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...

Facebook Messenger Scam Duped Millions

For months now, millions of Facebook users have been duped by the same phishing scam that cons users into handing over their account credentials. According to a report outlining the phishing campaign, the scam is still active and continues to push victims to a fake Facebook login page where victi...

Linux Malware Deemed ‘Nearly Impossible’ to Detect

A new Linux malware that’s “nearly impossible to detect” can harvest credentials and gives attackers remote access and rootkit functionality by acting in a parasitic way to infect targets, researchers said. Researchers from The BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team have been tracking the...

Cyber Risk Retainers: Not Another Insurance Policy

The one-two punch of a cyberattack can be devastating. There is the breach and then the related mitigation costs. Implementing a comprehensive Incident Response IR gameplan into a worst-case-scenario should not be a post-breach scramble. And when that IR strategy includes insurance, it also must...

Evil Corp Pivots LockBit to Dodge U.S. Sanctions

Evil Corp has shifted tactics once again, this time pivoting to LockBit ransomware after U.S. sanctions have made it difficult for the cybercriminal group to reap financial gain from its activity, researchers have found. Researchers from Mandiant Intelligence have been tracking a “financially...

Link Found Connecting Chaos, Onyx and Yashma Ransomware

For a year now, threat actors have been using different versions of the same ransomware builder – “Chaos” – to attack governments, corporations and healthcare facilities. Now researchers from Blackberry have connected the dots, painting a picture of a malware that has evolved five times in twelve...

Threat Actors Blanket Androids with Flubot, Teabot Campaigns

Researchers have discovered a raft of active campaigns delivering the Flubot and Teabot trojans through a variety of delivery methods, with threat actors using smishing and malicious Google Play apps to target victims with fly-by attacks in various regions across the globe. Researchers from...

20K WordPress Sites Exposed by Insecure Plugin REST-API

More than 20,000 WordPress sites are vulnerable to malicious code injection, phishing scams and more as the result of a high-severity cross-site scripting XSS bug discovered in the WordPress Email Template Designer – WP HTML Mail, a plugin for designing custom emails. The new vulnerability...

North Korean APTs Stole ~$400M in Crypto in 2021

Vast amounts of cash sloshing around in cryptocurrency markets are proving irresistible for cybercriminals and scammers of all kinds. From basic financial pump-and-dump schemes to straight-up nation-state cybertheft, nascent crypto markets, and their investors – often with dubious understanding o...

Facebook Bans Spy-for-Hire Firms for Targeting 50K People

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has kicked six alleged spy-for-hire “cyber-mercenaries” to the curb, along with a mysterious Chinese law-enforcement supplier. It accused the entities of collectively targeting about 50,000 people for surveillance. In a report PDF entitled “Threat Report on the...

SolarWinds Attackers Spotted Using New Tactics, Malware

One year after the notorious and far-reaching SolarWinds supply-chain attacks, its orchestrators are on the offensive again. Researchers said they’ve seen the threat group – which Microsoft refers to as “Nobelium” and which is linked to Russia’s spy agency – compromising global business and...

Finland Faces Blizzard of Flubot-Spreading Text Messages

The Flubot banking trojan is blanketing Finland, spreading via Android phones that are sending millions of malicious text messages. On Friday, the National Cyber Security Centre NCSC-FI at the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency posted a “severe” alert about the malware blizzard, which it...

Shape-Shifting ‘Tardigrade’ Malware Hits Vaccine Makers

An APT has attacked two separate vaccine manufacturers this year using a shape-shifting malware that appears at first to be a ransomware attack but later shows to be far more sophisticated, researchers have found. Dubbed Tardigrade by the Bioeconomy ​​Information Sharing and Analysis Center...

Verizon’s Visible Wireless Carrier Confirms Credential-Stuffing Attack

On Wednesday, Verizon’s Visible – an all-digital, uber-cheap wireless carrier – confirmed what customers have been complaining about on Reddit and Twitter all week: They lost control of their accounts; had their passwords and shipping addresses changed; and some got stuck with bills for pricey ne...

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...

REvil’s Back; Coder Fat-Fingered Away Its Decryptor Key?

UPDATE The REvil ransomware gang’s tentacles shot out yet again last week, with the ransomware gang’s servers back online, a fresh victim listed on its site, ransomware payments back up and flowing, and an explanation of why it took a two-month hiatus. A purported REvil representative also...

WooCommerce Multi Currency Bug Allows Shoppers to Change eCommerce Pricing

A security vulnerability in the WooCommerce Multi Currency plugin could allow any customer to change the pricing for products in online stores. WooCommerce is a popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress-powered websites; the Multi Currency plugin from Envato meanwhile allows e-tailers using...

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 –...

Tooling Network Detection & Response for Ransomware

Everywhere you look, there are new reports coming out about ransomware. And cybercriminals are becoming more aggressive, demanding even more in ransom payments than ever before. According to Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, ransom payments are up 82 percent in the first half of 2021, with an average...

Authorities Arrest Another TrickBot Gang Member in South Korea

Another alleged member of the TrickBot gang has been apprehended, this time when trying to leave South Korea, according to published reports. The Russian national, who is an alleged developer of the notorious crimeware, reportedly had been trapped in South Korea since February 2020 due to COVID-1...

WhatsApp Photo Filter Bug Allows Sensitive Info to Be Lifted

A security vulnerability in WhatsApp’s pic-retouching function could allow an attacker to read sensitive information from the WhatsApp memory, researchers said – so users should be careful whose pics they view and should, of course, update their apps. Disclosed by Check Point Research CPR, the...

Kaseya’s ‘Master Key’ to REvil Attack Leaked Online

Someone has leaked the master decryption key that Kaseya used to unlock the files encrypted by a REvil ransomware attack on the company that affected customers across 22 countries last month. However, while the key may be interesting to security researchers, it’s not likely to be of use to any of...

New CISA Director Confirmed, W.H. Gains Cyber-Director

The U.S. has made a key move to shore up its cybersecurity strategy, with the confirmation of Jen Easterly as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA on Monday. Easterly, a former official at the National Security Agency from 2011 to 2013 and two-time Bronze Star...

‘Oddball’ Malware Blocks Access to Pirated Software

The objective of most malware is some kind of gain — financial or otherwise — for the attackers who use it. However, researchers recently observed a unique malware with a single intent: Blocking the infected computers from visiting websites dedicated to software piracy. The malware which SophosLa...

Ransomware’s New Swindle: Triple Extortion

Ransomware attacks are exploding at a staggering rate, and so are the ransoms being demanded. Now experts are warning against a new threat — triple extortion — which means that attackers are expanding out to demand payments from customers, partners and other third parties related to the initial...

Fired Healthcare Exec Stalls Critical PPE Shipment for Months

The FBI has announced that Christopher Dobbins pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in prison for breaching and temporarily disabling the Stradis Healthcare shipping system using a secret account, after being fired weeks earlier. Last March, as doctors reported having to ration and reuse...

Feds Issue Recommendations for Maritime Cybersecurity

The White House has released cybersecurity guidance for securing the Maritime Transportation System MTS, which operates along 25,000 miles of coastal and inland waterways in the United States. The document points out that the MTS encompasses “361 ports, 124 shipyards, more than 3,500 maritime...

Police Vouch for Hacker Who Guessed Trump’s Twitter Password

When Dutch ethical hacker Victor Gevers tried to alert Secret Service that he was able to guess the password to President Donald Trump’s Twitter handle last October, there were plenty of skeptics, most notably at the White House. Now, Dutch prosecutors have determined Gevers did, in fact, guess t...

RubyGems Packages Laced with Bitcoin-Stealing Malware

RubyGems, an open-source package repository and manager for the Ruby web programming language, has taken two of its software packages offline after they were found to be laced with malware. RubyGems provides a standard format for distributing Ruby programs and libraries in the service of building...

Agent Tesla Keylogger Gets Data Theft and Targeting Update

Six-year-old keylogger malware called Agent Tesla has been updated again, this time with expanded targeting and improved data exfiltration features. Agent Tesla first came into the scene in 2014, specializing in keylogging designed to record keystrokes made by a user in order to exfiltrate data...

Divers Pull Rare Surviving WWII Enigma Cipher Machine from Bottom of the Baltic

German divers for the environmental group World Wildlife Fund were searching the ocean floor for abandoned nets threatening marine wildlife. What they found instead is a treasured piece of computing history, a World War II-era German Enigma crypto machine, sunk to the bottom of the Baltic Sea to...

Chinese Breakthrough in Quantum Computing a Warning for Security Teams

China’s top quantum-computer researchers have reported that they have achieved quantum supremacy, i.e., the ability to perform tasks a traditional supercomputer cannot. And while it’s a thrilling development, the inevitable rise of quantum computing means security teams are one step closer to...

Kmart, Latest Victim of Egregor Ransomware – Report

Retail stalwart Kmart has suffered a ransomware attack at the hands of the Egregor gang, according to a report. The incident has encrypted devices and servers connected to the company’s networks, knocking out back-end services, according to BleepingComputer. The outlet obtained the purported rans...

Cybersecurity Predictions for 2021: Robot Overlords No, Connected Car Hacks Yes

Predicting the future is always an iffy proposition. There’s the Nostradamus route, making predictions so cryptic and vague they could mean just about anything. Or you can go the TV psychic route and throw a handful of darts at the wall, highlighting the ones that stick and hope everyone ignores...

GoDaddy Employees Tricked into Compromising Cryptocurrency Sites

A recent social-engineering “vishing” attack on domain registrar GoDaddy temporarily handed over control of cryptocurrency service sites NiceHash and Liquid to fraudsters, exposing personal information of users. Vishing is a phishing scam that uses voice interactions over the phone to gain trust...

Defining Security Policies to Manage Remote Insider Threats

Even as state and local governments begin to relax COVID-19-related stay-at-home orders, many businesses have adapted to having more people work from home. This trend is likely to continue: Among the top 20 percent of earners, the number of people that work from home is close to 70 percent,...

Ghimob Android Banking Trojan Targets 153 Mobile Apps

A new banking trojan has been discovered targeting Android users, with the capabilities to spy on 153 mobile apps from various banks, cryptocurrencies and exchanges. Researchers describe the banking trojan, called Ghimob, as a “full-fledged spy in your pocket” that can be accessed remotely by its...

TrickBot Takedown Disrupts Major Crimeware Apparatus

The TrickBot trojan has been dealt a serious blow thanks to a coordinated action led by Microsoft that disrupted the botnet that spreads it. However, researchers warn that the operators will quickly try to revive their operations. TrickBot is known for spreading other malware, especially...

PoetRAT Resurfaces in Attacks in Azerbaijan Amid Escalating Conflict

A new iteration of the PoetRAT spyware, sporting improvements to operational security, code efficiency and obfuscation, is making the rounds in Azerbaijan, targeting the public sector and other key organizations as the country’s conflict with Armenia over disputed territory intensifies. Threat...

Comcast TV Remote Hack Opens Homes to Snooping

A security flaw allowing attackers to remotely snoop in on victims’ private conversations was found to stem from an unexpected device – their TV remotes. The flaw stems from Comcast’s XR11, a popular voice-activated remote control for cable TV, which has more than 18 million units deployed across...

APT41 Operatives Indicted as Sophisticated Hacking Activity Continues

UPDATE Five alleged members of the APT41 threat group have been indicted by a federal grand jury, in two separate actions that were unsealed this week. Meanwhile, the Department of Treasury also imposed sanctions on individuals and organizations associated with Iran-linked APT39. APT41 a.k.a...

Live Webinar: XDR and Beyond

Anyone paying attention to the cybersecurity technology market has heard the term XDR – Extended Detection and Response. It’s a new technology approach that combines multiple protection technologies into a single platform. All the analyst firms are writing about it and many of the top cybersecuri...

Airline DMARC Policies Lag, Opening Flyers to Email Fraud

More than half of global airlines do not have DMARC policies in place, opening their customers up to email fraud attacks, a new report found. DMARC Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance is considered the industry standard for email authentication to prevent attackers from...

Brazil's Banking Trojans Go Global

Malware that is typically used in Brazil is expanding its geography, targeting users in North America, Europe and elsewhere in Latin America. Banking trojans, which steal online banking logins and other financial credentials from unsuspecting victims, are fairly common – but the more sophisticate...

FakeSpy Android Malware Spread Via ‘Postal-Service’ Apps

Android mobile device users are being targeted in a new SMS phishing campaign that’s spreading the FakeSpy infostealer. The malware, which is disguised as legitimate global postal-service apps, steals SMS messages, financial data and more from the victims’ devices. The campaign was first discover...

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,...

More Than Half of IoT Devices Vulnerable to Severe Attacks

More than half of all internet of things IoT devices are vulnerable to medium- or high-severity attacks, meaning that enterprises are sitting on a “ticking IoT time bomb,” according to Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 research team. In new research released Tuesday, researchers said that several...

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...

Help Keep Data and Systems Safe with Access Rights Manager (ARM)

Built to provision, deprovision, audit, and manage user access rights to data, files, and other systems, SolarWinds® Access Rights Manager ARM is designed to help security admins and IT pros protect their companies from potential risks like data loss and breaches. Visualize who has access to what...

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...