Beyond MFA: Rethinking the Authentication Key

You have to hand it to the cyber-thieves: They have proven extremely adept at defeating security measures once thought reliable. Case in point: multifactor authentication MFA. While two-factor authentication 2FA using push text notifications has become the de-facto standard for login security, ba...

Fresh Loader Targets Aviation Victims with Spy RATs

A cyberattack campaign that goes after aviation targets has been uncovered, which is spreading remote access trojan RAT malware bent on cyber-espionage. Researchers from Microsoft said this week on Twitter that spear-phishing emails are the main attack vector. Individuals in the aerospace and...

Ring's Flying In-Home Camera Drone Escalates Privacy Worries

Ring’s newly announced robot drone – a connected device that flies around homes taking security footage – is causing privacy experts’ concerns to take off. Amazon on Thursday unveiled the Always Home Cam as part of its Ring division, which will cost $249.99 and starts shipping next year. The...

Microsoft Teams Impersonation Attacks Flood Inboxes

A convincing cyberattack that impersonates notifications from Microsoft Teams in order to steal the Office 365 credentials of employees is making the rounds, according to researchers. Two separate attacks have targeted as many as 50,000 different Teams users, according to findings from Abnormal...

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,...

Akamai Talks Massive Uptick in Credential-Stuffing Attacks Against Bank APIs

Cybercriminals continue to firehose financial services companies with new and innovative cyberattacks. Research from Akamai recently found that up to 75 percent of all credential abuse attacks against the financial services industry in 2019 targeted APIs directly rather than user-facing login...

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...

Combining AI and Playbooks to Predict Cyberattacks

When organizations invest in AI, they are not only able to automate menial tasks like patching, but they can also create an automated system that looks for and discovers attacks, not only after the fact, but even before they occur. This predictive capability becomes increasingly necessary as...

Greta Thunberg: Emotet's Person of the Year

There’s no doubt that teenage climate-change activist and Time Person of the Year Greta Thunberg inspires people around the world – and it turns out, this includes cybercriminals. More specifically, she’s inspiring as an opportunity: According to the Proofpoint Threat Insight team, a global...

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...

New Adwind Variant Targets Windows, Chromium Credentials

A new version of the Adwind remote access trojan RAT has been discovered taking aim at new targets. Adwind a.k.a. JRAT or SockRat is a Java-based remote access trojan that sniffs out data – mainly login credentials – from victims’ machines. While Adwind has historically been platform-agnostic,...

Phorpiex Botnet Shifts Gears From Ransomware to Sextortion

A recent wide-scale campaign indicates that a decade-old botnet is shifting gears from distributing ransomware to delivering millions of sextortion threats to innocent recipients. Worse, researchers say that the botnet’s spam campaign can affect up to 27 million potential victims. The botnet,...

Cyber-Risk Business Cases: Using Economic Impact to Justify TIG Investment

It sure is a difficult time to be a network defender. According to one industry report, as many as 85,000 malicious websites are launched daily, along with 8 million spam and phishing attacks; and, there are anywhere from 30-50 million malicious domains out there at any time. Scale seems to be...

Facebook, Microsoft Challenge Industry to Detect, Prevent ‘Deepfakes’

Facebook, Microsoft and a number of universities have joined forces to sponsor a contest promoting research and development to combat deepfakes, or videos altered through artificial intelligence AI to mislead viewers. The two tech giants—along with the Partnership on AI and academics from Cornell...

Half of Android Handsets Susceptible to Clever SMS Phishing Attack

Over half of all Android handsets are susceptible to a clever over-the-air SMS phishing attack that could allow an adversary to route all internet traffic through a rogue proxy, as well as hijack features such as a handset’s homepage, mail server and directory servers for synchronizing contacts a...

Easter Attack Affects Half a Billion Apple iOS Users via Chrome Bug

UPDATE About a half a billion Apple iOS users and counting have been hit by session-hijacking cybercriminals bent on serving up malware. They’re exploiting an unpatched flaw in the Chrome for iOS browser, to bypass sandboxing and hijack user sessions, targeting iPhone and iPad users. The attacks...

Threatpost News Wrap Podcast For Feb. 22

Threatpost editors Lindsey O’Donnell and Tom Spring discuss the biggest news of the week ended Feb. 22, including a report about flaws in password managers, and a 19-year-old flaw found in WinRAR. The Threatpost team also discussed an upcoming webinar on Feb. 27 at 2 p.m. ET. Patrick Hevesi of...

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...

Trivial Post-Intrusion Attack Exploits Windows RID

An novel post-intrusion attack technique allows hackers to hijack a Windows system component called RID, allowing the adversaries to assign administrative privileges to “guest” and other low-level accounts. The technique is simple and does not require a lot of sophistication, security researcher...

libssh Authentication Bypass Makes it Trivial to Pwn Rafts of Servers

The libssh open-source project has issued an update to address an authentication bypass vulnerability in the server code — to say that it’s trivial to exploit is an understatement. The flaw CVE-2018-10933 exists in libssh versions 0.6 and above being used in server mode – and it allows anyone to...

Privacy Regulation Could Be a Test for States’ Rights

When the California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA passed in June, security experts applauded the state legislation as a win for consumers. The ruling gave residents certain rights around how their personal data can be stored, accessed, sold and deleted. But months later in September, the U.S. Chamber...

Massive Spam Campaign Targets Unpatched Systems

Cybercriminals are leveraging a recently patched critical Adobe Flash Player vulnerability in a massive spam campaign targeting unpatched computers. According to cybersecurity firm Morphisec, cybercriminals are blasting spam messages that urge recipients to click a link to download a Word documen...

ASUS Patches Root Command Execution Flaws Haunting Over a Dozen Router Models

ASUS released patches for over a dozen router models on Tuesday that are each vulnerable to multiple firmware flaws that when combined give a local unauthenticated attacker the ability to execute commands as root on targeted devices. Routers models patched by ASUS are RT-AC88U, RT-AC3100, RT-AC86...

Wekby APT Gang Seen Using DNS Tunneling for Command and Control

Palo Alto Networks is reporting a shift in malware tactics used by the APT group Wekby that has added a rare but effective new tool to its bag of tricks. The security firm reported on Tuesday that over the past week, Wekby attackers are turning to the technique known as DNS tunneling in lieu of...

Russian APT28 Group Linked to NATO, Political Attacks

A Russian APT group tied to ongoing attacks against military and political targets in Eastern Europe and against NATO could also have ties to the MiniDuke espionage campaign uncovered more than a year ago. Dubbed APT28 by FireEye in a report published last night, the Russian hackers have targeted...

To Combat Firesheep, Microsoft's Bing Looking Into SSL

Microsoft’s Bing is looking into SSL and other privacy settings for the next version of their search engine. Currently the site strips SSL when forced into HTTPS and in turn, brings up an advisory on browsers signaling an unsafe connection. Introduced at Toorcon, the Firefox extension allows...

Coming on MS Patch Tuesday: 10 bulletins, 6 critical

Microsoft plans to ship 10 security bulletins next Tuesday June 9, 2009 with fixes for a wide range of code execution vulnerabilities affecting Windows, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. Six of the ten bulletins will be rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest severity rating. See the advance...

Novel ‘Nerbian’ Trojan Uses Advanced Anti-Detection Tricks

A newly discovered and complex remote access trojan RAT is spreading via malicious email campaigns using COVID-19 lures and includes numerous features to evade analysis or detection by researchers, Proofpoint has found. Dubbed Nerbian RAT, the novel malware variant is written in the OS-agnostic G...

Cybercriminals Actively Target VMware vSphere with Cryptominers

Organizations running sophisticated virtual networks with VMware’s vSphere service are actively being targeted by cryptojackers, who have figured out how to inject the XMRig commercial cryptominer into the environment, undetected. Uptycs’ Siddharth Sharma has released research showing threat acto...

Log4Shell Is Spawning Even Nastier Mutations

The internet has a fast-spreading, malignant cancer – otherwise known as the Apache Log4j logging library exploit – that’s been rapidly mutating and attracting swarms of attackers since it was publicly disclosed last week. Most of the attacks focus on cryptocurrency mining done on victims’ dimes,...

The Underground Economy: Recon, Weaponization & Delivery for Account Takeovers

This is Part I of a two-part blog series taking readers inside the criminal enterprise that is account-takeover fraud. For part II, please click here. With account takeover ATO attacks on the rise, stopping threat actors in the early phases of the kill chain will help today’s defenders gain an...

Windows Hello Bypass Bug Patch is Faulty, Researchers Say

LAS VEGAS – Microsoft Windows 10 biometric user authentication systems Windows Hello can be bypassed, using a single infrared image of a user’s face planted on a tampered clone of an external USB-based webcam. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-34466, CVSS score: 5.7, was patched by Microsoft...

Biden Races to Shore Up Power Grid Against Hacks

President Biden is putting the final details on a plan to encourage American electric utilities to strengthen their cybersecurity protections against hackers in the next 100 days, amid increasing cyberattacks. The White House push to boost electrical grid security comes in the wake of a report th...

Malicious Code Bombs Target Amazon, Lyft, Slack, Zillow

Researchers have spotted malicious packages targeting internal applications for Amazon, Lyft, Slack and Zillow among others inside the npm public code repository — all of which exfiltrate sensitive information. The packages weaponize a proof-of-concept PoC code dependency-confusion exploit that w...

Hackers Leak Stolen Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Data

On the heels of a previously-reported cyberattack on the European Medicines Agency EMA, cybercriminals have spilled compromised data related to COVID-19 vaccinations onto the internet. The EMA is an agency of the European Union in charge of the evaluation and supervision of medicinal products in...

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...

WordPress Plugin Flaw Allows Attackers to Send Forged Emails

More than 100,000 WordPress websites are affected by a high-severity flaw in a plugin that assists websites in sending out emails and newsletters to subscribers. The vulnerability exists in the Email Subscribers & Newsletters plugin by Icegram, which enables users to collect leads, send automated...

Amazon-Themed Phishing Campaigns Swim Past Security Checks

Amazon in the era of COVID-19 has become a staple of many people’s lives, as they order everything from sourdough starter to exercise equipment. Cybercrooks have latched onto the delivery behemoth as a lure for phishing emails, knowing that plenty of legitimate delivery messages are also making i...

Understanding the Payload-Less Email Attacks Evading Your Security Team

The traditional image of a successful email attack is that of a naive employee clicking the link in a crudely crafted spam email bent on phishing. But times have changed, and employees are much more security-educated than they used to be. So, today’s threat actors are creating increasingly...

Adobe Patches Critical RCE Flaw in Character Animator App

Adobe has issued an out-of-band patch for a critical flaw in Adobe Character Animator, its application for creating live motion-capture animation videos. The flaw can be exploited by a remote attacker to execute code on affected systems. The flaw CVE-2020-9586 is found in versions 3.2 and earlier...

Valve Confirms CS:GO, Team Fortress 2 Source-Code Leak

The discovery of leaked source code for two popular games – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive CS:GO and Team Fortress 2 – has led to security concerns and even calls for gamers to uninstall the software from their computers. The developer and publisher of the two games, Valve, is downplaying the...

Cobalt Ulster Strikes Again With New ForeLord Malware

A new credential-stealing malware, dubbed ForeLord, has been uncovered in a recent spear phishing campaign. Researchers tie the attack to a known advanced persistence threat APT group known as Cobalt Ulster. The emails distributing ForeLord were uncovered as part of a campaign, running between...

Microsoft Offers Rewards of Up to $20,000 in New Xbox Bug Bounty Program

Microsoft is offering rewards of up to $20,000 for finding vulnerabilities in its Xbox gaming platform through its latest bug bounty program unveiled this week. The Xbox Bounty Program is open to gamers, security researchers and basically anyone who can help the tech giant identify security...

Joker Android Malware Snowballs on Google Play

Google has removed 17,000 Android apps to date from the Play store that have been conduits for the Joker malware a.k.a. Bread – and in an analysis of the code, said that Joker’s operators have “at some point used just about every cloaking and obfuscation technique under the sun in an attempt to g...

Three Areas to Consider, to Focus Your Cyber-Plan

How’s this for concerning news: Half of all organizations don’t have the wherewithal to stop malicious actors from stealing sensitive information, taking down critical assets or damaging customer trust. According to a recent report from FireEye, 51 percent of organizations don’t believe they are...

Sophisticated Spy Kit Targets Russians with Rare GSM Plugin

A sophisticated cyberespionage platform called Attor has come to light, sporting an unusual capability for fingerprinting mobile devices as part of its attacks on government and diplomatic victims. According to researchers at ESET, Attor, which has flown under the radar since at least 2013, also...

Dunkin’ Donuts Gets Hit with Lawsuit Over 2015 Attack

Dunkin’ Donuts is being sued for violating New York state data breach notification laws. The lawsuit alleges that Dunkin’ parent company, Dunkin’ Brands, failed to disclose a breach in 2015 that affected nearly 20,000 customers who were part of the company’s DD Perks loyalty program. New York...

Cisco DNA Center Critical Flaw Opens Access to Internal Services

Cisco is urging customers to update after discovering a critical vulnerability in its Digital Network Architecture DNA Center, which could allow an unauthenticated attacker to access critical internal services. Overall, Cisco issued fixes for 25 vulnerabilities across its various products: Two...

New Mirai Samples Grow the Number of Processor Targets

New samples of the Mirai malware have been identified, targeting an array of embedded processors and architectures within connected devices. Researchers said that they discovered new Mirai samples in February 2019, capable of infecting IoT devices running Altera Nios II, OpenRISC, Tensilica Xtens...

Facebook Data of Millions Exposed in Leaky Datasets

UPDATE Hundreds of millions of Facebook records – including account names, personal data, and more – have been found in two separate publicly-exposed app datasets. The first publicly-exposed dataset originates from a Mexico-based media company, Cultura Colectiva, and contains over 540 million...