Anti-NATO Disinformation Campaign Leveraged CMS Compromises

Researchers have uncovered a widespread influence campaign that aims to discredit the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO, an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 North American and European countries. According to new research from FireEye, the campaign has been ongoing since at...

Black Hat USA 2020 Preview: Election Security, COVID Disinformation and More

Despite COVID-19 pushing the Black Hat USA 2020 conference to go virtual for the first time, you can expect a steady stream of new security research, threat intel and an impressive lineup of high-profile speakers. This year’s conference kicks off with Matt Blaze, McDevitt Chair in Computer Scienc...

Credit-Card Skimmer Has Unlikely Target: Microsoft ASP.NET Sites

Researchers have identified a credit-card skimming campaign that’s been active since mid-April that has a rather specific and unusual target: ASP.NET-based websites running on Microsoft Internet Information Services IIS servers. New research from Malwarebytes Labs recently uncovered the campaign,...

Enterprise Mobile Phishing Attacks Skyrocket Amidst Pandemic

The rate of mobile phishing rose sharply between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, a boost most likely due to the increased number of people working from home due to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, new research has found. In fact, encounter rates for enterprise mobile phishing...

'ICEBUCKET" Streaming TV Fraudsters Steal Millions of Ad Dollars in 'ICEBUCKET' Attack

A massive television ad fraud campaign that abuses the programmatic advertising ecosystem for connected TV CTV has successfully impersonated more than 2 million people in over 30 countries so far during its run, defrauding more than 300 different brands out of their ad dollars. The recently...

COVID-19 CISO Checklist for Securing a Remote Workforce

The Coronavirus crisis introduces a heavy burden on the CISO with the joint impact of a mass transition to working remotely coupled with a surge of cyberattacks that strive to monetize the general chaos. Security vendors, unintendedly, contribute to this burden by a relentless generation of noise...

Coronavirus ‘Financial Relief’ Phishing Attacks Spike

Researchers are warning of an upward surge in social-engineering lures in malicious emails that promise victims financial relief during the coronavirus pandemic. The slew of campaigns piggy-back on news of governments mulling financial relief packages, in response to the economic stall brought on...

Watering-Holes Target Asian Ethnic Victims with Flash Update Decoy

An extensive campaign has surfaced that targets Windows users belonging to a specific Asian religious and ethnic group. The attack making use of a series of watering-hole websites and a drive-by download gambit relying on fake Flash updates. According to analysis from Kaspersky, released on...

Unknown 'WildPressure' Malware Campaign Lets Off Steam in Middle East

A malware campaign that shares no known similarities to previous attacks has been uncovered, targeting organizations in the Middle East. Dubbed “WildPressure,” the campaign used a previously unknown malware that researchers named Milum, after the C++ class names inside the code. According to...

Video: Zoom Researcher Details Web Conference Security Risks, 2020 Threats

Research unveiled this week at CPX 360, a security event hosted by Check Point, disclosed vulnerabilities discovered in Zoom’s enterprise video conferencing platform. Zoom issued a bevy of security fixes after researchers said the company’s platform used weak authentication that made it possible...

California Adopts Strictest Privacy Law in U.S.

A landmark privacy rights bill took effect Jan. 1, 2020 in California and will have broad implications for U.S. consumers and businesses. The California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA mandates strict requirements for companies to notify users about how their user data will be used and monetized along...

Honda Leaks Data of 26K North American Customers

An exposed database was discovered leaking the personal information of 26,000 North American Honda owners and their vehicles. The Elasticsearch database in question is owned by the American Honda Motor Co., a North American subsidiary of the Honda Motor Co. The cloud misconfiguration exposed the...

Consumer Data Privacy Rights: Emerging Tech Blurs Lines

LAS VEGAS – From drones to facial recognition, new technology applications are introducing unique consumer privacy issues for civil society — and U.S. lawmakers and legal teams are struggling to keep up. Privacy is a fundamental human right for consumers, but new ways in which data is collected a...

IoT Security Woes Plague Healthcare Industry

LAS VEGAS – More hospitals are adopting internet of things IoT devices, from wearables to smart insulin pens. But neither hospitals nor the device manufacturers themselves are ready to address the onslaught of security and privacy challenges that come with medical connected devices. At least 82...

Emotet Returns from Summer Vacation, Ramps Up Stolen Email Tactic

Emotet, the banking trojan that has evolved into so much more, is back after a summer hiatus, dropping other banking trojans, information stealers, email harvesters, self-propagation mechanisms and ransomware. According to researchers at Cisco Talos, Emotet took a breather at the beginning of Jun...

Apple Claims Google is Spreading FUD Over Patched iPhone Bugs

Apple has called out Google for promoting a “false impression” about iOS vulnerabilities the iPhone maker said it fixed in February. It claims Google is unnecessarily panicking Apple customers. On Aug. 29, Ian Beer of Google’s Project Zero published a blog post that took a “very deep dive” into 1...

$5.3M Ransomware Demand: Massachusetts City Says No Thanks

After a ransomware attack slapped a hefty payout demand of $5.3 million on New Bedford, Mass., the city announced that it is instead opting to pick up the pieces and restore what it can from backups itself. If the city had opted to pay, the payout would have been the largest known ransom payout f...

Smominru Cryptominer Scrapes Credentials for Half-Million Machines

A commodity cryptomining botnet campaign that has infected a half-million computers is now tapping a lucrative secondary moneymaking opportunity in selling access to victim machines, according to researchers. An analysis of the known Smominru cryptomining campaign, which uses a modified version o...

TicTocTrack Smartwatch Flaws Can Be Abused to Track Kids

UPDATE A popular smartwatch that allows parents to track their children’s whereabouts, TicTocTrack, has been discovered to be riddled with security issues that could allow hackers to track and call children. Researchers at Pen Test Partners revealed vulnerabilities in the watch sold in Australia ...

BEC Scam Gang London Blue Evolves Tactics, Targets

Prolific business email compromise group London Blue has been spotted in a recent campaign that demonstrates the group’s evolved tactics and improved targeting via an updated database. London Blue has been around since 2011 – but researchers spotted the business email compromise BEC group again i...

RSA Conference 2019: Emotet Takes Aim at Latin America

SAN FRANCISCO – Remote access trojans RATs can be a scourge for corporate systems, giving backdoor access to cybercriminals that are looking to carry out espionage activities, do recon for future phishing efforts, or lift data to sell on the underground. They often serve as a key pivot point to...

RSA Conference 2019: Data-Wiping Cyberattacks Plague Financial Firms

Over a quarter of surveyed financial institutions reported that they were targeted by destructive cyberattacks over the past year, bent on completely destroying data. That’s according to a new Carbon Black report unveiled at RSA this year. The report, “Modern Bank Heists: The Bank Robbery Shifts ...

Double-Stuffed: Dunkin’ Hit by Another Credential-Stuffing Attack

Dunkin’ Donuts may have just launched its first double-filled doughnut, but another doubling up is not quite as tasty. The chain has suffered its second credential-stuffing attack in three months. Like the first incident, the attack targeted pastry aficionados that have DD Perks accounts, which i...

Podcast: Key Takeaways For DevOps in BSIMM9

Synopsys released its ninth annual Building Security in Maturity Model report BSIMM9 last week. The report tracked 120 firms to look at 116 unique activities among 415,000 developers. Gary McGraw, vice president of security technology at Synopsys, talked to the Threatpost about an emerging new...

Massive Malspam Campaign Finds a New Vector for FlawedAmmyy RAT

A widespread spam campaign from the well-known financial criminal group TA505 is spreading the FlawedAmmyy RAT using a brand-new vector: Weaponized PDFs containing malicious SettingContent-ms files. The SettingContent-ms file format was introduced in Windows 10; it allows a user to create...

Researchers Disclose Intel AMT Flaw Research

On Friday, just as Intel released additional information regarding a critical flaw found earlier this week in a subset of its business-class PCs, the researchers behind the initial vulnerability discovery, Embedi, also published their research on the flaw. Intel warned Monday of a firmware...

Google Discloses Another 'High Severity' Microsoft Bug

Google Project Zero disclosed Monday a “high severity” vulnerability it found in Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer browsers that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. The revelation adds yet another vulnerability to a growing list of known bugs Microsoft has been warned...

New Cerber Variant Leverages Tor2Web Proxies, Google Redirects

Criminals behind the latest Cerber ransomware variant are leveraging Google redirects and Tor2Web proxies in a new and novel way to evade detection. Researchers with Cisco Talos spotted the shifting tactic last week when it began tracking the latest Cerber 5.0.1 ransomware variant. The technique...

ICS-CERT Report Grim Reminder of State of Critical Infrastructure Security

U.S. critical infrastructure got another reminder this week that it needs to do more to protect itself from cyber attacks with the release of an annual government report. The NCCIC/ICS-CERT FY 2015 Annual Vulnerability Coordination Report points out that nagging issues continue to plague industri...

April 2016 Google Android Nexus Security Bulletin

Google has patched a vulnerability being exploited in the wild to root Nexus 5 Android devices. The public exploit—a rooting application—was privately disclosed to Google on March 15 by Zimperium researchers, and a less than a month after CORE Team researchers reported that CVE-2015-1805, which w...

Emergency Java Patch Re-Issued for 2013 Vulnerability

Oracle yesterday released an emergency patch for a Java vulnerability that was improperly patched in 2013. Researchers at Security Explorations in Poland two weeks ago disclosed that a Java patch for an issue the company reported in 2013, CVE-2013-5838, was still trivially exploitable, and it...

Adobe LiveCycle Data Services Hotfix

Adobe is today expected to push a hotfix through to implementations of its LiveCycle Data Services application framework. The company said the vulnerability, CVE-2015-3269, affects versions 4.7, 4.6.2, 4.5 and 3.0.x on Windows, Macintosh and UNIX systems. Adobe is not aware of public exploits of...

Hacking Team Promises to Rebuild RCS

The aftermath of the Hacking Team attack raised legitimate questions about the controversial Italian surveillance software vendor’s long-term viability. With reams of sensitive internal data and intellectual property posted online, how could the company survive? For now, however, the company seem...

Exploit for Flash Zero Day Appears in Angler Exploit Kit

The dangerous Angler exploit kit has a new piece of ammunition to use in its attacks: a fresh Adobe Flash zero-day vulnerability. The kit is exploiting the previously unknown vulnerability in several versions of Internet Explorer running on Windows 7 and Windows 8. French security researcher...

Flash Zero Day Used to Target Victims in Syria

A couple days after Microsoft warned users about a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer that’s being used in targeted attacks, Adobe on Monday said that researchers have discovered a zero day in Flash, as well, which attackers are using to target victims in Syria through a watering hole attack ...

Microsoft Ships IE 10 Zero Day Fix-It Tool

Microsoft last night released a Fix-It tool as a temporary mitigation for a zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer 10 being exploited by two hacker groups against the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the U.S. as well as a French aerospace manufacturer. IE 9 also contains the same use-after free...

Apple's iOS 7 Update Fixes 80 Security Bugs

We are one day in and Apple’s sleek new mobile operating system, iOS 7, has been dissected to death – the colors, the similarities to Android’s OS, the amount of time it took some users to download the update from Apple’s servers. Those talking points aside, the update also brought a slew of bug...

Oracle Patch Update to Include 109 Patches

Buckle up Oracle administrators for 109 patches coming your way tomorrow. Oracle’s quarterly Critical Patch Update is due, and the company is releasing fixes for security vulnerabilities across most of its enterprise products, addressing a host of remotely exploitable flaws. This comes a little...

Dorifel Malware Encrypts Files, Steals Financial Data, May Be Related to Zeus or Citadel

While much of the world was focused yesterday on the Gauss malware saga, there was another interesting infection happening, mainly in the Netherlands, that researchers think may be related to the Zeus and Citadel attacks, though the motivation behind the attack is somewhat of a mystery. The new...

New Gauss Malware, Descended From Flame and Stuxnet, Found On Thousands of PCs in Middle East

A new piece of malware dubbed Gauss, that experts say is a direct descendant of Flame and also related to Stuxnet and Duqu, has been found on thousands of PCs in the Middle East, mostly in Lebanon. Gauss contains some of the same code as Flame, but is markedly different in a number of respects,...

MSXML Exploit Surfaces in Black Hole Kit

Attackers really like exploit kits because they offer users the ease of point-and-click exploitation, lots of potential targets and don’t require a huge amount of technical knowledge to use. Attackers also enjoy Microsoft vulnerabilities, especially unpatched ones, because of the massive installe...

Adobe Releases Emergency Fix for Critical Reader Flaws

Adobe on Tuesday released an emergency patch for several critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader, including the recent Adobe Flash bug and a separate flaw that was disclosed earlier this month. The patch released Tuesday is outside of the company’s normal quarterly update schedule for Reader and...

End of Support for XP SP2 is End of an Era

Microsoft’s announcement this week that it is preparing to end support for machines running Windows XP SP2 not only represents a challenge for the thousands of businesses still running SP2, but also is the end of an era for both Microsoft and its customers. By the time Microsoft drops support for...

Windows WINS Attacks In The Wild

The “critical” WINS vulnerability that Microsoft issued a patch for last week is now being exploited actively in the wild, according to the SANS Institute sans.org. The Internet Storm Center ISC, which is operated by SANS, is receiving preliminary reports that hackers are targeting Microsoft’s WI...

State-Sponsored Phishing Attack Targeted Israeli Military Officials

An advanced persistent threat group, with ties to Iran, is believed behind a phishing campaign targeting high-profile government and military Israeli personnel, according to a report by Check Point Software. Targets of the campaign included a senior leadership in the Israeli defense industry, the...

Threat Actors Use Telegram to Spread ‘Eternity’ Malware-as-a-Service

Cybercriminals are promoting a new, modular malware-as-a-service offering that allows would-be attackers to choose from a cornucopia of threats via a Telegram channel that to date has more than 500 subscribers, researchers have found. The new malware service, dubbed the Eternity Project by the...

Cybercrooks’ Political In-Fighting Threatens the West

A rift has formed in the cybercrime underground: one that could strengthen, rather than cripple, the cyber-onslaught of ransomware. According to a report PDF published Monday, ever since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, “previously coexisting, financially motivated threat actors divided along...

ESPecter Bootkit Malware Haunts Victims with Persistent Espionage

A rare Windows UEFI bootkit malware has been discovered, offering attackers a path to cyber-espionage, researchers are warning. According to ESET, the bootkit’s goal is to install a full featured backdoor on a target PC, which “supports a rich set of commands and contains various automatic data...

Man Sues Parents of Teens Who Hijacked Nearly $1M in Bitcoin

When Colorado resident Andrew Schober downloaded the Electrum Atom Bitcoin wallet from Reddit, he also picked up a piece of clipboard hijacking malware that eventually redirected his 16.4552 Bitcoin to a wallet controlled by two teenagers living in the U.K. At today’s price, 16.4552 Bitcoin would...

Custom WhatsApp Build Delivers Triada Malware

Triada malware, both pernicious and persistent, has resurfaced. Its most recent sighting is buried inside an advertising component of a modified version of the popular WhatsApp messenger called FM WhatsApp. The malware, first spotted by researchers at Kaspersky in 2016, is a type of mobile...