Why Retailers Fail to Stop Shopping Bots

In the 1970s the United States encountered an “oil embargo” that dramatically curtailed people from being able to purchase gasoline for their vehicles. “No Gas Today” signs were everywhere. Gas rationing was imposed by only allowing car owners to buy gas based on whether the final numbers on thei...

Podcast: Microsoft Exchange Server Attack Onslaught Continues

Weeks after the disclosure around the ProxyLogon group of security bugs, exploitation attempts against unpatched Microsoft Exchange servers have skyrocketed. Derek Manky Derek Manky, Chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs, said that last week researcher...

Passwords, Private Posts Exposed in Hack of Gab Social Network

Distributed Denial of Secrets DDoSecrets, a self-proclaimed “transparency collective,” claim they have received more than 70 gigabytes of data exfiltrated from social media network Gab. Gab, which touts itself as “a social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow o...

Researcher Builds Parler Archive Amid Amazon Suspension

A security researcher said she has scraped and is archiving 99 percent of Parler’s public posts, as the social-media network goes offline following suspensions from Amazon, Apple and Google. Archived content includes public posts from the social-media site. These posts reportedly included Parler...

Biden to Appoint Cybersecurity Advisor to NSC – Report

President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly tapped the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity director to serve in a brand-new cyber-role on his National Security Council. Anne Neuberger, a more than 10-year veteran of the NSA and its cyber-chief since 2019, will become the country’s deputy nation...

Defending Against State and State-Sponsored Threat Actors

Security threats from states and state-sponsored actors have been around since before the field of cybersecurity was defined. They have now evolved to cyberspace, and present unique challenges for defenders. While there are fundamental differences between activist and criminal activity, and those...

Cayman Islands Bank Records Exposed in Open Azure Blob

A Cayman Island investment firm has removed years of backups, which up until recently were easily available online thanks to a misconfigured Microsoft Azure blob. The blob’s single URL led to vast stores of files including personal banking information, passport data and even online banking PINs —...

Xfinity, McAfee Brands Abused by Parked Domains in Active Campaigns

Parked domains, which act as aliases and redirect to other websites, can send visitors to malicious or unwanted landing pages or turn entirely malicious at any point in time – as evidenced by a recent Emotet campaign, a separate effort abusing Comcast and McAfee brands, and an election-themed...

Facebook, News and XSS Underpin Complex Browser Locker Attack

A sophisticated “browser locker” campaign is spreading via Facebook, ultimately pushing a tech-support scam. The effort is more advanced than most, because it involves exploiting a cross-site scripting XSS vulnerability on a popular news site, researchers said. Browser lockers are a type of...

Overlay Malware Targets Windows Users with a DLL Hijack Twist

Brazilians are being warned of a new overlay malware targeting Windows users in order to siphon victims’ financial data and drain their bank accounts. Researchers say what the malware, dubbed Vizom, lacks in sophistication it makes up for in its creative abuse of the Windows ecosystem. Trusteer, ...

RAINBOWMIX Apps in Google Play Serve Up Millions of Ad Fraud Victims

Researchers with White Ops have uncovered a scam to deliver millions of out-of-context OOC ads through a group of more than 240 Android applications on the official Google Play store, which the team said were collectively delivering more than 15 million impressions per day at their peak. The apps...

Free Apple iPhone 12? Chatbot Phish Spreads Via Texts

A mobile phishing campaign is spreading via text messages purporting to come from an Apple chatbot – and offering “free trials” of iPhone 12. The iPhone 12 is due to be released in October, and the buzz is high for Appleheads who are anxiously awaiting the launch. Cybercriminals are taking...

TikTok Fixes Flaws That Opened Android App to Compromise

Researchers have disclosed four high-severity flaws in the Android version of TikTok that could have easily been exploited by a seemingly benign third-party Android app. If successful, an attacker could fully compromise the target’s TikTok account. Public disclosure of the vulnerabilities was...

Microsoft Warns of Cyberattacks on Trump, Biden Election Campaigns

The U.S. election campaigns of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have been targeted in a slew of recent cyberattacks, Microsoft said on Thursday. With the U.S. presidential election a mere two months away, in recent weeks cyberattacks targeting people and organizations involved in it have ramped up...

BEC Wire Transfers Average $80K Per Attack

The average wire-transfer loss from business email compromise BEC attacks is significantly on the rise: In the second quarter of 2020 the average was $80,183, up from $54,000 in the first quarter. That’s according to the recently released Anti-Phishing Working Group APWG’s Phishing Activity Trend...

Cyberattacks Hit Thousands of Canadian Tax, Benefit Accounts

Canadian authorities said almost 15,000 online accounts for various government services have been targeted in three recent waves of credential-stuffing attacks. These accounts could give attackers access to Canadians’ tax-related and benefits information, coronavirus relief fund money and more...

DJI Drone App Riddled With Privacy Issues, Researchers Allege

Leading commercial drone maker DJI is hitting back against researcher allegations that its Android mobile application is riddled with privacy holes. One includes that the app continues to run in the background even after it’s been closed and collects sensitive data from users without consent. The...

Sharp Spike in Ransomware in U.S. as Pandemic Inspires Attackers

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape the face of cybercrime in 2020, with ransomware and attacks on internet of things IoT devices seeing sharp increases in the U.S. for the first half of the year. According to SonicWall’s 2020 Cyber Threat Report ransomware attacks are up, particularly in th...

LokiBot Redux Attacks Massive List of Common Android Apps

Researchers have discovered a new variant of the LokiBot trojan called BlackRock, that’s attacking not just financial and banking apps, but also a massive list of well-known and commonly used brand-name apps on Android devices. The apps targeted include: Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Grinder, Instagram...

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...

Phishing Campaign Targeting Office 365, Exploits Brand Names

Researchers have discovered a sophisticated new phishing campaign that uses recognized brand names to bypass security filters as well as to trick victims into giving up Microsoft Office 365 credentials to gain access to corporate networks. A new report from Check Point Software first observed the...

Coronavirus-Themed Cyberattacks Drop — Microsoft

A report from the Microsoft Threat Protection Intelligence Team found that Covid-19-themed cyberattacks peaked in early March and are now trending significantly down. The report also noted that those attacks have been a drop in the bucket compared to overall threats observed over the last four...

Theft of CIA's 'Vault 7' Secrets Tied to 'Woefully Lax" Security

A just-released report on the 2016 Central Intelligence Agency CIA data breach, which led to the Vault 7 document dump on WikiLeaks, blames “woefully lax” security by the nation’s top spy agency. The conclusions were part of an internal 2017 Department of Justice DoJ report on the CIA breach. On...

Protecting Unmanaged & IoT Devices: Why Traditional Security Tools Fail

We are currently experiencing the single largest explosion of network-enabled devices that we’ve ever witnessed. Many of these devices are running on the same networks as critical business solutions and may even be connecting directly to critical assets or delivering a critical capability...

Android 'ActionSpy' Malware Targets Turkic Minority Group

Researchers have discovered a new Android spyware, dubbed ActionSpy, targeting victims across Tibet, Turkey and Taiwan. The spyware is distributed either via watering-hole websites or fake websites. Researchers believe ActionSpy is being used in ongoing campaigns to target Uyghur victims. The...

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...

New iOS Jailbreak Tool Works on iPhone Models iOS 11 to iOS 13.5

A hacker team has released a new method to jailbreak iPhones that they claim uses a zero-day exploit that allows them to jailbreak iPhones running iOS 11 through Apple’s most recent version of its mobile operating system – iOS 13.5. Calling it a “big milestone for jailbreaking,” one of its...

Chatbooks Confirms Breach After ‘Shiny Hunters’ Sell Data

Photo-print service Chatbooks has confirmed a data breach, a week after cybercriminals listed a database containing customer email addresses, passwords and more for sale on an underground forum. The Utah-based company allows users to create customized photo books. Nate Quigley, CEO of Chatbooks,...

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...

U.S. Universities Hit With 'Adult Dating' Spear-Phishing Attack

Several U.S. universities have been targeted in a widespread spear-phishing attack that uses adult dating as a lure. In reality, the emails spread the Hupigon remote access trojan RAT, known to be leveraged by state-sponsored threat actors. Researchers from Proofpoint warned that the ongoing...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

Chrome in Android Leaks Device Fingerprinting Info

Google has issued a partial fix for an Android issue dating back to 2015 – after originally rejecting the bug report on the grounds of the mobile OS “working as intended.” The issue – which still doesn’t have a CVE designation despite being partially addressed as a problem – has to do with how...

Critical Vulnerability Found in Cisco Video Surveillance Manager

A critical vulnerability in the Cisco Video Surveillance Manager software has been uncovered, which could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to log in and execute arbitrary commands as the root user. The issue is a simple one: Affected versions contain static user credentials for the root...

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...

Mozilla Patches Critical Bug in Thunderbird

Mozilla issued a critical security update to its popular open-source Thunderbird email client. The patch was part of a December release of five fixes that included two bugs rated high and one rated moderate and another low. Mozilla said Thunderbird, which is also serves as a news, RSS and chat...

Android Flaw Allows Attackers to Poison Signed Apps with Malicious Code

Among the four dozen vulnerabilities Google patched this week was a fix for a bug that allowed attackers to inject malicious code into Android apps without affecting an app’s signature verification certificate. The technique allows an attacker to circumvent device anti-malware protection and...

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...

Google Plugs 21 Security Holes in Chrome Browser

Google on Wednesday patched 21 security vulnerabilities in Chrome, including a half dozen rated high severity that were reported by external researchers and were eligible for a bounty. Bug hunters earned a total of $30,000 in bounties, with a top payout of $7,500 to an unnamed researcher for a...

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,...

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...

Angler Adds Keen Team Use After Free IE Vulnerability

Attackers behind the Angler Exploit Kit have added a tweaked version of an exploit for a patched Internet Explorer use-after-free vulnerability. Microsoft patched the vulnerability MS14-056 in last October’s round of Patch Tuesday updates but that hasn’t stopped attackers from adding the...

December 2014 Adobe Reader, Acrobat Security Patches

Adobe is expected to update its Reader and Acrobat software next Tuesday as part of its scheduled security updates, and the updates will, according to an Adobe spokesperson, include patches for a Reader vulnerability disclosed this week by Google’s Project Zero. Researcher James Forshaw, a...

Cisco Patches XSS Flaw in Security Appliances

There’s a reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability in a variety of Cisco security appliances that enables a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the user. The vulnerability affects the Cisco Email Security Appliance, the Cisco Web Security Appliance and...

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...

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 –...

Encrypted PINs Stolen in Target Data Breach

Target confirmed this morning that encrypted PIN data was stolen in the Black Friday data breach that exposed 40 million accounts to fraud. Spokesperson Molly Snyder said the ongoing forensics investigation confirmed that PIN data was accessed as well, contrary to previous claims made by the reta...

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...