MS Discovers Over 1,800 Office 2010 Bugs

Microsoft uncovered more than 1,800 bugs in Office 2010 by tapping into the unused computing horsepower of idling PCs. Office developers found the bugs by running millions of “fuzzing” tests, said Tom Gallagher, senior security test lead with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group. Read the full...

Microsoft Issues Fix-It Workaround for IE Zero-Day

Microsoft has released a one-click “fix-it” workaround to help Internet Explorer users block malware attacks against an unpatched browser vulnerability. The Fix-It workaround, available here, effectively disables peer factory in the iepeers.dll binary in affected versions of Internet Explorer. Th...

Apple Patches 12 Serious Mac OS X Flaws

Apple’s first Mac OS X security update for 2010 is out, providing cover for at least 12 serious vulnerabilities. The update, rated critical, plugs security holes that could lead to code execution vulnerabilities if a Mac user is tricked into opening audio files or surfing to a rigged Web site. Wi...

Five Critical Bulletins Coming on MS Patch Tuesday

Microsoft’s September batch of security updates will include fixes for a multiple “critical” vulnerabilities affecting the Windows operating system. In all, the software maker will release five bulletins with patches for a range of flaws that could expose users to remote code execution attacks. T...

Rooting Malware Is Back. Here’s What to Look Out For.

Over the last several years, as the Android ecosystem matured, widely-distributed malware with rooting capabilities has become rare. But its rarity doesn’t mean it’s not still a threat. By definition, rooting malware is extremely dangerous because it can gain privileged access to the Android...

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...

T-Mobile’s Security Is ‘Awful,’ Says Purported Thief

On Thursday, a 21-year-old US citizen claiming to be the attacker who stole data on more than 50 million T-Mobile customers called the telecom’s security “awful.” On Friday, a “humbled” T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert wiped the egg from his face and apologized for the debacle, the repercussions of whic...

Lazarus Targets Job-Seeking Engineers with Malicious Documents

The notorious Lazarus advanced persistent threat APT group has been identified as the cybergang behind a campaign spreading malicious documents to job-seeking engineers. The ploy involves impersonating defense contractors seeking job candidates. Researchers have been tracking Lazarus activity for...

Indexsinas SMB Worm Campaign Infests Whole Enterprises

The Indexsinas SMB worm is on the hunt for vulnerable environments to self-propagate into, researchers warned – with a particular focus on the healthcare, hospitality, education and telecommunications sectors. Its end goal is to drop cryptominers on compromised machines. Indexsinas, aka...

FIN7 ‘Pen Tester’ Headed to Jail Amid $1B in Losses

A so-called “pen-tester” for the financial cybergang known as FIN7 will spend seven years in the slammer after being convicted for payment-card theft. According to the Department of Justice, Andrii Kolpakov, a Ukrainian national, was also ordered to pay a tidy $2.5 million in restitution for his...

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,...

NitroRansomware Asks for $9.99 Discord Gift Codes, Steals Access Tokens

The NitroRansomware malware strain is shaking up the ransomware norm by demanding Discord Nitro gift codes from victims instead of actual money. Discord is a VoIP, instant messaging and digital-distribution platform designed for creating communities. Users communicate with voice calls, video call...

Facebook: Malicious Chrome Extension Developers Scraped Profile Data

Facebook has filed legal action against two Chrome extension developers that the company said was scraping user profile data – including names and profile IDs – as well as other browser-related information. The two unnamed developers under the business name Oink and Stuff, developed Chrome...

Android Messenger App Still Leaking Photos, Videos

The GO SMS Pro Android app has published two new versions on Google Play since a major security weakness was disclosed in November – but neither fixes the original issue, leaving 100 million users at risk for privacy violations, researchers said. Meanwhile, a raft of exploitation tools have been...

Phishers Capitalize on Headlines with Breakneck Speed

The speed with which phishers are able to adapt to new messaging based on the latest headlines is accelerating, according to the Proofpoint Threat Research Team, which was able to track backend data from a recent voter-registration scam to uncover just how quickly cybercriminals can pivot to...

Work From Home Opens New Remote Insider Threats

Employees working from home face a new world of workplace challenges. With childcare facilities mostly closed, many are juggling crying babies or barking dogs, all while tending to job responsibilities. Under those conditions mistakes happen, like sending an email – with critical internal company...

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...

Chafer APT Hits Middle East Govs With Latest Cyber-Espionage Attacks

Researchers have uncovered new cybercrime campaigns from the known Chafer advanced persistent threat APT group. The attacks have hit several air transportation and government victims in hopes of data exfiltration. The Chafer APT has been active since 2014 and has previously launched cyber espiona...

Silent Night Banking Trojan Charges Top Dollar on the Underground

A descendant of the infamous Zeus banking trojan, dubbed Silent Night by the malware’s author, has emerged on the scene, with a host of functionalities available in a spendy malware-as-a-service MaaS model. Custom builds can run as much as $4,000 per month to use, which researchers say is now...

Verizon Data Breach Report: DoS Skyrockets, Espionage Dips

Denial-of-service DoS attacks have spiked over the past year, while cyber-espionage campaigns have spiraled downwards. That’s according to Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report DBIR released Tuesday, which analyzed 32,002 security incidents and 3,950 data breaches across 16 industry...

ProLock Ransomware Teams Up With QakBot Trojan to Infect Victims

A relatively new ransomware, ProLock, has paired up with the QakBot banking trojan to access victims’ networks. ProLock’s leveraging of QakBot gives it bolstered persistence, anti-detection and credential-dumping techniques. ProLock ransomware first emerged in March as a successor to another rece...

Feds Reveal Hidden Cobra's Trove of Espionage Tools

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation have exposed what they say are hacking tools used by the North Korean-sponsored APT group Hidden Cobra. The disclosure was the result of a broad government effort to combat the advanced persistent threat group, who have...

Adobe Discloses Dozens of Critical Photoshop, Acrobat Reader Flaws

Adobe has released out-of-band updates addressing critical vulnerabilities in its Photoshop and Acrobat Reader products, which if exploited could allow arbitrary code-execution. Overall, Adobe on Wednesday patched flaws tied to 41 CVEs across its products, 29 of which were critical in severity. T...

Let's Encrypt to Revoke Millions of TLS Certs

UPDATE Popular free certificate authority Let’s Encrypt said it will revoke 3 million Transport Layer Security TLS certificates Wednesday, because of a Certificate Authority Authorization CAA bug. The move could mean that millions of websites and machine identities that rely on those certificates...

Cybergang Favors G Suite and Physical Checks For BEC Attacks

Researchers have uncovered a new business email compromise BEC threat actor, which they call Exaggerated Lion, targeting thousands of U.S. companies with money pilfering scams. The cybercrime ring is unique in its leveraging of Google’s cloud-based productivity suite, G Suite, and for its use of...

Docker Registries Expose Hundreds of Orgs to Malware, Data Theft

A slew of misconfigured Docker container registries has inadvertently exposed source code for 15,887 unique versions of applications owned by research institutes, retailers, news media organizations and technology companies. According to Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 division, the registries lacked...

Wawa Breach May Have Affected More Than 30 Million Customers

A recent dump of payment card information being sold on a popular online fraud marketplace suggests that more than 30 million payment cards may have been affected by a malware attack and data breach at Wawa convenience stores and gas stations that was first revealed in December. The Joker’s Stash...

As Necurs Botnet Falls from Grace, Emotet Rises

A mid-January spam campaign by criminals behind the popular Necurs botnet shows a dramatic drop in skill and savvy by perpetrators. In a shift from sending sophisticated messages with lethal payloads, Necurs botnets are now peddling get-rich-quick spam messages in what researchers are calling...

Mandatory IoT Security in the Offing with U.K. Proposal

The U.K. government has unveiled a proposed law aimed at securing internet of things IoT devices, which have historically been riddled with basic security issues. The drafted law, announced on Monday, comprises three main mandates for IoT manufacturers. First, all consumer IoT device passwords mu...

ThreatList: 90% SMBs Believe Nation-State Actors Are Targeting Them

While APT activity is generally considered to be aimed at large enterprises housing valuable intellectual property, military-industrial entities, dissidents and civil society, and organizations of strategic importance to governments, the vast majority of small- and medium-sized businesses SMBs ar...

California's Domino Effect on U.S. Privacy Regulation

LAS VEGAS – The California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA, which goes into effect in January 2020, will implement strict requirements for companies to create more transparency about how user data is being used and disseminated. Microsoft’s acknowledgement this week that it will extend CCPA to all of i...

Cynet’s free vulnerability assessment offering helps organizations significantly increase their security

Long before a cyberattack is underway, organizations need to be focused on improving their security. Part of this is to always be monitoring their environment, on the lookout for weaknesses and ready to take action if they are found. This is the best way to ensure the organization remains immune ...

Vimeo Slapped With Lawsuit Over Biometrics Privacy Policy

Vimeo, the popular ad-free video platform, is facing a lawsuit that alleges it stored people’s facial biometrics without their consent or knowledge. The lawsuit, which was filed on Sept. 20, claims Vimeo violated the Illinois Biometrics Information Privacy Act BIPA. This is a law that imposes...

Feds Indict 281 People for Involvement in Massive Email Fraud Scheme

Federal authorities have arrested 281 people and seized nearly $3.7 million in a coordinated effort between multiple agencies to disrupt a massive email-fraud scheme. Perpetrators of a global business email compromise BEC scheme were the target of a four-month investigation that began in May call...

Federal Focus on Cyber Plays Out in President's Budget, IoT Legislation

The federal government is stepping up its game this week on the cybersecurity front, with both proposed budget line items that would requisition nearly $11 billion for cyber, and the introduction of the Internet of Things IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2019, which would require that devices...

RSAC 2019: The Dark Side of Machine Learning

SAN FRANCISCO – The same machine-learning algorithms that made self-driving cars and voice assistants possible can be hacked to turn a cat into guacamole or Bach symphonies into audio-based attacks against a smartphone. These are examples of “adversarial attacks” against machine learning systems...

Google Pulls Data-Chugging App From iOS Devices

Google has found itself in hot water for a research app that may have violated Apple’s policies by collecting user data in exchange for gift cards. The tech giant said it has now disabled Screenwise Meter“audience measurement” app – which voluntarily collects data from users’ phones, browsers and...

Google Fixes 48 Bugs, Sandbox Escape, in Chrome

Google has patched a high-risk vulnerability in its Chrome browser that allows an attacker to escape the Chrome sandbox. That vulnerability is one of 48 bugs fixed in version 52 of Chrome released Wednesday. Four dozen of those flaws are rated as high risks and Google paid out more than $22,000 i...

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report: Top Takeaways

Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report painted a bleak picture when it comes to malware, fraudulent login attempts and the staying power of really old exploits. Key findings in the 198-page biannual report run the gamut illustrating how old threats die hard and what new threats are on the...

Angler Exploit Kit Exploiting New Adobe Vulnerability, Dropping Cryptowall 3.0

While the Angler Exploit Kit may have already established itself as one of the more sophisticated kits on the underground market, it appears it’s still finding ways to evolve. Angler, this week, was spotted dropping the latest iteration of CryptoWall ransomware and leveraging yet another previous...

Apple Fixes WebKit Vulnerabilities in Safari Browser

Apple has updated its Safari browser, fixing a handful of exploitable WebKit flaws in various versions of Safari. WebKit is the core layout engine responsible for rendering webpages in the Safari browser. The first bulletin, vulnerabilities uncovered by Apple, resolves multiple memory corruption...

VMware Releases Patches for XSS, Cert. Validation Issue

VMware released a handful of patches late last week to fix several vulnerabilities, including a nasty cross-site scripting issue in one of its server virtualization platforms. The vulnerabilities lie in VMware’s vCenter Server Appliance vCSA – a module for VMware’s vCenter Server. The main bug, a...

September 2014 Microsoft Patch Tuesday advance notification

Microsoft today announced a relatively light load of patches will be delivered on Patch Tuesday next week, along with some numbers that demonstrate public vulnerability disclosures continue to rise. Four security bulletins, one rated critical, are scheduled to be released next Tuesday. In what’s...

Volume of NTP Amplification Attacks Getting Louder

No security arena is better representative of the cat and mouse game between hackers and defenders than DDoS attacks and prevention/mitigation. Enterprises and service providers have invested heavily in DDoS mitigations in order to keep critical services available. That’s forced hackers to crank ...

New APT Campaign Dubbed The Mask Called Most Sophisticated Seen to Date

PUNTA CANA–A group of high-level, nation-state attackers has been targeting government agencies, embassies, diplomatic offices and energy companies with a cyber-espionage campaign for more than five years that researchers say is the most sophisticated APT operation they’ve seen to date. The attac...

October Patch Tuesday Fixes Critical IE Bugs, 28 Vulnerabilities

As expected, Microsoft began shipping its latest batch of Patch Tuesday patches earlier this afternoon. However, while it was heavily presumed the update would fix at least one Internet Explorer zero day, the update actually fixes two critical vulnerabilities in the browser. Eight bulletins — fou...

IE Zero Day Used in Targeted Attacks Against Japanese Firms

Attackers exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser have compromised several popular local Japanese media outlets and have infected systems belonging to government, high tech and manufacturing organizations in Japan. Researchers at FireEye said the attacks appea...

Call for Ban on Vulnerable PHP SuperGlobal Variables

The ease with which PHP applications can be subverted should be pretty apparent by now given the number of botnets supported by compromised sites hosting PHP code. The biggest culprit in the PHP universe may be a set of nine variables called SuperGlobals that provide programmers with development...

Report: Malvertising Campaign Thrives on Dynamic DNS

A malvertising campaign that’s lasted almost half a year is staying alive thanks to infected web advertisements being circulated by otherwise clean ad networks. The campaign, now in its fifth month, relies on the Dynamic Domain Name System DDNS to keep it from being caught according to a report...