The time for Insider Risk Management is now: Code42 2021 Data Exposure Report Reveals a Perfect Storm

We all knew the overnight shift to remote work and cloud-based productivity and collaboration would dramatically change the Insider Risk landscape. But now, with nearly a year of data to look at, the Code42 2021 Data Exposure Report DER shows that the impact is pretty staggering: Employees are 85...

Google Play Boots Barcode Scanner App After Ad Explosion

A barcode scanner app, with over 10 million downloads, was booted from the Google Play marketplace after users began to complain of mobile-ad overload. The makers of the app, called Barcode Scanner, intentionally altered the code of the app via an update turning it from a benign app to adware,...

Cyberpunk 2077 Publisher Hit with Hack, Ransomware

UPDATE CD Projekt Red, the videogame-development company behind Cyberpunk 2077 and the wildly popular Witcher series, has suffered a ransomware attack that could soon result in troves of company data being dumped online – including game source code. The Warsaw-based company tweeted out a notice o...

Second SolarWinds Attack Group Breaks into USDA Payroll — Report

There had been hints that a second group of malicious actors may have exploited a SolarWinds bug to install the Supernova backdoor — notably, there was a conclusion by Microsoft back in December that this was the case. Now, sources told Reuters that there’s indeed evidence that a separate advance...

Cyberattacks on Healthcare Spike 45% Since November

As COVID-19 ravages international healthcare systems, cybercriminals have decided to leverage the increasingly dire circumstances to squeeze a few bucks out of the human suffering. According to new findings from Check Point Software, healthcare organizations have seen a 45-percent increase in...

New Windows Trojan Steals Browser Credentials, Outlook Files

Researchers have discovered a new information-stealing trojan, which targets Microsoft Windows systems with an onslaught of data-exfiltration capabilities– from collecting browser credentials to targeting Outlook files. The trojan, called PyMicropsia due to it being built with Python has been...

North Korea-Backed Spy Group Poses as Reporters in Spearphishing Attacks, Feds Warn

The North Korean advanced persistent threat APT group known as Kimsuky is actively attacking commercial-sector businesses, often by posing as South Korean reporters, according to an alert from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA. Kimsuky a.k.a. Hidden Cobra has been...

Experts Weigh in on E-Commerce Security Amid Snowballing Threats

The raging pandemic has forced many retailers to re-imagine their businesses, shifting from in-person to contactless interactions through online sales. This new socially distanced reality is colliding with the crush of an upcoming holiday shopping season, creating an unprecedented opportunity for...

Gamer Credentials Now a Booming, Juicy Target for Hackers

Credential theft targeting hardcore gamers has hit an all-time high as scams, illicit markets and account takeovers have become a booming business. The driving force behind the uptick in gaming-related crime is a sudden spike in usage of online games, spurred by the coronavirus pandemic and...

Unsecured Microsoft Bing Server Leaked Search Queries, Location Data

An unsecured database has exposed sensitive data for users of Microsoft’s Bing search engine mobile application – including their location coordinates, search terms in clear text and more. While no personal information, like names, were exposed, researchers with Wizcase argued that enough data wa...

How Zero Trust and SASE Can Redefine Network Defenses for Remote Workforces

Zero Trust has been touted for years as the future of network security. But, only recently has it started to gain traction as a practical enterprise security framework. The implementation of digital transformation initiatives has thrust Zero Trust into the spotlight as network applications and...

Charming Kitten Returns with WhatsApp, LinkedIn Effort

The Iran-affiliated APT known as Charming Kitten is back with a new approach, impersonating Persian-speaking journalists via WhatsApp and LinkedIn, in order to con victims into opening malicious links. The targets are Israeli scholars from Haifa and Tel Aviv universities, and U.S. government...

High-Severity TinyMCE Cross-Site Scripting Flaw Fixed

A high-severity flaw has been disclosed in TinyMCE, an open-source text editor used in the content management systems CMS of websites. The recently patched flaw could have been potentially exploited remotely by attackers to gain administrative privileges to websites. TinyMCE, developed by Tiny...

Black Hat 2020: Influence Campaigns Are a Cybersecurity Problem

Social media used as a cudgel for nation-states to sway opinion is a cybersecurity threat CISOs can’t ignore — and need to understand better and mitigate against. That’s the message from Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who said she is seeing a steady growth a...

Emotet Returns in Malspam Attacks Dropping TrickBot, QakBot

Emotet has returned after a five-month hiatus. Researchers first spotted the malware in a campaign that has spammed Microsoft Office users with hundreds of thousands of malicious emails since Friday. The malware first emerged in 2014, but has since then evolved into a full fledged botnet that’s...

Notorious Hacker 'Fxmsp' Outed After Widespread Access-Dealing

“Fxmsp,” a notorious hacker who made headlines last year for allegedly stealing and selling source code and customer access from McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro, has been outed. He’s a Kazakh national named Andrey Turchin, and according to unsealed court documents, he faces hacking charges datin...

EvilQuest: Inside A 'New Class' of Mac Malware

The new malware sample discovered this week, dubbed EvilQuest by security researchers, may be ushering in a new class of Mac malware, according to Thomas Reed, director of Mac and mobile with Malwarebytes. While EvilQuest pretends to be ransomware, in the background it’s actually using its...

Twitter Disrupts Wide-Ranging Political Disinformation Campaigns

Twitter has taken down three separate nation-sponsored influence operations, attributed to the People’s Republic of China PRC, Russia and Turkey. Collectively the operations consisted of 32,242 bogus or bot accounts generating the content and various amplifier accounts that retweeted it. “Every...

Helping Remote Workers Overcome Remote Attacks

Cybercriminals are experts at making the most of whatever they’re given. The current pandemic is no different, and they have been quick to profit from their victims’ fears. Adaptability has always been the hallmark of malicious actors, and the proliferation of “remote-everything” attacks is a pri...

Turla APT Revamps One of Its Go-To Spy Tools

The Turla APT group has been spotted using an updated version of the ComRAT remote-access trojan RAT to attack governmental targets. Turla a.k.a. Snake, Venomous Bear, Waterbug or Uroboros, is a Russian-speaking threat actor known since 2014, but with roots that go back to 2004 and earlier,...

Login with Facebook Bug Earns $20K Bounty

Facebook has awarded a security researcher $20,000 for discovering a cross-site scripting XSS vulnerability in the Facebook Login SDK, which is used by developers to add a “Continue with Facebook” button to a page as an authentication method. Exploitation could allow threat actors to hijack...

Zoom Kills iOS App’s Data-Sharing Facebook Feature

Zoom has removed a feature in its iOS web conferencing app that was sharing analytics data with Facebook, after a report revealing the practice sparked outrage. According to the Motherboard report last week that originally disclosed the privacy issue, the transferred information included data on...

This Stalkerware Delivers Extra-Creepy Features

Researchers are sending up a red flag over the distribution of an aggressive stalkerware app called Monitor Minor. In a report released Monday, researchers said the Android version of the app gives stalkers near absolute control of targeted devices, going so far as allowing them to capture the...

TrickBot Adds ActiveX Control, Hides Dropper in Images

The TrickBot banking trojan has gotten trickier, with the addition of a Windows 10 ActiveX control to execute malicious macros in boobytrapped documents. Michael Gorelik, researcher at Morphisec Labs, said that at least two dozen documents have come to light in the last few weeks that use ActiveX...

As Necurs Botnet Falls from Grace, Emotet Rises

A mid-January spam campaign by criminals behind the popular Necurs botnet shows a dramatic drop in skill and savvy by perpetrators. In a shift from sending sophisticated messages with lethal payloads, Necurs botnets are now peddling get-rich-quick spam messages in what researchers are calling...

CES Surveillance Hype Worries Privacy Advocates

Cutting-edge surveillance tech took center stage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada this past week. But just as many tech enthusiast praised the technology as something to marvel, privacy advocates voiced concern. Many security experts are sounding the alarm that the annual tec...

Epilepsy Foundation Bombarded with Seizure-Triggering Twitter Posts

The Epilepsy Foundation on Monday filed a criminal complaint against a number of undisclosed Twitter users after they bombarded its Twitter feed in November with a barrage of posts of flashing or strobing lights — exposing its thousands of followers to potential seizure-triggering images. The...

Facebook Alleges Company Infiltrated Thousands for Ad Fraud

Facebook has sued a Chinese company that it alleges used malware to compromise hundreds of thousands of user accounts – and then used them to run “deceptive ads” promoting counterfeit goods. The company in question is Hong Kong-based ILikeAd Media International Company Ltd., which was incorporate...

Federal Court: Suspicionless Search of Traveler Devices by Border Agents Is Unconstitutional

In a win for the privacy of international travelers, a federal court in Boston has ruled that searchers of traveler electronic devices by border agents without suspicion is unconstitutional. The ruling from the U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts came in a 2017 case, Alasaad v. Nielsen...

Apple Suspends Siri Program After Privacy Backlash

Apple is suspending a program that lets contractors listen in on Siri voice recordings after facing a rain of backlash regarding the privacy implications of the program. The suspension comes after a report in The Guardian last week outlining how contractors regularly listen to intimate voice...

DanaBot Adds Ransomware to its Arsenal

A new sample of the DanaBot trojan spotted in a recent campaign reveals that operators behind the malware have now included a ransomware component into its code, along with new string encryption and communications protocols. The update, wrote Check Point researchers on Thursday, represents a...

Ad Server Patched to Stop Possible Malware Distribution

UPDATE The open-source advertising platform Revive Adserver is urging customers to patch two vulnerabilities, one of which is critical and may have been exploited to allow hackers to deliver malware to third-party websites. Revive Adserver, formerly known as OpenX Source, is a free, open-source a...

Facebook Exposed Dataset Debacle: Who's Really To Blame?

UPDATE The discovery of millions of Facebook records leaked from publicly-exposed AWS storage buckets has left researchers wondering where the responsibility lies. The two separate datasets, disclosed Wednesday by researchers at Upguard, were held by two app developers, Cultura Colectiva and At t...

Ring Doorbell Flaw Opens Door to Spying

UPDATE A serious flaw in the popular Ring smart doorbell could allow an attacker on a shared WiFi network to spy on families’ video and audio footage, according to researchers. Ring Doorbell is a popular home security device acquired by Amazon. Researchers with BullGuard discovered a way to launc...

Google Fined $57M in Largest GDPR Slap Yet

France’s National Data Protection Commission CNIL has fined Google $57 million €50 million for violations of the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR – the largest fine yet issued under the EU’s new data privacy law. In investigating group complaints from privacy advocacy groups None Of Your...

Microsoft Patches Zero-Day Bug in Win7, Server 2008 and 2008 R2

Microsoft patched a zero-day vulnerability that enabled attackers to escalate privileges on targeted systems, which include Windows 7, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 systems. The vulnerability, rated important, was part of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday November security bulletin, which included 62...

Federal Agencies Face an Uphill Battle in Cyber-Preparedness

In the wake of the elimination of the federal cybersecurity czar position, the latest federal cybersecurity preparedness report from the Office of Management and Budget OMB and the Department of Homeland Security DHS shows that U.S. government is nowhere near ready for prime time when it comes to...

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...

Firefox, Chrome Patch Vulnerabilities, Add Security Features

Both Mozilla and Google have updated their browsers this week and have added important security fixes along with bolstering user privacy and safety. Google tackled 53 security fixes on Wednesday with the debut of Chrome 64 version 64.0.3282.119 for Windows, Mac and Linux. Only three of the...

1M Downloads Later, Google Pulls Phony WhatsApp From Google Play

Google has removed a phony WhatsApp download from Google Play and suspended the developer’s account, but not before the ad-spewing app was downloaded more than one million times. The unwanted app, called Update WhatsApp Messenger, was disclosed by a handful of Redditors over the weekend who said...

iOS 11 Update includes Patches for Eight Vulnerabilities

iOS 11 is out today and along with a new look and feel on the iPad especially comes a handful of patches for the Apple mobile OS. Apple addressed eight CVEs in today’s iOS update, and 15 overall as it also updated Safari and the Xcode development framework. Two Webkit bugs, CVE-2017-7106 and...

Bugs in Arris Modems Distributed by AT&T Vulnerable to Trivial Attacks

Trivially exploitable vulnerabilities have been discovered in several Arris home modems, routers and gateways distributed to consumers and small businesses through AT&T’s U-verse service. It’s unknown yet whether the firmware vulnerabilities were introduced by the OEM or the ISP since AT&T seems ...

Novel Attack Tricks Servers to Cache And Expose Personal Data

LAS VEGAS—Researcher Omer Gil has devised a way to trick a web server into caching pages and exposing personal data. The so-called web caching attack targets sites that use content delivery network CDN services such as Akamai and Cloudflare. These services act as traffic load balancers and revers...

Cisco Patches Publicly Disclosed SNMP Vulnerabilities in IOS, IOS XE

Cisco has patched nine serious remote code execution vulnerabilities in the SNMP subsystem running in its IOS and IOS XE software. The vulnerabilities had been publicly disclosed. Cisco notified users of the availability of patches after releasing its initial advisory on the matter on June 29,...

CopyCat Malware Infected 14M Android Devices, Rooted 8M, in 2016

A family of Android malware was so successful that at its peak, over the course of two months last year, it infected 14 million devices and rooted more than half of them, roughly eight million devices. Researchers said early Tuesday the strain of malware, dubbed CopyCat, helped its authors earn...

Adobe Patches 59 Vulnerabilities Across Flash, Reader, Photoshop

Adobe patched 59 vulnerabilities in five different products, including Flash Player, Acrobat/Reader, Photoshop, Adobe Campaign, and its Adobe Creative Cloud App as part of its regularly scheduled software update today. The company warned in a series of security bulletins posted shortly before noo...

OpenSSL Update Fixes High Severity DoS Vulnerability

The OpenSSL Software Foundation released an update to the OpenSSL crypto library that patches a vulnerability rated high severity that could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial-of-service condition. OpenSSL released the version 1.1.0e update that fixes flaws found in OpenSSL 1.1.0, accordin...

Ubuntu Update Includes OpenSSL Fixes

Ubuntu users are being urged to update their operating systems to address a handful of recently patched OpenSSL vulnerabilities which affect Ubuntu and its derivatives. Developers with Canonical, the company that oversees the Linux distribution, announced the updates on Tuesday, encouraging users...

3.2 Million Servers Vulnerable to JBoss Attack

Cisco Talos said on Friday that 3.2 million servers are vulnerable to the JBoss flaw used as the initial point of compromise in the recent SamSam ransomware attacks. Worse, researchers said that thousands of servers have already been backdoored. Hardest hit have been K-12 schools running library...

AirDroid Patches Vulnerability Exposing Android Data

A critical vulnerability impacting 50 million Android users running the popular AirDroid application has been patched. AirDroid, an app that allows you link an Android device to a computer and send SMS messages, run apps and add contacts via a Wi-Fi connected web browser, released the patch Jan...