Watering Hole Attacks Push ScanBox Keylogger

A China-based threat actor has ramped up efforts to distribute the ScanBox reconnaissance framework to victims that include domestic Australian organizations and offshore energy firms in the South China Sea. The bait used by the advanced threat group APT is targeted messages that supposedly link...

Massive Zero-Day Hole Found in Palo Alto Security Appliances

Researchers have developed a working exploit to gain remote code execution RCE via a massive vulnerability in a security appliance from Palo Alto Networks PAN, potentially leaving 10,000 vulnerable firewalls with their goods exposed to the internet. The critical zero day, tracked as CVE 2021-3064...

Ransomware Defense: Top 5 Things to Do Right Now

If there is any cyber-threat at the top of everyone’s mind right now, it must be ransomware. Once a “nuisance” threat, ransomware has grown into a layered, multi-billion-dollar industry for attackers. These threat actors are no longer amateurs trying their hand at breaking and entering. Rather, w...

Babuk Ransomware Builder Mysteriously Appears in VirusTotal

The Babuk ransomware gang’s source code has been uploaded to VirusTotal, making it available to all security vendors and competitors. It’s unclear however just how that happened. According to a Wednesday posting from Malwarebytes, the operators of the ransomware – perhaps best-known for hitting t...

Building SIEM for Today’s Threat Landscape

It’s easy to see how the changing security landscape has shaped the evolution of the security information and event management SIEM practice area — and how it continues to. But architecting an effective SIEM approach requires a well-thought-out strategy. A combination of security information...

Feds Shut Down Fake COVID-19 Vaccine Phishing Website

Federal law enforcement in Maryland has shut down a fraudulent website targeting immigrant communities that claimed to be for a company developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, the site was stealing information from people with the purpose of using it for future cybercriminal activity. The U.S...

DOJ: Creep Coach Finagles Nude Athlete Photos

A former track-and-field coach who worked at several universities has been arrested and is facing up to five years in prison for attempting to solicit nude photos of his athletes through sham social-media accounts and cyberstalking. The Department of Justice alleged that Steve Waithe, while...

Crossing the Line: When Cyberattacks Become Acts of War

The Cold War concept isn’t outdated. In the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the battleground has simply shifted from conflicts between ideological proxy governments to cyberspace. And the opponents have grown from a few primary nations into a broad range of sovereign threat actors. Th...

Nvidia Squashes High-Severity Jetson DoS Flaw

Nvidia has patched three vulnerabilities affecting its Jetson lineup, which is a series of embedded computing boards designed for machine-learning applications, in things like autonomous robots, drones and more. A successful exploit could potentially cripple any such gadgets leveraging the affect...

Ransomware Attackers Publish 4K Private Scottish Gov Agency Files

On the heels of a ransomware attack against the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency SEPA, attackers have now reportedly published more than 4,000 files stolen from the agency – including contracts and strategy documents. After hitting SEPA on Christmas Eve with the attack, cybercriminals...

Google Services Weaponized to Bypass Security in Phishing, BEC Campaigns

A spike in recent phishing and business email compromise BEC attacks can be traced back to criminals learning how to exploit Google Services, according to research from Armorblox. Social distancing has driven entire businesses into the arms of the Google ecosystem looking for a reliable, simple w...

Cybercrime Moves to the Cloud to Accelerate Attacks Amid Data Glut

Cybercriminals are embracing cloud-based services and technologies in order to accelerate their attacks on organizations and better monetize their wares, researchers have found. This is largely driven by cybercriminals who sell access to what they call “clouds of logs,” which are caches of stolen...

IBM Settles Lawsuit Over Weather Channel App Data Privacy

IBM, the owner of the Weather Channel mobile app, has reached a settlement with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office after a 2019 lawsuit alleged that the app was deceiving its users in how it was using their geolocation data. The 2019 lawsuit claimed, the app’s permission prompt for users to...

NSA, FBI Warn of Linux Malware Used in Espionage Attacks

UPDATE The U.S. government is warning of new malware, dubbed Drovorub, that targets Linux systems. It also claims the malware was developed for a Russian military unit in order to carry out cyber-espionage operations. The malware, Drovorub, comes with a multitude of espionage capabilities,...

Apple Knocked Off Perch as Most Imitated Brand for Phishing Attacks

Google and Amazon overtook Apple in the second quarter Q2 of 2020 as the brand most spoofed by attackers to lure people into falling for phishing attacks. The leaderboard change is likely due to activity related to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research. While the number of so-called...

WFH Alert: Critical Bug Found in Old D-Link Router Models

D-Link is urging customers to replace its now obsolete line of DIR-865L Wireless Routers in reaction to a recently discovered critical command-injection bug that leaves users open to a denial-of-service attack. The routers, first introduced in 2013, reached end-of-life support in Feb. 2016. In Au...

Joomla Resources Directory Users Exposed in Leaky AWS Bucket

An Amazon Web Services AWS cloud storage bucket that was left open to the public internet has exposed thousands of Joomla users’ personal information. About 2,700 individuals who signed up to use the Joomla Resources Directory JRD – a community forum for finding developers and service providers...

ACLU Sues Clearview AI Over Faceprint Collection, Sale

The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU has sued a New York-based startup for amassing a database of biometric face-identification data of billions of people and selling it to third parties without their consent or knowledge The U.S. citizens’-rights watchdog organization has filed suit in the...

Microsoft Adds DNS-Over-HTTPS Support for Windows 10 Insiders

Microsoft has announced the first testable version of DNS-Over-HTTPS DoH support, available for its Windows 10 operating system. Support for the DoH protocol, which Microsoft first announced in November, is available in the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19628. This is accessible for members of...

Attackers Claim Identity of Financial NGO to Steal Sharepoint, Office Credentials

A new phishing campaign is targeting investment brokers with fraudulent emails aimed at stealing their Microsoft SharePoint and Office credentials, by invoking the identity of a credible financial regulatory organization. The “widespread, ongoing phishing campaign” is using emails that claim to b...

Apple App Store Riddled With Money-Sucking Fleeceware Apps

Researchers are warning iPhone users of fleeceware apps after finding more than 30 examples of them on Apple’s App Store. Fleeceware is jargon for apps that trick users into paying excessive fees for basic applications and functionality that is available free elsewhere. Many of these fleeceware...

Spearphishing Campaign Exploits COVID-19 To Spread Lokibot Infostealer

Researchers have discovered threat actors once again capitalizing on the COVID-19 pandemic and current attention on the World Health Organization WHO with a new spearphishing email designed to spread the LokiBot trojan sent using the WHO trademark as a lure. Researchers at FortiGuard Labs on Marc...

Covid-19 Poll Results: One in Four Prioritize Health Over Privacy

One in four respondents to a Threatpost reader poll said they were okay with sacrificing a portion of their personal privacy in exchange for some form of cellphone tracking that could – in theory – reduce coronavirus infection rates and save lives. While the majority of Threatpost readers were...

WHO Targeted in Espionage Attempt, COVID-19 Cyberattacks Spike

The World Health Organization WHO has attracted the notice of cybercriminals as the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic continues to play out, with a doubling of attacks recently, according to officials there. Problematically, evidence has also now apparently surfaced that the DarkHotel APT group has tri...

What is the Best Defense Against Phishing Attacks?

Whether the subject line was “You’re account will be closed!” or the email address was [email protected], we have all received and rolled our eyes at a poorly disguised phishing attempt. While many view phishing as a small annoyance, this attack method has maintained longevity for a reason and...

This Stalkerware Delivers Extra-Creepy Features

Researchers are sending up a red flag over the distribution of an aggressive stalkerware app called Monitor Minor. In a report released Monday, researchers said the Android version of the app gives stalkers near absolute control of targeted devices, going so far as allowing them to capture the...

DoppelPaymer Ransomware Used to Steal Data from Supplier to SpaceX, Tesla

A company that provides custom parts to aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Boeing, has been the target of an attack by an emerging type of ransomware that can both encrypt files and exfiltrate data. Colorado-based Visser Precision said it was targeted by a “cyber incident” that involved...

Iranian APT Targets Govs With New Malware

SAN FRANCISCO – A never before seen credential-stealing malware, dubbed ForeLord, has been uncovered in recent spear phishing emails. Researchers have attributed the campaign to a known Iranian advanced persistence threat APT group. The emails distributing ForeLord were uncovered as part of a...

Sen. Schumer Pushes for TSA Employee Ban on TikTok App at Work

The Transportation Safety Authority TSA has become the latest federal agency to ban the use of TikTok among its employees based on national-security fears over how ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns the app, uses the data collected by it. Some TSA employees have used the app to create...

Apple Takes Heat Over 'Vulnerable' iOS Cut-and-Paste Data

Any cut-and-paste data temporarily stored to an iPhone or iPad’s memory can be accessed by all apps installed on the specific device – even malicious ones. That data can then reveal private information such as a user’s GPS coordinates, passwords, banking data or a spreadsheet copied into an email...

Critical WordPress Bug Leaves 320,000 Sites Open to Attack

Two WordPress plugins, InfiniteWP Client and WP Time Capsule, suffer from the same critical authorization bypass bug that allows adversaries to access a site’s backend with no password. All an attacker needs is the admin username for the WordPress plugins and they are in, according to researchers...

PoS Malware Exposes Customer Data of Catch Restaurants

Popular NYC restaurants Catch NYC, Catch Roof and Catch Steak discovered and removed malware on their point-of-sale PoS systems — but not before it exposed credit-card information from unknowing diners. Catch Hospitality Group, which owns the three NYC hotspots, said in a data-breach notice this...

Gamers Hit with Nvidia GPU Driver, GeForce Flaws

Nvidia has issued fixes for high-severity flaws in two popular gaming products, including its graphics driver for Windows and GeForce Experience. The flaws can be exploited to launch an array of malicious attacks – from denial-of-service efforts DoS to escalation of privileges. The majority of th...

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,...

Intimate Details on Healthcare Workers Exposed as Cloud Security Lags

Yet another non-password protected cloud database has come to light, this time exposing a raft of highly personal information on healthcare workers and traveling nurses – including drug tests and arrest records. The incident showcases the unfortunate reality that cloud data security remains a...

IoT Security Challenges in a 5G Era: Expert Advice

When it comes to what we can expect with 5G mobile networks, they promise a more IoT friendly ecosystem, with vast improvements over the current capabilities of the 4G. Providing ultra low-latency and exponentially faster throughput along with sensors that will boast a 10-year battery life 5G pav...

Energy Sector Phish Swims Past Microsoft Email Security via Google Drive

A targeted spearphishing campaign has hit an organization in the energy sector – after using a savvy trick to get around the company’s Microsoft email security stack. According to Aaron Riley, a researcher from Cofense, the campaign impersonated the CEO of the targeted company, sending email via...

Unpatched Flaws in IoT Smart Deadbolt Open Homes to Danger

UPDATE Researchers have uncovered vulnerabilities in a popular smart deadbolt could allow attackers to remotely unlock doors and break into homes. The manufacturer behind the smart lock, Hickory Hardware, has deployed patches to the affected apps on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The...

The Anatomy of Threat Hunting: What You Need to Know and Why

No big surprise here: cybercrime will keep causing a major slowdown in the years to come as the business world proceed with digitalization. Despite implementing all traditional measures to stay protected, organizations keep falling prey to impersonation, phishing, and malware. Scary enough? What’...

Fin7 Ramps Up Campaigns With Two Fresh Malware Samples

Despite the arrest of several Fin7 members in 2018, the cybercrime group has ramped up its efforts in a series of widespread campaigns hitting businesses with two never-before-seen malware samples. Researchers with Flashpoint said Wednesday that they have discovered a new administrative panel and...

Fourth Major Credential Spill in a Month Hits DreamMarket

The hacker behind more than 840 million account records appearing for sale on the Dark Web in February in dumps collectively known as Collections 1-3 is back with 26.42 more records from six companies. The adversary, who goes by the handle Gnosticplayers, is asking just 1.2431 in Bitcoin roughly...

Adobe Patches Critical Photoshop, Digital Edition Flaws

Adobe on Tuesday released its March Security Update, reporting and fixing only two critical flaws: one in Photoshop CC and one in Adobe Digital Editions. Both critical flaws could allow a bad actor to achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user, Adobe said. The company sai...

Cisco Patches High-Severity Webex Vulnerability For Third Time

Cisco Systems is hoping three times is a charm. The networking giant has issued a third patch for a stubborn high-severity flaw in its Webex Meetings platform after researchers once again discovered a way to bypass the previous fix. The privilege elevation vulnerability CVE-2019-1674 exists in th...

Stealthy Malware Disguises Itself as a WordPress License Key

UPDATE A spam-injecting malware is targeting WordPress site owners by disguising itself as a legitimate license key for a WordPress design theme. According to analysis from Sucuri, a customer opened a malware removal ticket reporting “some weird spam URLs injected onto their WordPress website.”...

6 Signs of Successful Threat Hunting

When a threat hunting program is established by an organization, their goal is to proactively hunt threats, with a focus on newer, more sophisticated attacks for which reliable signatures or indicators are not yet available. However, without an effective threat hunting program, the attacker is...

Millions of Home Fiber Routers Vulnerable to Complete Takeover

UPDATE Consumers lucky enough to have blazing-fast 1Gbps internet access in their homes are likely to use the internet more than lower-broadband households; however, millions of them are at risk for hackers to gain wide-ranging access to their internet activities including being able to view full...

Project Zero Chains Bugs for ‘aPAColypse Now’ Attack on Windows 10

Google’s Project Zero released details of a local proof-of-concept attack against a fully patched Windows 10 PC that allows an adversary to execute untrusted JavaScript outside a sandboxed environment on targeted systems. The attack is a variation of a WPAD/PAC attack. In Project Zero’s case, the...

DYN Confirms DDoS Attack Knocking Out Twitter, Spotify Other Major Sites

Update DNS provider Dyn has confirmed two massive distributed denial of service attacks against its servers Friday impacting many of its customers including Twitter, Spotify and GitHub. The attacks came in two waves, one early Friday morning and a second just a few hours later. “This attack is...

Old Android Flaw Elevates Privileges, Steals SMS, Call Logs

A five-year-old Android vulnerability disclosed today affects hundreds of different device models going back to Jelly Bean 4.3. Older devices are at the greatest risk; newer devices running Android with SE Android, the OS’ implementation of Security Enhanced Linux, are at a lesser risk. The...

Google Patches More Trouble in Mediaserver

Google has re-branded its monthly patch release, bringing a new name and new scope to the newly renamed Android Security Bulletin. While that may be new, the content is definitely familiar. Once again, critical remote code execution Mediaserver vulnerabilities dominate this month’s patches...