Attackers Horn in on MFA Bypass Options for Account Takeovers

An uptick in business email compromise attacks is being attributed to successful compromises of multi-factor authentication MFA and conditional access controls, according to researchers. While brute-forcing and password spraying techniques are the most common way to mount account takeovers, more...

Long Tail Analysis: A New Hope in the Cybercrime Battle

Our hyper-connected world and its ever-faster network speeds have resulted in mountains of diverse data that needs to be processed. It has also resulted in an ever-expanding attack surface, requiring cybersecurity solutions to scale like never before. These days, scale is about more than traffic...

New TrickBot Variant Updates Anti-Analysis Tricks

Researchers uncovered a new variant of the TrickBot malware that relies on new anti-analysis techniques, an updated method for downloading its payload as well as adopting minor changes to the integration of its components. TrickBot is a module-based malware that, while first identified as a banki...

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...

Burning Man Tickets for $225? Yep, Too Good to Be True

Burning Man aficionados anxious to get their tickets squared away for the 2020 “experience” should beware: Fake concert organizers are offering passes in what researchers say is a very convincing and sophisticated scam effort. Burning Man, which bills itself as a “vibrant participatory metropolis...

TrickBot Switches to a New Windows 10 UAC Bypass to Evade Detection

The TrickBot trojan has evolved again to bolster its ability to elude detection, this time adding a feature that can bypass Windows 10 User Account Control UAC to deliver malware across multiple workstations and endpoints on a network, researchers have discovered. Researchers at Morphisec Labs te...

Iranian Hackers Target U.S. Gov. Vendor With Malware

Iran-linked threat actor APT34 has been observed sending targeted, malicious email attachments to customers and employees of a company that works closely with U.S. government agencies. The company in question is U.S.-based Westat, a professional services company that provides research services to...

‘Fleeceware’ Apps Downloaded 600M Times from Google Play

Google has made a concerted effort in recent months to try to eliminate bad apps for its Android mobile platform on the Google Play store—something the company historically has battled. However, fleeceware apps—which trick users into paying excessive amounts of money for simple apps with...

Facebook Cracks Down on Deepfake Videos

Facebook is banning deepfake videos, which stem from a technique of human-image synthesis based on artificial intelligence AI to create fake content. Over the past year, security experts and lawmakers have voiced concerns about malicious deepfake applications, particularly as a vessel for...

Alexa, Google Home Eavesdropping Hack Not Yet Fixed

Months after researchers disclosed a new way to exploit Alexa and Google Home smart speakers to spy on users, those same researchers now warn that Amazon and Google have yet to create effective ways to prevent the eavesdropping hack. The researchers who in October disclosed the “Smart Spies” hack...

FIN8 Targets Card Data at Fuel Pumps

The notorious FIN8 cybercrime group has a new target when it comes to skimming payment-card details from consumers: Point-of-sale PoS systems used at fuel pumps at gas stations. Visa warned this week in a public alert posted online that its Payment Fraud Disruption PFD department has seen at leas...

ENFUSE 2019: Security Regulations, Insider Threats, and IoT Privacy Risks

LAS VEGAS – From insider threats, Internet of Things insecurity, to medical device hacking, ENFUSE 2019 broke down the top privacy and security issues help desks are seeing today. It also tackle what regulatory efforts are being developed to address those threats. Threatpost editor Lindsey...

Fancy Bear Targets Sporting, Anti-Doping Orgs As 2020 Olympics Loom

At least 16 anti-doping authorities and sporting organizations around the world have been hit by cyberattacks as the world begins to gear up for the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, which kick off July 2020. The attacks, which began Sept. 16, have been linked to infamous Russian threat group Fancy Bea...

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,...

Apple Disables Walkie-Talkie App Due to Eavesdropping Flaw

Apple has temporarily disabled the Walkie-Talkie feature from the Apple Watch due to a vulnerability that could allow potential attackers to eavesdrop in on iPhone calls, a TechCrunch report said. The Apple Watch Walkie-Talkie app allows users to converse with friends in real-time, without having...

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...

Facebook Stored Passwords in Plain Text For Years

Hundreds of millions of Facebook user passwords have been stored in plain text for years, the social media giant acknowledged on Thursday. KrebsOnSecurity, which first reported the news, said that specifically between 200 and 600 million passwords were stored in plain text as early as 2012, and...

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...

Black Hat 2018: Widespread Critical Flaws Found in Smart-City Gear

Smart-city technology continues to roll out in municipalities worldwide – everything from automated alerts about weather hazards and traffic issues to smart lighting and connected trash systems. However, like the rest of the Internet of Things IoT ecosystem, security is always a concern, as...

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...

New Dridex Variant Emerges With An FTP Twist

A variant of the Dridex banking trojan recently popped up in an email campaign, with an unusual twist: The attackers used compromised FTP sites for hosting malicious documents, according to researchers at Forcepoint. It was a notable departure from the norm of using HTTP links and could represent...

Microsoft Patches Office Bug Actively Being Exploited

Security experts are urging network administrators to patch a Microsoft Office vulnerability that has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability CVE-2017-11826 could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Office file. It was one of 62 vulnerabilities patched by Microso...

Siemens Patches Authentication Bypass Flaw in SiPass Server

A handful of vulnerabilities in Siemens’ SiPass integrated server have been patched, including one that allows an attacker to bypass authentication on the box. SiPass is the company’s integrated access control server managing physical access in a number of industries and use cases. The product...

OpenSSL Fixes Critical Bug Introduced by Latest Update

OpenSSL today released an emergency security update after a patch in its most recent update issued last week introduced a critical vulnerability in the cryptographic library. The new flaw affects only OpenSSL 1.1.0a, which was made available last Thursday; users are urged to update to 1.1.0b...

NIST Recommends SMS Two-Factor Authentication Deprecation

A U.S. government agency said the end is nigh for SMS-based two-factor authentication, citing a lack of security around the feature. The latest draft version of the Digital Authentication Guideline issued this week by the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology NIST said the practice...

Pornhub Hack Earns Researchers $22,000

A PHP vulnerability that exposed adult website PornHub’s user data to hackers and allowed for code execution on servers hosting the site, earned a trio of German researchers $22,000 as part of a bug bounty program. PHP patched the vulnerability in June. The flaw is tied to a use-after-free memory...

DHCP Denial of Service Vulnerability Patched

The Internet Systems Consortium ISC on Tuesday patched a denial-of-service vulnerability in numerous versions of DHCP. The flaw affects nearly all IPv4 DHCP clients and relays and most servers, ISC said in its advisory. “A badly formed packet with an invalid IPv4 UDP length field can cause a DHCP...

Pirelli Home Broadband Routers Exposed for Two Years

ISP-issued home broadband routers have been a shooting gallery for researchers and hackers alike looking for, and successfully exploiting, shocking vulnerabilities. One disclosed by a researcher in Spain this week is symptomatic of the problem to a disturbing degree. Researcher Eduardo Novella...

Era Ends With Break Up of Trustworthy Computing Group at Microsoft

In a move that has surprised many in the security community, Microsoft has disbanded its Trustworthy Computing unit, the group that was responsible for the pioneering work that helped reverse the company’s security reputation and make Windows a much more secure and reliable computing platform. Th...

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...

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...

Gong Da Exploit Kit Bundling Numerous Java Attacks

Don’t expect any relief from the current assault on Java. A new sandbox-escape exploit targeting a vulnerability in the Java Runtime Environment has been integrated into both the Black Hole and Gong Da exploit kits, setting the stage for additional attacks, researchers said. The exploit was...

Vasillis Pappas Wins $200,000 Microsoft Blue Hat Prize

LAS VEGAS–Microsoft on Thursday handed out three rather large checks to a trio of security researchers, the largest one–$200,000–going to Vasillis Pappas who won the company’s first Blue Hat Prize competition for defensive technologies. Pappas’s kBouncer ROP mitigation technology edged out...

XP SP2 Will Soon Be Hacker's Candy Store

Unless thousands of companies still using Windows XP SP2 computers suddenly stop procrastinating, hackers are going to be in seventh heaven come July 13. Read the full article. The Last Watchdog...

Rickroll Grad Prank Exposes Exterity IPTV Bug

UPDATE When Township High School District 214 in Illinois got rickrolled all at once across its six different schools just before graduation, it was more than a meticulously executed senior prank. Cybersecurity star-in-the-making and recent high-school graduate Minh Duong found, and was able to...

‘Glowworm’ Attack Turns Light Flickers into Audio

Virtual meetings are vulnerable to a new, exotic attack called Glowworm, which measures an audio output device’s LED power light changes and converts them to audio reproductions — allowing cyberattackers to listen to sensitive conversations. As an increasing amount of business is being conducted...

The True Impact of Ransomware Attacks

One of the most damaging myths about ransomware attacks is, “If your company does regular system backups, you don’t have to worry. Just restore from the backup.” While system backups are crucial — power outages, natural disasters, or even mistakes by employees can destroy data just as quickly as ...

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...

Multiple Industrial Control System Vendors Warn of Critical Bugs

Industrial control system firms Real Time Automation and Paradox both warned of critical vulnerabilities Tuesday that opened systems up to remote attacks by adversaries. Flaws are rated 9.8 out of 10 in severity by the industry standard Common Vulnerability Scoring System. The Real Time Automatio...

Safari Bug Revealed After Apple Takes Nearly a Year to Patch

A security researcher disclosed details of an Apple Safari web browser security hole that could leak files with other browsers and applications and open the door to exploitation by attackers. The disclosure came only after Apple said it would delay patching the vulnerability for nearly a year. Fo...

Alleged Hacker Behind Massive ‘Collection 1’ Data Dump Arrested

A hacker accused of selling hundreds of millions of stolen credentials from last year’s “Collection 1” data dump on the dark web has been arrested in the Ukraine. The Security Service of Ukraine SSU took into custody a threat actor known as “Sanix,” who they claim posted 773 million e-mail...

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?...

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...

xHelper: The Russian Nesting Doll of Android Malware

The “undeletable” xHelper malware – which ultimately results in the installation of the Triada trojan – has become a virulent scourge for Android devices this year, according to researcher analysis – bringing with it a hallmark of being virtually indestructible for the common user. xHelper is kno...

Official Government COVID-19 Mobile Apps Hide a Raft of Threats

A rash of COVID-19 Android mobile apps have emerged that are aimed at helping citizens in Iran, Italy and Colombia track symptoms and virus infections. However, they’re also putting people’s privacy and the security of their data at risk, researchers have found. Security researchers at the ZeroFO...

Adobe Discloses Dozens of Critical Photoshop, Acrobat Reader Flaws

Adobe has released out-of-band updates addressing critical vulnerabilities in its Photoshop and Acrobat Reader products, which if exploited could allow arbitrary code-execution. Overall, Adobe on Wednesday patched flaws tied to 41 CVEs across its products, 29 of which were critical in severity. T...

Video: Ransomware a Growing Industrial Security Threat

SAN FRANCISCO – Today, Operational Technology OT and Information Technology systems are merging and changing security playbooks. Here at RSA Conference 2020, Waterfall Security‘s CEO and co-founder Lior Frenkel describes the front lines of the convergence. Frenkel maintains that just as more...

Google Ditches Patch-Time Bug Disclosure in Favor of 90-Day Policy

Google’s Project Zero bug-hunting team is making a big change to its vulnerability disclosure policies. Full details on any vulnerability will be made public 90 days after discovery, regardless of when the bug is fixed. That means that whether it’s patched on Day 20 or Day 120, bug details will g...

Podcast: Managing an Out-Of-Control Security Tech Stack

This podcast is sponsored by Arctic Wolf. In this sponsored podcast, Threatpost podcast host Cody Hackett and Sam McLane, chief technology officer with Arctic Wolf, discuss important considerations when building a multi-layered cybersecurity strategy and best practices when evaluating security...

News Wrap: Voice Assistant Laser Hack, Twitter Insider Threats, Data Breach Fine Fails

Threatpost editors break down the top news stories for the week ended Nov. 8. The hot stories of the week include: Despite trillions of dollars in data-breach fine payouts, each year the number of compromised companies and individuals with private data exposed rise – a Threatpost feature looks at...