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...

Google PPC Ads Used to Deliver Infostealers

Researchers have tracked down the origins of several increasingly prevalent info-stealers – including Redline, Taurus, Tesla and Amadey – that threat actors are delivering via pay-per-click PPC ads in Google’s search results. On Wednesday, breach prevention firm Morphisec posted an advisory in...

DarkSide Hits Toshiba; XSS Forum Bans Ransomware

For a ransomware gang whose servers were purportedly commandeered last week, DarkSide has had a server-fueled weekend, with a reported hit on Toshiba Business. Late on Thursday night came a post to the “Exploit” underground forum that looked, at least, to be from DarkSide. It described how the...

Anti-Spam WordPress Plugin Could Expose Website User Data

An SQL-injection vulnerability discovered in a WordPress plugin called “Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk” could expose user emails, passwords, credit-card data and other sensitive information to an unauthenticated attacker. Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk is...

Mount Locker Ransomware Aggressively Changes Up Tactics

The Mount Locker ransomware has shaken things up in recent campaigns with more sophisticated scripting and anti-prevention features, according to researchers. And, the change in tactics appears to coincide with a rebranding for the malware into “AstroLocker.” According to researchers, Mount Locke...

North Korean APT Gears Up to Target Security Researchers

The same North Korean threat actors that targeted security researchers in January appear to be readying a new campaign using a fake company and associated social-media accounts that aim to lure security professionals into another cyber-espionage trap. Google discovered the site as well as Twitter...

DDoS Attacks Wane in Q4 Amid Cryptomining Resurgence

Distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks dropped significantly at the end of 2020, down 31 percent in the fourth quarter, according to researchers. The reason? Cybercriminals have switched their efforts and their botnets to cryptomining. According to an analysis from Kaspersky published Tuesday...

SAP Commerce Critical Security Bug Allows RCE

SAP is warning of a critical vulnerability in its SAP Commerce platform for e-commerce businesses. If exploited, the flaw could allow for remote code execution RCE that ultimately could compromise or disrupt the application. SAP Commerce organizes data – such as product information – to be...

Data from August Breach of Amazon Partner Juspay Dumped Online

Data from a breach that occurred five months ago involving Juspay, which handles payments for Amazon and other online retailers in India, has been dumped online, a researcher has found. Security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia discovered data of 35 million Indian credit-card holders from a breach...

Microsoft Teams Users Under Attack in 'FakeUpdates' Malware Campaign

Attackers are using ads for fake Microsoft Teams updates to deploy backdoors, which use Cobalt Strike to infect companies’ networks with malware. Microsoft is warning its customers about the so-called “FakeUpdates” campaigns in a non-public security advisory, according to a report in Bleeping...

Mysterious APT Leaves Curious ‘KilllSomeOne’ Clue

Researchers are scratching their heads when it comes to unmasking a new advanced persistent threat APT group targeting non-governmental organizations in the Southeast Asian nation Myanmar formerly Burma. Based on crude messages, such as “KilllSomeOne”, used in attack code strings, coupled with...

OAuth Consent Phishing Ramps Up with Microsoft Office 365 Attacks

An APT known as TA2552 has been spotted using OAuth2 or other token-based authorization methods to access Office 365 accounts, in order to steal users’ contacts and mail. OAuth is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used as a way for people to sign into services without entering a...

Have I Been Pwned Set to Go Open-Source

Have I Been Pwned, the service that logs data breaches and lets individuals search to see if they’ve been affected by one, is about to go open-source. The result of that, according to its founder, will be additional transparency and security-enhancing features. HIBP, which was kicked off in 2013,...

Researchers Warn of High-Severity Dell PowerEdge Server Flaw

Researchers have disclosed details of a recently patched, high-severity Dell PowerEdge server flaw, which if exploited could allow an attacker to fully take over and control server operations. The web vulnerability was found in the Dell EMC iDRAC remote access controller, technology embedded with...

GDPR Compliance Site Leaks Git Data, Passwords

A website that gives advice on privacy regulation compliance has fixed a security issue that was exposing MySQL database settings — including passwords — to anyone on the internet. The website, GDPR.EU, is an advice site for organizations that are struggling to comply with the General Data...

Activities of a Nigerian Cybercriminal Uncovered

Ever wonder who’s behind one of those Nigerian cyber-crime email campaigns asking you to enter into a shady business deal and how they’re enacted? In a unique profile, researchers pulled back the curtain on such an attack with a report outlining how a Nigerian cybercriminal made hundreds of...

Let’s Encrypt Pushes Back Deadline to Revoke Some TLS Certificates

Let’s Encrypt said it will give users of its Transport Layer Security TLS certificates more time to replace 1 million certificates that are still active and potentially affected by a Certificate Authority Authorization CAA bug before it revokes them. The popular free certificate authority had giv...

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...

Pwn2Own Miami Contestants Haul in $180K for Hacking ICS Equipment

The very first Pwn2Own hacking competition that exclusively focuses on the industrial control systems ICS has kicked off in Miami. So far, a total of $180,000 has been awarded for pwning five different products. The contest hosts at Trend Micro’s Zero Day initiative ZDI have allocated more than...

Satan Ransomware Reborn to Torment Businesses

A ransomware with the un-snappy moniker of “5ss5c” has emerged on the scene and appears to be in active development. According to independent researcher Bart Blaze, the malware is the successor to the Satan ransomware, and its authors are still experimenting with focused targeting China, for now...

Facebook Security Debacles: 2019 Year in Review

Facebook Security: 2019 Year in Review Facebook spent the past year both trying to deal with the consequences of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked its public relations in 2018, as well as other issues afflicting the social media platform – from data security challenges to political...

Feds Offer $5M Reward to Nab 'Evil Corp' Dridex Hacker

U.S. authorities are offering up $5 million for information leading to the arrest of Evil Corp. leader Maksim V. Yakubets, 32, of Russia, who goes under the moniker “aqua.” The U.S. alleges that Yakubets and his company have stolen millions of dollars from victims using the Dridex banking trojan...

Magecart 5 Linked to Carbanak Gang

Researchers have linked Magecart Group 5, the credit-card skimming cybercriminals behind the Ticketmaster breach, to Dridex phishing campaigns and the infamous Carbanak group. Magecart – which is an umbrella group encompassing several different affiliates all using the same modus operandi – injec...

DEF CON and Feds Partner on Anonymous Bug Submission Program

Hacking conference organizer DEF CON Communications said it plans to roll out a global anonymous bug submission platform based on the SecureDrop communications tool. During a session at DEF CON in Las Vegas last week, conference founder Jeff Moss said the goal was to launch the yet-to-be-named...

Puzzling Gwmndy Botnet Focuses on Low-Volume Proxy Connections

An odd botnet has been spotted targeting Fiberhome routers, in a quest to add 200 of them per day to its botnet web. That’s a low number in the world of botnets, according to 360 Netlab researchers, which observed a previously unknown malware strain called Gwmndy after the attackers’ domain name...

Google Releases Open Source Tool For Computational Privacy

Google is releasing a new open-source cryptographic tool aimed at boosting privacy around sensitive data sets. The tool, called Private Join and Compute, is designed to help companies who are working together with confidential data sets. Private Join and Compute, allows companies to share data in...

Hackers Favor Weekdays for Attacks, Share Resources Often

Do threat actors carry out phases of their attack on different days of the week? Do threats use the same infrastructure for exploitation and control? These may not be the sort of questions that cybersecurity professional usually think about, but their implications can actually have an important...

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...

Facial Recognition is Here: But Are We Ready?

When MacKenzie Fegan was boarding her morning flight to Mexico City last Wednesday, she noticed something odd at her gate at the JFK International Airport. Instead of a JetBlue employee scanning her boarding pass or taking a look at her passport, she – and other passengers at the gate – was...

Microsoft Outlook Breach Widens in Scope, Impacting MSN And Hotmail – Report

UPDATE A recently-disclosed Microsoft email-platform breach is reportedly much worse than previously thought, now impacting a large number of Outlook accounts as well as MSN and Hotmail email accounts. On Friday, a slew of Outlook users reported receiving notifications from Microsoft. The...

Podcast: Chris Vickery on UpGuard's Discovery of Millions of Facebook Records

Data collection and security was thrust to the forefront this week after researchers with UpGuard disclosed that hundreds of millions of Facebook records were found in two separate publicly-exposed app datasets. The two publicly-exposed datasets included one controlled by Mexican media company...

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...

RSA Conference 2019: Firms Continue to Fail at IoT Security

SAN FRANCISCO – Low prices and firms racing products to market are two of the biggest factors when it comes to why Internet of Things devices are not getting the type of security do diligence they deserve. According to Checkmarx researcher Erez Yalon, despite years of the infosec community soundi...

Attackers Can Track Kids' Locations via Connected Watches

Despite ongoing warnings about connected watches and toys endangering kids’ privacy and potentially their physical safety, makers of these Internet of Things gadgets continue to turn out products that do just that. The latest concern is a gamut of kids’ GPS-tracking watches, which were found to b...

Outlook Bug Allowed Hackers to Use .RTF Files To Steal Windows Passwords

A vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook allowed hackers to steal a user’s Windows password just by having the target preview an email with a Rich Text Format RTF attachment that contained a remotely hosted OLE object. The bug was patched by Microsoft as part of its April Patch Tuesday fixes, over a...

‘IOTroop’ Botnet Could Dwarf Mirai in Size and Devastation, Says Researcher

A botnet, which is adding new bots every day, has already infected one million businesses during the past month and could easily eclipse the size and devastation caused by Mirai. The malware and botnet, dubbed IOTroop, was spotted in September by researchers at Check Point who warn that 60 percen...

Android Factory Reset Improper Sanitization Exposes Data

The churn of Android devices, whether older smartphones being traded in or sold online, makes device sanitization imperative. The native feature in the OS, however, may not be doing as thorough a job as advertised. A paper, “Security Analysis of Android Factory Resets” pdf, published by Ross...

Vulnerabilities in Android Apps That Allow Intercept of Messages, Photos Outlined

Researchers from the University of New Haven have taken to Youtube this week to publicize vulnerabilities in a dozen Android apps, including Instagram, Vine and OKCupid. Researchers at the University of New Haven’s Cyber Forensics Research and Education Group UNHcFREG have chosen to disclose the...

Mixed Reviews on Microsoft myBulletins Patch Service

Microsoft today released its new myBulletins service, an interface where IT administrators can customize security patch update information. While providing users with a slick GUI that allows for extensive filtering of patch information by the products in use inside an enterprise or small company,...

Malicious Java App is Cross-Platform Botnet

Java-related security issues have remained relatively quiet during the past few months, especially after a rocky start to 2013 seemingly had one Java flaw after another in the news. Things might be starting to ramp up again with the discovery of a cross-platform Java-based botnet. Researchers at...

Issue with SWFUploader Could Lead to XSS Vulnerabilities, Content Spoofing

UPDATED Many versions of SWFUpload – an applet that combines Flash and JavaScript that’s used in millions of websites, including WordPress sites– are vulnerable to content spoofing and a cross-site scripting vulnerability that could lead to the takeover of accounts, according to reports this week...

Fake Payroll Confirmation Email Leads to Black Hole Exploit Kit

Criminal hackers launched an attack campaign earlier this week in which they sent a slew of emails purporting to come from the financial software developer Intuit. The emails contained links that led to sites hosting the Blackhole exploit kit in an apparent attempt to infect the machines of...

Arms Race In Zero Days Spells Trouble For Privacy, Public Safety

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part podcast with independent security researcher Chris Soghoian. In the first part of our podcast with independent security researcher Chris Soghoian, we talked about the way that the proliferation of “free” applications have forced consumers into the...

Katie Moussouris on Microsoft, Trustworthy Computing and the Evolution of the Security Community

Dennis Fisher talks with Microsoft’s Katie Moussouris about the way that the Trustworthy Computing effort at Microsoft has changed, how the security community has evolved since she got involved in the 1990s and the challenges–and fun–of being a woman in security. Podcast audio courtesy of sykboy6...

Microsoft to Give Security Guidelines for Agile

Microsoft will release on Tuesday guidelines for developers building online applications and for those using the Agile code-development process. The Agile guidelines apply principles from Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle SDL to Agile, an umbrella term for a development model frequently...

Malicious Npm Packages Tapped Again to Target Discord Users

Threat actors once again are using the node package manager npm repository to hide malware that can steal Discord tokens to monitor user sessions and steal data on the popular chat and collaboration platform, researchers have found. A campaign discovered this week by Kaspersky researchers is hidi...

Office 365 Config Loophole Opens OneDrive, SharePoint Data to Ransomware Attack

Researchers are warning attackers can abuse Microsoft Office 365 functionality to target files stored on SharePoint and OneDrive in ransomware attacks. Those files, stored via “auto-save” and backed-up in the cloud, typically leave end users with the impression data is shielded from a ransomware...

Google: 2021 was a Banner Year for Exploited 0-Day Bugs

Google Project Zero reported 58 exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in 2021, a record in the short time the team of security researchers has been keeping tabs. In a year-in-review report on the number instances a zero-day bug has been exploited in the wild, researchers noted the number a twofold...

The Evolving Role of the CISO

Digital technologies have infused every aspect of a business, especially with the shutdown of the physical workplace. The increased interdependence between the physical, digital and cybersecurity worlds demand a leadership position that combines both the technical know-how and the ability to...

Fake Zoom App Dropped by New APT ‘Luminous Moth’

Researchers have spotted a weird one: A newly identified threat actor linked to China that’s first mass-attacking, but then cherry-picking, just a few targets to hit with malware and data exfiltration. Kaspersky researchers said in a Wednesday writeup that they’ve named the advanced threat actor...