Apple iPhone Malware Tactic Causes Fake Shutdowns to Enable Spying

In the world of mobile malware, simply shutting down a device can often wipe out any bad code, given that persistence after rebooting is a challenge for traditional malicious activity. But a new iPhone technique can hijack and prevent any shut-down process that a user initiates, simulating a real...

Invest in These 3 Key Security Technologies to Fight Ransomware

A recent survey by Fortinet revealed that two-thirds of organizations had been the target of at least one ransomware attack – and 85 percent are more concerned about a ransomware attack than any other form of cyberattack. And, the evolving threat landscape is cited as one of the top challenges in...

Military’s RFID Tracking of Guns May Endanger Troops

Reports that the military has started outfitting firearms with RFID tags for tracking have raised security alarms. The concern: What if the enemy uses the tags to track soldiers on the battlefield? The Department of Defense, the Marines and the Navy have already rejected the RFID tagging tech for...

Large-Scale Phishing-as-a-Service Operation Exposed

Microsoft uncovered a large-scale, well-organization and sophisticated phishing-as-a-service PhaaS operation. The turnkey platform allows users to customize campaigns and develop their own phishing ploys so they can then use the PhaaS platform to help with phishing kits, email templates and hosti...

HP Omen Hub Exposes Millions of Gamers to Cyberattack

Millions of devices running the HP Omen Gaming Hub were using on a driver with a bug that could give attackers kernel-mode access without administrator privileges. HP has since released a patch, but a new report on the flaw CVE-2021-3437 from researchers from SentinelLabs details how the gaming...

SOVA, Worryingly Sophisticated Android Trojan, Takes Flight

A new Android banking trojan named SOVA “owl” in Russian is under active development, researchers said, and it has big dreams even in its infancy stage. The malware is looking to incorporate distributed denial of service DDoS, man in the middle MiTM and ransomware functionality into its arsenal –...

TeamTNT’s New Tools Target Multiple OSes

The TeamTNT malware pushers have a slew of new toys with which to wreak havoc – multiple shell/batch scripts, open-source tools, a cryptocurrency miner, an IRC and more – that have inflicted more than 5,000 infections globally as antivirus AV tools struggle to catch up with the newest malware...

Why Your Business Needs a Long-Term Remote Security Strategy

When COVID-19 first emerged, companies across all sectors of the economy were forced to rapidly transition to remote work. The goal was simple: Ensuring business continuity in the face of an unprecedented challenge — a challenge that most assumed would come and go in short order. As vaccines...

DoJ Task Force: Taking Down the Ransomware Economy

Ransomware has reached crisis levels across business sectors and across the globe, but a public-private Ransomware Task Force aims to stem the tide of attacks by disrupting the crooks’ business model. Join Threatpost for “Fortifying Your Business Against Ransomware, DDoS & Cryptojacking Attacks” ...

Malware Gangs Partner Up in Double-Punch Security Threat

Cybergangs are joining forces under the guise of affiliate groups and “as-a-service” models, warns Maya Horowitz, the director of threat intelligence research with Check Point Research. She said the trend is driving a new and thriving cybercriminal underground economy. Several malware gangs have...

Rana Android Malware Updates Allow WhatsApp, Telegram IM Snooping

Researchers have discovered new samples of a previously discovered Android malware, which is believed to be linked to the APT39 Iranian cyberespionage threat group. The new variant comes with new surveillance capabilities – including the ability to snoop on victims’ Skype, Instagram and WhatsApp...

Toymaker Mattel Hit by Ransomware Attack

Top toymaker Mattel revealed it was a victim of a ransomware attack that successfully encrypted some data and temporarily crippled a limited number of business functions. The disclosure was part of a U.S. Securities Exchange Commission SEC disclosure filed in late October. Mattel reported the...

How the Pandemic is Reshaping the Bug Bounty Landscape

The pandemic has overhauled the bug-bounty landscape, both for companies looking to adopt such programs and the bounty hunters themselves. Casey Ellis, founder and CTO of Bugcrowd, said that COVID-19’s far-reaching implications — including increasing the acceptance of remote work, pushing more...

Data Breaches Expose Vets, COVID-19 Patients

A pair of healthcare-related data breaches at high-profile government agencies has impacted tens of thousands of people. First, a cyberattack at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs VA has impacted about 46,000 veterans, exposing their financial information. And another incident, at the U.K.’s...

IcedID Trojan Rebooted with New Evasive Tactics

Threat actors have enhanced a banking trojan that has been widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic with new functionality to help it avoid detection by potential victims and standard security protections. Attackers have implemented several new features — including a password-protected attachment...

DDoS Attacks Cresting Amid Pandemic

The number of distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks spiked in the second quarter of 2020, researchers said. According to the latest Kaspersky quarterly DDoS attacks report, DDoS events were three times more frequent in comparison to the second quarter last year up 217 percent, and were up 30...

Facial-Recognition Flop: Face Masks Thwart Virus, Stump Security Systems

Face masks not only have shown in research to slow the spread of COVID-19, they also deter facial-recognition technology from correctly identifying people, according to a new study. New research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST found that even the best of 89 commercial...

Podcast: Would You Use A Contact-Tracing Coronavirus App?

As a world afflicted by the coronavirus pandemic begins to re-open restaurants, retail stores and more, public-health officials remain concerned about the spread of the virus. Technology for contact-tracing apps, intended to help citizens trace whether they were exposed to someone who has tested...

New Kaiji Botnet Targets IoT, Linux Devices

A new botnet has been infecting internet of things IoT devices and Linux-based servers, to then leverage them in distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks. The malware, dubbed Kaiji, has been written from scratch, which researchers say is “rare in the IoT botnet landscape” today. Kaiji, which wa...

Poll: Are You Creeped Out By Facial Recognition?

Several news incidents this week regarding facial recognition and biometrics have sparked discussions in the security space over privacy concerns and issues around consent. First, a JetBlue passenger made headlines in a now-viral Twitter exchange with the airline, about the facial-recognition...

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...

Poll: Facebook Harvests Email Contacts for 1.5M Users – Is Enough, Enough?

Another day, another Facebook issue. Earlier on Thursday, news broke that Facebook confirmed that it has harvested the email contact lists for 1.5 million people, in an ongoing effort since May 2016. The social network said the situation was “unintentional” – and that somehow, it just happened. A...

Adobe Fixes Acrobat and Reader Flaw With Publicly-Available PoC

Adobe on Tuesday released three patches – including a fix for a flaw in Adobe Acrobat and Reader that exposes hashed passwords that already has a proof-of-concept PoC exploit code publicly available. The information disclosure vulnerability, CVE-2018-15979, exists in Adobe Acrobat and Reader for...

Malware on SHEIN Servers Compromises Data of 6.4M Customers

Email addresses and encrypted passwords of over 6.4 million SHEIN customers were stolen over the summer after the women’s retailer said it suffered a “concerted criminal cyberattack” on its computer network. The data breach occurred between June and August 2018, the company said in a recent...

Tricky DoS Attack Crashes Mozilla Firefox

A newly released proof-of-concept attack using malicious JavaScript can crash or freeze Mozilla Firefox when an unsuspecting victim visits a specially crafted webpage on the browser. Researcher Sabri Haddouche, a security researcher with Wire, on Sunday released the source code for the attack,...

Cisco Issues New Warning for 6-Month-Old Critical Bug in IOS XE

UPDATE Cisco Systems has issued a second warning for a critical static credential bug in its IOS XE software, which allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to targeted systems. The security bulletin comes more than six months after the company initially reported the bug and provided a...

Microsoft Flaw Allows Full Multi-Factor Authentication Bypass

A vulnerability in Microsoft’s Active Directory Federation Services ADFS has been uncovered that would allow malicious actors to bypass multi-factor authentication MFA safeguards. Many organizations rely on ADFS to manage identities and resources across their entire enterprise, and ADFS functions...

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...

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...

Two Critical Vulnerabilities Found In Inmarsat’s SATCOM Systems

UPDATE Researchers are warning of two critical vulnerabilities in global satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat’s SATCOM systems. The vulnerabilities impact thousands of customers running the newest version of its AmosConnect platform, typically found on maritime sea vessels, according to...

Emergency Apple Patch Fixes High Sierra Password Hint Leak

Apple rushed out an emergency patch Thursday that fixed an incredulous bug in its shiny new High Sierra operating system that revealed APFS volume passwords via the password hint feature. Brazilian researcher Matheus Mariano of Leet Tech found the bug and privately disclosed it to Apple. He said...

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...

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...

Carbanak Using Google Services for Command and Control

Carbanak certainly has not sat idly by after years of advanced criminal campaigns targeting primarily financial institutions. The outfit, alleged to have stolen from more than 100 banks worldwide, has popped up again with a new means of managing command and control over its malware and implants...

Adobe Patches Nine Code Execution Flaws in Flash Player

Two weeks after rushing out an emergency patch for a zero-day vulnerability, Adobe today released another Flash Player security update. The new release patched nine vulnerabilities, all of which expose the host system to remote code execution. Adobe said it is not aware of public exploits against...

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...

Inside the xDedic Hacked Server Marketplace

An underground market peddling hacked servers was a unique find, even for a seasoned researcher such as Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade of Kaspersky Lab. But there it was, xDedic.biz selling access to tens of thousands of servers for pennies on the dollar. A Russian-speaking hacker group was...

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...

Google Chrome 45 Security Patches, Bug Bounty Awards

Tuesday turned out to be a busy day for browser makers. The three major vendors in the space—Google; Mozilla; and Microsoft—joined arms and announced their intent to stop support for the weakened RC4 encryption algorithm starting early next year. Google, having already announced it would pause...

Emergency Out-of-Band Internet Explorer Patch

Microsoft today released an emergency patch for all supported versions of Internet Explorer, including IE 11 running on the recently released Windows 10. Microsoft said in its advisory that the zero-day is being publicly exploited. Google security engineer Clement Lecigne is credited with reporti...

SAP HANA Encryption Vulnerabilities

SAP’s in-memory relational database management system, HANA, contains a whopper of a security weakness: a default encryption key guarding passwords, stored data and backups. Researchers from ERPScan, which recently uncovered serious configuration vulnerabilities in Oracle PeopleSoft products, on...

Chinese Hackers Compromised Forbes.com Using IE, Flash Zero Days

A Chinese APT group was able to chain together two zero day vulnerabilities, one against Adobe’s Flash Player and one against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9, to compromise a popular news site late last year. The group’s aim was to gain access to computers at several U.S. defense and financial...

Another Flash Zero Day Emerges

For the third time in the last couple of weeks, Adobe is dealing with a zero day vulnerability in Flash. The company is working on a patch for another Flash bug that is being exploited in drive-by download attacks. Adobe officials released an advisory Monday warning users that attackers are...

Cybersecurity Legislation Forecast is Grim

MINNEAPOLIS – If you’re expecting federal cybersecurity legislation any time soon, forget it. Despite the number of prospective bills on the Hill right now, Congress is unlikely to move anything forward any time soon, according to Matthew Rhoades, director cyberspace and security program Truman...

Apple Patches Shellshock Vulnerability in Bash

Apple tonight released its patch for the Bash vulnerability, updating OS X Lion, Mountain Lion and Mavericks. Late Friday, Apple reassured Mac OS X users that most were protected by default, but nonetheless that it was working on a patch. The vulnerability in Bash, which stands for Bourne Again...

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...

Time Stamp Bug in Sudo Could Have Allowed Code Entry

A vulnerability in sudo – a program that manages user privileges on certain types of systems – could allow an unauthenticated user to execute commands for about five minutes, without entering a password. The problem, which has since been fixed, previously existed in builds 1.6.0 through 1.7.10p6...

Two High-Risk Flaws Fixed in Google Chrome 23

Google has fixed two bugs in its Chrome browser, including a high-severity vulnerability in its media handler that a researcher named Pinkie Pie discovered. The bug, which is different from another use-after-free vulnerability the researcher used in the Pwnium contest at Hack in the Box in Octobe...

SSL Vulnerabilities Found in Critical Non-Browser Software Packages

The death knell for SSL is getting louder. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University have discovered that poorly designed APIs used in SSL implementations are to blame for vulnerabilities in many critical non-browser software packages. Serious security vulnerabiliti...