Octopus Scanner Sinks Tentacles into GitHub Repositories

The Octopus Scanner malware, which targets the Apache NetBeans Java integrated development environment IDE, has been nesting in at least 26 GitHub source-code repositories, according to researchers – waiting to take over developer machines. A team from GitHub Security Labs, acting on a tip from a...

‘Hack-For-Hire’ Firms Spoof WHO To Target Google Credentials

“Hack-for-hire” organizations are the latest group of cybercriminals to take advantage of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, using COVID-19 as a lure in phishing emails bent on stealing victims’ Google credentials. Researchers with Google’s Threat Analysis Group TAG warned that they’ve spotted a...

Hackers Breach 3.5 Million MobiFriends Dating App Credentials

The credentials of 3.5 million users of MobiFriends, a popular dating app, have surfaced on a prominent deep web hacking forum, according to researchers. MobiFriends is an online service and Android app designed to help users worldwide meet new people online. The Barcelona-based developer of...

Google Android RCE Bug Allows Attacker Full Device Access

Google has patched a vulnerability in its Android OS that could allow attackers to completely take over someone’s device to install programs, steal or change data, or create new accounts with full privileges. The flaw CVE-2020-0103 was one of 39 vulnerabilities affecting Android OS builds that us...

Tupperware Cyberattack Stores Away Customer Payment Cards

Cybercriminals hacked the official website of Tupperware, the popular food container giant, injecting a payment card skimmer into its checkout page in hopes of stealing the credit-card details of online customers. The attackers targeted the official Tupperware.com website, which averages close to...

Flaws Riddle Zyxel’s Network Management Software

Security researchers are warning that networking hardware vendor Zyxel and its Cloud CNM SecuManager software is chock-full of unpatched vulnerabilities that kick open the doors for hackers to exploit. In all, researchers have identified 16 vulnerabilities, ranging from multiple backdoors and...

Puerto Rico Gov Hit By $2.6M Phishing Scam

A phishing scam has swindled a Puerto Rico government agency out of more than $2.6 million, according to reports. According to reports, the email-based phishing scam hit Puerto Rico’s Industrial Development Company, which is a government-owned corporation aimed at driving economic development to...

U.S. Gov Agency Targeted With Malware-Laced Emails

A U.S. government agency was targeted with spear phishing emails harboring several malware strains – including a never-before-seen malware downloader that researchers call “Carrotball.” The campaign, which researchers observed occurring from July to October and code-named “Fractured Statue,”...

Drake Lyrics Used as Calling Card in Malware Attack

A hacker with the handle “Master X” leverages a PowerShell script that contains a reference to singer-songwriter Drake lyric’s “Kiki Do You Love Me” and ultimately delivers a malicious payload to its victims. The campaign is email based; with missives containing a malicious PowerPoint attachment...

Twitter Fixes Bug that Enabled Takeover of Android App Accounts

Twitter for Android users are being urged to update their app to avoid a security bug that allows a malicious user to access private account data and could also allow an attacker to take control of accounts to send tweets and direct messages. The warning comes from Twitter who said there are no...

Google Discloses Android Camera Hijack Hack

Researchers have disclosed a high-severity issue that could allow attackers to hijack the Google Camera App, the built-in smartphone camera for Android phones. The issue was fixed for Google-manufactured phones in July – but Google said patches are still rolling out to smartphones in the broader...

Bedside Hotel Robot Hacked to Stream In-Room Video

A Japanese hotel chain called “Henn na” that uses robots in lieu of human staff is wrestling with bedside bots that researchers hacked to view video footage from guest rooms. The chain’s parent, HIS Group, owns 10 locations throughout Japan that leverage robots with facial recognition capability...

Senate Passes Bill Aimed At Combating Ransomware Attacks

The U.S. Senate has approved new legislation aimed at helping government agencies and private-sector companies combat ransomware attacks. The legislation comes as local governments and schools continue to be hit by sophisticated – and in some cases coordinated – ransomware attacks. The proposed...

Malware Moves: The Rise of LookBack – And Return of Emotet

Malware activity for various families continues to ebb and flow; with a popular malware called LookBack recently discovered in a slew of campaigns, and Emotet and other malware variants that were quiet over the summer set to make a dangerous comeback. Researchers believe that nation-state actors...

Google Calendar Settings Gaffes Exposes Users' Meetings, Company Details

Google has come under fire for a configuration setting tied to its Google Calendar service, which has left hundreds of calendars inadvertently open to the public – and could potentially expose billions more. It’s important to note that no actual vulnerability exists in the settings of Google...

IRS Impersonation Attacks Spread Malware Nationwide

The Internal Revenue Service IRS is warning taxpayers about a snowballing email attack that uses messages pretending to be legitimate IRS communications. The end game for the effort is malware being installed on unsuspecting users’ machines; imposters may gain control of the taxpayer’s computer o...

Yahoo Offers $117.5M Settlement in Data Breach Lawsuit

Yahoo is offering to cough up $117.5 million to settle a lawsuit regarding its massive data breaches that compromised the personal information of three billion users. The new $117.5 million settlement, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, comes after the internet company’s first...

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...

RSA Conference 2019: Operational Technology Widens Supply Chain Attack Surfaces

SAN FRANCISCO – Today’s supply chain has evolved, with operational technology OT used in factories increasingly becoming connected and converging with IT systems — introducing new attack vectors. This new reality is vital for companies to understand in the context of risk, according to Dawn...

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...

Fake Adobe Flash Updates Hide Malicious Crypto Miners

While fake Flash updates that push malware have traditionally been easy to spot and avoid, a new campaign has employed new tricks that stealthily download cryptocurrency miners on Windows systems. To the average user, the newly discovered samples, which have been active as early as August, seem...

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...

Samba Patches Critical Bug Exploitable With One Line Of Code

A patch for a critical vulnerability impacting the free networking software Samba was issued Wednesday. The flaw poses a severe threat to users, with approximately 104,000 Samba installations vulnerable to remote takeover. More troubling, experts say, the vulnerability can be exploited with just...

Oracle Fixes 253 Vulnerabilities in Last CPU of 2016

Oracle fixed 253 vulnerabilities across 76 product lines on Tuesday as part of its quarterly Critical Patch Update. Many of the fixes addressed by Oracle tackled vulnerabilities tied to securing critical enterprise data. Vulnerabilities in Oracle Fusion Middleware, a family of infrastructure...

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...

Another Set of PHP Releases Pushed Out to Fix CVE-2012-1823 Flaw

For the second time in less than a week, the developers of PHP have released new versions of the language that include a fix for the remotely exploitable vulnerability that was disclosed last week. The group is encouraging users to upgrade to PHP 5.4.3 or 5.3.13 immediately. The vulnerability...

Adobe Warns of Critical Zero-Day Flaw in Reader and Acrobat

Adobe is warning users about a critical vulnerability in its Reader and Acrobat applications that could lead to remote code execution. There are reports that attackers already are using the Reader bug in targeted attacks, and Adobe said it plans to have a patch ready by next week. Adobe security...

Attorney General: Massachusetts Won't Investigate iTunes Fraud

It looks as if Apple iTunes users who have been the victim of identity theft will have to look for a new knight in shining armor to wring answers from the notoriously close-lipped Cupertino technology giant. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office said on Monday that it isn’t planning to...

How DEP Can Mitigate IE Zero-Day Attacks

Jonathan Ness of Microsoft’s Security Research and Defense team explains the inner workings of the Data Execution Prevention technology that can help mitigate the targeted attacks exploiting the vulnerability in Internet Explorer right now...

Microsoft Pushes for Better Software Security Practices

WASHINGTON–Microsoft has spent several years and untold millions of dollars working on methods to write more secure and reliable software, and now the company is encouraging other organizations to make the same investment in software security. One of the outputs of the company’s software security...

Zero Trust for Data Helps Enterprises Detect, Respond and Recover from Breaches

AUTHOR: Mohit Tiwari, CEO and Co-Founder, Symmetry Systems Compromised credentials and identities, third-party breaches, API attacks, and application exploits are all foundational entry points for today’s hackers. Recent months have brought many high-profile breaches from Samsung and Nvidia to Ok...

Feds Shut Down RaidForums Hacking Marketplace

U.S. law enforcement has shut down one of the largest cybercriminal online forums in the world and revealed the charges its Portuguese founder will face in federal court. However, the takedown is likely to only be a temporary blow to hackers, who will find other ways of buying and selling data...

MoleRats APT Launches Spy Campaign on Bankers, Politicians, Journalists

Malicious files doctored up to look like legitimate content related to the Israeli-Palestine conflict are being used to target prominent Palestinians, as well as activists and journalists in Turkey, with spyware. That’s according to a disclosure from Zscaler, which attributes the cyberattacks to...

Leaked NSO Group Data Hints at Widespread Pegasus Spyware Infections

Israeli-based NSO Group is being blasted in a groundbreaking report that alleges that the company’s controversial Pegasus malware is being used to target activists, journalists, business executives and politicians on a widespread level, using a variety of exploits — including a zero-click zero-da...

Cyberattack Suspected in Cox TV and Radio Outages

A reported ransomware attack on Cox Media Group CMG has crippled streaming and other internal operations of dozens of radio and television stations scattered across America’s 20 broadcast markets. CMG has won’t comment on the reported attack and hasn’t responded to a request for comment. A member...

Microsoft, Google Clouds Hijacked for Gobs of Phish

Threat actors are cashing in on the rapid shift to cloud-based business services during the pandemic, by hiding behind ubiquitous, trusted services from Microsoft and Google to make their email phishing scams look legit. And it’s working. In fact, in the first three months of 2021 alone,...

Scripps Cyberattack Causes Widespread Hospital Outages

Scripps Health, a hospital network based in San Diego, was hit by a cyberattack over the weekend, forcing some critical-care patients to be diverted, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Scripps acknowledged the attack in a statement but didn’t specify whether it was a ransomware incident...

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...

Cybersecurity Bug-Hunting Sparks Enterprise Confidence

Nearly three-quarters of IT security professionals 73 percent surveyed say they prefer to buy technology and services from vendors who are proactive about security, including leveraging ethical hacking and having transparent communications about vulnerabilities. But less than half of vendors...

Ransomware in 2020: A Banner Year for Extortion

Remote learning platforms shut down. Hospital chemotherapy appointments cancelled. Ransomware attacks in 2020 dominated as a top threat vector this past year. Couple that with the COVID-19 pandemic, putting strains on the healthcare sector, and we witnessed ransomware exact a particularly cruel...

Gitpaste-12 Worm Widens Set of Exploits in New Attacks

The Gitpaste-12 worm has returned in new attacks targeting web applications, IP cameras and routers, this time with an expanded set of exploits for initially compromising devices. First discovered in a round of late-October attacks that targeted Linux-based servers and internet-of-things IoT...

Microsoft Exchange Attack Exposes New xHunt Backdoors

Two never-before-seen Powershell backdoors have been uncovered, after researchers recently discovered an attack on Microsoft Exchange servers at an organization in Kuwait . The activity is tied back to the known xHunt threat group, which was first discovered in 2018 and has previously launched an...

California Elementary Kids Kicked Off Online Learning by Ransomware

As students head back to the classroom, the spate of ransomware attacks against schools is continuing. The latest is a strike against a California school district that closed down remote learning for 6,000 elementary school students, according to city officials. The cyberattack, against the Newha...

Black Hat 2020: Linux Spyware Stack Ties Together 5 Chinese APTs

A stack of Linux backdoor malware used for espionage, compiled dynamically and customizable to specific targets, is being used as a shared resource by five different Chinese-language APT groups, according to researchers. According to an analysis from BlackBerry released at Black Hat 2020 on...

Lazarus Group Brings APT Tactics to Ransomware

Targeted ransomware attacks are on the rise, usually perpetrated by financially motivated threat gangs, which often work in concert together. However, researchers said that a recent strain of ransomware, called VHD, can be linked to an unusual source: The Lazarus Group APT. According to researche...

A 'New Age' of Sophisticated Business Email Compromise is Coming

A newly discovered, sophisticated threat group that targets organizations without DMARC implemented and relies on business email compromise is heralding what researchers call “a new age” of business email compromise. The group, called Cosmic Lynx, is the first reported Russian BEC cybercriminal...

Emerging Ransomware Targets Photos, Videos on Android Devices

A new strain of ransomware has arisen in Canada, targeting Android users and locking up personal photos and videos. Called CryCryptor, it has initially been spotted pretending to be the official COVID-19 tracing app provided by Health Canada. It’s propagating via two different bogus websites that...

LinkedIn 'Job Offers' Targeted Aerospace, Military Firms With Malware

Attackers are impersonating human resource employees from Collins Aerospace and General Dynamics in a spear-phishing campaign leveraging LinkedIn’s messaging service. Targets are sent phony job offers that include malicious documents designed to fetch data-exfiltrating malware. The spear-phishing...

Enterprise Security Woes Explode with Home Networks in the Mix

The work-from-home WFH paradigm that has become the new normal in the age of coronavirus comes with exacerbated network security risk – as evidenced by growing a number of botnets and automated attacks that are taking advantage of known vulnerabilities in both consumer and corporate IT gear. The...