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...

Lazarus Group Widens Tactics in Cryptocurrency Attacks

North Korea-linked APT Lazarus Group has been spotted targeting the cryptocurrency business again, adding Apple users to the mix by using PowerShell scripts to control macOS malware, and honing its Windows strategy. The campaign has been active since at least November 2018, according to an analys...

Airbus Data Takes Flight; and Billions of Credentials Dumped on Dark Web

French airplane and military aircraft behemoth Airbus SE has become the latest victim of a cyberattack leading to a data breach, with an incident detected on its “commercial aircraft business” information systems. It is only the latest high-profile data exposure to come to light in recent days, a...

Five Critical Android Bugs Get Patched in October Update

Five critical vulnerabilities were reported by Google Monday as part of its October Android Security Bulletin. In all, 14 patches were issued for corresponding vulnerabilities, ranging from critical to high. The relative low bug count for the month of October is due to the fact this month Google...

Remote Wi-Fi Attack Backdoors iPhone 7

Google on Tuesday disclosed details and a proof-of-concept exploit for a Wi-Fi firmware vulnerability in Broadcom chipsets patched this week in iOS 11. The attack enables code execution and persistent presence on a compromised device. “The exploit gains code execution on the Wi-Fi firmware on the...

Windows SMB Zero Day to Be Disclosed During DEF CON

LAS VEGAS—A 20-year-old Windows SMB vulnerability is expected to be disclosed Saturday during a talk at DEF CON. Microsoft has said it will not patch the vulnerability, which allows an attacker to remotely crash a Windows server with relative ease using only 20 lines of Python code and a Raspberr...

Microsoft Offers Analysis of Zero-Day Exploited By Zirconium Group

Microsoft has released technical details on a zero-day vulnerability being exploited by a little-known APT group known as Zirconium. According to the company the vulnerability CVE-2017-0005 affects mostly older versions of Windows and can allow an adversary to execute remote code if a user either...

Cisco Warns of Critical Vulnerability Revealed in WikiLeaks 'Vault 7' Data Dump

Cisco Systems warned customers on Friday of a critical vulnerability that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code and obtain full control on more than 300 different models of its switches and routers. Cisco said it became aware of the vulnerability after WikiLeaks released its Vault 7...

Adobe Patches Experience Manager; No Flash Update

Adobe rolled out its monthly patch release today, and the news isn’t necessarily what was patched, but what wasn’t. For the first time since January, Adobe did not release a security update for Flash Player. Given Flash’s legacy of being a target-rich environment for cybercriminals and advanced...

Google Fixes 51 Bugs in Chrome 41

Google released the latest build of its browser Tuesday, Chrome 41.0.2272.76, patching 51 different bugs and paying out over $50,000 in bounties. Google paid bounties for 18 bugs ranging from medium to high severity. The bounties for all of the vulnerabilities totaled $52,000. 13 of those bugs ca...

Sandworm APT Team Found Using Windows Zero Day Vulnerability

UPDATE–A cyberespionage team, possibly based in Russia, has been using a Windows zero day vulnerability to target a variety of organizations in several countries, including the United States, Poland, Ukraine and western Europe. The vulnerability, which will be patched today by Microsoft, is...

New Web-Based MiniDuke Components Discovered

Researchers at Kaspersky Lab and CrySys Lab have discovered files buried inside a MiniDuke command and control server that indicate the presence of a Web-based facet of the campaign that initially targeted government agencies, primarily in Europe. Users are likely lured to the malicious webpages...

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...

Microsoft Patches Critical Remote Flaws in Word, IE and Windows

A rare critical Microsoft Word vulnerability was patched today by Microsoft, one of seven security updates pushed out repairing 11 flaws in its December security update. The Word vulnerability earned a critical rating because the Outlook email client uses Word to display documents in the Outlook...

Adam Shostack on Methods of Compromise, the New School and Learning

Dennis Fisher talks with Adam Shostack of Microsoft about the taxonomy he helped develop for classifying how PCs are compromised, what he would and wouldn’t change in The New School of Information Security and who he’s learned the most from. Podcast audio courtesy of sykboy65 Subscribe to the...

New Toolkit Able to Track and Trace Duqu Worm

The Hungarian research facility that helped discover Duqu, the much-blogged about Trojan, has now released an open-source toolkit that can be used to help detect traces and instances of the worm. The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security CrySys at the Budapest University of Technology an...

Microsoft Issues Fix-It Workaround for IE Zero-Day

Microsoft has released a one-click “fix-it” workaround to help Internet Explorer users block malware attacks against an unpatched browser vulnerability. The Fix-It workaround, available here, effectively disables peer factory in the iepeers.dll binary in affected versions of Internet Explorer. Th...

Five Critical Bulletins Coming on MS Patch Tuesday

Microsoft’s September batch of security updates will include fixes for a multiple “critical” vulnerabilities affecting the Windows operating system. In all, the software maker will release five bulletins with patches for a range of flaws that could expose users to remote code execution attacks. T...

Rethinking Cyber-Defense Strategies in the Public-Cloud Age

The pandemic has fast-tracked migration to the public cloud, including Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Platform and Microsoft Azure. But the journey hasn’t exactly been smooth as silk: The great migration has brought a raft of complex security challenges, which have led to headline-grabbing...

Cyberattackers Put the Pedal to the Medal: Podcast

Cyber-defenders have a lot on their plates: Rapid vulnerability exploitation. Ransomware-apalooza. Botnet infestations on the order never seen in the past. How can IT security teams effectively deal with the escalating volume of threats, especially as those threats become more sophisticated and...

Living Off the Land: How to Defend Against Malicious Use of Legitimate Utilities

Living-off-the-land binaries LOLBins are no joke: Cyberattackers have been increasingly making use of them to hide their malicious work from security solutions. It’s time for threat hunters and IT security staff to familiarize themselves with how these are used in the attack chains of some of the...

Critical Linux Kernel Bug Allows Remote Takeover

A critical heap-overflow security vulnerability in the Transparent Inter Process Communication TIPC module of the Linux kernel could allow local exploitation and remote code execution, leading to full system compromise. TIPC is a peer-to-peer protocol used by nodes within a Linux cluster to...

Fresh APT Harvester Reaps Telco, Government Data

A previously unseen advanced persistent threat APT group dubbed Harvester by researchers is attacking telcos, IT companies and government-sector targets in a campaign that’s been ongoing since June. According to a Symantec analysis, the group sports a veritable cornucopia of advanced and custom...

LockBit 2.0 Ransomware Proliferates Globally

The LockBit ransomware-as-a-service RaaS gang has ramped up its targeted attacks, researchers said, with attempts against organizations in Chile, Italy, Taiwan and the U.K. using version 2.0 of its malware. Attacks in July and August have employed LockBit 2.0, according to a Trend Micro analysis...

Bug in Millions of Flawed IoT Devices Lets Attackers Eavesdrop

Security researchers have discovered a critical flaw that affects tens of millions of internet-of-things IoT devices – one that exposes live video and audio streams to eavesdropping threat actors and which could enable attackers to take over control of devices, including security webcams and...

Connected Farms Easy Pickings for Global Food Supply-Chain Hack

A group of hackers made an unnerving DEF CON 29 presentation showing how the sprawling growth of digital and automated farming has left the world’s food supply chain vulnerable to cyberattack. A video for DEF CON 29 hacker conference this week put out by the group Sick Codes explained that modern...

BEC Losses Top $1.8B as Tactics Evolve

Business email compromise BEC attacks ramped up significantly in 2020, with more than $1.8 billion stolen from organizations with these types of attacks last year alone — and things are getting worse. BEC attacks are carried out by cybercriminals either impersonating someone inside an organizatio...

NitroRansomware Asks for $9.99 Discord Gift Codes, Steals Access Tokens

The NitroRansomware malware strain is shaking up the ransomware norm by demanding Discord Nitro gift codes from victims instead of actual money. Discord is a VoIP, instant messaging and digital-distribution platform designed for creating communities. Users communicate with voice calls, video call...

623K Payment Cards Stolen from Cybercrime Forum

The Swarmshop cyber-underground “card shop” has been hit by hackers, who lifted the site’s database of stolen payment-card data and leaked it online. That’s according to researchers at Group-IB, who said that the database was posted on a rival underground forum. Card shops, are online cybercrimin...

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...

REvil Group Claims Slew of Ransomware Attacks

The REvil ransomware threat group is on a cyberattack tear, claiming over the past two weeks to have infected nine organizations across Africa, Europe, Mexico and the U.S. The organizations include two law firms, an insurance company, an architectural firm, a construction company and an...

Cisco Warns of Critical Auth-Bypass Security Flaw

A critical vulnerability in Cisco Systems’ intersite policy manager software could allow a remote attacker to bypass authentication. The vulnerability is one of three critical flaws fixed by Cisco on this week. It exists in Cisco’s ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator ACI MSO — this is Cisco’s management...

Singtel Suffers Zero-Day Cyberattack, Damage Unknown

Singtel, Tier 1 telecom carrier throughout Asia and owner of Australian telco Optus, has been impacted by a software security hole in a third-party file transfer appliance targeted by attackers. Singtel is one of multiple organizations affected by the bug, including an Australian medical research...

First-Ever Russian BEC Gang, Cosmic Lynx, Uncovered

Researchers say they have discovered the first-ever reported Russian business email compromise BEC cybercriminal ring, showing that sophisticated attackers beyond the usual Nigerian scammers are setting their sights on the email-based attack vector. The BEC gang is called Cosmic Lynx, and has bee...

8 U.S. City Websites Targeted in Magecart Attacks

Researchers are warning that the websites of eight U.S. cities – across three states – have been compromised with payment card-stealing Magecart skimmers. The websites all utilize Click2Gov municipality payment software, which was previously involved in data breaches. Unlike other skimmers, which...

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...

TikTok Violated Children’s Privacy Law, FTC Complaint Says

The popular video sharing app TikTok has landed in hot water again over privacy issues. On Thursday, a group of privacy advocates filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission FTC alleging the platform failed to adequately protect children’s privacy. The complaint alleged that TikTok violat...

Zero Day Initiative Bug Hunters Rake in $1.5M in 2019

Zero Day Initiative ZDI awarded more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes to bug-hunters throughout 2019, it said, resulting in 1,035 security vulnerability advisories for the year. Most of those advisories 88 percent were published in conjunction with a patch from the vendor, Zero Day Initiative...

Sodinokibi Ransomware Group Sponsors Hacking Contest

White hats aren’t alone in holding hacking contests. Russian-language cybercriminals are known for running similar competitions on underground forums. However, an analysis of Dark Web activity has uncovered a trend towards offering increasingly high-stakes prizes during such battles. At the same...

Bezos, WhatsApp Cyberattacks Show Growing Mobile Sophistication

NEW ORLEANS – Sophisticated nation-state groups are increasingly using mobile devices as an infection vector. Oded Vanunu, head of products vulnerability research at Check Point research, told Threatpost during CPX 360 this week that because mobile devices come equipped with varying technologies,...

Mandatory IoT Security in the Offing with U.K. Proposal

The U.K. government has unveiled a proposed law aimed at securing internet of things IoT devices, which have historically been riddled with basic security issues. The drafted law, announced on Monday, comprises three main mandates for IoT manufacturers. First, all consumer IoT device passwords mu...

California's Tough New Privacy Law and Its Biggest Challenges

The California Consumer Privacy Act is being touted as one of the strongest privacy regulations in the U.S. enacted so far. However, though the CCPA was adopted on January 1, 2020, the act still has several loose ends and privacy loopholes that need to be fleshed out. At a high level ,the CCPA...

Stealthy MacOS Malware Tied to Lazarus APT

Researchers have identified new MacOS malware that can execute remote code in memory that they believe is the work of the powerful North Korean APT group Lazarus, they said Thursday. Security researcher Dinesh Devadoss on Twitter posted a hash for a MacOS trojan he discovered that hides behind a...

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...

Managing the Human Security Factor in the Age of Ransomware

Security analysts have determined that cybercrime cost the global economy $1.5 trillion in 2018. Ransomware, in particular, is estimated to grow by as much as 350 percent over the next year. And while the ransom for a generic ransomware attack has now risen to nearly $13,000, with recent targeted...

Apache Solr Bug Gets Bumped Up to High Severity

A bug impacting the Linux enterprise-search platform called Apache Solr has been revised from low to high-severity after researchers discovered a new remote code execution exploit. The warning comes from Tenable, which is reporting that the newly-identified default configuration vulnerability cou...

IRS Emails Promise a Refund But Deliver Botnet Recruitment

U.S. taxpayers are being offered fake refunds in the latest wave of phishing emails, which ultimately deliver an payload that adds the target machine to the multifunctional Amadey botnet. Amadey is a relatively new botnet, first noted late in Q1 of 2019, according to Milo Salvia, security...

ThreatList: Half of All Social Media Logins Are Fraud

More than half of logins 53 percent on social-media sites are fraudulent; and 25 percent of all new account applications on social media are fake, according to a recent analysis. Those numbers far outstrip the overall rate of 10 percent of interactions being fraudulent. The Arkose Labs Q3 Fraud a...

Google Launches Open-Source Browser Extension for Ad Transparency

Google is launching an experimental, open-source browser extension aimed at increasing transparency around online advertising by displaying information about the ads that are shown to users. The browser extension is an integral part of a new Google initiative announced Thursday to develop a set o...

Cynet: An Autonomous Security Platform for Any Size Organization

The Cynet security platform takes a different approach to traditional point security offerings, by providing a consolidated solution to all aspects of breach protection through a single interface. Unlike endpoint security solutions that only focus on particular types of threats targeting the...