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...

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...

Community Housing Nonprofit Hit with $1.2M Loss in BEC Scam

A non-profit community housing collective has been swindled out of more than $1.2 million in a business email compromise BEC campaign. Red Kite Community Housing, a coop housing association in High Wycombe, U.K. outside of London announced in a recent website notice that £932,000 of the money pai...

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...

GE Aviation Passwords, Source Code Exposed in Open Jenkins Server

A public Jenkins server owned by GE Aviation has exposed source code, plaintext passwords, global system configuration details and private keys from the company’s internal commercial infrastructure. GE Aviation, a subsidiary of General Electrics, is among the top commercial aircraft engine...

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...

Is Privacy Really iPhone? Researchers Weigh in on Apple's Targeted Ad Tracking

Apple has a consistent track record of implementing privacy controls, which it has been touting via a series of saturating “Privacy? That’s iPhone” television ads. Yet, though it may be deservedly capitalizing on the increasing privacy-consciousness of consumers out there and the negative headlin...

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...

Adobe Flash Zero-Day Leveraged Via Office Docs in Campaign

An Adobe Flash Player zero-day exploit has been spotted in the wild as part of a widespread campaign, researchers said on Wednesday. Adobe has just issued a patch for the previously unknown critical flaw. The vulnerability, CVE-2018-15982, is a use-after-free flaw enabling arbitrary code executio...

FBI Sinkholes $38M Global Ad Fraud Operation

The FBI has taken control of 31 web domains in a widespread takedown of a multi-year, global ad fraud campaign, believed to have stolen at least $38 million, partly via a botnet strategy. In addition, eight defendants face a 13-count indictment from a federal court in Brooklyn in the case. The...

How Shared Pools of Cloud Computing Power Are Changing the Way Attackers Operate

The transformation from racks of physical hardware hosting sites and services to cloud computing has provided organizations with better flexibility and reduced costs. Attackers have seen the benefits to this model and are also taking advantage of cloud computing to make more money, evade detectio...

Microsoft Windows Zero-Day Found in Task Scheduler

A zero-day flaw recently disclosed in Microsoft’s Windows task scheduler could enable a bad actor to gain elevated privileges. The flaw, which was disclosed Monday on Twitter, does not yet have a patch. The issue exists in the Advanced Local Procedure Call ALPC interface of Microsoft Windows task...

Fresh Approach to WiFi Cracking Uses Packet-Sniffing

Legacy WiFi just became a little less safe, according to Jens Steube, the developer of the password-cracking tool known as Hashcat. He has found a faster, easier way to crack some WPA/WPA2-protected WiFi networks. Hackers have compromised the WPA/WPA2 encryption protocols in the past, but it’s an...

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...

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...

Cisco Warns of Critical Flaw in Voice OS-based Products

Cisco Systems issued a security advisory warning customers key products tied to its Cisco Voice Operating System software platform were vulnerable to an attack where an unauthenticated, remote hacker could gain unauthorized and elevated access to impacted devices. The Cisco Security Bulletin is...

Siemens Update Patches SIMATIC PCS 7 Bug in Some Versions

Siemens has made an update available for some of its SIMATIC PCS 7 distributed control systems that are impacted by a remotely exploitable input validation vulnerability. Siemens said version 8.2 and V8.1 prior to 8.1 SP1 with WinCC v7.3 Update 13 are affected. “Successful exploitation of this...

Nagios Core Patches Root, RCE Vulnerabilities

Nagios Core has been updated to take care of two critical vulnerabilities that can be pinned together to attack servers hosting the open source IT infrastructure monitoring software. The flaws were privately disclosed by researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers, who said the vulnerabilities can...

Exploit Code Released for NTP Vulnerability

A researcher has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a vulnerability in the Network Time Protocol daemon that could crash a server with a single, malformed packet. The Network Time Foundation’s NTP Project on Monday patched the bug and nine others with the release of NTP 4.2.8p9. The...

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...

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...

Obihai Patches Memory Corruption, DoS, CSRF Vulnerabilities

Obihai Technology recently patched vulnerabilities in its ObiPhone IP phones that could have led to memory corruption, buffer overflow, and denial of service conditions, among other outcomes. The California-based company manufactures IP-enabled phones and VOIP telephone adapters it calls OBi...

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...

Apple Mac OS X Gatekeeper Bypass

Gatekeeper is Mac OS X’s guardian against rogue applications and malware sneaking into Apple’s famous walled garden. It’s also been a favorite target of researchers and advanced attackers desperate to gain control of Apple devices. Tomorrow at Virus Bulletin in Prague, researcher Patrick Wardle,...

TrueCrypt Security Vulnerabilities Patched in VeraCrypt

TrueCrypt may be a fond memory for most of its users, but that hasn’t stopped researchers and hackers from poking about the open source encryption software. Recently, researchers from Google’s Project Zero team uncovered a pair of elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in TrueCrypt, both of which...

Magnitude Exploit Kit Adobe Flash Zero Day 0Day

The urgency to patch Adobe Flash Player installations ramped up over the weekend when exploits for a recently patched zero-day vulnerability were found in the Magnitude Exploit Kit. French researcher Kafeine said on Sunday that a sample he encountered was dropping two instances of Cryptowall...

Microsoft LAPS Tool Addresss Local Admin Password Problem

Microsoft’s release last week of the Local Administrator Password Solution LAPS takes some steps to address an old question of what to do with local admin passwords, but doesn’t provide a complete answer, experts said. Windows admins have long used a common local account with the same password on...

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...

May 2014 Apple Safari Browser Security Patches

Apple released an update to Safari yesterday patching 22 vulnerabilities in the WebKit browser engine that allow code execution or a browser crash. Safari 7.0.4 is available for OS X Mavericks 10.9 and Safari 6.1.4 for OS X Mountain Lion 10.8. The vulnerabilities could be exploited if the user wa...

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...

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...

Exploit Kit Adds Vector for Silverlight Vulnerability

Developers behind the Angler Exploit Kit have apparently added a new exploit over the last week that leverages a known vulnerability in Microsoft’s Silverlight browser framework. Silverlight, similar to Adobe Flash, is Microsoft’s plug-in for streaming media on browsers and is perhaps most known...

Oracle Releases 40 Critical Java Patches in June Update

Oracle pushed out another 40 Java patches Tuesday night bringing the total number of Java security updates for 2013 to well over 100, exceeding already the number of Java patches released in 2012. Attackers have had a field day this year exploiting previously unreported vulnerabilities in Java, i...

Adobe Recommends Protected View as Temporary Zero Day Mitigation

Adobe released an advisory yesterday suggesting a manual mitigation for zero-day vulnerabilities in its Reader and Acrobat products that are being actively exploited in the wild. The exploit is the first sandbox escape in Adobe Reader X and above. FireEye, which reported the vulnerability to Adob...

Computer Virus Blacks Out Qatari Gas Producer

An “unknown virus” has shutdown the entire computer network of the world’s second largest liquefied natural gas LNG producer, RasGas, according to news reports. RasGas is based in Qatar, a peninsular nation located within the larger Arabian Peninsula. The LNG producer has reportedly been offline...

Researcher Finds Technique to Bypass Microsoft's EMET Protections

A security researchers has discovered a pair of methods that enable him to bypass the protections offered by Microsoft’s EMET anti-exploit technology. The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, which Microsoft updated late last month to include one of the three technologies that were finalists i...

How The Flame Malware Stayed Hidden For So Long

The past week has brought to light more revelations about the mysterious Flame or sKyWIper worm that was first identified at the end of May. Among them: the eye-popping admission from Microsoft that the malware’s authors found a way to use that company’s Windows Update feature to distribute the...

New .Secure Global TLD Proposed

A group of security experts is working to put together a new global TLD that will require companies and individuals applying for domains to adhere to strict security policies and requirements. The proposed .secure TLD is intended to be a known safe group of domains and would include mandatory use...

Mac OS X Trojan Goes BitCoin Mining, Steals Files

A new Trojan targeting Mac OS X users is not only after data, but Bitcoins as well. The malware is being detected by Sophos as Miner-D, but is also known as DevilRobber. According to Sophos, the Trojan is hiding inside pirated versions of the Mac OS X image editing application GraphicConverter...

Survey: Information Theft A Bigger Problem than Physical Theft

Anyone who has received “notification” of funky activity on their credit card, or an urgent e-mail plea from the widow of Mobutu Sese Seko won’t be surprised to learn that information theft is a big problem. But a new survey out from Kroll Consulting finds that its also the biggest problem facing...

New Malware Murofet Following Conficker's Lead

It’s been a blissful few months since Conficker last reared its over-hyped head, but now there’s a new piece of malware that is adopting some of the tactics that Conficker used. The malware, known as Murofet, is using Conficker’s technique of generating thousands of new domains for updates every...

Mozilla Patches Firefox DLL Load Hijacking Bug

Mozilla has joined Apple in being among the first to fix the DLL load hijacking attack vector that continues to haunt hundreds of Windows applications. The open-source group released Firefox 3.6.9 with patches for a total of 15 vulnerabilities 11 rated critical, including the publicly known DLL...

Apple Plugs Critical iPhone Security Holes

Apple has shipped a patch to cover five documented vulnerabilities that expose iPhone and iPod Touch users to malicious hacker attacks. The most serious flaw could allow remote code execution if an iPhone/iPod Touch user opens audio and image files. Here’s the skinny on the vulnerabilities being...

Inside the Pay-Per-Install Malware Economy

Stevens provides considerable details on the methods and tools used by cyber-criminals, the seedboxes and crypters that are used to get around anti-malware detection and the clever black hat SEO Search Engine Optimization techniques used in social engineering attacks. An example of one affiliate...

Virtual Currency Platform ‘Tornado Cash’ Accused of Aiding APTs

The U.S. government has slapped sanctions on virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash for laundering more than $7 billion in crypto cash derived from cybercriminal activity. At least $455 million of that was moved for state-sponsored Lazarus Group in part to help fund North Korea’s missile program,...

Taming the Digital Asset Tsunami

Internet Protocol IP addresses and the devices, web services and cloud assets behind them are the lifeblood of modern businesses. But too often companies amass thousands of digital assets, creating an unmanageable mess for IT and security teams. Left unchecked, a single forgotten, abandoned or...

Scammers Target NFT Discord Channel

Discord a public chat application designed for gamers has grown popular among crypto owners all over the world. Attackers are targeting the Discord servers of several popular nonfungible token NFT projects. Josh Fraser founder of Origin protocol shared a thread on Twitter earlier this month,...

NSO Group Pegasus Spyware Aims at Finnish Diplomats

The controversial Pegasus spyware, developed by NSO Group, has been found on the devices of Finland’s diplomatic corps serving outside the country as part of a wide-ranging espionage campaign, according to Finnish officials. They also said the infections were of the zero-click variety. “The highl...

Ozzy Osbourne NFTs Used to Bite Off Chunk of Crypto Coin

Ozzy Osbourne and his famously enterprising wife and manager, Sharon, decided to launch a new non-fungible token NFT collection called CryptoBatz — but the rollout was clouded. Scammers quickly found they could use an abandoned vanity Discord URL to drain potential buyers’ crypto wallets...