to gain access to sensitive personal health information PHI, alter data and even shut the machine’s availability down. The flaws affect 100...

VMware Fixes Critical Flaw in ESXi Hypervisor

VMware has hurried out fixes for a critical flaw in its ESXi hypervisor, a few weeks after it was found during China’s Tianfu Cup hacking competition. The use-after-free vulnerability CVE-2020-4004 has a CVSS score of 9.3 out of 10, making it critical. It exists in the eXtensible Host Controller...

Unpatched Bugs in Oracle iPlanet Open Door to Info-Disclosure, Injection

A pair of vulnerabilities in Oracle’s iPlanet Web Server have been disclosed that can lead to sensitive data exposure and image injections onto web pages if exploited. However, no patch is forthcoming for either flaw. The bugs CVE-2020-9315 and CVE-2020-9314 are specifically found in the web...

Malicious Google Web Extensions Harvest Cryptowallet Secrets

Large campaigns that are spreading malicious browser extensions are abusing Google Ads and well-known cryptocurrency brands to draw in victims. Extensions can be installed to add widgets or other functionality to web browsers; they offer the ability to do everything from setting a special search...

Critical Cisco Bug Opens Software Licencing Manager to Remote Attack

A critical flaw in the High Availability HA service of Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem Base has been uncovered, which would open the door to remote attackers thanks to its use of a static, default password, even if the platform isn’t directly connected to the internet. Cisco Smart Software...

CISA Pushing U.S. Agencies to Adopt Vulnerability Disclosure Policies

The U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency has issued a draft directive mandating all agencies to develop vulnerability disclosure policies, which would give ethical hackers clear guidelines for submitting bugs found in government systems. Security experts hope that the directive will light a fir...

AG Barr, Officials to Facebook: Don't Encrypt Messaging

U.S. Attorney General William Barr is among government officials asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to halt or at least delay a plan to add end-to-end encryption to its messaging services in an effort to bolster consumer privacy. The move, unveiled Thursday, once again sparked the privacy debate...

Strangest Phishing Lures of 2019: From Divorce Papers to Real Estate Decoys

Hackers aren’t just targeting infrastructure anymore – they’re actively playing on the emotions of people, whether it’s a consumer who desperately wants to lose weight to an employee who is nervous he will lose his job if he doesn’t do exactly what his boss says. That’s according to Proofpoint’s...

How to Prepare for Misconfigurations Clouding the Corporate Skies

Cloud-based storage and infrastructure provides myriad benefits for any organization, like letting them avoid the costs of expensive hardware and granting them quick access to infrastructure as needed. Companies can use cloud services for minutes or years, depending on their needs. However, there...

Fingerprints of 1M Exposed in Public Biometrics Database

Researchers discovered the personal and biometrics data of more than a million people left publicly exposed on a database owned by Suprema, a biometric security company. Data includes facial recognition and fingerprint information collected by the UK metropolitan police, small local businesses an...

Black Hat 2019: WhatsApp Users Still Open to Message Manipulation

LAS VEGAS – Researchers at Black Hat USA 2019 demoed how known vulnerabilities in WhatsApp could still be exploited in several attacks that manipulate chats. Facebook-owned WhatsApp is a popular end-to-end encrypted messaging platform with at least 1.5 billion users. Researchers with Check Point...

ThreatList: Top 8 Threat Actors Targeting Canada in 2019

Banking and financial services in Canada are being targeted in geo-specific attacks looking to spread varying forms of malware, according to researchers tracking thousands of malicious email campaigns between January 2019 to May 2019. In particular, campaigns are typically launched by...

Goodbye Passwords: Hello Identity Management

Keeping track of user names and passwords sounds easy, but it is not. In a world where protected network resources are accessed by employees on mobile devices, outside contractors, web applications and internet of things IoT devices – passwords just don’t cut it anymore. The stakes are high:...

Free Cynet Threat Assessment for Mid-sized and Large Organizations

If you cannot see what’s happening in your network, your ability to make smart security decisions will suffer. Many vendors offer threat assessment options, but they usually require an investment of time and resources. One vendor out there – Cynet – is offering a no-cost threat assessment to...

Oracle Patches Apache Struts, Reminds Users to Update Equifax Bug

Oracle released fixes for a handful of recently patched Apache Struts 2 vulnerabilities, including a critical remote code execution vulnerability CVE-2017-9805 that could let an attacker take control of an affected system, late last week. The Apache Software Foundation patched the RCE...

Cody Pierce on the Future of Exploit Development

Mike Mimoso talks to Cody Pierce, director of vulnerability research and prevention with Endgame, at RSA Conference 2017 about how attackers are changing their techniques in the face of mitigations and continuing to base exploits around legitimate APIs and functions to thwart detection. Download:...

Microsoft Fills Windows, Office Holes with March Patch Release

Microsoft Corp. issued their monthly security bulletins on Tuesday, with fixes for four known vulnerabilities in the company’s Windows operating system, Office suite and Remote Desktop Connection products. The March patch release included three bulletins: MS11-015, 016 and 017. Only one, MS11-015...

Microsoft Adds Tracking Protection to IE 9

Microsoft has pushed out a new release candidate of Internet Explorer 9 that includes two new privacy protections designed to enable consumers to prevent tracking by some Web sites. The new IE 9 release candidate has two separate, but related, technologies aimed at giving users more control over...

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...

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...

Microsoft Releases Emergency Security Updates for Windows 10, Server

Microsoft has quietly pushed out two emergency security updates to fix remote code execution bugs in Microsoft Windows Codecs Library. Windows Codecs Library handles how the OS compresses large multimedia files such as photos and videos, and then decodes them for playback within applications. The...

Unpatched Wi-Fi Extender Opens Home Networks to Remote Control

A popular Wi-Fi extender for the home has multiple unpatched vulnerabilities, including the use of a weak, default password, according to researchers. Also, two of the bugs could allow complete remote control of the device. The flaws have been found in Tenda PA6 Wi-Fi Powerline extender, version...

SFO Websites Hacked: Airport Discloses Data Breach

The San Francisco International Airport SFO disclosed this week two of its websites had been hacked and lead to the disclosure of some users’ login credentials at both sites. The attacks occurred in March and compromised were SFOConnect.com and SFOConstruction.com, both relatively low-traffic...

WordPress Plugin Bug in Popup Builder Threatens 100K Websites

Two vulnerabilities – including a high-severity flaw – have been patched in a popular WordPress plugin called Popup Builder. The more severe flaw could enable an unauthenticated attacker to infect malicious JavaScript into a popup – potentially opening up more than 100,000 websites to takeover...

Active Exploits Hit Vulnerable WordPress ThemeGrill Plugin

Researchers are urging users of a vulnerable WordPress plugin, ThemeGrill Demo Importer, to update as soon as possible after discovering attackers are actively exploiting a flaw in the plugin. The ThemeGrill Demo Importer plugin is owned by ThemeGrill, which offers various templates for website...

Ransomware Attack Hits Data Center Provider CyrusOne: Report

U.S. data center provider CyrusOne has been hit by a ransomware attack, which has impacted six of its managed services customers, a report has found. CyrusOne, which is based in Texas and is one of the biggest data center providers in the U.S., serves more than 185 of Fortune 1000 customers...

HackerOne Breach Leads to $20,000 Bounty Reward

HackerOne has paid out $20,000 after a high-severity vulnerability was discovered in the bug-bounty platform. The flaw allowed an outside bounty hunter to access customers’ reports and other sensitive information. Disclosed this week in a HackerOne report, the security incident stemmed from a...

Silent Librarian Retools Phishing Emails to Hook Student Credentials

Silent Librarian is targeting university students in full force with a revamped phishing campaign. The threat group, aiming to steal student login credentials, is using new tricks that bring more credibility to its phishing emails and helping it avoid detection. The threat group also known as TA4...

Researcher Bypasses Instagram 2FA to Hack Any Account

A researcher earned a $30,000 bug bounty from Facebook after discovering a weakness in the Instagram mobile recovery process that would allow account takeover for any user, via mass brute-force campaigns. Independent researcher Laxman Muthiyah took a look at Instagram’s mobile recovery flow, whic...

Snapchat Privacy Blunder Piques Concerns About Insider Threats

Snap, the company behind the popular Snapchat social media app, has found itself in hot water after a recent report revealed that Snap employees were abusing their access to private user data – which includes location data, saved Snaps and phone numbers. According to a Thursday Motherboard report...

'Unhackable' Biometric USB Offers Up Passwords in Plain Text

A USB stick dubbed eyeDisk that uses iris recognition to unlock the drive claims to be “unhackable” – only, it isn’t. In fact, a simple Wireshark analysis revealed the device’s password – in plain text. David Lodge of Pen Test Partners noticed the product on Kickstarter, where it amassed enough...

Weather Channel Knocked Off-Air in Dangerous Precedent

On Thursday, The Weather Channel – a trusted cable network source of meteorological data across the U.S. – was knocked off the air by what it said was a “malicious software attack” on its network. The Weather Channel hack – not to be confused with the Weather Channel’s own hacks – affected its li...

Equifax Says 145.5M Affected by Breach, Ex-CEO Testifies

Equifax, the credit agency behind this summer’s breach of 143 million Americans, said this week the number of victims implicated in the breach has increased. Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr., the company’s interim CEO, announced Monday that 2.5 million additional Americans were also impacted, bringing...

Microsoft Addresses NTLM Bugs That Facilitate Credential Relay Attacks

NTLM has a long history of serious vulnerabilities and of causing anxiety for Windows and UNIX server admins. Their collective angst is unlikely to lessen today with the disclosure of a pair of new vulnerabilities in the protocol suite. Microsoft today patched one of the issues among its Patch...

Linux Foundation Badge Program Boost Open Source Security

The Linux Foundation says a new Core Infrastructure Initiative CII Best Practices Badge program launched Tuesday will help companies interested in adopting open source technologies evaluate projects based on security, quality and stability. The CII Best Practices Badge does not issue certificates...

Apple's iOS 7 Update Fixes 80 Security Bugs

We are one day in and Apple’s sleek new mobile operating system, iOS 7, has been dissected to death – the colors, the similarities to Android’s OS, the amount of time it took some users to download the update from Apple’s servers. Those talking points aside, the update also brought a slew of bug...

More on Office 2003 Zero Day Vulnerability Patch

This week’s patch and security advisory for a vulnerability in Microsoft Office is the perfect example of why enterprise administrators need to take Microsoft’s criticality ratings as a suggestion and not gospel. Microsoft pushed security update MS13-051 through on Tuesday with a rating of...

Anti-Tibetan Attack Stems from Nvidia Abuse, Old RTF Vulnerability

A series of targeted attacks are continuing to bully a signed Nvidia application into dropping a backdoor that lets attackers root their way through the systems of Tibetan sympathizers. According to Sophos’ Gabor Szappanos, the multifaceted attack can install a backdoor on unsuspecting users’...

Nasty New Java Zero Day Found; Exploit Kits Already Have It

UPDATE – Security experts are urging users to disable Java immediately after the discovery of another zero-day exploit that has been incorporated into the Blackhole, Redkit, Cool and Nuclear Pack exploit kits. According to a French researcher who uses the handle Kafeine, the exploits target the...

Zoom Patches ‘Zero-Click’ RCE Bug

Zoom patched a medium-severity flaw, advising Windows, macOS, iOS and Android users to update their client software to version 5.10.0. The Google Project Zero security researcher Ivan Fratric noted in a report that an attacker can exploit a victim’s machine over a zoom chat. The bug, tracked as...

Protect Your Executives’ Cybersecurity Amidst Global Cyberwar

It’s been roughly two months since Russia first launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the world has borne witness to unspeakable tragedy. While damaged and destroyed property can and will be rebuilt; the death and despair incurred by Ukrainians will leave a lasting imprint acro...

Imunify360 Bug Leaves Linux Web Servers Open to Code Execution, Takeover

A high-severity security vulnerability in CloudLinux’s Imunify360 cybersecurity platform could lead to arbitrary code execution and web-server takeover, according to researchers. Imunify360 is a security platform for Linux-based web servers that allows users to configure various settings for...

Mac Zero Day Targets Apple Devices in Hong Kong

Since at least late August, attackers have been using flaws in macOS and iOS – including in-the-wild use of what was then a zero-day flaw – to install a backdoor on the Apple devices of users who visited Hong Kong-based media and pro-democracy sites. This isn’t a finely targeted campaign, but it’...

Apple macOS Flaw Allows Kernel-Level Compromise

Apple has patched a vulnerability in macOS can allow attackers to bypass a key OS protection and install a malicious rootkit to perform arbitrary operations on a device, researchers from Microsoft have discovered. The problem—dubbed “Shrootless”–is associated with a security technology called...

BQE Web Suite Billing App Rigged to Inflict Ransomware

Threat actors have been caught exploiting a now-patched zero-day critical vulnerability in a popular timeclock and billing system, to take over vulnerable servers and inflict companies’ networks with ransomware. Discovered by Huntress Labs earlier this month, the ongoing attacks focus on an...

Human Fraud: Detecting Them Before They Detect You

This is Part II of a two-part blog series taking readers inside the criminal enterprise that is account-takeover fraud. For part I, please click here. In my last blog, we focused on the initial phases of the account-takeover ATO kill chain – recon, weaponization and delivery – and how attackers...

SonicWall Warns Firewall Hardware Bugs Under Attack

Security vendor SonicWall is warning customers to patch its enterprise secure VPN hardware to thwart an “imminent ransomware campaign using stolen credentials” that’s exploiting security holes in current models and those running legacy firmware. Targeted are the company’s Secure Mobile Access SMA...