Encryption Utility Firm Accused of Bundling Malware Functions in Product

An Italian company that sells what it describes as a legitimate encryption utility is being used as malware packer for the cloud-delivered malicious GuLoader dropper, claim researchers. The tool, according a recent investigation, creates GuLoader samples and helps the malware avoid antivirus...

NSO Group Impersonates Facebook Security Team to Spread Spyware — Report

According to an investigative journalist team, the Israeli authors of the infamous Pegasus mobile spyware, NSO Group, have been using a spoofed Facebook login page, crafted to look like an internal Facebook security team portal, to lure victims in. The news comes as Facebook alleges that NSO Grou...

Hackers Dumpster Dive for Taxpayer Data in COVID-19 Relief Money Scams

Threat actors are using a combination of scams to obtain as well as buy and sell credentials for U.S. taxpayers to steal appropriations from the COVID-19 relief package as well as 2020 tax refunds, new research has found. Researchers from Secureworks Counter Threat Unit CTU have observed an...

VPN Concerns with Unplanned Remote Employees

The volume of employees working from home is steadily increasing, especially as local recruiting limits the number of skilled people. This along with the current state of coronavirus means that throughout the world, spikes in work-from-home policies are putting pressure on IT teams to scale virtu...

Hackers Leak Biopharmaceutical Firm's Data Stolen in Ransomware Attack

The Clop ransomware group attacked biopharmaceutical company ExecuPharm and reportedly leaked some of the company’s compromised data on underground forums. ExecuPharm, a Pennsylvania-based subsidiary of the U.S. biopharmaceutical giant Parexel, provides clinical trial management tools for...

Unique P2P Architecture Gives DDG Botnet 'Unstoppable' Status

The coin-mining botnet known as DDG has seen a flurry of activity since the beginning of the year, releasing 16 different updates over the course of the past three months. Most notably, its operators have adopted a proprietary peer-to-peer P2P mechanism that has turned the DDG into a highly...

Tekya Malware Threatens Millions of Android Users via Google Play

Researchers have discovered a new family of auto-clicker malware that commits mobile ad fraud, lurking in 56 apps on the Google Play store. Collectively, they have been downloaded nearly a million times worldwide. A team from Check Point Software recently discovered the malware, dubbed Tekya, whi...

Cynet Offers Free Threat Assessment for Mid-Sized and Large Organizations

Visibility into an environment attack surface is the fundamental cornerstone to sound security decision making. However, the standard process of 3rd party threat assessment as practiced today is both time consuming and expensive. Cynet changes the rules of the game with a free threat assessment...

SMS Phishing Campaign Targets Mobile Bank App Users in North America

A mobile phishing campaign that targeted customers of more than a dozen North American banks, including Chase, Royal Bank of Canada and TD Bank, managed to hook nearly 4,000 victims. The attacks used an automated SMS tool to blast bogus security text messages to mobile phone users between June an...

U.S. Finance Sector Hit with Targeted Backdoor Campaign

The financial services sector in the U.S. found itself under a barrage of cyberattacks last month, all bent on delivering a powerful backdoor called Minebridge. The attack chain employed a known method called “VBA Stomping” to avoid detection. According to researchers at FireEye, the campaigns,...

The Best Templates for Posting Cybersecurity Jobs

The cybersecurity of a company is heavily reliant upon the skills and knowledge of the people who install, manage and operate its security products. This means that recruiting and nurturing the best security team possible should be a CISO’s top priority. Cynet’s Ultimate Cybersecurity Job Posting...

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...

For $8.6M, Cisco Settles Suit Over Bug-Riddled Video Surveillance Software

Cisco Systems has agreed to pay $8.6 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged it sold video security software with known security vulnerabilities to U.S. federal and state governments. The litigation, originally brought in 2011, was filed under the False Claims Act, claiming that the software...

Wipro Attackers Have Operated Under the Radar for Years

New details are emerging in the April attack on systems consulting behemoth Wipro, which saw its network hacked and used for mounting attacks on a dozen of its customers. In a fresh analysis of the indicators of compromise IOCs, Flashpoint analysts said that the cyberattackers have actually been...

Evil TeamViewer Attacks Under the Guise of the U.S. State Department

UPDATE A targeted, email-borne attack against embassy officials and government finance authorities globally is making use of a malicious attachment disguised as a top-secret U.S. document. It weaponizes TeamViewer, the popular remote-access and desktop-sharing software, to gain full control of th...

ThreatList: Bad Bots Account for a Fifth of All Web Traffic, FinServ Hit the Worst

About a fifth of all web traffic 20.4 percent comes from bad bots, which continue to attack daily in automated offensives on websites, mobile apps and APIs. That’s worse for some verticals, like the banking and finance sector, which was hit the hardest last year. That’s according to the Distil...

MAGA 'Safe Space' App Developer Threatens Security Researcher

UPDATE A newly released 63red Safe mobile app that aims to help wary Trump supporters find “safe” and conservative-friendly places to wear Make America Great Again MAGA gear turns out to have a host of security issues, according to one researcher. Meanwhile, Scott Wallace, the Oklahoma-based mobi...

Researchers Break IPsec VPN Connections with 20-Year-Old Protocol Flaw

A new Bleichenbacher oracle cryptographic attack has been set loose on the world, using a 20-year-old protocol flaw to compromise the Internet Key Exchange IKE protocol used to secure IP communications. Specifically, the attack targets IKE’s handshake implementation used for IPsec-based VPN...

Simple Security Flaws Could Steer Ships Off Course

A proof-of-concept attack could cause ships to dangerously veer off course, and it all stems from simple security issues, including the failure to change default passwords or segment networks. Researcher Ken Munro, with Pen Test Partners, on Monday showed how the attack could work and how it’s...

Schneider Electric Patches Critical RCE Vulnerability

Researchers discovered a critical remote code execution vulnerability in two Schneider Electric industrial control related products that could give attackers the ability to disrupt or shut down plant operations. Tenable Research, who discovered the vulnerability CVE-2018-8840 and created a...

Popular ‘Circle with Disney’ Parental Control System Riddled With 23 Vulnerabilities

The makers of the popular parental control system called Circle with Disney patched 23 vulnerabilities over the weekend. The bugs ran the gamut from memory corruption and denial of service, to SSL validation vulnerabilities and impact all devices managed on a network. Circle with Disney is a $90...

Microsoft Programming Error is Behind Dangerous Kernel Bug, Researchers Claim

Researchers claim a programming error in the Microsoft Windows kernel cracks the door open for malicious executables to bypass security software. The flaw, according to security firm EnSilo, has been present on previous versions of Windows dating back to Windows 2000 and can be found on Windows 1...

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...

Siemens, Bayer Expected to Patch Medical Devices Hit By WannaCry

It was initially thought just Windows machines were vulnerable but it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that medical devices and industrial control systems were subjected to the perils of this weekend’s WannaCry ransomware outburst as well. Over the past few days the Department of Homeland...

Firefox 51 Begins Warning Users of Insecure HTTP Connections

Mozilla Foundation took steps with the release of Firefox 51 on Tuesday to communicate more clearly to users when they land on a HTTP website collecting personal information such as passwords that the site may not be secure. Going forward, Firefox will display a gray lock icon with a red...

Google Patches Android 'Custom Boot Mode' Vulnerability

A high-risk Android custom boot mode vulnerability was one of many bugs patched by Google as part of its January Android Security Bulletin released earlier this week. On Thursday, the IBM security team that discovered the vulnerability disclosed details about the flaw which leaves Nexus 6 and 6P...

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 ...

Critical Android Vulnerability 'Drammer' Impacts Millions of Handsets

Researchers have published details of a new method for exploiting a problem with Android devices tied to a hardware flaw within DRAM memory modules that can allow attackers to get root-level access to target machines. The vulnerability, dubbed Drammer, could give an attacker root access to millio...

Apple Squashes 68 Security Bugs With Sierra Release

With the release of macOS Sierra 10.12 Tuesday, Apple snuffed out dozens of lingering security vulnerabilities in OS X El Capitan and Yosemite. Along with updates to its OS, Apple addressed security bugs in its Safari web browser and macOS Server in separate security bulletins, also released...

Google Patches Quadrooter Vulnerabilities in Android

The Quadrooter vulnerabilities made a lot of people take notice because the scale of affected Android devices more than 900,000 put it on a level with Stagefright and other bugs that impact a large majority of the Android ecosystem. Some details on the four vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed...

Apple Patches Trident Vulnerabilities in OS X, Safari

The disclosure a week ago that three Apple iOS zero days were used to spy on a political dissident from the United Arab Emirates included high-profile exposes of the activities of a cyber arms-dealing outfit in Israel known as the NSO Group and an emergency update for iOS. Last night, Apple...

Range of Mousejack Attack More Than Doubles

The Mousejack vulnerability raised awareness of the potential risks introduced by a wireless mouse or keyboard to the enterprise. From a relatively short distance, a hacker could send packets to the device that generate keystrokes on the host computer rather than mouse clicks. In short order,...

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...

Juniper ScreenOS Backdoor Password

Researchers from two security firms have uncovered the password guarding one of the backdoors discovered in Juniper Networks’ ScreenOS, the operating system behind its NetScreen enterprise-grade firewalls. Fox-IT and Rapid7 found the secret code, which was disguised to look like debug code, said...

Emergency Adobe Flash Zero Day Patch Arrives Ahead of Schedule

Adobe has decided to patch the zero day vulnerability that was disclosed in Flash Player earlier this week today — instead of next week as originally scheduled. According to a security bulletin Adobe posted this morning the update actually fixes three vulnerabilities in the software, but the most...

Control Flow Guard Mitigation Bypass

Introduced in Windows 8.1 Update 3 and Windows 10, Control Flow Guard was Microsoft’s latest antidote to memory-corruption attacks. The technology was meant to stand up to attacks that had long ago figured out how to bypass previous-generation protections such as Address Space Layout Randomizatio...

Ubuntu Patches Privilege-Escalation Bug

There is a privilege-escalation vulnerability in several versions of Ubuntu that results from the fact that the operating system fails to check permissions when users are creating files in some specific circumstances. Security researcher Philip Pettersson discovered the vulnerability and reported...

OPM Warned About Vulnerabilities, Governance Weaknesses

It’s hardly a surprise that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management OPM was targeted by nation-state hackers, given the sensitivity of the personal information the office stored. It’s also no shocker that OPM has been successfully infiltrated more than once given the state of its information...

Google Fixes 159 Flaws in Chrome

Google updates its Chrome browser on a very aggressive timeline, often a couple of times a month. Usually, each update includes a handful of security fixes, maybe 12 or 15. On Tuesday, the company released Chrome 38, which patched a staggering 159 vulnerabilities. The huge majority of those...

AskMen Purportedly Compromised by Nuclear Pack Kit

Users who visit AskMen.com, a men’s entertainment and lifestyle portal, are being hit with malicious code, potentially stemming from the Nuclear Pack exploit kit, researchers announced today. When a user stumbles across the site – or a localized version aus.askmen.com, etc. of it – malicious code...

PHP Updated to Fix Heartbleed, Other Bugs

The maintainers of PHP have released two new versions of the scripting language that fix a number of bugs, including a pair of vulnerabilities related to OpenSSL. Versions 5.4.28 and 5.5.12 both contain that important patch, as well as fixes for more than a dozen other vulnerabilities. The fix fo...

Volume of NTP Amplification Attacks Getting Louder

No security arena is better representative of the cat and mouse game between hackers and defenders than DDoS attacks and prevention/mitigation. Enterprises and service providers have invested heavily in DDoS mitigations in order to keep critical services available. That’s forced hackers to crank ...

Apache Update Resolves Security Vulnerabilities

Apache has released version 2.4.9 of its ubiquitous HTTP web server HTTPD, resolving two security vulnerabilities and a number of other bugs in the process. The Apache Software Foundation is recommending HTTPD 2.4.9 over all previous versions. The first patch fixes CVE-2014-0098. It aims to...

IE Zero Day Exploits Increase Just Before Patch

Attackers have increased their exploitation of an Internet Explorer zero day vulnerability CVE-2014-0322 set to be fixed by Microsoft in its regularly scheduled patch Tuesday release later this afternoon. According to a Websense report, the exploit source code deployed in at least two incidents –...

Google Fixes 28 Security Flaws in Chrome 33

Google Chrome 33 is out, and the new version of the browser includes fixes for 28 security vulnerabilities, including a number of high-severity bugs. The company paid out more than $13,000 in rewards to researchers who reported vulnerabilities that were fixed in this release. One of the...

New IE Zero Day Found Targeting Military Intelligence

Attackers were able to compromise the U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars’ website this week and serve up a previously unknown zero day exploit in Internet Explorer 10, and while motivation behind the campaign is still unclear, experts are speculating its aim was to procure military intelligence...

October 2013 Oracle Java Critical Patch Update

On Tuesday, for the first time, Java security updates were included with the quarterly Oracle Critical Patch Update – and just as quickly, Java wasted no time elevating itself as the top concern for Oracle admins and security experts. Of the 51 Java patches released, 50 allow for remote code...

Google Fixes Five Bugs in Chrome 18

Google has fixed five security vulnerabilities in its Chrome browser, including three high-severity flaws. One of the less-severe vulnerabilities fixed in Chrome 18 is a race condition in the browser’s sandbox. This round of patches in Chrome is one of the rare occasions when the company didn’t...

U.S. Says Cybercrime a Major National Security Threat

A new report from the National Security Council warns that international cybercrime has reached the upper echelon of threats of to the security of the United States and is responsible for as much as $1 billion in losses in just one year in the U.S. The report, which focuses on a number of broad...

New Adobe PDF Zero-Day Flaw Under Attack

Adobe today sounded an alarm for a new zero-day flaw in its PDF Reader/Acrobat software, warning that hackers are actively exploiting the vulnerability in-the-wild. Details on the vulnerability are not yet public but the sudden warning from Adobe is a sure sign that rigged PDF documents are being...