Phishing Attack Skirts Detection With YouTube

Researchers are warning of an increase in phishing emails that use YouTube redirect links, which help attackers skirt traditional defense measures. If certain malicious URLs are blocked by web browser phishing filters, attackers commonly use a redirector URL to bypass these filters and redirect t...

Zynga Faces Lawsuit Over Massive Words with Friends Breach

Mobile game developer Zynga could face a class-action lawsuit stemming from a massive data breach last September, which impacted 218 million users of the Words with Friends mobile app. The news comes as other big names face security incidents: T-Mobile and Carnival Cruise Lines have admitted this...

Privacy Experts Skeptical of Proposed Data Protection Agency

A new federal bureaucracy, the Data Protection Agency DPA, has been proposed to completely revamp how the U.S. government regulates data collection and misuse by big tech companies. However, while privacy experts call the agency a “good first step,” they remain skeptical about how effective it...

Google Account Security Keys Launch for iPhone

Google has extended its Advanced Protection Program for account security to the iPhone platform, aimed at those that are the most-targeted by cybercriminals: Members of political campaign teams, journalists, activists, executives, employees in regulated industries such as finance or government, a...

FBI Taps Apple to Unlock Pensacola Shooter's iPhone

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is once again asking Apple to help unlock the iPhone of a potential terrorist. The FBI is looking to crack two iPhones that they believe were owned by Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the Saudi-born suspect in the shooting attack that killed three people in December ...

Podcast: The Roadblocks and Opportunities For Women in Cybersecurity

In 2019, diversity in the cybersecurity was thrust to the forefront with recognition from both vendors and experts. The tech industry is facing challenges around diversity in general, but women are particularly underrepresented. And with an estimated 3.5 million jobs are expected to remain unfill...

Podcast: What We've Learned from the Year of the Breach

This podcast is sponsored by Arctic Wolf. Large-scale data breaches hitting organizations like Capital One and Georgia Tech in 2019 show that companies continue to be targeted in malicious cyberattacks that expose customers’ personal data and valuable records. Threatpost host Cody Hackett sat dow...

Signal Tests Upgraded Cryptography for Groups Function

Signal, the encrypted messaging platform, is planning to launch an upgraded secure group messaging and communities function. Signal’s groups are private, meaning that the service itself doesn’t keep a record of a user’s group memberships, group titles, group avatars or group attributes. But the w...

Magecart Group Switches Up Tactics with MiTM, Phishing

A fresh splinter group under the Magecart umbrella has been discovered ramping up activity starting in August-September of 2019. It’s using a unique codebase and different tactics to carry out its attacks, according to researchers. Magecart is an umbrella term encompassing several different threa...

Plugging the Data Leak in Manufacturing

More often than not, when then the internet of things IoT is brought up these days, it conjures images of Alexa, Siri and Cortana. These personal assistants can help users turn on a smart light bulb, flick on the oven and get you the day’s news, all in one fell swoop. However, IoT has evolved far...

Pwn2Own Expands Into Industrial Control Systems Hacking

Industrial control systems ICS used to manage critical infrastructure and manufacturing will be the main target in next year’s popular Pwn2Own’s annual hacking competition. Over the past few years, Pwn2Own – a hacking contest that draws in white-hat hackers looking for fame and fortune through...

France's 'Secure' Telegram Replacement Hacked in an Hour

The French Government last week launched a custom messaging application called Tchap, touting it as being “more secure than Telegram.” One small snag however: The platform has already – quelle dommage! – been hacked. French security researcher Robert Baptiste, a.k.a. Elliot Alderson, downloaded t...

Microsoft Issues Multiple Critical Patches for Edge Browser

Microsoft patched a bevy of critical bugs impacting its Edge browser that could allow an attacker to hijack a targeted PC simply by steering a victim to a rigged website harboring specially crafted exploit code. In all, Microsoft tackled four critical Edge vulnerabilities, part of the company’s...

In County Crippled by Hurricane, Water Utility Targeted in Ransomware Attack

A “critical water utility” has been targeted in a recent ransomware attack, significantly impeding its ability to provide service in the week after Hurricane Florence hit the East Coast of the U.S. The Onslow Water and Sewer Authority ONWASA said in a Monday release that a “sophisticated ransomwa...

ThreatList: Credential Theft Spikes by Triple Digits in U.S.

Credential theft was substantially up in the United States during the third quarter – even as declines were charted in Europe and Asia. What credentials go for on the Dark Web. Periodic analysis from Blueliv shows a whopping 141 percent increase in compromised credentials from North American...

Four Critical Flaws Patched in Adobe Digital Edition

Adobe on Tuesday issued patches for 16 vulnerabilities spanning several of its products. The most serious of those flaws, four critical glitches in Adobe Digital Edition, could enable arbitrary code-execution. Adobe Digital Editions is an reader software program used for acquiring, managing and...

Newly Published Exploit Code Used to Spread Mirai Variant

Qihoo 360 Netlab researchers reported on Friday that they are tracking an uptick in botnet activity associated with a variant of Mirai. Targeted are ports 23 and 2323 on internet-connected devices made by ZyXEL Communications that are using default admin/CenturyL1nk and admin/QwestM0dem telnet...

Google Warns of DoS and RCE Bugs in Dnsmasq

Seven flaws in what is known as Dnsmasq can be exploited by attackers who can use the bugs to carry out remote code execution, information exposure or a denial of service attacks against affected devices. Google researchers identified the flaws in a research paper published Monday, the same day a...

Nigerian BEC Scams Hit 500 Companies in 50 Countries

Nigerian cybercriminals targeting industrial firms have stolen a slew of sensitive technical drawings, network diagrams, cost estimates, and project plans already this year. The data, exfiltrated by a cocktail of different spyware programs, wasn’t stolen from just executives, but also operators,...

Emergency Update Patches Zero Day in Microsoft Malware Protection Engine

Microsoft made quick work of what two prominent Google researchers called the worst Windows vulnerability in recent memory, releasing an emergency patch Monday night, 48 hours after Google’s private disclosure was made. The mystery Windows zero day CVE-2017-0290 was in the Microsoft Malware...

Apple Patches iTunes, iCloud for Windows, Xcode Server

Apple’s iTunes and iCloud software for Windows PCs received updates on Thursday for vulnerabilities that could allow for the disclosure of personal information and arbitrary code execution. In addition to the Windows fixes, Apple also alerted Mac and iOS app developers to nearly a dozen security...

Cisco Warns of IOS Flaw Vulnerable to ShadowBrokers Attack

Cisco is warning its customers of new activity around the ShadowBrokers data dump, indicating that all versions of its IOS, IOS XE and IOS XR software are vulnerable to one of the many exploits released more than a month ago. “Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team PSIRT is aware of...

Google Play Hit With Rash of Auto-Rooting Malware

Researchers have identified a recent wave of malware targeting the Google Play app marketplace that entices users to download utilities and games that when installed surreptitiously root devices. The exploit, which mobile security firm Lookout calls autorooting malware, gives attackers complete...

Stagefright Variant 'Metaphor' Puts Millions Of Samsung, LG and HTC Phones At Risk

Millions of Android users are at risk of a new Metaphor exploit that can take over Samsung, LG and HTC phones in under 20 seconds. The hack gives attackers access to the targeted phones including the ability to inject malware and take control over key smartphone functions. Discovered by...

OpenSSH Implementations with X11Forwarding Enabled Should Heed Recent Security Update

Users who choose to enable X11Forwarding in OpenSSH, or those who use software products that re-enable it, should pay close attention to last Wednesday’s OpenSSH security update. The latest version of the open source implementation of the SSH protocol patches a flaw that exposes it to command...

Five-Year 'Dust Storm' APT Campaign Seen Targeting Japanese Critical Infrastructure

A five-year campaign primarily focused on extracting sensitive information from Japanese oil, gas, and electric utilities was outlined by researchers on Tuesday. Referred to as Operation Dust Storm .PDF by researchers at Cylance, the campaign has managed to stay persistent over the years, and...

Android Stagefright Exploit Code Released to Public

Joshua Drake, the researcher who found the so-called Stagefright vulnerability in Android, today released exploit code to the public, which he hopes will be used to test systems’ exposure to the flaw. The move comes more than a month after vulnerability details were released in August during...

Google Fixes Sandbox Escape in Chrome

Google has patched a high-risk vulnerability in its Chrome browser that allows an attacker to escape the Chrome sandbox. That vulnerability is one of 37 bugs fixed in version 43 of Chrome. Six of those flaws are rated as high risks and Google paid out more than $38,000 in rewards to researchers w...

APT Group Embeds C&C Data on TechNet Pages

The so-called Deputy Dog APT group has surfaced again with a means of keeping its command and control servers under wraps that involves Microsoft’s TechNet online resources. New research published last week by Microsoft and FireEye revealed targeted attacks against organizations have been...

Lessons Learned in Building a Vulnerability Coordination Program

CANCUN – Bounty programs are mislabeled creatures, too often pigeonholed as a payoff for finding individual vulnerabilities in software. Wrong. “The name bug bounty is actually a false categorization of what is truly just an incentive program,” said Katie Moussouris, chief policy officer at...

Ryan Naraine on SAS 2015

Dennis Fisher talks with Ryan Naraine, the long lost co-founder of Threatpost, about the upcoming Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit in Cancun and how much the conference has grown in the last few years. Music by Chris Gonsalves Download: digitalunderground184.mp3...

Edward Snowden Effect on Privacy Attitudes

Serious concessions have been made about privacy post-Snowden, in particular about how personal information is processed and consumed online. Results from a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center of Washington, D.C., show that the Snowden leaks have raised consumers’ consciousness about not...

Adobe Patches 18 Vulnerabilities in Flash

Adobe pushed out security updates for Flash Player this afternoon, addressing 18 different vulnerabilities, all critical, that could allow an attacker to take control of an affected system running the multimedia platform according to a security bulletin posted today. The Patch Tuesday updates,...

Web Editor Vulnerable To XSS Attacks

All versions of an HTML editor used in several Microsoft technologies, including ASP.NET, suffer from a high-risk cross-site scripting XSS vulnerability that could allow an attacker to inject malicious script and glean private information. The problem exists in all versions of RadEditor, a WYSIWY...

Google Patches 31 Flaws in Chrome

Google has patched a long list of serious security vulnerabilities in Chrome, including at least 19 highly rated flaws. The company patched a total of 31 vulnerabilities in Chrome 34 and paid out more than $28,000 in rewards to researchers who reported bugs to Google. Among the security fixes in...

Apple Fixes Security in WebKit, SAfari

Apple updated its Mac OS X Mavericks platform yesterday with a number of security fixes for the Safari browser and WebKit layout engine. The operating system update will move users to OS X Mavericks version 10.9.1. It appears that the broad operating system release is merely a repackaging of a...

JBoss AS Attacks Up Since Exploit Code Disclosed

Attackers are exploiting a two-year-old vulnerability in JBoss Application Servers that enables a hacker to remotely get a shell on a vulnerable webserver. The number of infections has surged since exploit code called pwn.jsp was publicly disclosed Oct. 4. Researchers at Imperva said that a numbe...

Google Fixes Three High-Risk Flaws in Chrome

There is a trio of high-risk security vulnerabilities in Google Chrome that have been patched in a new version of the browser released on Tuesday. The vulnerabilities all are use-after-free bugs, and Google paid a total of $5,000 in rewards to researchers who discovered and reported them. Google...

Patches for Django Framework Fix DoS Vuln

Developers behind the Web framework Django have pushed out a new build that fixes a handful of security issues, including a denial of service vulnerability in the framework’s password hasher. Django 1.4.8, Django 1.5.4, and Django 1.6 beta 4 were released over the weekend and users are urged to...

Another Java 6 Vulnerability Found in the Wild

Unless you have an Oracle product that requires Java 6 or are paying for support for that version of the platform, you’d seen the last publicly available updates as of February. That doesn’t mean attackers have pushed back from targeting Java 6, and that certainly doesn’t mean that organizations...

July 2013 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Updates

A critical Windows kernel vulnerability, publicly disclosed in May by a Google security engineer, will be patched tomorrow when Microsoft releases its July Patch Tuesday security updates. Tavis Ormandy, who has controversially disclosed Windows vulnerability details in the past, made a posting to...

Google Fixes More Than a Dozen Flaws in Chrome 27

Google has released Chrome 27, a new version of its browser that includes a long list of security fixes, many of which are for high-risk vulnerabilities. The company handed out more than $14,000 in rewards to researchers who reported bugs fixed in the latest iteration of Chrome. Google’s security...

Microsoft Patches IE Zero Day Used In Watering Hole Attack

Microsoft wasted no time today delivering a patch for the Internet Explorer 8 vulnerability being exploited in watering hole attacks carried out against the U.S. Department of Labor website and nine others worldwide. Today’s Patch Tuesday security updates also include a fix for IE vulnerabilities...

Attackers Target Older Java Bugs

It’s no secret that Java has moved to the top of the target list for many attackers. It has all the ingredients they love: ubiquity, cross-platform support and, best of all, lots of vulnerabilities. Malware targeting Java flaws has become a major problem, and new statistics show that this epidemi...

Microsoft Releases Updated MS13-036 Patch

Microsoft has released a new version of the MS13-036 patch that was causing some customers’ machines to crash. The company had recommended in the days after the original fix was first released that customers uninstall the MS13-036 patch while Microsoft investigated the cause of the problems. The...

Apple Releases iOS 6.1 With Fixes for More Than 20 Vulnerabilities

Apple has fixed dozens of security vulnerabilities in iOS with the release of version 6.1, including a serious flaw in the kernel and a number of bugs in the WebKit framework. The company also revoked trust in the bad TurkTrust certificates that were discovered late last year. One of the key...

Password Cracker Targets Siemens S7 PLCs

Siemens S7 programmable logic controllers, the same PLC family exploited by the Stuxnet malware, are in the crosshairs of a password-cracking tool that is capable of stealing credentials from industrial control systems. PLCs are microprocessors that automate mechanical processes inside factories,...

Large-Scale Water Holing Attack Campaigns Hitting Key Targets

A new APT-style espionage campaign launched this summer targeting organizations tied to financial services, government agencies and the defense industry used a technique dubbed water holing to entice victims and silently redirect them to sites hosting zero-day exploits. Researchers at RSA Securit...

New PDF Attack Targets Aviation Defense Industry

FireEye reported today it had detected a new critical PDF attack targeting the aviation defense industry. Malware Page exploits a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. An attacker would be able to execute code remotely via a crafted argument to the getIcon...

Newest Java 7 Update Still Exploitable, Researcher Says

UPDATE–Oracle last week patched the two zero-day vulnerabilities in Java that attackers had been exploiting in targeted attacks, but it didn’t take long for researchers to poke more holes in the software. A new bug that allows a complete Java sandbox escape has been identified already, the latest...