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...

QR Codes: A Sneaky Security Threat

If it seems like QR codes have popped up everywhere these days, you’re right. Ever since they were first used by the Japanese auto industry to streamline manufacturing processes, companies everywhere have capitalized on the benefits of QR codes. They’re cheap to deploy and can be applied to almos...

Windows 7 ‘Upgrade’ Emails Steal Outlook Credentials

An ongoing phishing attack puts pressure on enterprise employees to upgrade their Windows 7 systems – but in reality, they are redirected to a fake Outlook login page that steals their credentials. Windows 7 reached end-of-life EOL on Jan. 14, with Microsoft urging enterprises to upgrade to its...

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...

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...

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...

InfinityBlack Dismantled After Selling Millions of Credentials

The InfinityBlack hacking group, which is responsible for selling millions of stolen credentials, has been dismantled. Polish and Swiss law-enforcement authorities, supported by Europol, arrested five individuals in Poland believed to be members of InfinityBlack, on April 29. According to Europol...

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...

TikTok Flaw Allows Threat Actors to Plant Forged Videos in User Feeds

A security weakness in the popular TikTok video-sharing service allows a local attacker to hijack any video content streamed to a user’s TikTok feed and swap it out with hacker-generated content. Researchers created a proof-of-concept PoC hack using a technique called a man-in-the-middle MiTM...

GE Employees Lit Up with Sensitive Doc Breach

A phisher’s treasure chest of personally identifiable information PII for General Electric employees has been exposed – thanks to the compromise of one of the company’s partners, Canon Business Process Services. In a data-breach notice filed with the State of California, General Electric GE noted...

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...

Two Critical Android Bugs Get Patched in February Update

Google has released a security update for a critical flaw in its Android operating system that allows hackers to execute remote code on affected handsets, potentially allowing an adversary to gain remote access to the device. Part of Google’s February Android Security Bulletin, released Monday,...

400 Vet Locations Nipped by Ryuk Ransomware

National Veterinary Associates NVA has been hit with the Ryuk ransomware, in an attack that affects 400 clinics across the country. The California company said that it could take a week for its facilities to be fully back up and running normally. Patient records, payment systems and practice...

Ex-Twitter Employees Spied on Saudi Dissidents: DoJ

The Department of Justice DoJ has charged two former Twitter employees of working with the government of Saudi Arabia to snoop on political dissidents’ accounts. The 27-page complaint alleges that two former Twitter employees, Ali Alzabarah, 35, and Ahmad Abouammo, 41, accessed Twitter account da...

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...

ICS Security Plagued with Basic, Avoidable Mistakes

At least 33 percent of the security issues found in industrial control systems ICS are rated as being of high or critical risk. FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence compiled data from dozens of ICS security health assessment engagements performed by its Mandiant division, and found that these issues inclu...

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...

Innovative Phishing Tactic Makes Inroads Using Azure Blob

A fresh tactic for phishing Office 365 users employs credential-harvesting forms hosted on Azure Blob storage – signed with legitimate Microsoft SSL certificates to lend an air of legitimacy. Azure Blob Storage is a cloud storage solution for hosting unstructured data such as images, video or tex...

Hackers Prepping IOTroop Botnet with Exploits

Hackers moved one step closer to launching full-scale DDoS attacks using millions of IoT devices herded into the botnet known as Reaper or IOTroop. Researchers at NewSky Security warn that hackers are swapping scripts on forums that can scan the internet for vulnerable IoT devices and dump defaul...

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...

Neutrino EK Spotted Leveraging Patched IE Zero Day

Attackers behind the Neutrino Exploit Kit didn’t take long to co-op a recently patched Internet Explorer zero-day into its arsenal. Researchers claim the kit has been pushing CVE-2016-0189, a vulnerability that was reportedly used in targeted attacks on South Korean organizations earlier this yea...

Oracle Patches VENOM Vulnerability

Oracle, whose virtualization software VirtualBox is among those affected by the VENOM vulnerability, on Saturday joined the litany of VM providers that have patched the bug. Oracle was one of the first vendors notified by Crowdstrike, whose researcher Jason Geffner found the bug and disclosed it...

PointDNS Recovers from Massive DDoS Attack

PointDNS says most of its DNS servers are online again after a massive DDoS attack late last week took down the service provider. A post on the company’s Twitter account on Friday said the provider was adding nameservers and working with network providers to restore service to its customers. Many...

December 2013 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Updates

One zero-day down, one to go. As expected, Microsoft did today patch a zero-day in its GDI+ graphics component MS13-096 reported more than a month ago after exploits were spotted in the wild. The fix was one of 11 security bulletins—five critical—released as part of the December 2013 Patch Tuesda...

Attack Using Backdoored Apache Binaries to Lead to Blackhole Kit

There is a newly identified ongoing attack campaign in which attackers are using compromised Apache HTTP binaries to redirect users to malicious sites serving various flavors of malware, including the Blackhole exploit kit. Rather than going the traditional route of simply injecting malicious cod...

Microsoft: Uninstall Faulty Patch Tuesday Security Update

Microsoft announced last night that it has stopped pushing a security update originally released on Patch Tuesday because the fix is causing some PCs to blue screen. Microsoft recommends users uninstall the patch, which is also causing compatibility with some endpoint security software. “We’ve...

Microsoft Adopts CVRF Format for Security Bulletins

Since the beginning of recorded time, security researchers, software vendors and hackers have been issuing security advisories in all kinds of nutty formats. Some feature excellent ASCII art, some have clever inside jokes and some come from Microsoft. Now, there’s a effort underway, called the...

Media, Human Rights Sites Suffer With Rise In DDoS Attacks

The recent wave of online actions by supporters and opponents of information leaking site Wikileaks has focused attention on the phenomenon of distributed denial of service DDoS attacks. But a study published by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society this week concludes that...

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...

Apple Patches Critical Safari Vulnerabilities

Apple today shipped Safari 4.0.4 to fix a total of seven security flaws that expose Windows and Mac users to a wide range of malicious hacker attacks. The high-priority update patches vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution drive-by downloads if a user simply surfs to a maliciously rigge...

Russia Lays Groundwork for Cyberattacks on U.S. Infrastructure

The Russian government is exploring “options for potential cyberattacks” on critical infrastructure in the U.S., the White House warned on Monday, in retaliation for sanctions and other punishments as the war in Ukraine grinds on. Officials said that its latest intelligence shows cyber-related...

Cybercriminals Actively Target VMware vSphere with Cryptominers

Organizations running sophisticated virtual networks with VMware’s vSphere service are actively being targeted by cryptojackers, who have figured out how to inject the XMRig commercial cryptominer into the environment, undetected. Uptycs’ Siddharth Sharma has released research showing threat acto...

Missouri Vows to Prosecute ‘Hacker’ Who Informed State About Data Leak

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper recently found a huge security blunder: The Missouri educational agency’s site was displaying 100,000+ clearly visible Social-Security numbers for school teachers, administrators and counselors in its HTML source code. The newspaper verified its findings with...

4 Key Questions for Zero-Trust Success

Historically, securing remote access was primarily done using VPNs. However, as enterprises have begun to understand the principles of zero trust, which states that no user may access any data source without first being authenticated, VPNs are proving to be insufficient. The demand for secure...

3.1M Neiman Marcus Customer Card Details Breached

Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Group is known worldwide as the go-to luxury retailer for the well-heeled. But their reputation for impeccable quality just took a big hit with revelations that the company was breached by an attacker back in May 2020. It took 17 months for the retailer to notice. Just...

Terrorist Watchlist Exposed Online with Nearly 1.9M Records

A researcher has revealed the discovery of a federal terrorist watchlist that includes 1.9 million records, which were available online without any security protections. The data remained exposed for three more weeks even after the Department of Homeland Security DHS was informed about it...

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...

Tulsa’s Police-Citation Data Leaked by Conti Gang

The city of Tulsa, OK is asking some of its residents to keep a close eye on their personal and financial accounts after the Conti ransomware group leaked some 18,000 city files, mostly police citations, on the dark web. The leak stemmed from a May 6 ransomware attack that caused the city to shut...

STEM Audio Table Rife with Business-Threatening Bugs

The STEM Audio Table conference-room speaker has a security vulnerability that would allow unauthenticated remote code execution RCE as root – paving the way for eavesdropping on conversations, denial of service, lateral movement throughout enterprise networks and more. And, there are multiple...

Microsoft: Big Cryptomining Attacks Hit Kubeflow

Microsoft has spotted a new, widespread, ongoing attack targeting Kubernetes clusters running Kubeflow instances, in order to plant malicious TensorFlow pods that are used to mine for cryptocurrency. The Kubeflow open-source project is a popular framework for running machine learning ML tasks in...

Podcast: The State of Ransomware

Last month, ransomware group DarkSide targeted operator Colonial Pipeline Co., disrupting fuel supply in the Eastern part of the U.S. The attack on a major U.S. oil pipeline had widespread ripples: it prompted President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency and caused substantial pain at gas...

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...

Credential-Stuffing Attack Targets Regional Internet Registry

Regional internet registry RIPE NCC is warning of a credential-stuffing attack against its single sign-on service, RIPE NCC Access, and is encouraging users to implement two-factor authentication 2FA. Click to Register Located in Amsterdam, the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre RIP...

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...

News Wrap: Barnes & Noble Hack, DDoS Extortion Threats and More

The Threatpost editors break down the top security stories of the week ended Oct. 16, including: Patch Tuesday insanity, with Microsoft and Adobe releasing fixes for severe vulnerabilities – including a critical, potentially wormable remote code execution bug known as the “Ping of Death” Barnes a...

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...

‘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...

A Dozen Nation-Backed APTs Tap COVID-19 to Cover Spy Attacks

Cybercriminals have seized on the novel coronavirus as a theme in their attacks, and it turns out that the most sophisticated players on that scene are no exception. According to Google’s Threat Analysis Group TAG, more than a dozen nation-state-backed APTs are using the COVID-19 pandemic as a...

Researchers Warn of Novel PXJ Ransomware Strain

Researchers have discovered a new strain of ransomware, dubbed “PXJ,” which emerged in the wild in early 2020. While PXJ performs functions similar to other ransomware variants, it does not appear to share the same underlying code with most known ransomware families, researchers said. They first...