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...

Dark Basin Hack-For-Hire Group Targeted Thousands Over 7 Years

A hack-for-hire group, called Dark Basin, has been outed after targeting thousands of individuals and organizations worldwide – including advocacy groups and journalists, elected and senior government officials, and hedge funds — over the course of seven years. Dark Basin conducted commercial...

Singapore’s Contact Tracing Wearable Causes Privacy Backlash

Singapore’s announcement that it is developing a wearable for contact tracing has caused citizens to voice concern for the technology’s impact on their data privacy, with more than 35,000 signing a petition against the devices. On Friday during a parliament session, Vivian Balakrishnan,...

Quantum Security Goes Live with Samsung Galaxy

Samsung and South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom have debuted the Galaxy A Quantum 5G smartphone, sporting a quantum random number generation RNG chipset. It’s the first commercialization of quantum technology for mobile phones, and it will serve as a significant bellwether for full quantum...

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...

Zoom Bombing Attack Hits U.S. Government Meeting

A U.S. House Oversight Committee meeting was the most recent victim of a Zoom bombing attack, after the meeting was disrupted at least three different times by uninvited attendees. The incident was disclosed in a recent internal letter from Jim Jordan R-Ohio to Carolyn Maloney R-NY, chairwoman fo...

In COVID-19 Scam Scramble, Cybercrooks Recycle Phishing Kits

Phishing attacks looking to take advantage of interest and fear around the COVID-19 health crisis are becoming a pandemic themselves – and apparently cybercriminals are looking to conserve resources by leaning on their older stockpiles of weapons to keep the infection wave going. Or Katz, a...

Hackers Actively Exploited 0-Day in CCTV Camera Hardware

Multiple zero-day vulnerabilities were actively being exploited in CCTV security cameras manufactured by Taiwan-based LILIN, researchers found. The company, an IP video solution provider, was being targeted by hackers hijacking the company’s DVR hardware. Once commandeered, hackers then planted...

News Wrap, Coronavirus Edition: WFH Security Woes, Pwn2Own

For the week ended March 20, Threatpost editors break down the top security stories, including: The various cybercriminal activities – malware, phishing and other scams – tapping into the coronavirus pandemic The security risks of businesses working from home due to the virus’ spread Privacy...

Unpatched Security Flaws Open Connected Vacuum to Takeover

SAN FRANCISCO – Researchers have discovered several high-severity vulnerabilities in a connected vacuum cleaner. The security holes could give remote attackers the capability to launch an array of attacks — from a denial of service DoS attack that renders the vacuum unusable, to viewing private...

Phishing Campaign Targets 250 Android Apps with Anubis Malware

A new phishing campaign is attempting to deliver sophisticated malware that can completely hijack an Android mobile device to steal user credentials, install a keylogger and even hold a device’s data for ransom. The attacks are designed for mobile inboxes and leverage the Anubis malware, a...

N.Y. Could Ban Cities from Paying Ransomware Attackers

New York State may soon ban municipalities from paying ransomware demands in the event of a cyberattack. State Senators Phil Boyle, George M. Borrello and Sue Serino introduced Senate Bill S7246 earlier this month, in response to the rising tide of cyberattacks targeting government agencies and...

Download The Ultimate ‘Security for Management’ Presentation Template

There is a person in every organization that is the direct owner of breach protection. His or her task is to oversee and govern the process of design, build, maintain and continuously enhance the security level of the organization. Title-wise, this person is most often either the CIO, CISO or...

Liverpool Voyeur Used IM-RAT to Video Women at Home

Scott Crowley. A 27-year-old Liverpool, England man has been convicted on charges of computer misuse after admitting to installing the remote-access trojan RAT known as Imminent Monitor on three unsuspecting women’s devices. The defendant, Scott Crowley, said in a court hearing that he used...

Why Cloud, Collaboration Breed Insider Threats

When it comes to facing insider threats, many enterprises seem to be suffering from a type of organizational cognitive dissonance – as in, they hold two, seemingly contradictory beliefs when it comes to the cloud and the collaboration tools that they use. Specifically, business leaders and...

Facebook Privacy Breach: 100 Developers Improperly Accessed Data

UPDATE Facebook said that 100 third-party app developers have improperly accessed the names and profile pictures of members in various Facebook groups – data that was restricted in 2018 by the platform after its Cambridge Analytica privacy snafu. Facebook said that the developers – including 11 i...

Insurance Pays Out a Sliver of Norsk Hydro's Cyberattack Damages

On the heels of a severe cyberattack, aluminum giant Norsk Hydro has received only $3.6 million in cyber-insurance – just a fraction of the total costs in damage. Overall, the Oslo, Norway-based company incurred between $60 million to $71 million in damages from the incident, which forced it to...

Hostinger Data Breach: 14M Customer Passwords, Personal Data at Risk

Web hosting company Hostinger is warning that a breach of one of its servers potentially gave bad actors access to the hashed passwords and personal data of more than 14 million customers. Hostinger, a popular web, cloud and virtual private server hosting provider and domain registrar with 29...

Latest FinSpy Modules Lift Data from Secure Messaging Apps

The latest iOS and Android versions of the FinSpy espionage malware have been deployed in the wild, and are capable of collecting a raft of personal information such as contacts, SMS/MMS messages, emails, calendars, GPS location, photos, files in memory, phone call recordings and data – even from...

GoBotKR Targets Pirate Torrents to Build a DDoS Botnet

A botnet dubbed GoBotKR is targeting fans of Korean TV, compromising computers via pirated copies of South Korean movies, games and TV shows available via Korean and Chinese torrent sites. Ultimately, the cybercriminals are building a network that can then be used to perform DDoS attacks of vario...

Billions of Malicious Bots Attacks Take to Cipher-Stunting to Hide

When it comes to cyberattacks, adversaries are focusing not just on advanced malware development, but also on increasing the sophistication of their evasion techniques. This is playing out lately in the form of ballooning instances of “cipher stunting” – a TLS tampering technique that helps...

RSAC 2019: For Domestic Abuse, IoT Devices Pose New Threat

SAN FRANCISCO – The influx of connected products in the home – from smart thermometers to connected locks – presents a disturbing new threat surface for victims of domestic abuse. That’s what Lisa Green, senior director of operations at Independent Security Evaluators, is warning conference-goers...

Threatpost Poll: Over Half of Firms Asked Struggle with Mobile Security

A Threatpost survey of readers found over half of respondents don’t feel sufficiently prepared to prevent or handle a security incident stemming from mobile devices in their firm. The informal survey results should serve as harbinger for security professionals in light of the fact that 80 percent...

Emoji Attack Can Kill Skype for Business Chat

A denial of service DoS vulnerability in the Skype for Business unified communications platform has been uncovered, which can be triggered by sending large numbers of emojis to the instant messaging client. According to the SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab, which discovered the flaw CVE-2018-8546,...

New Microsoft Bug Bounty Program Looks To Squash The Next Spectre, Meltdown

In the wake of the Meltdown and Spectre flaws, Microsoft has rolled out a new bug bounty program targeting speculative execution side channel vulnerabilities. The limited time program is open until December 31, and offers up to $250,000 for identifying new categories of speculative execution...

Cisco Issues New Patches for Critical Firewall Software Vulnerability

Cisco has released new patches for a critical vulnerability in its Adaptive Security Appliance software after further investigation revealed additional attack vectors. The company first announced the vulnerability, CVE-2018-0101, on Jan. 29. It received a Common Vulnerability Scoring System base...

PHPMailer, SwiftMailer Updates Resolve Critical Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities

Critical remote code execution vulnerabilities in two different libraries used to send emails via PHP were patched this week. An issue in PHPMailer, thought fixed, was resolved with an update, version 5.2.21, pushed late Wednesday. Developers with another mailing library for PHP, SwiftMailer,...

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...

Android Devices Linux Zero Day Kernel Vulnerability

Google is downplaying the scope of the critical Linux vulnerability patched this week, suggesting that the number of affected Android devices has been exaggerated. The Android OS is built upon the Linux kernel, but minus many of the libraries that are included in standard Linux builds. Initially,...

Flawed TLS Implementations Leak RSA Keys

A number of TLS software implementations contain vulnerabilities that allow hackers with minimal computational expense to learn RSA keys. Florian Weimer, a researcher with Red Hat, last week published a paper called “Factoring RSA Keys With TLS Perfect Forward Secrecy” that demonstrated...

March 2015 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Bulletins

Windows IT shops figure to be in for some scrambling today. Not only was it revealed that a five-year-old patch for a vulnerability exploited by Stuxnet was incomplete and machines have been exposed since 2010, but today is also Patch Tuesday and the updated Stuxnet patch is one of 14 bulletins...

Chrome 40 Patches 62 Security Vulnerabilities

Google pushed out on Wednesday a new version of its Chrome browser 40.0.2214.91 and along with it paid out more than two dozen bounties, including 16 for memory corruption vulnerabilities. In all, 62 security vulnerabilities were patched, 17 of those considered high severity bugs by Google. Most ...

Many Flash, Java Users Running Older, Vulnerable Versions

It’s long been known that Java and Flash are favored targets of attackers, thanks to their huge install bases and numerous security issues. And the users who are targeted by these attacks aren’t doing themselves any favors either, as new research shows that 19 percent of business users are runnin...

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...

Volume of Malware Targeting Java CVE-2012-1723 Flaw Spikes

It’s been nearly two months since Oracle patched the CVE-2012-1723 Java vulnerability, a serious remote pre-authentication flaw that’s present in the Java Runtime Environment. It’s taken a little time, but the attacker community has decided that this bug deserves some serious attention, and as a...

Mystery of Duqu Deepens As Researchers Ponder Unknown Programming Language

Segments of code within the mysterious information stealing trojan, Duqu, seem to have been written in an unknown programming language according to a new report from Securelist. Kaspersky Lab Expert, Igor Soumenkov claims that Duqu’s payload DLL initially looked like standard Windows executable,...

Google Fixes 13 Flaws in Chrome

Just a few days after releasing a fairly large set of patches for its Chrome browser, Google has pushed out another update, fixing 13 vulnerabilities, more than half of them being high-severity bugs. The newest version of Chrome also includes an updated version of Adobe Flash that has a fix for a...

Attacks Continuing Against IE Flaw as Microsoft Preps Patch

Microsoft officials said on Sunday that they are continuing to investigate the attacks that are exploiting the unpatched flaw in Internet Explorer, but that the attacks right now are limited to specifically targeted activity against enterprise networks. The company said that it doesn’t look like...

Microsoft Confirms SMB2 Flaw, Heightens Severity

Microsoft has issued a formal security advisory to confirm the remote reboot flaw in its implementation of the SMB2 protocol, going a step further to warn that a successful attack could lead to remote code execution and full system takeover. The vulnerability, which was originally released as a...

Critical SonicWall NAC Vulnerability Stems from Apache Mods

Rapid7 has offered up more details on a SonicWall critical flaw that allows for unauthenticated remote code execution RCE on affected devices, noting that it arises from tweaks that the vendor made to the Apache httpd server. The bug CVE-2021-20038 is one of five vulnerabilities discovered in its...

Apple macOS Flaw Allows Kernel-Level Compromise

Apple has patched a vulnerability in macOS can allow attackers to bypass a key OS protection and install a malicious rootkit to perform arbitrary operations on a device, researchers from Microsoft have discovered. The problem—dubbed “Shrootless”–is associated with a security technology called...

Apple Patches Critical iOS Bugs; One Under Attack

Apple lovers who haven’t yet updated to iOS 15, you may want to pop into Settings to freshen up your iPhone now: Apple has released several critical security updates that might light a fire under your britches. On Monday and Tuesday, Apple released iOS 14.8.1, iPadOS 14.8.1, watchOS 8.1 and tvOS...

Amazon Driver-Surveillance Cameras Roll Out, Sparking Debate

Drivers working for Amazon Delivery Service Partners DSPs are increasingly under constant surveillance for safe driving, monitored by artificial intelligence which awards them a score and generates voice reminders for safe driving. That score is used to award bonuses, promotions and more. Drivers...

‘Azurescape’ Kubernetes Attack Allows Cross-Container Cloud Compromise

A critical security vulnerability allowing attackers to perform cross-account container takeover in Microsoft’s public cloud, dubbed “Azurescape”, has been uncovered by researchers. The issue exists in Azure Container Instances ACI, which is Microsoft’s container-as-a-service CaaS offering which...

‘I’m Calling About Your Car Warranty’, aka PII Hijinx

LAS VEGAS – When you sign up on a new website, where does that information go? Some researchers decided to find out. On Wednesday, they released their preliminary information at a Black Hat USA 2021 session called Use and Abuse of Personal Information. Researchers created 300 fake identities,...

‘Agrius’ APT Launches Wiper Attacks Against Israelis

A new attack group called Agrius is launching damaging wiper attacks against Israeli targets, which researchers said are hiding behind ransomware to make their state-sponsored activities appear financially motivated. Sentinel Labs analysts said they have been tracking Agrius’ operations in Israel...

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...

Telegram Platform Abused in 'ToxicEye' Malware Campaigns

Hackers are leveraging the popular Telegram messaging app by embedding its code inside a remote access trojan RAT dubbed ToxicEye, new research has found. A victim’s computer infected with the ToxicEye malware is controlled via a hacker-operated Telegram messaging account. The ToxicEye malware ca...

Robinhood Warns Customers of Tax-Season Phishing Scams

Attackers have targeted customers of stock-trading broker Robinhood with a phishing campaign aimed to steal their credentials and spread malware using fake tax documents, the company has warned. Robinhood, which aims to make it easy for people to trade stocks online but has faced a number of...

State-sponsored Threat Groups Target Telcos, Steal 5G Secrets

Chinese-language APTs are targeting telecom companies in cyberespionage campaigns aimed at stealing sensitive data and trade secrets tied to 5G technology, according to researchers. The campaigns, dubbed “Operation Diànxùn”, target and lure victims working in the telecom industry. A typical ploy...