Closing the Gap Between Application Security and Observability

Infosec Insiders columnist Daniel Kaar, global director application security engineering at Dynatrace. When it’s all said and done, application security pros may come to look upon the Log4Shell vulnerability as a gift. Potentially one of the most devastating software flaws ever found, Log4Shell...

Apple Pays $100.5K Bug Bounty for Mac Webcam Hack

A researcher who showed Apple how its webcams can be hijacked via a universal cross-site scripting bug UXSS Safari bug has been awarded what is reportedly a record $100,500 bug bounty. The bug could be used by an adversary as part of an attack to gain full access to every website ever visited by...

The State of Incident Response: Measuring Risk and Evaluating Your Preparedness

The coronavirus pandemic presented the perfect opportunity for security teams to evaluate the state of their incident-response process. In fact, it highlighted the dire need to implement a more structured, detailed and well-practiced plan to sufficiently support organizations when suffering a...

Bogus Cryptomining Apps Infest Google Play

Google has removed eight deceptive mobile apps from the Play Store that masquerade as cryptocurrency cloud-mining applications but which really exist to lure users into expensive subscription services and other fraudulent activity. They may have been removed, but researchers at Trend Micro noted...

Kerberos Authentication Spoofing: Don’t Bypass the Spec

Authentication is the front gate to security systems, so if you bypass it, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can log in as an admin and change configurations, access protected resources and gain control of appliances to steal sensitive data from them. For these reasons, the...

MacOS Flaw in Telegram Retrieves Deleted Messages

A vulnerability in a high-level privacy feature of Telegram on macOS that sets up a “self-destruct” timer for messages on both the sender’s and recipient’s devices can allow someone to retrieve these messages even after they’ve been deleted, a researcher has found. Reegun Richard Jayapaul,...

Ongoing Spearphishing Campaign Targets Afghan Gov’t

Chinese-speaking cyberespionage actors have targeted the Afghan government, using Dropbox for command-and-control C2 communications and going so far as to impersonate the Office of the President to infiltrate the Afghan National Security Council NSC, researchers have found. According to a report...

Biden’s Cybersecurity EO: The Wrong Issues

It’s no secret that foreign adversaries are making a concerted effort to target U.S. government agencies and companies. As technology advances and foreign superpowers gain influence, the game is shifting beneath our feet here in the U.S. Motivated in part by the extent and consequences of the...

Bug Exposes Eufy Camera Private Feeds to Random Users

Owners of Eufy home security cameras were warned this week of an internal server bug that allowed strangers to view, pan and zoom in on their home-video feeds for approximately one day. Inversely, customers were also suddenly given access to do the same to other users. The SNAFU, according to...

Five Critical Password Security Rules Your Employees Are Ignoring

Password security was a problem even before the advent of widespread remote work. So, what happened post-pandemic? Keeper Security’s Workplace Password Malpractice Report sought to find out. In February 2021, Keeper surveyed 1,000 employees in the U.S. about their work-related password habits — a...

Pipeline Update: Biden Executive Order, DarkSide Detailed and Gas Bags

Colonial Pipeline Co. may have turned off the tap following Friday’s ransomware attack, but the news about the devastating assault keeps gushing. In the wake of the DarkSide cyberattack, President Biden signed an executive order Wednesday aimed at bolstering the federal government’s cyber defense...

SaaS Attacks: Lessons from Real-Life Misconfiguration Exploits

It’s unfortunate but true: SaaS attacks continue to increase. You can’t get around it, COVID-19 accelerated the already exploding SaaS market and caused industries not planning on making a switch to embrace SaaS. With SaaS apps becoming the default system of record for organizations, it has left...

Facebook: Stolen Data Scraped from Platform in 2019

The leak of personal data from more than 533 million Facebook users was scraped from their profiles by malicious actors because of a security flaw in the company’s platform prior to September 2019, the social media giant said Tuesday. Threat actors posted that data to a public hacker forum over t...

Chinese Hackers Selling Intimate Stolen Camera Footage

Stolen videos captured by tens of thousands of security cameras at private properties throughout China are now for sale across social media, marketed as sex tapes. That’s according to the South China Morning Post, which reported that the cost of each “tape” varies, depending on how salacious the...

LinkedIn Spear-Phishing Campaign Targets Job Hunters

A threat group called Golden Chickens is delivering the fileless backdoor moreeggs through a spear-phishing campaign targeting professionals on LinkedIn with fake job offers, according to researchers at eSentire. The phishing emails try to trick a victim into clicking on a malicious .ZIP file by...

Security Researcher Hides ZIP, MP3 Files Inside PNG Files on Twitter

A security researcher has discovered a novel steganography technique for hiding data inside a Portable Network Graphics .PNG image file posted on Twitter, a tactic that could be exploited by threat actors to hide malicious activity. Researcher David Buchanan heralded his discovery on Twitter...

Cyberattacks See Fundamental Changes, A Year into COVID-19

COVID-19-related phishing emails, brute-force attacks on remote workers, and a focus on exploiting or abusing collaboration platforms are the hallmarks of cybercriminal enterprise as the coronavirus marks its first anniversary of going global. A year after the COVID-19 crisis was officially...

Health Website Leaks 8 Million COVID-19 Test Results

Yet another human-related error — this time a flaw in a health department website in the state of Bengal, India — has exposed the confidential results of COVID-19 tests as well as personally identifying information PII for an entire geographic region’s population. Test results related to more tha...

TDoS Attacks Take Aim at Emergency Services

Telephony denial-of-service TDoS attacks, which affect the availability and readiness of call centers, are hitting critical first-responder facilities, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI. A TDoS attack is designed to prevent incoming and outgoing calls, by flooding a target with...

Spotify Suffers Second Credential-Stuffing Cyberattack

Spotify streaming music aficionados are in the crosshairs of yet another credential-stuffing cyberattack, just three months after the last one. The service has forced password resets for impacted users. Cybercriminals carrying out credential-stuffing take advantage of people who reuse the same...

WordPress Pop-Up Builder Plugin Flaw Plagues 200K Sites

Developers of a plugin, used by WordPress websites for building pop-up ads for newsletter subscriptions, have issued a patch for a serious flaw. The vulnerability could be exploited by attackers to send out newsletters with custom content, or to delete or import newsletter subscribers. The plugin...

Microsoft 365 Becomes Haven for BEC Innovation

Two fresh business email compromise BEC tactics have emerged onto the phishing scene, involving the manipulation of Microsoft 365 automated email responses in order to evade email security filters. In one case, scammers are targeting victims by redirecting legitimate out-of-office OOO replies fro...

Outgoing FCC Chair Issues Final Security Salvo Against China

Outgoing Federal Communications Chair Ajit Pai has issued a final warning about Chinese telcos at the end of a tenure spent cracking down on companies like Huawei, ZTE and China Telecom. Pai, a former telecommunications industry lobbyist and in-house counsel for Verizon, told Reuters that managin...

ElectroRAT Drains Cryptocurrency Wallet Funds of Thousands

A new remote access tool RAT has been discovered being used in an extensive campaign. The attack has targeted cryptocurrency users in an attempt to collect their private keys and ultimately to drain their wallets. The never-before-seen RAT at the center of the campaign, which researchers dub...

Cloud is King: 9 Software Security Trends to Watch in 2021

IT security professionals have largely spent the year managing a once-in-a-generation workforce shift from office to home in 2020. With the initial push over, experts predict that 2021 will be focused on shoring up the cloud and re-imagining organizational workflows under this new normal. Softwar...

How to Increase Your Security Posture with Fewer Resources

With the number of COVID-19 cases increasing, another round of attacks is looming over schools and universities as they move into holiday break and prepare for the spring semester. According to a recent article the Wall Street Journal, there have been “nearly three dozen ransomware attacks agains...

Critical, Unpatched Bug Opens GE Radiological Devices to Remote Code Execution

A pair of critical vulnerabilities have been discovered in dozens of GE Healthcare radiological devices popular in hospitals, which could allow an attacker to gain access to sensitive personal health information PHI, alter data and even shut the machine’s availability down. The flaws affect 100...

Making Sense of the Security Sensor Landscape

We have a serious sensor problem in the cybersecurity world. And it’s bad. Particularly when it comes to network intrusion detection and prevention sensors IDS/IPS. It seems like many security operations center SOC teams have completely given up on them being effective. But is the problem with...

Misconfigured Docker Servers Under Attack By Xanthe Malware

Researchers have discovered a Monero cryptomining botnet they call Xanthe, which has been exploiting incorrectly configured Docker API installations in order to infect Linux systems. Xanthe was first discovered in a campaign that employed a multi-modular botnet, as well as a payload that is a...

Post-Cyberattack, UVM Health Network Still Picking Up Pieces

More than a month after a cyberattack hit the University of Vermont UVM health network, the organization is still working to recover its systems. The UVM health network is a six-hospital, home-health and hospice system, which encompasses more than 1,000 physicians, 2,000 nurses and other clinicia...

Firestarter Android Malware Abuses Google Firebase Cloud Messaging

An APT group is starting fires with a new Android malware loader, which uses a legitimate Google messaging service to bypass detection. The malware, dubbed “Firestarter,” is used by an APT threat group called “DoNot.” DoNot uses Firebase Cloud Messaging FCM, which is a cross-platform cloud soluti...

Social Media: Thwarting The Phishing-Data Goldmine

Phishing attacks are on the rise and are more widespread — and successful — than ever before. They’ve gone way beyond mocked-up bank emails littered with malicious links although those are still around, too. Today’s hackers now target mobile users across multiple vectors, such as text and SMS...

Triple-Threat Cryptocurrency RAT Mines, Steals and Harvests

A previously undocumented malware family called KryptoCibule is mounting a three-pronged cryptocurrency-related attack, while also deploying remote-access trojan RAT functionality to establish backdoors to its victims. According to researchers at ESET, the malware has been seen targeting victims...

CactusPete APT Hones Toolset, Resurfaces with New Espionage Targets

The China-based APT known as CactusPete has returned with a new campaign aimed at military and financial targets in Eastern Europe, which is a new geography for the group’s victimology, according to researchers. The group also used a fresh variant of the Bisonal backdoor, which allows the attacke...

Podcast: Security Lessons Learned In Times of Uncertainty

Derek Manky With the coronavirus pandemic breaking out, and corporate workforces going remote, “uncertainty is a key word” for 2020, Derek Manky, Chief, Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs, said. The uncertain times led to an outpouring of cybercriminal...

Enterprise Data Security: It’s Time to Flip the Established Approach

There’s an old saying when it comes to big undertakings: Don’t boil the ocean. Well, there’s hardly any bigger project in information security than trying to protect corporate data. But the reality is that too many organizations today are, in fact, “boiling the ocean” when it comes to their...

Microsoft Seizes Malicious Domains Used in Mass Office 365 Attacks

Microsoft has seized several domains associated with a massive hacking campaign, which has targeted Office 365 accounts with phishing and business email compromise BEC emails. The sophisticated phishing attacks, which first began in December, have since compromised Office 365 accounts in 62...

Trojans, Backdoors and Droppers: The Most-Analyzed Malware

Trojans, backdoors and droppers, oh my: These are the top three malware types being analyzed by threat intelligence teams, according to statistics out on Thursday. According to anonymized statistics from requests to the Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal, almost three quarters 72 percent of the...

Tycoon Ransomware Banks on Unusual Image File Tactic

A new ransomware strain called Tycoon is seeking to wheel and deal its way into the Windows and Linux worlds, using a little-known Java image format as part of its kill chain. The ransomware is housed in a trojanized version of the Java Runtime Environment JRE, according to researchers at...

NetWalker Ransomware Gang Hunts for Top-Notch Affiliates

The NetWalker ransomware – the scourge behind one of the recent Toll Group attacks – has transitioned to a ransomware-as-a-service RaaS model, and its operators are placing a heavy emphasis on targeting and attracting technically advanced affiliates, according to researchers. Traditionally,...

Texas Courts Won't Pay Up in Ransomware Attack

A ransomware attack has hit the information technology office that supports Texas appellate courts and judicial agencies, leading to their websites and computer servers being shut down. The office said that it will not pay the ransom requested by the cybercriminals. Specifically affected is the...

Sphinx Malware Returns to Riddle U.S. Targets, with Modifications

The Zeus Sphinx banking trojan has seen a recent resurgence in the United States, sporting some modifications and using COVID-19 spam as a lure. Sphinx re-emerged in December but saw a big spike in March via the use of coronavirus themes. Since April, it has been seen attacking U.S. targets with ...

Maze Ransomware Attack Hits Cognizant

IT services giant Cognizant said that it has been hit by the Maze ransomware group in a cyberattack that has caused service disruptions. Cognizant, a Fortune 500 company that employs close to 300,000 people, said that it is providing customers with indicators of compromise IoCs and other technica...

Cloud Misconfig Mistakes Show Need For DevSecOps

Developers have become accustomed to deploying apps in data centers with what could be described as a “crunchy hard outer layer,” to keep their data center secure. But when it comes to the public cloud, “it just doesn’t exist that way,” said Ryan Olson, vice president of threat intelligence with...

RSAC 2020: Ransomware a 'National Crisis,' CISA Says, Ramps ICS Focus

Industrial control systems ICS and critical infrastructure will be a main focus for the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA this year – especially as ransomware looms as a main threat to the sector going forward. That’s according to Christopher...

Equifax Breach: Four Members of Chinese Military Charged with Hacking

U.S. authorities have charged four Chinese military officers in the 2017 Equifax data breach, which compromised the data of nearly 150 million. The four, Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei, are believed to be members of the 54th Research Institute of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army PLA...

Equifax Settles Class-Action Breach Lawsuit for $380.5M

A Georgia court granted final approval for an Equifax settlement in a class-action lawsuit, after the credit-reporting agency was hit by its massive 2017 data breach. Equifax will pay $380.5 million to settle lawsuits regarding the 2017 data breach, the Atlanta federal judge reportedly ruled this...

Elder Scrolls Online Targeted by Cybercrooks Hunting In-Game Loot

Phishers are out in force to scam aficionados of the Elder Scrolls Online video game into giving up their account details. The crooks are posing as developers for the game under the moniker “ElderScrollDevs,” and targeting those with PlayStation consoles and possibly others, according to a Reddit...

DHS Plans to Expand Facial Recognition Border Checks

The Department of Homeland Security plans to extend facial recognition checks to all travelers entering and leaving the U.S. – including previously-exempt U.S. citizens. The proposed ruling, outlined in a recent filing that was first reported this week by TechCrunch, signifies a rapid expansion o...

NYPD Fingerprint Database Taken Offline to Thwart Ransomware

The New York Police Department’s database of fingerprints was knocked offline over the weekend thanks to a ransomware scare, according to reports. The malware was introduced to the network via a contractor who was installing a digital display, according to an article in the New York Post. To do t...