1,300 Popular Android Apps Access Data Without Proper Permissions

Over 1,300 popular Android apps defy user permissions and gather sensitive data with no consent, according to a study by a coalition of academics from the International Computer Science Institute. The report examined popular mobile apps available through the U.S. version of the Google Play store,...

Chinese Hackers Behind 2015 Anthem Data Breach Indicted

Two Chinese nationals have been charged in the massive 2015 data breach of health insurer Anthem that impacted more than 78 million people. Fujie Wang, 32, and another Chinese man, who remains unnamed, were allegedly part of a China-based hacking group that was behind the breach of Indiana-based...

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...

GlitchPOS Malware Appears to Steal Credit-Card Numbers

A new insidious malware bent on siphoning credit-card numbers from point-of-sale PoS systems has recently been spotted on a crimeware forum. Researchers at Cisco Talos said in a Wednesday analysis that they discovered the malware, dubbed “GlitchPOS,” being peddled on the Dark Web for $250. The...

RSA Conference 2019 Recap

SAN FRANCISCO – The RSA Conference 2019 is wrapping up, and Threatpost has been on the show floor this week covering the barrage of security news from the conference – including the annual cryptographers’ panel, big tech companies’ thoughts on privacy, and new vulnerabilities and patches that wer...

Microsoft to Kill Updates for Legacy OS Using SHA-1

Microsoft is in the process of phasing out use of the Secure Hash Algorithm 1 SHA-1 code-signing encryption to deliver Windows OS updates – announcing that customers running legacy OS versions will be required to have SHA-2 code-signing support installed on their devices by July 2019. No SHA-2...

EternalBlue Exploit Used in Retefe Banking Trojan Campaign

Criminals behind the Retefe banking Trojan have added a new component to their malware that uses the NSA exploit EternalBlue. The update makes Retefe the latest malware family to adopt the SMBv1 attack against a patched Windows vulnerability, and could signal an emerging trend, said researchers a...

September 2015 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Bulletins

Microsoft today patched a vulnerability in its graphics component present in Windows, Office and Lync that has been publicly attacked, and is one of five vulnerabilities patched this month that have been publicly disclosed. Microsoft released a dozen bulletins today, five of them it rates critica...

Bash Botnet Exploit Found, Bash Patches Incomplete

The urgency to patch systems against the Bash zero-day vulnerability has been cranked to 10 after reports of an exploit in the wild have been made public by AusCERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team of Australia. This seems to reflect a similar finding posted by a researcher who goes by the...

Microsoft Fix It a Temporary Patch for IE 8 Zero Day Flaw

Microsoft has released a Fix-It to address an Internet Explorer 8 zero-day that was exploited in a watering hole attack against the U.S. Department of Labor website last week. The Fix It is a temporary mitigation until a patch is released. Microsoft’s next scheduled Patch Tuesday security updates...

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’...

Partial disclosure: Was it a cat I saw?

Quite often in our industry, two or five people can look at the same problem from different angles, and see radically different things. Rare is the situation that reads the same to everyone, forwards and backwards. It’s all about perspective. In my appearance on the ‘Partial Disclosure Dilemma’...

Log4Shell Vulnerability Targeted in VMware Servers to Exfiltrate Data

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and Coast Guard Cyber Command CGCYBER released a joint advisory warning the Log4Shell flaw is being abused by threat actors that are compromising public-facing VMware Horizon and Unified Access Gateway UAG servers. The VMware Horizon is a...

The Internet’s Most Tempting Targets

The number of exposed assets keeps climbing, but existing security strategies aren’t keeping up. Attack surfaces are getting more complex, and the excruciatingly hard part is figuring out where to focus. For every 1,000 assets on an attack surface, there is often only one that’s truly interesting...

‘Pay Ransom’ Screen? Too Late, Humpty Dumpty – Podcast

Systems actively encrypted? Are they showing a screen that says “pay the ransom?” Too late: At that point, you’re probably toast. A few options, none great: 1. The painful and problematic process of recovery-via-backups if you have them and they work. You’ve tested them, right? No? Sorry: You can...

Phish Swims Past Email Security with Milanote Pages

The Milanote app, billed as the “Evernote for creatives” by reviewers, has attracted the notice of cybercriminals who are abusing it to carry out credential-stealing campaigns that skate past secure email gateways SEGs, researchers said. Milanote is a tool for organizing and collaborating on...

Critical Security Bugs Fixed in Virtual Learning Software

Netop, the company behind a popular software tool designed to let teachers remotely access student computers, has fixed four security bugs in its platform. Researchers said that the critical vulnerabilities in the company’s Netop Vision Pro system could allow attackers to hijack school networks,...

Ransomware and IP Theft: Top COVID-19 Healthcare Security Scares

Healthcare cybersecurity threats have been under the spotlight this past year, in particular with the rise of COVID-19 and the budgetary and resource strains that has put on hospitals. Beau Woods, a Cyber Safety Innovation Fellow with the Atlantic Council, founder and CEO of Stratigos Security an...

COVID-19 Antigen Firm Hit by Malware Attack

Over the past two weeks, global biotech firm Miltenyi has been battling a malware attack on its IT infrastructure, the company said in a recent disclosure to its customers. Miltenyi, which has been working on treatments for COVID-19, is still wrestling with phone and email communications in the...

Cisco Patches Critical Flaw After PoC Exploit Code Release

A day after proof-of-concept PoC exploit code was published for a critical flaw in Cisco Security Manager, Cisco has hurried out a patch. Cisco Security Manager is an end-to-end security management application for enterprise administrators, which gives them the ability to enforce various security...

Critical Adobe Illustrator, Bridge and Magento Flaws Patched

Adobe is warning of critical flaws in Adobe Bridge, Adobe Illustrator and the Magento e-commerce platform. If exploited, the most severe vulnerabilities could enable remote code execution on affected systems. Adobe’s out-of-band security update, released on Tuesday, addressed vulnerabilities tied...

Oracle Tackles a Massive 405 Bugs for Its April Quarterly Patch Update

Oracle admins are staring down the barrel of a massive quarterly Critical Patch Update that includes 405 patches. Business software giant Oracle Corp. revealed 286 of those vulnerabilities are remotely exploitable across nearly two dozen product lines. Impacted with multiple critical flaws, rated...

Dark_Nexus Botnet Compromises Thousands of ASUS, D-Link Routers

A new botnet has compromised hundreds of ASUS, D-Link and Dasan Zhone routers over the past three months, as well as Internet of Things IoT devices like video recorders and thermal cameras. The botnet, called darknexus based on a string it prints in its banner, uses processes similar to previous...

Zeus Sphinx Banking Trojan Arises Amid COVID-19

The Zeus Sphinx banking trojan is back after being off the scene for nearly three years. According to researchers Amir Gandler and Limor Kessem at IBM X-Force, Sphinx a.k.a. Zloader or Terdot began resurfacing in December. However, the researchers observed a significant increase in volume in Marc...

Working from Home: COVID-19's Constellation of Security Challenges

As the threat of coronavirus continues to spread, businesses are sending employees home to work remotely, and students are moving to online classes. But with the social distancing comes a new threat – a cyber-related one. As organizations rush to shift their businesses and classes online,...

Hackers Cashing In On Healthcare Industry Security Weaknesses

SAN FRANCISCO – Cybercriminals are pushing boundaries in looking for new ways to cash in on the healthcare space – whether it is persuading desperate patients to download health information apps that actually infect their devices with malware, attacking hospitals with ransomware attacks or even...

LoRaWAN for IoT: Beware Encryption Misconfigurations and Security Pitfalls

UPDATE The LoRaWAN protocol, which efficiently supports low-power wireless devices over wide area networks, has become standard in the world of the industrial internet of things IoT. One of its benefits is its support for end-to-end encryption. However, researchers are warning that while LoRaWAN...

Vivin Nets Thousands of Dollars Using Cryptomining Malware

A recently uncovered threat actor, dubbed Vivin, has made thousands of U.S. dollars through a large-scale cryptomining campaign. Vivin is unique due to its longevity — the threat actor has been active since at least 2017 — and researchers with Cisco Talos point to Vivin as a good example of why...

New Way Found to Use Alexa, Google to 'Voice Phish' and Eavesdrop on Users

Researchers have found new ways that bad actors can exploit Alexa and Google Home smart speakers to spy on users. This time the hack not only includes eavesdropping, but also includes voice-phishing, or using people’s voice cues to determine passwords. The vulnerability lies in small apps created...

WhatsApp, Telegram Coding Blunders Can Expose Personal Media Files

Though WhatsApp and Telegram tout themselves as secure messaging services, faulty developer coding that allows cyberattackers to intercept media files sent on the Android versions of the services like photos and videos, documents and voice memos undercuts that claim. The security weakness, dubbed...

WWDC 2019: Apple Takes Aim at Facebook on Privacy

Apple took a swipe at Facebook at its Worldwide Developers’ Conference WWDC on Monday, unveiling fresh privacy features for the upcoming version of its iOS operating system for iPhone and iPad iOS 13. Most notably, it took the wraps off of an authentication mechanism that will allow users to sign...

High-Severity PrinterLogic Flaws Enable Remote Code Execution

A slew of high-severity flaws have been disclosed in the PrinterLogic printer management service, which could enable a remote attacker to execute code on workstations running the PrinterLogic agent. PrinterLogic’s Print Management software allows businesses to deploy and use remote printers...

Cisco Warns of Critical Nexus 9000 Data Center Flaw

A critical vulnerability in Cisco’s software-defined networking SDN software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to connect to a vulnerable data-center switch and take it over, with the privileges of the root user. The bug CVE-2019-1804, which has a CVSS severity rating of 9.8 out of...

RSAC 2019: Joomla! Flaw Exploited to Create Mass Phishing Infrastructure

SECOND UPDATE Editor’s Note: It has come to our attention that Check Point’s findings are being questioned by Joomla! and others in the open-source ecosystem. Our story accurately reflects Check Point’s report — but it’s clear that the news isn’t about Jmail or the vulnerability which is at least...

EU Recalls Children's Smartwatch That Leaks Location Data

UPDATE The European Commission has issued a recall for a popular smartwatch for children, citing “serious” privacy issues that could allow a bad actor to track or communicate with kids remotely. The issues exist in Safe-KID-One, an IoT watch made by German company Enox Group that allows parents t...

PewDiePie Hackers Say They Launched Second Printer Siege

UPDATE Hackers have claimed that they launched yet another attack tricking hundreds of thousands of printers globally to print pamphlets promoting YouTube celebrity “PewDiePie.” The latest incident comes on the heels of a similar hack last month. That’s when hackers claimed they commandeered 50,0...

Microsoft Patches 15 Critical Bugs in March Patch Tuesday Update

Microsoft patched 15 critical vulnerabilities this month as part of its March Patch Tuesday roundup of fixes. In all, the company issued 75 fixes, with 61 rated important. Products receiving the most urgent patches included Microsoft browsers and browser-related technologies such as the company’s...

Equifax Says 2.4 Million More People Impacted By Massive 2017 Breach

Equifax said that an additional 2.4 million Americans have had their personal data stolen as part of the company’s massive 2017 data breach, including their names and some of their driver’s license information. The additional identified victims bring the total of those implicated in what has beco...

Microsoft Patches Critical Windows Search Vulnerability

Microsoft patched more than two dozen remote code execution vulnerabilities today, many of them rated critical. One was a RCE bug that allowed an attacker to take complete control of a server or workstation via Windows Search. The fixes were part of Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday update that...

New Collision Attacks Against 3DES, Blowfish Allow for Cookie Decryption

RC4 apparently is no longer the lone pariah among smaller cryptographic ciphers. Already broken and set for deprecation by the major browser and technology makers, RC4 could shortly have company in Triple-DES 3DES and Blowfish. Researchers are set to present new attacks against 64-bit ciphers tha...

June 2014 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Updates

Prompted by the disclosure of a zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 more than six months after it was reported, Microsoft next Tuesday will finally issue a patch. HP’s Zero Day Initiative ZDI released on May 21 some detail on a previously unreported use-after-free bug in IE 8. No public...

IE 11 Stands Up to Pwn2Own Exploit Attempt

VANCOUVER – Successful exploits at the Pwn2Own contest get all the glitz, but the rarities are the exploits that fail. A group of four young South Korean hackers from ASRT, all of them well shy of their thirtieth birthdays, stood in proxy for Jung Hoon Lee. Lee was home fulfilling a military...

Ruby on Rails Exploit Harvests IRC Botnet

Developers who have not updated their Ruby on Rails installations with a five-month-old security patch would do well to secure the Web development framework now. Exploit code has surfaced for CVE-2013-0156 that is being used to build a botnet of compromised servers. Exploit code has been publicly...

Botnets Hit Perl Testers With Denial of Service Attack

According to a posting on the CPAN Testers’ blog, the CPAN Testers’ server has been being aggressively scanned by “20-30 bots every few seconds” in what they call “a dedicated denial of service attack”; these bots “completely ignore the rules specified in robots.txt”. Read the full article. The H...

Mitigating the Slowloris HTTP DoS Attack

Enterprise IT security staffs looking for some mitigation for the newly released HTTP DoS tool may have a few options. The analysts at the SANS Internet Storm Center are recommending that organizations running Web servers that are vulnerable to the tool’s attack make some basic configuration...

Partially Unpatched VMware Bug Opens Door to Hypervisor Takeover

A security vulnerability in VMware’s Cloud Foundation, ESXi, Fusion and Workstation platforms could pave the way for hypervisor takeover in virtual environments – and a patch is still pending for some users. The issue affects a wide swath of the virtualization specialist’s portfolio and affects...

Where the Latest Log4Shell Attacks Are Coming From

Cybersecurity professionals across the world have been scrambling to shore up their systems against a critical remote code-execution RCE flaw CVE-2021-44228 in the Apache Log4j tool, discovered just days ago. Now under active exploit, the “Log4Shell” bug allows complete server takeover. Researche...

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...

Google Emergency Update Fixes Two Chrome Zero Days

Google has pushed out an emergency Chrome update to fix yet another pair of zero days – the second pair this month – that are being exploited in the wild. This hoists this year’s total number of zero days found in the browser up to a dozen. “Google is aware the exploits for CVE-2021-37975 and...

Angry Affiliate Leaks Conti Ransomware Gang Playbook

An apparently vengeful affiliate of the Conti Gang has leaked the playbook of the ransomware group after alleging that the notorious cybercriminal organization underpaid him for doing its dirty work. A security researcher shared a comment from an online forum allegedly posted by someone who did...