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...

Loyalty Cards Targeted in Tesco Clubcard Attack

U.K. supermarket giant Tesco is warning on a credential-stuffing attack that potentially affects 600,000 members of its Clubcard loyalty program. It said that it detected cybercriminals trying out different name and password combos, gleaned from a database of stolen usernames and passwords for...

New Bill Proposes NSA Surveillance Reforms

A newly-introduced bill is proposing sweeping privacy reforms to a controversial government surveillance program, which has been previously used by the National Security Agency NSA to vacuum up the call records of millions of Americans. The “Safeguarding Americans’ Private Records Act” was...

Nebraska Medicine Breached By Rogue Employee

Hospital network Nebraska Medicine has disclosed a data breach after a former employee accessed sensitive patient data – including medical records and Social Security numbers. The Nebraska Medicine network encompasses Nebraska’s largest hospital, Nebraska Medical Center, as well as other location...

‘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...

Just-Released Checkra1n iPhone Jailbreak Stirs Security Concerns

With the checkra1n iPhone jailbreak now available, security experts are urging mobile-device managers to keep on their toes as the powerful new tool becomes available to hackers and iPhone users who may recklessly use it. Jailbreaking is the process of hacking these devices to bypass DRM...

Facebook Sues NSO Group Over Alleged WhatsApp Hack

Facebook has filed a lawsuit against Israeli company NSO Group, creator of the Pegasus spyware, alleging that it was behind the massive WhatsApp hack earlier this year. In May 2019, a zero-day vulnerability was found in WhatsApp’s messaging platform, exploited by attackers who were able to inject...

Latest Qbot Variant Evades Detection, Infects Thousands

Qbot, an information-stealing trojan that has been around for 10 years, has resurfaced again with a new phishing-based infection technique that is able to evade anti-spam defenses. Varonis Security Research spotted the fresh global Qbot campaign in March. Researchers said they have positively...

Amazon Auditors Listen to Echo Recordings, Report Says

Amazon is under fire after a bombshell report revealed the company employs thousands of auditors to listen to Echo users’ voice recordings. The team exists to help improve Amazon Alexa’s comprehension of human speech, so the voice command device responds better to commands, according to a Wednesd...

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 – ...

Bugs in Grandstream Gear Lay Open SMBs to Range of Attacks

A series of both unauthenticated and authenticated remote code-execution vulnerabilities have been uncovered in a variety of Grandstream products for small to medium-sized businesses, including audio and video conferencing units, IP video phones, routers and IP PBXs. Affected Products According t...

Wordpress Plugin Patched After Zero Day Discovered

UPDATE A popular WordPress plugin is urging users to update as soon as possible after it patched a vulnerability that was being exploited in the wild. If users cannot update, developers recommended they disable the plugin. The plugin, Social Warfare, lets users add social media sharing buttons to...

RSA Conference 2019: Cryptographers' Panel Decries Adi Shamir's Visa Issues

SAN FRANCISCO – This year’s RSA Conference Cryptographers’ Panel started on a sour note when it was announced that longtime participant Adi Shamir, one of the inventors of the RSA algorithm, would be absent because of visa issues with the U.S. Department of State. Shamir, who addressed the...

RSA Conference 2019: BEC Scammer Gang Takes Aim at Boy Scouts, Other Nonprofts

SAN FRANCISCO – A Nigeria-based scammer gang dubbed “Scarlet Widow” has been launching email fraud attacks against thousands of targets – including universities, the Salvation Army, and Boy Scouts of America. Researchers with Agari detailed the attack during an RSA Conference session on Tuesday...

Apple's Shazam App Boots Facebook Ads and Other Third-Party SDKs

Shazam, the handy app that uses audio recognition to tell you what song is playing over any given set of speakers, has reportedly eliminated all third-party software developer kits SDKs in its iOS version except for one: HockeyApp. Apple, which bought the startup for $400 million last year, has...

Attackers Can Track Kids' Locations via Connected Watches

Despite ongoing warnings about connected watches and toys endangering kids’ privacy and potentially their physical safety, makers of these Internet of Things gadgets continue to turn out products that do just that. The latest concern is a gamut of kids’ GPS-tracking watches, which were found to b...

High-Severity Flaws in Cisco Secure Internet Gateway Service Patched

Two high-severity vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Cisco’s security platform that could allow an attacker to gain administrative privileges – and take full control of the impacted machine. The glitches, disclosed Wednesday, affect two parts of Cisco Umbrella, a secure internet gateway that...

Adobe Patches Critical Bugs In Flash Player, Creative Cloud

Adobe has fixed several critical vulnerabilities – including a critical code execution bug in Adobe Flash Player – as part of its regularly scheduled May Security Bulletin, on Tuesday. In all, Adobe released patches for five critical and important vulnerabilities spanning Creative Cloud, Adobe...

Google Detects and Boots Tizi Spyware Off Google Play

The Google Play Protect team said it identified a new strain of Android spyware called Tizi found inside several apps previously available via the Google Play marketplace. The recent discovery triggered a wider investigation by Google who said apps infected by the Tizi malware date back to 2015...

Cisco Warns of High Severity Bug in NetFlow Appliance

Warning the device is susceptible to denial of service attacks, Cisco Systems on Wednesday released a patch for its NetFlow Generation Appliance. The flaw traces back to the hardware’s Stream Control Transmission Protocol SCTP used by the appliance, according to a Cisco Security Advisory posted...

PowerWare Ransomware Uses PowerShell for Fileless Infections

Attackers are not through testing the limits of what they can do with new features in ransomware samples. That latest found in the wild is called PowerWare and it was discovered a week ago targeting a company in the healthcare industry, researchers at Carbon Black told Threatpost. What sets...

CryptoLocker Variant Coming After Gamers

Gamers may soon be feeling the pain of crypto-ransomware. A variant of CryptoLocker is in the wild that goes after data files associated with 20 different online games, locking downloadable content in an attempt to target younger computer users. Researchers at Bromium today said an unnamed...

Lessons Learned in Building a Vulnerability Coordination Program

CANCUN – Bounty programs are mislabeled creatures, too often pigeonholed as a payoff for finding individual vulnerabilities in software. Wrong. “The name bug bounty is actually a false categorization of what is truly just an incentive program,” said Katie Moussouris, chief policy officer at...

IE 8 0Day in Sunshop Targeted Espionage Malware Campaign

Lady Boyle seems to have an admirer. Malware named after a character in the Dishonored video game continues to pop up in targeted attacks against a number of high profile military and socially motivated websites. The latest surfaced about 10 days ago in an attack researchers at FireEye are callin...

Critical Flaw Found in Linux Kernel

There is a NULL pointer dereference flaw in the Linux kernel that can be exploited by attackers to gain root access to a vulnerable machine. The vulnerability is in version 2.6.21 of the Linux kernel and some Linux vendors already have taken steps to fix the vulnerability. Red Hat has released a...

Adam Shostack on the Science of Security and Value of Thinking Differently

Dennis Fisher talks to Adam Shostack of Microsoft, about the evolution of thinking around “The New School of Information Security,” his new group blog and what surprised him most when he went to work at Microsoft. Download Subscribe to the Digital Underground podcast on Podcast audio courtesy of...

Podcast: Inside the Hackers’ Toolkit

There is no question that companies are in the sights of would-be criminals looking to exploit them. While companies look at solutions and training to help keep the perimeter secure, the biggest fail point is often the employees, AKA the human element. In this Threatpost podcast, sponsored by...

Malware Builder Leverages Discord Webhooks

On April 23rd, 2022, a Discord user with the handle “Portu” began advertising a new password-stealing malware builder. Malware builders are programs which so-called script kiddie hackers can craft their own executables on top of. Script kiddie is cybersecurity parlance for a novice hacker who use...

F5 Warns of Critical Bug Allowing Remote Code Execution in BIG-IP Systems

Application service provider F5 is warning a critical vulnerability allows unauthenticated hackers with network access to execute arbitrary commands on its BIG-IP systems. The F5 BIG-IP is a combination of software and hardware that is designed around access control, application availability and...

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...

Google Chrome is Abused to Deliver Malware as Legit Windows 10 App

Crooks behind a newly identified malware campaign are targeting Windows 10 with malware that can infect systems via a technique that cleverly bypasses Windows cybersecurity protections called User Account Control UAC. Researchers from Rapid7 recently identified the campaign and warn the goal of t...

Law Firm to the Fortune 500 Breached with Ransomware

Campbell Conroy & O’Neil, P.C. – U.S. law firm to a dazzling array of huge companies – told its star-studded clientele that an intruder may have groped their data. It was hit with ransomware in February and is now suffering the data-breach fallout. That client list spans a slew of industries and...

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...

Oh FCUK! Fashion Label, Medical Diagnostics Firm Latest REvil Victims

U.K.-based fashion brand French Connection, which advertises under the acronym “FCUK,” confirmed that it has been compromised by ransomware group REvil. Just hours later, Brazilian medical diagnostics firm Grupo Fleury announced it had the same misfortune. The twin attacks reveal shifting...

Apple Exec Calls Level of Mac Malware ‘Unacceptable’

Apple is using the growing threat of malware on its Mac platform as a defense in a lawsuit that could force the company to open up new channels of applications for its mobile iOS platform. In testimony in a California court Wednesday, Apple head of software engineering, Craig Federighi called the...

CES 2021 Gadgets: Worst in Privacy and Security Awards

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show was hampered by the pandemic, but that didn’t stop an expert panel from convening to award this year’s dubious CES 2021 Worst in Show honors in the context of gadget privacy and security. Overall trends from the week included ever-connected devices constantly...

Ex-Cisco Employee Convicted for Deleting 16K Webex Accounts

A man has been sentenced to two years in jail after being convicted of hacking Cisco’s Webex collaboration platform in an insider-threat case brought to the U.S. District Court in California. Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh, 31, admitted that he broke into Cisco’s cloud infrastructure in 2018, hosted on...

Changing Employee Security Behavior Takes More Than Simple Awareness

Security awareness rarely leads to sustained behavior change on its own, according to a recent analysis – meaning that organizations need to proactively develop a robust “human-centered” security program to reduce the number of security incidents associated with poor security behavior. According ...

Some Apple Apps on macOS Big Sur Bypass Content Filters, VPNs

Security researchers are blasting Apple for a feature in the latest Big Sur release of macOS that allows some Apple apps to bypass content filters and VPNs. They say it is a liability that can be exploited by threat actors to bypass firewalls and give them access to people’s systems and expose...

Lax Security Exposes Smart-Irrigation Systems to Attack Across the Globe

More than 100 smart-irrigation systems deployed across the globe were installed without changing the factory’s default, passwordless setting, leaving them vulnerable to malicious attacks, according to recent findings from Israeli security research firm Security Joes. The researchers immediately...

Security Takeaways from the Great Work-from-Home Experiment

As states deal with re-opening and in some cases, re-closing, the reality is that for many organizations, remote work will play a significant role in business through 2020 and beyond. And so will increased cybercriminal activity, as demonstrated by a 131 percent increase in viruses and about 600...

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...

Zoom Faces More Legal Challenges Over End-to-End Encryption

Video-conferencing behemoth Zoom has been hit with yet another lawsuit stemming from its claim to offer end-to-end encryption for sessions. The suit, filed in a Washington D.C. court PDF this week by a nonprofit advocacy group called Consumer Watchdog, alleges that the company falsely told users...

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...

Hosting Provider's Database of Crooked Customers Leaked

A hacker has leaked online the database of the largest free hosting service popular with cybercriminals, the result of a breach that took down the service earlier this year, according to a published report. A hacker going by the online name of “KingNull” uploaded on a file-hosting site a database...

News Wrap: Ransomware Extortion Tactics, Contact-Tracing App Security Worries

Threatpost editors discuss the top news stories of the week ended May 15, including: Recent ransomware attacks, including ones targeting healthcare giant Magellan, the IT office that supports Texas appellate courts and judicial agencies, and a popular law firm that works with several A-list...

ThreatList: Human-Mimicking Bots Spike, Targeting e-Commerce and Travel

Bad bots, bad bots, whatcha gonna do? Target e-commerce, the travel industry, media and online marketplaces, that’s what. Those are the top four verticals attacked by bots in the last year, according to data released on Wednesday from Radware, with e-commerce accounting for the most activity. In...

Skype Phishing Attack Targets Remote Workers' Passwords

Remote workers are being warned of a new phishing campaign targeting their Skype passwords. The phishing emails look “eerily similar” to a legitimate Skype notification alert, according to a report released by Cofense on Thursday. Emails indicate users have 13 pending Skype notifications that can...

Copycat Site Serves Up Raccoon Stealer

Someone is targeting web denizens with a malicious, copycat Malwarebytes website, which serves up the Raccoon information stealer malware to unsuspecting visitors. According to the security firm itself, the attackers set up the domain “malwarebytes-free.com” with a domain registrar in Russia in...

Responding to the New Normal: How to Prevent Added Risk in Your Business

Our world has shifted dramatically over the last few weeks. Many people have moved from shock to acceptance as the novel coronavirus COVID-19 has taken hold across the world, across our nation, in our states, in our communities, and even in our organizations. Companies are particularly vulnerable...