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...

iOS Kids Game Morphs into Underground Crypto Casino

A kids’ game called “Jungle Run” that, until recently, was available in the Apple App store, was secretly a cryptocurrency-funded casino set up to scam people out of money. Join experts from Digital Shadows Austin Merritt, Malwarebytes Adam Kujawa and Sift Kevin Lee to find out how cybercrime...

Ransomware Attack Creates Dutch Cheese Shortages

An Easter weekend ransomware attack on a food-logistics firm in the Netherlands has caused shortages of prepackaged cheese in supermarkets across the country. The largest Dutch grocery store chain had some bad news for a cheese-mad nation. “Due to a technical malfunction, there is limited...

Sextortionist Campaign Targets iOS, Android Users with New Spyware

New spyware is targeting iOS and Android frequenters of adult mobile sites by posing as a secure messaging application in yet another twist on sextortionist scams. The spyware, dubbed Goontact, targets users of escort-service sites and other sex-oriented services – particularly in Chinese-speakin...

Industrial Cyberattacks Get Rarer but More Complex

Cyberattacks against the oil and gas industry inched up only slightly compared to the second half of 2019. Security experts say they are encouraged by the anemic growth, but at the same time are expressing concern that attacks are now becoming more potent, targeted and complex. According to new...

Firefox for Android Bug Allows 'Epic Rick-Rolling'

A vulnerability in Firefox for Android paves the way for an attackers to launch websites on a victim’s phone, with no user interaction. The attack manifests in the form of a Firefox browser window on the target device suddenly launching, without the users’ permission. This can be used for various...

CEOs Could Be Held Personally Liable for Cyberattacks that Kill

A full 75 percent of top brass at companies will be personally on the hook for cyber-physical security CSP incidents by 2024 – especially those that involve fatalities. That’s according to the Gartner research firm, which predicted this week that CEOs soon will no longer be able to hide behind...

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...

Doki Backdoor Infiltrates Docker Servers in the Cloud

A fresh Linux backdoor called Doki is infesting Docker servers in the cloud, researchers warn, employing a brand-new technique: Using a blockchain wallet for generating command-and-control C2 domain names. Doki however is meant to provide a persistent capability for code-execution on an infected...

BEC Hotshot with Opulent Social Media Presence to Face U.S. Charges

A Dubai resident with an elaborate lifestyle that he touted on social media – think designer clothes, expensive watches, luxury cars and charter jets – has arrived in the United States to face criminal charges. He is charged with conspiring to engage in money laundering, as part of a business ema...

WhatsApp Phone Numbers Pop Up in Google Search Results — But is it a Bug?

UPDATE A researcher is warning that a WhatsApp feature called “Click to Chat” puts users’ mobile phone numbers at risk — by allowing Google Search to index them for anyone to find. But WhatsApp owner Facebook says it is no big deal and that the search results only reveal what the users have chose...

REvil Ransomware Attack Hits A-List Celeb Law Firm

A popular law firm that works with several A-list celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Drake and Madonna, has been hit by a ransomware attack. Hackers are now threatening to release the 756 gigabytes of data allegedly stolen – including non-disclosure agreements, client contracts and personal...

Lazarus Group Hides macOS Spyware in 2FA Application

The North Korea-linked cyberthreat group known as Lazarus Group has added a new variant of the Dacls remote-access trojan RAT to its arsenal of spy gear, designed specifically for the Mac operating system. Dacls was first discovered last December targeting Windows and Linux platforms. The new...

Zoom Removes Data-Mining LinkedIn Feature

Zoom has nixed a feature that came under fire for “undisclosed data mining” of users’ names and email addresses, used to match them with their LinkedIn profiles. The feature, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, is a LinkedIn service used for sales prospecting. When users enter a web conference meeting,...

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...

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...

Coronavirus-Themed APT Attack Spreads Malware

An advanced persistent threat APT group is leveraging the coronavirus pandemic to infect victims with a previously unknown malware, in a recently discovered campaign that researchers call “Vicious Panda.” Researchers identified two suspicious Rich Text Format files RTF — a text file format used b...

Critical Bugs in Rockwell, Johnson Controls ICS Gear

Security vulnerabilities that require very little skill to exploit have been discovered in industrial control systems ICS gear from Rockwell Automation and Johnson Controls, which anchor a flurry of bug disclosures impacting critical infrastructure. First, a set of critical vulnerabilities in...

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...

FBI: $3.5B Lost in 2019 to Known Cyberscams, Ransomware

Cybercriminals are focusing on previously successful internet scams to defraud businesses and individuals in the United States out of more money than ever before, according to the FBI’s annual report on cybercrime. Meanwhile, ransomware continues to take a big financial toll on victims. Businesse...

Feds Cut Off Access to Billions of Breached Records with Site Takedown

The feds and international law enforcement have taken down a website that was selling access to billions of stolen personal records. The FBI and the Department of Justice said on Thursday that they, in conjunction with the Dutch police, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency and Germany’s...

Intel Fixes High-Severity Flaw in Performance Analysis Tool

Intel is warning of a high-severity vulnerability in its performance analysis tool called Intel VTune Profiler. If exploited the flaw allows an adversary to perform a privilege escalation attack, giving them elevated and unauthorized system access to a targeted system. The VTune Profiler, formerl...

Alexa, Siri, Google Smart Speakers Hacked Via Laser Beam

Researchers have discovered a new way to hack Alexa and Siri smart speakers merely by using a laser light beam. No physical access of the victims’ device, or owner interaction, is needed to launch the hack, which allows attackers to send voice assistants inaudible commands such as unlocking doors...

Apple Removes 17 Malicious iOS Apps From App Store

Researchers have uncovered 17 apps on Apple’s official App Store infected with malware. Apple has since removed the apps from the App Store – but a “significant” number of iOS users could have installed them, researchers said. Once downloaded, the malicious apps infect victims with a trojan...

Magecart Hits 80 Major eCommerce Sites in Card-Skimming Bonanza

UPDATE More than 80 global eCommerce sites have been uncovered that were actively compromised by Magecart groups. Magecart, a loose affiliation of attack groups responsible for the payment-card attacks on Ticketmaster, Forbes, British Airways, Newegg and others, typically insert virtual credit-ca...

MacOS Zero Day Allows Trusted Apps to Run Malicious Code

A researcher has revealed a zero-day flaw in Apple’s Mojave operating system tied to the way the OS verifies apps. The bug allows attackers to sneak past macOS security measures and run whitelisted apps that have been manipulated to run malicious code. macOS researcher Patrick Wardle revealed the...

Romanian Duo Convicted of Malware Scheme Infecting 400,000 Computers

A Romanian duo has been convicted for infecting hundreds of thousands of computers with malware that scooped up credentials and financial information, and scamming victims out of millions of dollars. The two, Bogdan Nicolescu, 36, and Radu Miclaus, 37, were convicted by a federal jury in Ohio on...

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’...

March Madness Scams Give Attackers Fast Break

With the 2019 NCAA tournament’s Final Four around the corner, researchers are urging viewers to be wary of a slew of March Madness-related phishing attacks, adware installers and other security threats. While security concerns regarding popular sporting events – from the World Cup to the Super Bo...

Dailymotion Fights Ongoing Credential-Stuffing Attack

Dailymotion, the video-sharing platform, said Friday that it had fallen victim to a “large-scale” and ongoing credential-stuffing assault by attackers looking to harvest user data. The French YouTube competitor said in an alert that it has “successfully contained the attacks following the...

Critical Adobe Flash Bug Impacts Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS

Adobe released a patch for a critical flaw on Tuesday that leaves its Flash Player vulnerable to arbitrary code execution by an adversary. Affected are versions of the Flash Player running on Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS. In tandem, a Microsoft Security Advisory was also issued for the bug...

Facebook Bans More Than 800 Accounts in Disinformation Purge

Facebook on Thursday announced it has removed hundreds of pages and accounts as the company cracks down on spam. The move comes at a time when Facebook is under intense scrutiny about how it handles misinformation, particularly as the U.S. midterm elections draw near. The company said it has...

Slideshow: Intel from Virus Bulletin 2018

This year’s Virus Bulletin 2018, held in Montreal Oct. 3-5, featured a keynote from Microsoft’s John Lambert and a range of threat intelligence research from BAE Systems, Check Point, Cisco Talos, Citizens Lab, Digita Security, ESET, GoSecure, Kaspersky Lab, Malwarebytes, Sophos Security and more...

New Spectre-Level Flaw Targets Return Stack Buffer

Researchers have discovered yet another speculative execution side-channel flaw enabling attackers to access sensitive data at the CPU level. The new Spectre-class exploit, dubbed SpectreRSB, was detailed by researchers from the University of California at Riverside in a research paper on Friday...

Major OS Players Misinterpret Intel Docs, and Now Kernels Can Be Hijacked

Multiple operating system vendors issued coordinated patches this week to address a common vulnerability across their platforms, which was introduced thanks to widespread misinterpretation of Intel developer documentation. According to the CERT/CC team, most major players including Apple, FreeBSD...

NFL Players and Agents Targeted in Database Extortion Attempt

A misconfigured database containing records belonging to 1,133 National Football League players and their agents was exposed via an unsecured Elasticsearch server. The database belongs to the NFL Players Association and includes the home address, phone numbers and IP addresses for hundreds of...

WordPress Fixes CSRF, XSS Bugs, Announces Bug Bounty Program

WordPress is urging webmasters to update to the latest version of its content management system to mitigate several issues, including a pair of cross-site scripting XSS bugs and a cross-site request forgery CSRF bug that’s existed for 10 months. The latest iteration of the software, version 4.7.5...

Cisco Warns of Critical Flaw in Teleconferencing Gear

Cisco Systems is warning customers of a critical vulnerability affecting three of its TelePresence MCU platform models. The flaw could give attackers the ability to remotely execute code on impacted systems or create conditions favorable to a denial-of-service DoS attack. According to an advisory...

Cisco Patches Critical Vulnerability in Facility Events Response System

Cisco Systems issued a security bulletin Wednesday for a critical vulnerability found in its IP Interoperability and Collaboration System IPICS. The feature is a key part of a mechanism used by Cisco to facilitate emergency responses for “facility events.” The vulnerability CVE-2016-6397, accordi...

New Research Refines Security Vulnerability Metrics

Adequate security metrics have seemingly been an unattainable goal, especially when it comes to software security. Too often, organizations simply rely on vulnerability counts for flaws disclosed in an operating system or popular application as a measure of its security. But too often, variables...

Tor Blacklisting Exit Nodes Vulnerable to Heartbleed Bug

The Tor Project has begun blacklisting exit nodes vulnerable to the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL. Researcher Collin Mulliner, with the Systems Security Lab at Northeastern University in Boston, published the results of an experiment he conducted using a publicly disclosed Heartbleed...

NTP Amplification Flaw To Blame For Gaming DDoS Attacks

US-CERT has issued an advisory that warns enterprises about distributed denial of service attacks flooding networks with massive amounts of UDP traffic using publicly available network time protocol NTP servers. Known as NTP amplification attacks, hackers are exploiting something known as 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...

Automated Toolkits Named in Massive DDoS Attacks Against U.S. Banks

Attackers targeting major U.S. banks with distributed denial of service attacks are using a number of toolkits to automate the job. Prolexic Technologies, a security company specializing in DDoS protection services, identified one toolkit called itsoknoproblembro, a kit that attacks multiple port...

New Linux Distro Promoted as Anonymous-OS

A new Ubuntu Linux distribution is being marketed as “Anonymous-OS” and comes pre-loaded with tools for hacking and protecting anonymity online. However, it is unclear whether the new operating system was created by the anarchic hacking group, or even has its endorsement. Anonymous-OS Version 0.1...

Google Fixes 15 Bugs in Chrome, Gives Users Ability to Delete Flash Cookies

Google has fixed more than a dozen security bugs in its Chrome browser, including five high-severity vulnerabilities and one that qualified for the company’s highest bug bounty, a $3133.7 reward. The new version of Chrome has fixes for 15 separate security vulnerabilities, the most critical of...

Microsoft Says No to Paying Bug Bounties

Microsoft has no plans to follow in the footsteps of Mozilla and Google and pay researchers cash rewards for the bugs that they find in Microsoft’s products. In the wake of both Mozilla and Google significantly increasing their bug bounties to the $3,000 range, there have been persistent rumors i...

Microsoft Shifts to 'Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure' Policy

Microsoft is changing the way in which it handles vulnerability disclosures, now moving to a model it calls coordinated vulnerability disclosure, in which the researcher and the vendor work together to verify a vulnerability and allow ample time for a patch. However, the new philosophy also...

Main PHP-Nuke Site Compromised

The main site for the PHP-Nuke content management system software has been compromised and is serving malicious iFrame exploits to visitors. Researchers at Websense found that the phpnuke.org site is currently serving several different exploits. The attack uses the common iFrame-redirection...

Microsoft Scrambling to Close Stubborn Security Hole

From Washington Post Brian Krebs Microsoft may soon be taking the unusual step of issuing an out-of-band security update to address multiple weaknesses that stem from a Windows security flaw that the software giant tried to fix earlier this month. Read the full story washingtonpost.com See more...