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...

DoJ Charges Rhode Island Woman in Phishing Scheme Against Politicians

The Department of Justice DoJ has charged a woman in Rhode Island in a phishing campaign against candidates for political office and related associates that impersonated various individuals–including campaign workers and the Microsoft security team—in an attempt to trick victims into providing...

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...

Fraud Ring Launders Money Via Fake Charity Donations

A money-laundering fraud ring is targeting donation sites, taking advantage of the outpouring of charity sparked by the global pandemic. Dubbed Cart Crasher by the Sift security firm, the fraud ring leverages guest checkout options on donation sites to steal money and launder stolen payment cards...

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...

WordPress Injection Anchors Widespread Malware Campaign

The downloader malware known as Gootloader is poisoning websites globally as part of an extensive drive-by and watering-hole cybercampaign that abuses WordPress sites by injecting them with hundreds of pages of fake content. The adversaries have so far delivered the Cobalt Strike intrusion tool,...

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...

Zero-Click Apple Zero-Day Uncovered in Pegasus Spy Attack

Four nation-state-backed advanced persistent threats APTs hacked Al Jazeera journalists, producers, anchors and executives, in an espionage attack leveraging a zero-day exploit for Apple iPhone, researchers said. The attack, carried out in July and August, compromised 36 personal phones belonging...

Zoom Impersonation Attacks Aim to Steal Credentials

A new Zoom-themed phishing attack is circulating through email, text and social media messages, aiming to steal credentials for the videoconferencing service. The Better Business Bureau BBB warned last week that the attack uses Zoom’s logo, and in a message tells recipients that their Zoom accoun...

ThreatList: Pharma Mobile Phishing Attacks Turn to Malware

As pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, mobile phishing gangs are swapping up their tactics in hopes to get their hands on critical research. Cybercriminals previously targeted pharmaceutical company employee credentials. However, new research shows that...

Dating Site Bumble Leaves Swipes Unsecured for 100M Users

After a taking closer look at the code for popular dating site and app Bumble, where women typically initiate the conversation, Independent Security Evaluators researcher Sanjana Sarda found concerning API vulnerabilities. These not only allowed her to bypass paying for Bumble Boost premium...

Trump Campaign Website Defaced by Cryptocurrency Scam

UPDATE Hackers took over President Trump’s 2020 election campaign website late Tuesday, replacing parts of the site with a cryptocurrency scam before returning it to its original content several minutes later. Journalist Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler was the first to notice the attack while he was...

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,...

AWS Facial Recognition Platform Misidentified Over 100 Politicians As Criminals

Facial recognition technology is still misidentifying people at an alarming rate – even as it’s being used by police departments to make arrests. In fact, Paul Bischoff, consumer privacy expert with Comparitech, found that Amazon’s face recognition platform incorrectly misidentified more than 100...

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...

Self-Propagating Malware Targets Thousands of Docker Ports Per Day

The Docker cloud containerization technology is under fire, with an organized, self-propagating cryptomining campaign targeting misconfigured open Docker Daemon API ports. Thousands of container-compromise attempts are being observed every day as part of the campaign, according to Gal Singer, a...

Cisco Warns of High-Severity SD-WAN Flaws

Cisco Systems has fixed three high-severity vulnerabilities in its software-defined networking for wide-area network SD-WAN solutions for business users. If exploited, the flaws could enable bad actors to execute commands with root privileges on affected systems. To exploit the vulnerabilities...

Critical Adobe Flaws Fixed in Out-of-Band Update

Adobe has issued unscheduled patches for two critical vulnerabilities that, if exploited, enable an attacker to execute remote code on targeted devices. The two apps affected by the critical flaws are Adobe After Effects, a visual effects and motion graphics app used for post-production film maki...

Katie Moussouris: The Bug Bounty Conflict of Interest

Since the launch of the Hack the Pentagon program in 2016, bug bounty programs continue to increase in popularity – however, as more programs are created, some companies are forgetting the real reason behind bug bounties. Instead of aiming to make their systems more secure, companies are viewing...

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...

Coronavirus Campaigns Spread Emotet, Malware

As the coronavirus originating in the Wuhan province of China continues to stir widespread fears about a global public health crisis, some see an opportunity in the outbreak. A recent spate of malicious, botnet-driven emails is using the coronavirus as a theme, according to telemetry from IBM...

Trolls-For-Hire Pave Way For Sophisticated Social Media Hacks

NEW ORLEANS – Researchers have observed the blossoming of a new type of social media nuisance they are calling Trolling-as-a-Service. They say these rabble-rousing efforts have emerged as a clever new way for hackers to launch coordinated and dangerous attacks via Facebook and Twitter. Speaking a...

Threatpost Poll: Are Published PoC Exploits a Good or Bad Idea?

The practice of disclosing proof-of-concept PoC exploits has long caused a debate in the security community. As the name suggests, these outline steps used to exploit a vulnerability in a system to show how it can be done — and are used to test networks and pinpoint vulnerable aspects of a system...

Scammers Dupe Texas School District Out of $2.3M

A Texas school district, based outside of Austin, Tex., has lost $2.3 million after falling victim to an email scam. The Manor Independent School District encompasses 8,000 students from elementary to high school. Police told local news outlets that the incident started in early November and...

Your Smart Christmas Lights Are Safer Than They Were Last Year

Thinking about putting up smart Christmas lights but worried about your internet of things IoT security? You can rest a bit easier this year because at least one festive light option is a bit safer than it used to be, new research has found. Manufacturers of the Twinkly smart lights have taken in...

GE, Dunkin', Forever 21 Caught Up in Broad Internal Document Leak

A marketing firm exposed hashed passwords and sensitive public relations documents of thousands of customers via a leaky Amazon S3 database – including big-name brands like GE, Dunkin’ Donuts, Forever 21 and more. Researchers with UpGuard in October discovered a misconfigured Amazon S3 storage...

Authorities Break Up Imminent Monitor Spyware Organization

The developers behind a commodity remote-access tool RAT that allows full control of a victim’s computer has been taken down by Australian and global authorities. The Imminent Monitor RAT IM-RAT first appeared in 2012, the work of a developer going by the handle of “Shockwave,” according to...

Download: The Comprehensive Compliance Guide

A large part of the CISO/CIO responsibility is ensuring compliance standards are met. As one of the main drivers of security product purchase and implementation, regulation comes in many different shapes and sizes. Some standards provide clear consequences for failure to meet them. Others provide...

California Bans Deepfakes in Elections, Porn

California has passed a law that bans the use of deepfake technology in political speech, and for non-consensual use in adult content. Deepfakes are a manipulation of images and recordings, created by artificial intelligence technology, that make it appear as if an individual is doing or saying...

4 Dating Apps Pinpoint Users' Precise Locations – and Leak the Data

Four popular dating apps that together can claim 10 million users have been found to leak precise locations of their members. “By simply knowing a person’s username we can track them from home, to work,” explained Alex Lomas, researcher at Pen Test Partners, in a blog on Sunday. “We can find out...

Ransomware Sees Triple-Digit Spike in Corporate Detections

LAS VEGAS — As cybercriminals continue to chase the most lucrative attack vectors they can find, ransomware attacks are migrating from consumer targets to organizations, businesses, municipalities and beyond. For the first time, consumer detections have fallen below organizational infections, as ...

Amazon Alexa Secretly Records Children, Lawsuits Allege

A federal lawsuit is alleging that Amazon is recording children who use its Alexa devices, without their consent or knowledge. Alexa is the built-in voice assistant shipped with devices like Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot, Fire TV and some third-party gadgets. “Alexa routinely records and voiceprints...

Airbnb Superhost Secretly Recorded Guests with Hidden Bedroom Camera

An Airbnb “superhost” in China has been arrested after a guest staying in his house found a hidden camera recording her in the bedroom. The guest, an unnamed woman who was staying in the Airbnb in eastern China last week, said she discovered the camera after spotting a light that looked unusual i...

Carbanak Source Code Unveils a Startlingly Complex Malware

A look under the hood of FIN7’s notorious Carbanak backdoor – the result of nearly 500 total hours of analysis across 100,000 lines of code and dozens of binaries – shows that the malware is highly sophisticated – more sophisticated than expected. It’s a Cadillac in a sea of golf carts, if you...

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...

RSA Conference 2019: The Sky's the Limit For Satellite Hacks

SAN FRANCISCO – The satellites orbiting the world are rife with vulnerabilities – and as more satellites go up, and antenna equipment becomes cheaper, they are becoming a lucrative target for threat actors back on earth, according to researchers. William Malik, vice president of infrastructure...

Separ Malware Plucks Hundreds of Companies' Credentials in Ongoing Phish

An ongoing phishing campaign is using malicious PDF documents to spread Separ malware and ultimately steal victims’ browser and email credentials. Since the attack started at the end of January, it has affected around 200 companies and over 1,000 individuals, located mainly in Southeast Asia, the...

Intel Responds to Spectre-Like Flaw In CPUs

Intel acknowledged that its processors are vulnerable to another dangerous speculative execution side channel flaw that could give attackers unauthorized read access to memory. The new vulnerability, disclosed by Google Project Zero and Microsoft’s Security Response Center, is called Variant 4, a...

KRACK Vulnerability Puts Medical Devices At Risk

A slew of devices from medical technology company Becton, Dickinson and Company BD are vulnerable to the infamous KRACK key-reinstallation attack, potentially enabling hackers to change and exfiltrate patient records. The KRACK vulnerability, discovered last October, is an industry-wide glitch in...

Lenovo Warns Critical WiFi Vulnerability Impacts Dozens of ThinkPad Models

Lenovo warned customers on Friday that two critical Broadcom vulnerabilities impacts 25 models of its popular ThinkPad brand. The vulnerabilities were first revealed in September and originally they were only reported to impact specific Broadcom chipsets used in Apple iPhones, Apple TV and Androi...

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...

GPG Patches 18-Year-Old Libgcrypt RNG Bug

New versions of Libgcrypt and Gnu Privacy Guard GnuPG or GPG released on Wednesday include security fixes for vulnerabilities discovered in the mixing functions of the Libgcrypt random number generator. The flaws were privately disclosed by Felix Dörre and Vladimir Klebanov of Karlsruhe Institute...

How Bugs Lead to a Better Android

Google is used to taking a beating over Android vulnerabilities, but it says too often its hard work fixing vulnerabilities and keeping the platform safe goes unnoticed. “Over the seven years working on Android security vulnerabilities I’ve seen a lot of bugs and a lot of fear uncertainty and...

Android Rooting Application Emergency Patch

A rooting application has been found in the wild targeting Nexus mobile devices using a local privilege escalation vulnerability patched two years ago in the Linux kernel that remains unpatched in Android. Researchers at Zimperium, the same company that discovered last summer’s Stagefright flaws...

Broken 2013 Java Patch Leads to Sandbox Bypass

Java’s miserable 2013 just will not go away. One of the endless parade of bugs found in the platform throughout 2013—many of which were zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in targeted attacks—apparently wasn’t closed off completely by an October 2013 patch released by Oracle. Researchers at Polish...

Microsoft Warns of Crowti Ransomware

Researchers with Microsoft have spotted a spike in Crowti, a ransomware similar to Cryptolocker that encrypts files on victims’ machines and then asks for payment to unlock them. The malware has existed for several months but it wasn’t until mid-October that Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center...

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...

In Possible Targeted Attack, Amnesty International Web Site Found Serving Malware

Amnesty International’s United Kingdom website was compromised late last week and was being used to exploit a known Java runtime environment hole on machines belonging to unwitting visitors to the site, according to Barracuda Labs researcher, Paul Royal. Citing historical data, Royal claims that...

Critical Flaws Haunt Adobe Shockwave Player

Adobe’s run on the patching treadmill continued this week with a “critical” update to fix a pair of code execution holes in its Shockwave Player. The vulnerabilities affect Adobe Shockwave Player 11.5.2.602 and earlier versions, on the Windows and Mac operating systems. According to an Adobe...

Microsoft Acknowledges IE7 Flaw

Microsoft has acknowledged a new unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and said that the company is investigating methods for fixing the flaw. The company said that although there is public exploit code available for the vulnerability, it has not seen any evidence of ongoing attac...