Zero-Day ‘Follina’ Bug Lays Microsoft Office Open to Attack

UPDATE A zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Office allows adversaries to run malicious code on targeted systems via a flaw a remote Word template feature. The warning comes from Japanese security vendor Nao Sec, which tweeted a warning about the zero day over the weekend. It’s unclear if the...

Link Found Connecting Chaos, Onyx and Yashma Ransomware

For a year now, threat actors have been using different versions of the same ransomware builder – “Chaos” – to attack governments, corporations and healthcare facilities. Now researchers from Blackberry have connected the dots, painting a picture of a malware that has evolved five times in twelve...

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...

APTs Overwhelmingly Share Known Vulnerabilities Rather Than Attack O-Days

Most advanced persistent threat groups APTs use known vulnerabilities in their attacks against organizations, suggesting the need to prioritize faster patching rather than chasing zero-day flaws as a more effective security strategy, new research has found. Security researchers at the University ...

Mandating a Zero-Trust Approach for Software Supply Chains

In the wake of the SolarWinds attack last year, President Biden issued an executive order in May advocating for mandatory software bills of materials, or SBOMs, to increase software transparency and counter supply-chain attacks. For reference, SBOMs are machine-readable documents that provide a...

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...

Pegasus Spyware Uses iPhone Zero-Click iMessage Zero-Day

A never-before-seen, zero-click iMessaging exploit has been allegedly used to illegally spy on Bahraini activists with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab. The digital researchers are calling the new iMessaging exploit FORCEDENTRY. In a report published on...

Microsoft Spills 38 Million Sensitive Data Records Via Careless Power App Configs

For months, Microsoft’s Power Apps portals exposed personal data tied to 38 million records ranging from COVID-19 vaccination status, Social Security numbers and email addresses. Consumers most affected by what is being called a “platform issue” are those doing business with American Airlines,...

Friends Reunion Anchors Video Swindle

The second quarter saw a rise in entertainment lures for fraud and phishing, including one campaign capitalizing on the buzz around “Friends: The Reunion.” Researchers at Kaspersky found fake sites supposedly hosting video for the much-anticipated special episode of the popular sitcom, according ...

Black Hat: Let’s All Help Cyber-Immunize Each Other

LAS VEGAS – The in-person Black Hat USA 2021 cybersecurity conference is back, after a pandemic-forced, year-long hiatus, with attendance notably down but spirts up among attendees eager to get back to networking, learning and returning to some normalcy. Event founder Jeff Moss kicked off...

‘Charming Kitten’ APT Siphons Intel From Mid-East Scholars

An Iran-linked advanced persistent threat APT group has taken a scholarly bent with its latest phishing campaign, which involves lengthy chats with professors, think tank higher-ups and journalists focused on Middle Eastern affairs. The threat actor is Charming Kitten – aka a number of names,...

Hackers Steal FIFA 21 Source Code, Tools in EA Breach

Hackers have breached computer game maker Electronic Arts EA and stolen source code and related tools for the company’s extensive game library, the company has confirmed. EA said it’s investigating “a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and...

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...

TeaBot Trojan Targets Banks via Hijacked Android Handsets

Researchers have discovered an Android trojan that can steal victims’ SMS messages and credentials and completely take over devices. The trojan, dubbed TeaBot, is aimed at committing fraud against at least 60 banks in Europe. Join Threatpost for “Fortifying Your Business Against Ransomware, DDoS ...

Nintendo Sues Video-Game Pirates

Gaming giant Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against video-game piracy group ringleader Gary Bowser, a Canadian national behind Team Xecuter, which law enforcement said built and sold hacking devices that enabled consoles to play unauthorized versions of games. Download “The Evolution of Ransomware”...

Spotlight on Cybercriminal Supply Chains

An examination of cybercrime ecosystems reveals it mirrors legitimate financial organization and market systems. “Cybercriminals need to move money and pay employees in their organization just like any other company,” said Derek Manky Chief Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet’...

Security Analysis Clears TikTok of Censorship, Privacy Accusations

Nebulous privacy and censorship criticisms about video social-media app TikTok have been swirling for months. Security analysts from CitizenLab are the first to collect real data on the platform’s source code, and reported that TikTok meets reasonable standards of security and privacy. The...

Top MSPs challenges in 2021

If one searches for ‘the top MSP challenges’ between 2017 and 2020, there are mainly five things that are more likely to emerge from the search results: adopting cloud-based solutions, sales margins, satisfying complex client’s needs, employee turnover, and the scalability of the IT security...

Mobile Adware Booms, Online Banks Become Prime Target for Attacks

Hackers painted a bullseye on the backs of online financial institutions in 2020 as the pandemic shuttered local branch offices and forced customers online. Over the past 12 months, incidents of adware nearly tripled. And, overall in 2020 researchers saw a slight drop in the number of mobile...

U.S. Accuses DPRK Hackers of Stealing Millions

The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted three North Korean computer programmers for their alleged participation in widespread, destructive cyberattacks as part of the advanced persistent threat APT known as Lazarus Group. The indictment broadens the scope of crimes that the DoJ has linked to...

SolarWinds Malware Arsenal Widens with Raindrop

An additional piece of malware, dubbed Raindrop, has been unmasked in the sprawling SolarWinds supply-chain attacks. It was used in targeted attacks after the effort’s initial mass Sunburst compromise, researchers said. The SolarWinds espionage attack, which has affected several U.S. government...

Telegram Triangulation Pinpoints Users' Exact Locations

A feature that allows Telegram users to see who’s nearby can be misused to pinpoint your exact distance to other users – by spoofing one’s latitude and longitude. According to bug-hunter Ahmed Hassan, the “People Nearby” feature could allow an attacker to triangulate the location of unsuspecting...

Adrozek Malware Delivers Fake Ads to 30K Devices a Day

A persistent malware campaign called Adrozek has been using an evolved browser modifier to deliver fraudulent ads to search-engine pages, according to Microsoft. At its peak in August, Adrozek was observed on more than 30,000 devices each day, researchers found, affecting multiple browsers. The...

Federated Learning: A Therapeutic for what Ails Digital Health

For researchers and physicians the mountains of data hospitals and healthcare systems hold could be a goldmine for artificial intelligence and machine learning, but data privacy concerns and regulations have kept scientists from being able to harness that information to improve outcomes. Now...

Google Boots 21 Bogus Gaming Apps from Play Marketplace

Researchers have discovered a raft of malicious gaming apps on Google Play that come loaded with adware, signaling that the tech giant continues to struggle with keeping bad apps off its online marketplace. Twenty-one gaming ads discovered on Google packed with adware from the HiddenAds family we...

Unpatched Apple T2 Chip Flaw Plagues Macs

A researcher is claiming that Apple devices – with a macOS operating system and a T2 security chip – are open to an exploit that could give bad actors root access. A fix has not been issued by Apple. The flaw stems from the T2 chip, which is the second-generation version of Apple’s chip that...

Spammers Smuggle LokiBot Via URL Obfuscation Tactic

Spammers have started using a tricky URL obfuscation technique that sidesteps detection – and ultimately infects victims with the LokiBot trojan. The tactic was uncovered in recent spear-phishing emails with PowerPoint attachments, which contain a malicious macro. When the PowerPoint file is...

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...

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...

Transparent Tribe Mounts Ongoing Spy Campaign on Military, Government

The APT group Transparent Tribe is mounting an ongoing cyberespionage campaign, researchers said, which is aimed at military and diplomatic targets around the world. The effort features a worm that can propagate from machine to machine while stealing files from USB removable drives. Transparent...

Instagram Retained Deleted User Data Despite GDPR Rules

Instagram kept copies of deleted pictures and private direct messages on its servers even after someone removed them from their account. The Facebook-owned service acknowledged the slipup and awarded a security researcher $6,000 for finding the bug. Researcher Saugat Pokharel discovered the...

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...

TikTok Surreptitiously Collected Android User Data Using Google-Prohibited Tactic

TikTok has been collecting unique identifiers from millions of Android devices without their users’ knowledge using a tactic previously prohibited by Google because it violated people’s privacy, new research has found. Click to register! The app concealed the practice, which can track users onlin...

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...

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...

TrickBot Adds BazarBackdoor to Malware Arsenal

A new module for the infamous trojan known as TrickBot has been deployed: A stealthy backdoor that researchers call “BazarBackdoor.” The binary was first spotted being delivered as part of a phishing campaign that began in March, according to an analysis from Panda Security this week. The campaig...

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...

Utah Says No to Apple/Google COVID-19 Tracing; Debuts Startup App

The state of Utah has settled on a contact-tracing mobile app that collects detailed user location information to track the spread of COVID-19 among citizens – eschewing the API model proposed by Apple and Google in April. The app is called “Healthy Together” and it was created by a startup calle...

'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...

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...

TrickBot Trojan Adds RDP Brute-Forcing to Its Arsenal

The TrickBot malware has added a new feature: A module called rdpScanDll, built for brute-forcing remote desktop protocol RDP accounts. According to BitDefender, the module has been used in campaigns against telecom, education and financial services industry targets in the United States and Hong...

The Coronavirus is Already Taking Effect on Cyber Security– This is How CISOs Should Prepare

The Coronavirus is hitting hard on the world’s economy, creating a high volume of uncertainty within organizations. Cynet has revealed new data, showing that the Coronavirus now has a significant impact on information security and that the crisis is actively exploited by threat actors. In light o...

Shlayer, No. 1 Threat for Mac, Targets YouTube, Wikipedia

The malvertising-focused trojan known as Shlayer has burbled to the top of the malware heap when it comes to targeting Mac users. It made up 29 percent of all attacks on macOS devices in Kaspersky’s telemetry for 2019, making it the No. 1 Mac malware threat for the year. To spread, it has been...

Android Ups the Mobile Security Ante with Default TLS Encryption

A full 80 percent of Android apps are encrypting their traffic by default, according to a Transport Layer Security TLS adoption update from Google. That percentage is even greater for apps targeting Android 9 and higher, with 90 percent of those encrypting traffic by default, the tech giant said ...

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...

Wizard Spider Upgrades Ryuk Ransomware to Reach Deep into LANs

The Ryuk ransomware has added two features to enhance its effectiveness: The ability to target systems that are in “standby” or sleep mode; and the use of Address Resolution Protocol ARP pinging to find drives on a company’s LAN. Both are employed after the initial network compromise of a victim...

Rethinking Responsibilities and Remedies in Social-Engineering Attacks

In the pantheon of catchy cybersecurity slogans that should never have caught on, two about social engineering spring to mind almost immediately: “End users are the weakest link” and “attackers only have to be lucky once; defenders have to be lucky all the time.” Both of those statements have bee...

California Passes Bill to Ban Police Use of Facial Recognition

The California Senate has passed a bill in a 22-15 vote that would ban the use by law enforcement of body cams that use facial recognition. The move will send AB 1215, already passed by the California Assembly back in May on a 45-17 vote, to the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom to be signed into law. Th...