Think-Tanks Under Attack by Foreign APTs, CISA Warns

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and the FBI have issued a warning on what they say are persistent, continued cyberattacks by advanced persistent threat APT actors targeting U.S. think-tanks. The attackers are looking to steal sensitive information, acquire user credentia...

Microsoft Revamps ‘Invasive’ M365 Feature After Privacy Backlash

Microsoft has announced what it calls a more privacy-friendly version of its Productivity Score enterprise feature, following backlash from security experts who condemned it as a “full-fledged workplace surveillance tool.” The Productivity Score feature, which was launched as part of the Microsof...

Ticketmaster Scores Hefty Fine Over 2018 Data Breach

Ticketmaster’s UK division has been slapped with a $1.65 million fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office ICO in the UK, over its 2018 data breach that impacted 9.4 million customers. The fine £1.25million has been levied after the ICO found that the company “failed to put appropriate securi...

Adobe Warns Windows, MacOS Users of Critical Acrobat and Reader Flaws

Adobe has fixed critical-severity flaws tied to four CVEs in the Windows and macOS versions of its Acrobat and Reader family of application software services. The vulnerabilities could be exploited to execute arbitrary code on affected products. These critical flaws include a heap-based buffer...

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...

Feds: Iran Behind 'Proud Boys' Email Attacks on Democratic Voters

Federal officials claim that Iranian threat actors are behind two separate email campaigns that assailed Democratic voters this week with threats to “vote for Trump or else.” The campaigns claimed to be from violent extremist group Proud Boys. Two specific email campaigns — one on Tuesday Oct. 20...

Carnival Corp. Ransomware Attack Affects Three Cruise Lines

Hackers accessed personal information of guests, employees and crew for three cruise line brands and the casino operations of Carnival Corp. in a ransomware attack the company suffered on Aug. 15, officials have confirmed. Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line and Seabourn were the brands...

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...

Amazon Prime Day Spurs Spike in Phishing, Fraud Attacks

Cybercriminals are tapping into Amazon’s annual discount shopping campaign for subscribers, Prime Day, with researchers warning of a recent spike in phishing and malicious websites that are fraudulently using the Amazon brand. There has been a spike in the number of new monthly phishing and...

Grindr's Bug Bounty Pledge Doesn't Translate to Security

SAS@Home 2020– After a Grindr security flaw was disclosed this week, the dating site promised it would launch a bug-bounty program in an effort to “keep its service secure.” But Katie Moussouris, CEO of Luta Security and a bug bounty program expert, warned at this week’s SAS@home virtual event th...

Facebook 'SilentFade' Malware Attack Stole Credentials For Years

Facebook has detailed a wide-scale Chinese malware campaign that targeted its ad platform for years and siphoned $4 million from users’ advertising accounts. The campaign was addressed by the social media’s security teams after it first became active. Dubbed SilentFade short for “Silently running...

Telehealth Poll: How Risky Are Remote Doctor Visits?

Telemedicine is enjoying a healthy boom, as more doctors, clinics and hospitals reduce in-person risks associated with COVID-19. Pre-pandemic, .01 percent of healthcare visits were virtual. The percentage today has leveled off to 21 percent, after peaking at 69 percent earlier this year, accordin...

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...

Hackers Dump 20GB of Intel's Confidential Data Online

More than 20 gigabytes of proprietary data and source code from chipmaker Intel Corp. was dumped online by a third party, likely the result of a data breach from earlier this year. The announcement of the “first 20gb release in a series of large Intel leaks” was made by user and IT consultant...

Encryption Under ‘Full-Frontal Nuclear Assault’ By U.S. Bills

Encryption expert Riana Pfefferkorn believes new proposed laws – the EARN IT Act and the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act – pose dire threats to cybersecurity and privacy. In this Threatpost interview, Pfefferkorn, who is associate director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford...

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...

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...

Leaked NHS Docs Reveal Roadmap, Concerns Around Contact-Tracing App

A COVID-19 contact-tracing app to be rolled out by the UK’s National Health Service NHS has been thrust into the spotlight thanks to sensitive documents being leaked via a public Google Drive link. Contact tracing has emerged as a top idea for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and is consider...

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...

Coronavirus Poll Results: Cyberattacks Ramp Up, WFH Prep Uneven

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep the globe and Americans are told to isolate from others, many organizations are sending employees home to work. While most respondents in a Threatpost poll this week said they feel prepared from a security standpoint for this transition, a fifth of them...

Spread of Coronavirus-Themed Cyberattacks Persists with New Attacks

As the coronavirus blows up into a worldwide pandemic, threat actors continue to exploit the disease to spread malware. Just this week, cybersecurity professionals identified a bevy of new threats ranging from coronavirus-themed malware attacks, booby-trapped URLs and credential stuffing scams. O...

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...

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...

News Wrap: Amazon Ring Risks, Stalkerware, and D-Link Router Flaws

Threatpost news editors break down the top stories of the week, including: The Coalition Against Stalkerware launched this week, with the aim of offering a centralized location for helping victims of stalkerware, as well as defining what stalkerware is in the first place. Five U.S. Senators are...

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...

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...

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...

Bug In Git Opens Developer Systems Up to Attack

UPDATE Git repository hosting services GitHub, GitLab and Microsoft VSTS each patched a serious vulnerability on Tuesday that could lead to arbitrary code execution when a developer uses a malicious repository. Developers behind the open-source development Git tool pushed out Git 2.17.1, addressi...

Samsung Patches Six Critical Bugs in Flagship Handsets

Samsung began rolling out patches over the weekend to fix six critical bugs found in its flagship Android handsets as part of its May patch bulletin. Flaws range from a remote code execution bug to a buffer overflow vulnerability, plus a peek-and-poke command bug that leaves memory locations open...

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...

Google Patches Critical Encryption Bug Impacting Pixel, Nexus Phones

Google patched a critical encryption bug found on its Pixel, Pixel 2 and Nexus phones this week along with delivering 49 other fixes, part of its December Pixel / Nexus Security Bulletin. Five of the patches relate to vulnerabilities rated high. One of the patches CVE-2017-13167 is for an elevati...

Chain of 11 Bugs Takes Down Galaxy S8 at Mobile Pwn2Own

The mobile version of the annual Pwn2Own contest wrapped up today in Tokyo with an unprecedented attack chain leveling the Samsung Galaxy S8. Researchers from MWR Labs used 11 vulnerabilities across six different mobile applications to execute code on Samsung’s flagship device and exfiltrate data...

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...

Windows Search Bug Worth Watching, and Squashing

Between Conficker and WannaCry, there was a nearly a decade when network worms went dark. WannaCry changed that, riding into enterprises globally on the coattails of a leaked nation-state exploit. In the months since the May 12 ransomware attack, vendors, researchers and network admins have been ...

Cisco Fixes DoS, Authentication Bypass Vulnerabilities, OSPF Bug

Cisco fixed 15 vulnerabilities this week in more than a dozen products, including two high severity vulnerabilities that could have let an attacker trigger a denial of service condition or bypass local authentication. The more severe bugs fixed on Wednesday exist in the company’s Identity Service...

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...

Russian-Speaking Turla Joins APT Elite

SINT MAARTEN—In the waning moments of his 2016 talk at the Security Analyst Summit, Thomas Rid had a drop-the-mic moment when he disclosed there were likely links between the infamous Moonlight Maze cyberespionage operation of the mid- and late-1990s and the modern-day Turla APT. Today during thi...

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...

St. Jude Faces New Claim Heart Devices are Hackable

St. Jude Medical is facing fresh allegations its heart implant devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks. The claims were introduced by the defense as part of St. Jude’s defamation lawsuit against short seller Muddy Waters and security firm MedSec. In a legal filing submitted Monday, experts hired b...

Old SSH Vulnerability at Center of Credential-Stuffing Attacks

Connected devices aren’t just for DDoS attacks anymore. Researchers at Akamai this week exposed how attackers are using a 12-year-old SSH vulnerability in combination with weak or default credentials to compromise an array of IOT and home networking devices. Those connected things are then being...

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 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...

Patched libarchive Vulnerabilities Have Big Reach

The libarchive programming library was recently patched against three critical memory-related vulnerabilities that could be abused to execute code on computers running the vulnerable software. As is the case with most open source software packages, patching the core library is only half the battl...

Researcher Pockets $30,000 in Chrome Bounties

Security researcher Mariusz Mlynski is having a good month. Having cashed in earlier in May to the tune of $15,500, Mlynski pocketed another $30,000 courtesy of Google’s bug bounty program after four high-severity vulnerabilities were patched in the Chrome browser, each worth $7,500 to the...

German Government Audits TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt continues to fascinate even though it hasn’t been updated in more than a year and has been cleared of backdoors in more than one extensive audit. The German government’s Federal Office for Information Security BSI is the latest to inspect and analyze the security of the abandoned open...