Researcher: 'Baseless Assumptions' Exist About Intel AMT Vulnerability

Researchers at Embedi who found the critical Active Management Technology AMT flaw in Intel chips said in a blog published today there were “a tremendous amount of baseless assumptions” being made about the vulnerability. According Embedi CTO Dmitry Evdokimov, an information vacuum has predictabl...

Publicly Disclosed Windows Vulnerabilities Await Patches

As a consequence of skipping its February Patch Tuesday release, Microsoft is leaving two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities unpatched with proof-of-concept exploits available for both. That raises the stakes exponentially on possible attacks, said Tod Beardsley, senior research director at Rapid...

January 2017 Adobe Flash, Reader, Acrobat Security Patches

Adobe today released its first patches of the year, a familiar refrain of Flash Player and Reader fixes, none of which are under attack. The Flash update addresses 13 vulnerabilities, all but one of which trigger remote code execution attacks. Meanwhile, 29 bugs were patched in Reader and Acrobat...

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...

Cisco Patches Critical Bugs in 900 Series Routers, Prime Home Server

Cisco Systems has issued two critical advisories addressing flaws in a variety of enterprise-class products ranging from its 900 Series Routers to its Cisco Prime Home server and cloud-based network management platform. Service providers running Cisco ASR 900 Series routers are being warned that ...

July 2016 Android Security Bulletin

The frail world of the Android ecosystem has taken some hits in the past week with the disclosure of a full disk encryption bypass vulnerability and the arrival of the HummingBad malware. The FDE bypass highlighted the need to keep Android patch levels current, but as Duo Labs statistics point ou...

August 2015 Apple QuickTime Security Patches

Apple on Thursday pushed out a new version of QuickTime for Windows that patched nine vulnerabilities, including a handful reported Aug. 13 by Cisco Talos and Fortinet researchers. All five flaws, if exploited, could lead to a crash of the media player or code execution in some cases, Apple said ...

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...

AntLabs InnGate security vulnerability patch

ANTLabs today is expected to roll out patches for a vulnerability in its InnGate Internet gateways that are popular in hospitality and convention locations. The gateways provide temporary Internet access to hotel guests or conference attendees using kiosks, for example. The vulnerability...

Samsung Insists Find My Mobile Service Safe

Samsung this week tried to quell recent reports that its Find My Mobile service is vulnerable to hacking, firing back at NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology who warned last month that the feature could be exploited. In a blog post on the company’s global blog Tuesday, Samsung...

Five Year Old Security Vulnerability Patched in Linux Kernel

A serious and reportedly five-year-old bug in the Linux kernel could give attackers the ability to run malicious code or, at the very least, cause crashes on a variety of affected systems. Some, though not necessarily all, Linux distributions would be vulnerable without installing the patch. What...

FBI Shuts Down Online Drug, Hacking Market Silk Road

The FBI has taken down the infamous Silk Road underground drug market, arresting Ross William Ulbricht in San Francisco yesterday and charging him not only with the distribution of illegal drugs including heroin and LSD, but also with a number of computer hacking crimes. Ulbricht, who was known a...

Adobe ColdFusion Exploits in Wild; Patch Remains Week Away

Adobe is recommending ColdFusion users apply a series of mitigations to counter active exploits against vulnerabilities in the application server. An advisory was released late Friday night that the trio of flaws are being targeted by attackers, and that the company would not have a patch availab...

Attackers Go Phishing for Payroll Workers With Java CVE-2012-1723 Exploit

The Java CVE-2012-1723 vulnerability is suddenly the golden child of bugs. The flaw, which Oracle patched in June, has been the target of several pieces of malware and Web-based attacks of late, and now researchers say there is a phishing scam targeting payroll and HR employees that involves and...

OpenOffice Zaps Six Security Bugs

OpenOffice.org has shipped a new version of the desktop productivity suite to patch six vulnerabilities that could expose users to malicious hacker attacks. The flaws fixed in OpenOffice.org 3.2 could be exploited via GIF, XPM files and Microsoft Word document processing, according to an advisory...

Securing Your Move to the Hybrid Cloud

Infosec Insider contributor Rani Osnat is SVP Strategy at Aqua Security The combination of private and public cloud infrastructure, which most organizations are already using, poses unique security challenges. There are many reasons why organizations adopt the public cloud — from enabling rapid...

Leaky Access Tokens Exposed Amazon Photos of Users

The Amazon Photos app for Android insufficiently protected user access tokens, according to a blog post published on Wednesday. Theoretically, with exposed tokens, an attacker could’ve accessed users’ personal data from a number of different Amazon apps – not just Photos but also, for example,...

Box 2FA Bypass Opens User Accounts to Attack

UPDATE A security hole in Box, the cloud-based file-sharing service, paved the way for busting its multifactor authentication MFA, researchers said – and it’s the second such MFA bypass they have discovered in the service so far. Clearly, the stakes are high – gaining access to a Box account coul...

How to Buy Precious Patching Time as Log4j Exploits Fly

Sure, Apache got a patch out fast when the Log4j logging library vulnerability – aka Javageddon or “up there with Shellshock” – exploded last week. But emergency patches take days best-case scenario or weeks to install: plenty of time for attackers to do their worst. Which they lickety-split did,...

Kronos Ransomware Outage Drives Widespread Payroll Chaos

Kronos, the workforce management platform, has been hit with a ransomware attack that it says will leave its cloud-based services unavailable for several weeks – and it’s suggesting that customers seek other ways to get payroll and other HR tasks accomplished. The outage has left cataclysmic issu...

12 New Flaws Used in Ransomware Attacks in Q3

A dozen new vulnerabilities were used in ransomware attacks this quarter, bringing the total number of bugs associated with ransomware to 278. That’s a 4.5 percent increase over Q2, according to researchers. Five of the newbies can be used to achieve remote code execution RCE, while two can be us...

EU: Russia Behind ‘Ghostwriter’ Campaign Against Germany

In the wake of cyberattacks targeting the recently held German elections, the European Union has blamed Russia for an ongoing disinformation campaign called “Ghostwriter.” Germany is the latest target in an effort that for years has tried to discredit NATO, and which has both smeared and...

MyRepublic Data Breach Raises Data-Protection Questions

Almost 79,400 MyRepublic mobile subscribers have been caught up in a data breach that exposed a range of personal information, the company has confirmed. The Singapore-based ISP and mobile provider said that an “unauthorized data access incident” took place on August 29. The intrusion in question...

Supreme Court Limits Scope of Controversial Hacking Law

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a police officer who received money for obtaining data from a law-enforcement database for an associate did not violate a controversial federal hacking law, marking a victory for the ethical hacking community by limiting the law’s scope. In a landmar...

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...

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”...

It’s Easy to Become a Cyberattack Target, but a VPN Can Help

Even though data breaches top news headlines every other week, it’s still tempting to think that no one is interested in your data. But a hacker doesn’t need to target you in particular to get their hands on your most sensitive information. Let’s look at the cyber-threats out there and how a...

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...

Cybercriminal Enterprise 'Ringleaders' Stole $55M Via COVID-19 Fraud, Romance Scams

Click to Register U.S. law enforcement arrested six “ringleaders” of a Ghana-based cybercriminal enterprise, who had allegedly launched a slew of money-stealing scams dating back to 2013 that included romance scams, business email compromise attacks and fraud. Seized in the arrests were a slew of...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Leading Game Publishers Hit Hard by Leaked-Credential Epidemic

Leading gaming companies, such as Ubisoft, have become big targets for cybercriminals that aim to turn a profit by selling leaked insider-credentials tied to the top game publishers. Over 500,000 stolen credentials tied to the top 25 gaming firms were found on caches of breached data online and u...

Code42 Incydr Series: Honing in on high-risk users with Code42 Incydr

The crux of the insider threat challenge is that everyone can be a risk. That’s why most security teams are focusing on gaining broader and deeper visibility into all file activity — especially the surge in remote, off-network activity. But this doesn’t mean that security teams should discount...

Smart Doorbells on Amazon, eBay, Harbor Serious Security Issues

Researchers have found serious security and privacy issues in 11 different smart doorbells, distributed via online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, which could be exploited by attackers to physically switch off the devices. Smart doorbells, which connect to a smartphone and alert users when...

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...

New Global Threat Landscape Report Reveals 'Unprecedented' Cyberattacks

A newly released threat report, tracking the biggest trends in the cybercriminal landscape, shows that attackers have been capitalizing on the global pandemic in various ways – from ransomware to web-based malware. Derek Manky Derek Manky, Chief, Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at...

NetWalker Ransomware Rakes in $29M Since March

The NetWalker ransomware has been around for about a year, but it has really made a name for itself in 2020, racking up around $29 million in extortion gains just since March. First detected in August 2019, NetWalker lingered around before surging in use in March through June, according to an...

Popular TP-Link Family of Kasa Security Cams Vulnerable to Attack

A popular consumer-grade security camera made by TP-Link and sold under the Kasa brand has bevy of bugs that open the hardware to remote attacks, such as giving hackers access to private video feeds and the ability to change device settings. The researcher Jason Kent, with Cequence Security,...

Former DIA Analyst Sentenced to Prison Over Data Leak

A former analyst for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency DIA has been sentenced to more than two years in prison after sharing highly classified, national defense intelligence with two reporters. The sentencing comes after the 32-year-old analyst, Henry Kyle Frese, pleaded guilty in February to...

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...

Microsoft Outlook Users Targeted By Gamaredon's New VBA Macro

The Gamaredon threat group has given its post-compromise toolset a facelift with the addition of a new Visual Basic for Applications VBA macro. The VBA macro leverages compromised victims’ Microsoft Outlook email accounts to send spear-phishing emails to their contacts – rapidly widening the...

Podcast: Why Identity Access Management is the New Perimeter

With the proliferation of cloud in enterprise environments, the concept of “identity” today is very different than how it used to be. Threatpost host Cody Hackett talks to Brian Johnson, CEO and co-founder of DivvyCloud by Rapid7, about how identity access management IAM is rapidly changing – and...

'Unbreakable' Smart Lock Draws FTC Ire for Deceptive Security Claims

The Federal Trade Commission has slapped Tapplock, the maker of smart padlocks that it bills as “unbreakable,” with an official complaint that could lead to fines down the road. The agency alleges that the company engaged in false and deceptive claims about its security practices, after the lock...

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...

Facebook to Pay $550M to Settle Class Action Case Over Facial Recognition

Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to Illinois users to settle a class action lawsuit filed over the use of its face-tagging technology to collect facial-recognition data on its social media platform. The company unveiled the settlement on a quarterly financial call Wednesday, in which it...