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...

Kia Motors Hit With $20M Ransomware Attack – Report

So far, Kia Motors America has publicly acknowledged an “extended system outage,” but ransomware gang DoppelPaymer claimed it has locked down the company’s files in a cyberattack that includes a $20 million ransom demand. That $20 million will gain Kia a decryptor and a guarantee to not to publis...

Let’s Encrypt to Replace 200M Certificates a Day

Let’s Encrypt just announced an infrastructure makeover which means the open certificate authority CA is able to re-issue up to 200 million certificates in a 24-hour period, something the service said could be necessary in “some of the worst scenarios.” The upgrade comes a year after Let’s Encryp...

Hacker Tries to Poison Water Supply of Florida Town

A threat actor hacked into the computer system of the water treatment facility in Oldsmar, Fla., and tried to poison the town’s water supply by raising the levels of sodium hydroxide, or lye, in the water supply. The attack happened just two days before NFL’s Super Bowl LV was held nearby in Tamp...

New Malware Hijacks Kubernetes Clusters to Mine Monero

Researchers have discovered never-before-seen malware, dubbed Hildegard, that is being used by the TeamTNT threat group to target Kubernetes clusters. While Hildegard, initially detected in January 2021, is initially being used to launch cryptojacking operations, researchers believe that the...

Magento Web Skimmers Piggyback in Ongoing Costway Website Compromise

Two web skimmers have been discovered on the payment webpages of Costway, one of the top retailers in North America and Europe, which sells appliances, furniture and more. The skimmers are targeting consumers’ credit-card payment details. In a twist, researchers say one of these web skimmers is...

23M Gamer Records Exposed in VIPGames Leak

VIPGames.com, a free platform with a total of 56 available classic board and card games like Hearts, Crazy Eights, Euchre, Dominoes, Backgammon and others, has exposed the personal data of tens of thousands of users. In all, more than 23 million records for more than 66,000 users were left expose...

Millions of Social Profiles Leaked by Chinese Data-Scrapers

More than 400GB of public and private profile data for 214 million social-media users from around the world has been exposed to the internet – including details for celebrities and social-media influencers in the U.S. and elsewhere. The leak stems from a misconfigured ElasticSearch database owned...

New Year, New Ransomware: Babuk Locker Targets Large Corporations

Only a few days into the new year, one of the first new ransomware strains of 2021 has been discovered. Dubbed Babuk Locker, the ransomware appears to have successfully compromised five companies thus far, according to new research. The research author, Chuong Dong, a computer science student at...

6 Questions Attackers Ask Before Choosing an Asset to Exploit

In the past decade or so, we’ve seen a massive shift toward the cloud. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated pivot to remote work has only accelerated this cloud trend, forcing blue-teamers to be more agile to protect their attack surfaces. While defenders are adapting to support cloud-based...

The SolarWinds Perfect Storm: Default Password, Access Sales and More

SECOND UPDATE A perfect storm may have come together to make SolarWinds such a successful attack vector for the global supply-chain cyberattack discovered this week. Researchers said that includes its use of a default password “SolarWinds123” that gave attackers an open door into its...

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...

Kegtap, Singlemalt, Winekey Malware Serve Up Ransomware to Hospitals

The boozy names might sound like the kind of thing conjured up in a frat-house common room, but malware families Kegtap, Singlemalt and Winekey are being used to gain initial network access in potentially lethal ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations in the midst of a global pandemic,...

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...

Mobile Browser Bugs Open Safari, Opera Users to Malware

A set of address-bar spoofing vulnerabilities that affect a number of mobile browsers open the door for malware delivery, phishing and disinformation campaigns. The bugs, reported by Rapid7 and independent researcher Rafay Baloch, affect six browsers, ranging from the common Apple Safari, Opera...

Facebook Small Business Grants Spark Identity-Theft Scam

Cybercriminals are exploiting a $100 million Facebook grant program designed for small businesses impacted by the pandemic, to phish personal information and take over Facebook accounts. The perpetrators are trying to dupe people into thinking that the social network is handing out free money to...

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...

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...

How to Safeguard Data When the Majority of Your Workforce is Remote

Before our current situation, you and your teams may have implemented a comprehensive data protection plan. The scope of change businesses are currently facing is something none of us could have predicted. These changes will continue to impact how we work in the future. How can you be sure your...

Kubernetes Falls to Cryptomining via Machine-Learning Framework

A unique cyberattack campaign that targets Kubeflow, a machine-learning toolkit for Kubernetes, has affected large swathes of container clusters, according to Microsoft. The Kubeflow open-source project is a popular framework for running machine-learning ML tasks in Kubernetes. According to an...

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...

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...

'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...

Covid-19 Spurs Facial Recognition Tracking, Privacy Fears

In the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, facial recognition technology is being adopted globally as a way to track the virus’ spread. But privacy experts worry that, in the rush to implement COVID-19 tracking capabilities, important and deep rooted issues around data collection and...

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...

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...

Tesla Autopilot Duped By 'Phantom' Images

Researchers said that autopilot systems used by popular cars – including the Tesla Model X – can be fooled into detecting fake images, projected by drones on the road or on surrounding billboards, as real. Attackers could potentially leverage this design hole to trigger the systems to brake or...

Man Sentenced in ATM Skimming Conspiracy

A New York state man has been sentenced to five years for an elaborate ATM skimming conspiracy that allowed him to steal at least $390,141 from victims. Bogdan Rusu, 39, of Queens, NY pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme, which used secret card-reading devices and pinhole cameras on...

Amazon's Blink Smart Security Cameras Open to Hijack

Multiple high-severity vulnerabilities have been discovered in Amazon-owned Blink XT2 security camera systems, which if exploited could give attackers complete control over them. The internet of things IoT cameras not to be confused with the Blink open-source browser engine, consist of a wireless...

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 ...

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...

Podcast: Vendors, Suppliers, Partners – Oh My! Who Will Increase Your Risk of Account Takeover?

Your users’ login credentials are available for sale on the criminal underground — and criminals know it. For the third year running, the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Report calls out the use of weak and stolen credentials as the most common hacking tactic. This podcast is sponsored by SpyCloud The...

Podcast: A Utility Ransomware Attack, Post-Hurricane

A “critical water utility” was hit by a recent ransomware attack, significantly impeding the 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 ransomware attack… has left the utili...

FBI’s BEC Crackdown Leads To 74 Arrests Globally

The FBI announced Monday the results of a major crackdown on scammers behind business email compromise BEC campaigns that resulted in 74 arrests and the retrieval of millions of dollars. Several U.S. federal authorities and police from other countries were involved in Operation WireWire, a...

Intel Halts Spectre Fixes On Older Chips, Citing Limited Ecosystem Support

Intel has halted patches for an array of older chips that would protect them against the Spectre vulnerability, according to a recent microcode update. The microcode update shows that its older products – including Wolfdale, Bloomfield, Clarksfield, Gulftown, Harpertown, Jasper Forest, SoFIA 3GR,...

Oracle MICROS POS Vulnerability Puts 300,000 Systems at Risk

Point-of-sale systems are rich targets for attackers, given their status as a gateway to credit card information, customer and back-office data and other goodies. A recently patched vulnerability in Oracle’s MICROS POS system software can lead to attackers gaining full access to the systems, say...

Cisco Patches Critical VPN Vulnerability

Cisco Systems released a patch Monday to fix a critical security vulnerability in its Secure Sockets Layer VPN solution called Adaptive Security Appliance. The vulnerability, according to a Cisco Security Advisory, could allow an unauthenticated and remote attacker to execute remote code on...

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...

Patched Flash Player Sandbox Escape Leaked Windows Credentials

One of the patches included in Tuesday’s Adobe Flash Player update was a do-over after the researcher who privately reported the problem earlier this year discovered the original patch incompletely resolved the issue. Dutch researcher Bjorn Ruytenberg disclosed details after Adobe updated the...

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,...

Siemens Patches Critical Intel AMT Flaw in Industrial Products

Siemens patched two critical vulnerabilities that affected its industrial products this week. One, tied to a recently disclosed flaw in Active Management Technology – a function of certain Intel processors – could have allowed an attacker to gain system privileges. Another vulnerability could hav...

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,...

Chrome Browser Hack Opens Door to Credential Theft

A vulnerability in Google’s Chrome browser allows hackers to automatically download a malicious file onto a victim’s PC that could be used to steal credentials and launch SMB relay attacks. Bosko Stankovic, information security engineer at DefenseCode, found the flaw in the default configuration ...

OpenVPN Audits Yield Mixed Bag

Two security audits of OpenVPN were recently carried out to look for bugs, backdoors, and other defects in the open source software; one found the software was cryptographically sound, while another found two legitimate vulnerabilities. The news comes after it was announced in December the SSL VP...

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...

Flash Player Bug An Eavesdropper's Delight

Adobe yesterday patched a not-so-sweet 16 Flash Player vulnerabilities, including a zero day under attack. While not much is known about the targeted attacks using the Flash Player bug, or its victims, details have surfaced on another patched flaw that is a potential privacy nightmare...

VeraCrypt Audit Under Way; Email Mystery Cleared Up

Update To say the VeraCrypt audit, which begins today, got off to an inauspicious start would be an understatement. On Sunday, two weeks after the announcement that the open source file and disk encryption software would be formally scrutinized for security vulnerabilities, executives at one of t...

Caution Urged over Patched Windows USB Driver Flaw

USB-related vulnerabilities make people nervous; you need look no further than Stuxnet and BadUSB to see the dangers associated with infected portable storage devices and peripherals. Yesterday, Microsoft patched a flaw in the Windows USB Mass Storage Class Driver that could put some people on...

December 2015 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Bulletins

Forgive your local Windows admin if they’re a little shy on holiday cheer in the coming days. Blame instead Microsoft for foisting upon them on Tuesday 71 security patches, including two for vulnerabilities in Office and the Windows kernel currently under attack. Microsoft also issued a separate...