China-based APT Debuts Sepulcher Malware in Spear-Phishing Attacks

A China-based APT has been sending organizations spear-phishing emails that distribute a never-before-seen intelligence-collecting RAT dubbed Sepulcher. Researchers discovered the new malware being distributed over the past six months through two separate campaigns. The first, in March, targeted...

Twitter Fixes High-Severity Flaw Affecting Android Users

Twitter has fixed a vulnerability in its Android app, which could have enabled attackers to access private Twitter data, like direct messages DMs on Android devices. The flaw is related to an underlying Android operating system OS security issue CVE-2018-9492, which affects operating system...

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...

StrongPity APT Back with Kurdish-Aimed Watering Hole Attacks

The APT group known as StrongPity is back with a new watering-hole campaign, targeting mainly Kurdish victims in Turkey and Syria. The malware served offers operators the ability to search for and exfiltrate any file or document from a victim’s machine. The group a.k.a. Promethium is operating a...

FTC Slams Children’s App Developer for COPPA Violations

Children’s app developer HyperBeard has agreed to pay $150,000 after being accused by the Federal Trade Commission FTC of illegally collecting children’s data without parental consent. HyperBeard‘s website says it’s the largest mobile game developer and publisher in Mexico, with various games suc...

Zoom Restricts End-to-End Encryption to Paid Users

Security experts are up in arms after learning that video conferencing app Zoom will only offer end-to-end encryption to paid users. On Zoom’s Wednesday first-quarter financial earnings call, Zoom CEO Eric Yuang said that the upcoming end-to-end encryption feature would not apply for free users...

Google Faces Privacy Lawsuit Over Tracking Users in Incognito Mode

Google faces a $5 billion class-action lawsuit over claims that it has been collecting people’s browsing information without their knowledge even when using the incognito browsing mode that’s meant to keep their online activities private. The lawsuit, filed in the federal court in San Jose,...

Long Tail Analysis: A New Hope in the Cybercrime Battle

Our hyper-connected world and its ever-faster network speeds have resulted in mountains of diverse data that needs to be processed. It has also resulted in an ever-expanding attack surface, requiring cybersecurity solutions to scale like never before. These days, scale is about more than traffic...

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...

Safe Remote Access to Critical Infrastructure Networks in a Time of Global Crisis

With governments closing down workplaces all over the world, telecommuting presents not just online administrative and capacity challenges for organizations, but also security challenges. As highlighted in a recent article by Andy Greenberg from Wired, when more and more employees are asked to VP...

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,...

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...

Researchers: Hackers Can Seize Control of Ballots Cast Using the Voatz Voting App

Security researchers have found key flaws in a mobile voting app that some states plan to use in the 2020 election that can allow hackers to launch both client- and server-side attacks that can easily manipulate or even delete someone’s vote, as well as prevent a reliable audit from taking place...

Trump Slams Apple for Refusing to Unlock Suspected Shooter’s iPhones

President Donald Trump has weighed in on Apple’s decision not to help the FBI unlock iPhones of the suspect in a shooting in Florida, slamming the company in a Tweet that demands Apple “step up to the plate and help our great Country.” The president on Tuesday suggested that Apple has benefited...

Modern Intel CPUs Plagued By Plundervolt Attack

Researchers have discovered a new attack impacting modern Intel CPUs, which could allow an attacker to extract highly-sensitive information – such as encryption keys – from affected processors by altering their voltage. The attack, dubbed “Plundervolt,” centers around Intel Software Guard...

Feds Offer $5M Reward to Nab 'Evil Corp' Dridex Hacker

U.S. authorities are offering up $5 million for information leading to the arrest of Evil Corp. leader Maksim V. Yakubets, 32, of Russia, who goes under the moniker “aqua.” The U.S. alleges that Yakubets and his company have stolen millions of dollars from victims using the Dridex banking trojan...

‘Highly Competitive' Buer Loader Emerges in Underground Markets

A previously undocumented modular loader has emerged as a lucrative tool for cybercriminals in a variety of campaigns. Researchers say the “highly competitive” loader, dubbed Buer, is intended for use by actors seeking a turn-key, off-the-shelf solution. Researchers say they have spotted the load...

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...

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...

Data Breach Fines: Are They Working to Boost Consumer Safety?

Breach statistics are downright discouraging: Over the past five years the number of businesses breached has skyrocketed. The human consequences are also bad, with billions of private email addresses, bankcard numbers and other deeply personal data points exposed online and now in the hands of...

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 ...

Privacy Groups: Ring's Police Partnerships Can Lead to Sinister Ends

More than 30 privacy and consumer advocacy groups are urging local legislators to intervene in doorbell-camera company Ring’s partnerships with law enforcement. In 2018, Amazon-owned Ring announced that it was starting a “new neighborhood watch” effort, to allow homeowners to provide voluntary...

Phishing Attacks Enlist Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure in Ploys

Recent phishing campaigns have been spotted boosting their anti-detection efforts by using Amazon Web Services to host their landing pages. It’s a sign of a nascent trend towards using public cloud storage, according to researchers. The attackers are also layering on various obfuscation technique...

Google Releases Open Source Tool For Computational Privacy

Google is releasing a new open-source cryptographic tool aimed at boosting privacy around sensitive data sets. The tool, called Private Join and Compute, is designed to help companies who are working together with confidential data sets. Private Join and Compute, allows companies to share data in...

Amid Bug Bounty Hype, Sometimes Security is Left in the Dust

In January, the European Union kicked-off over a dozen new bug bounty programs targeting a bevy of popular open-source programs used by its members. The effort was supposed to be met with cheers. But instead, the launch sparked an unexpected backlash from the security community. The EU’s program...

Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder Spills 2 Million Passwords

More than 2 million passwords for Wi-Fi hotspots were leaked online by the Android app developer behind the mobile application called WiFi Finder. The passwords were part of an insecure database found by researchers at GDI Foundation. The Android app itself did not just help users find Wi-Fi...

Ubiquitous Bug Allows HIPAA-Protected Malware to Hide Behind Medical Images

A bug in a 30-year-old standard used for the exchange and storage of medical images has been uncovered; it allows an adversary to embed fully-functioning executable code into the image files captured by medical devices such as CT and MRI machines. This results in hybrid files that allow malware...

Samsung Galaxy S10 Fingerprint Sensor Duped With 3D Print

A Samsung Galaxy S10 user said he was able to successfully bypass the phone’s fingerprint sensors using a 3D print of his own fingerprint. The Samsung user posted on Imgur this weekend under the alias, “darkshark” saying he was able to fool the Galaxy S10’s fingerprint using a simple technique – ...

RSAC 2019: Malicious Emailed URLs See Triple-Digit Increase

SAN FRANCISCO: Business emails laced with malicious URLs in the message body have spiked by more than 125 percent in Q4 2018 in comparison with the quarter before. According to Mimecast’s latest Email Security Risk Assessment ESRA report, released at the RSA Conference 2019 in San Francisco this...

New GandCrab Decryptor Unlocks Files of Updated Ransomware

Yet another free decryptor is available for GandCrab ransomware victims. The tool, released Tuesday, is the third decryptor update in the past year that thwarts the prolific and fast-evolving GandCrab ransomware. Europol police announced availability of the update, which now unlocks data encrypte...

Managing Enterprise Security After the Data Supernova

As the amount of data continues to grow and expand outside of the enterprise, security leaders need to develop a plan to quickly secure it. The big promise of cloud computing was that it would simplify security. Organizations would no longer have to worry about securing their infrastructure becau...

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...

Pinterest Browser Extension Injects Unwanted Code into 5K Websites

A buggy Mozilla Firefox browser extension for sharing links to Pinterest has automatically injected malformed code into at least 5,000 websites. The code injection in this instance was not malicious, but researchers at Sucuri, which discovered and reported the problem on Tuesday, said the inciden...

June Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Issues Critical Fixes for DNS, Cortana

Microsoft has fixed 11 critical bugs in its June Patch Tuesday update, including a Windows DNS-related remote code execution flaw. It also patched an easily exploitable problem in the Cortana voice engine. One of the most serious issues is a critical remote code execution vulnerability...

Shipping Industry Cybersecurity: A Shipwreck Waiting to Happen

The global shipping industry is vulnerable to a range of hacks, including one that can send multi-million dollar vessels on a collision course for disaster, according researchers. Worse, the flaws are trivial to execute and easy to mitigate against, according to a report by Pen Test Partners. “Sh...

Apple Releases Spectre Patches for Safari, macOS and iOS

Apple released iOS 11.2.2 software Monday for iPhones, iPads and iPod touch models that patch for the Spectre vulnerabilities. A macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 supplemental update was also released to bolster Spectre defenses in Apple’s Safari browser and WebKit, the web browser engine used by Safari,...

Huawei Router Vulnerability Used to Spread Mirai Variant

Researchers have identified a vulnerability in a Huawei home router model that is being exploited by an adversary to spread a variant of the Mirai malware called Mirai Okiru, also known as Satori. Researchers at Check Point published a report Thursday, and said the flaw is in Huawei’s router mode...

Risk of 'Destructive Cyber Attacks' Prompts Microsoft to Update XP Again

Fearing destructive attacks precipitated by the availability of the nation-state exploits in the wild that spawned the WannaCry outbreak, Microsoft today announced that its Patch Tuesday updates would include fixes for older versions of Windows, including XP. The move is unusual and mimics a...

Hundreds of Thousands of Netgear Routers Vulnerable to Password Bypass

Hundreds of thousands–potentially more than one million–Netgear routers are susceptible to a pair of vulnerabilities that can lead to password disclosure. Researchers said that while anyone who has physical access to a router can exploit the vulnerabilities locally, the real threat is that the fl...

PHPMailer Bug Leaves Millions of Websites Open to Attack

UPDATE A critical PHPMailer bug tied to the way websites handle email and feedback forms is leaving millions of websites hosted on popular web-publishing platforms such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla open to attack. The flaw was disclosed by researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers, who said t...

August 2016 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Bulletins

A tricky vulnerability patched today in the Windows PDF Library could have put Microsoft Edge users on Windows 10 systems at risk for remote code execution attacks. Edge automatically renders PDF content when it’s set as a computer’s default browser, unlike most other browsers; the feature means...

APT Group 'Patchwork' Cuts-and-Pastes a Potent Attack

An advanced persistent threat tied to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea is targeting governments and entities around the world including the U.S. The attacks are unique, according to security experts, because the perpetrators are relying nearly 100 percent on computer code copied-and-pasted...

Patched BadTunnel Windows Bug Has 'Extensive' Impact

Among the more than three dozen vulnerabilities Microsoft patched on Tuesday was a fix for a bug that the researcher who found it said has “probably the widest impact in the history of Windows.” “There were also some wide impact vulnerabilities before, but maybe not like this extensive,” Chinese...

glibc Linux remote code execution vulnerability

Glibc, the GNU C library at the core of last year’s GHOST vulnerability, is vulnerable to another critical flaw affecting nearly all Linux machines, as well as API web services and major web frameworks where the code runs. The vulnerability, discovered independently by researchers at Google and R...

Duqu Resurfaces With New Round of Victims, Including Kaspersky Lab

The Duqu attackers, who are considered by researchers to be at the top of the food chain of APT groups and are responsible for attacking certificate authorities and perhaps spying on Iran’s nuclear program, have resurfaced with a new platform that was used to compromise high-profile victims,...

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...

Oracle Gives Heartbleed Update, Patches 14 Products

As the dominoes continue to fall around Heartbleed, Oracle is doing its best to keep users apprised of its ongoing efforts to patch software that may be vulnerable to the OpenSSL vulnerability. In a document updated early this morning Oracle gave its customers five separate updates regarding:...

NetTraveler Now Using Java Exploits, Watering Hole Attacks

When NetTravler was unveiled in June, Costin Raiu of Kaspersky Lab warned that the espionage campaign was an “ugly gorilla with a thousand faces” and that we hadn’t seen them all yet. A little more than two months later, another profile of the malware targeting activists, diplomats, government...

Bots, Zeus, Web Exploits: the Most Potent Threats of 2012

Every year it seems that security-related news advances further from its roots in national security circles, IT departments, and the antivirus industry into the mainstream consciousness. From July to the end of year was no exception. However, despite a handful of flashy security stories, F-Secure...

Microsoft Publishes Workaround for Oracle Outside In Vulnerability

Microsoft gave its users steps earlier this week to sidestep a vulnerability in one of Oracle’s Outside In libraries. The company published some mitigations for the bug, but said it isn’t aware of any active attacks against it yet. The Oracle technology is licensed by software developers like...