Russian Dutch-domiciled search engine, ride-hailing and email service provider Yandex on Friday disclosed a data breach that compromised 4,887 email accounts of its users. The company blamed the incident on an unnamed employee who had been providing unauthorized access to the users’ mailboxes for personal gain. “The employee was one of three system administrators with
Cyber Security
UAE and Kuwait government agencies are targets of a new cyberespionage campaign potentially carried out by Iranian threat actors, according to new research. Attributing the operation to be the work of Static Kitten (aka MERCURY or MuddyWater), Anomali said the “objective of this activity is to install a remote management tool called ScreenConnect (acquired by
Popular messaging app Telegram fixed a privacy-defeating bug in its macOS app that made it possible to access self-destructing audio and video messages long after they disappeared from secret chats. The vulnerability was discovered by security researcher Dhiraj Mishra in version 7.3 of the app, who disclosed his findings to Telegram on December 26, 2020.
Ten people belonging to a criminal network have been arrested in connection with a series of SIM-swapping attacks that resulted in the theft of more than $100 million by hijacking the mobile phone accounts of high-profile individuals in the U.S. The Europol-coordinated year-long investigation was jointly conducted by law enforcement authorities from the U.K., U.S.,
In the era of hacking and malicious actors, a company’s cloud security posture is a concern that preoccupies most, if not all, organizations. Yet even more than that, it is the SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) that is critical to today’s company security. Recently Malwarebytes released a statement on how they were targeted by Nation-State
Two new Android surveillanceware families have been found to target military, nuclear, and election entities in Pakistan and Kashmir as part of a pro-India, state-sponsored hacking campaign. Dubbed Hornbill and Sunbird, the malware impersonates legitimate or seemingly innocuous services to cover its tracks, only to stealthily collect SMS, encrypted messaging app content, and geolocation, among
New details have emerged about the remote computer intrusion at a Florida water treatment facility last Friday, highlighting a lack of adequate security measures needed to bulletproof critical infrastructure environments. The breach, which occurred last Friday, involved an unsuccessful attempt on the part of an adversary to increase sodium hydroxide dosage in the water supply
A previously known Windows remote access Trojan (RAT) with credential-stealing capabilities has now expanded its scope to set its sights on users of Android devices to further the attacker’s espionage motives. “The developers of LodaRAT have added Android as a targeted platform,” Cisco Talos researchers said in a Tuesday analysis. “A new iteration of LodaRAT
In what’s a novel supply chain attack, a security researcher managed to breach over 35 major companies’ internal systems, including that of Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, and Uber, and achieve remote code execution. The technique, called dependency confusion or a substitution attack, takes advantage of the fact that a piece of software
Microsoft on Tuesday issued fixes for 56 flaws, including a critical vulnerability that’s known to be actively exploited in the wild. In all, 11 are listed as Critical, 43 are listed as Important, and two are listed as Moderate in severity — six of which are previously disclosed vulnerabilities. The updates cover .NET Framework, Azure
Hackers successfully infiltrated the computer system controlling a water treatment facility in the U.S. state of Florida and remotely changed a setting that drastically altered the levels of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) in the water. During a press conference held yesterday, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said an operator managed to catch the manipulation in real-time
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platforms have received incredible attention as the platform for security teams. Whether you’re evaluating an EDR for the first time or looking to replace your EDR, as an information security professional, you need to be aware of the gaps prior already to implementation so you can best prepare how to
Law enforcement officials in Ukraine, in coordination with authorities from the U.S. and Australia, last week shut down one of the world’s largest phishing services that were used to attack financial institutions in 11 countries, causing tens of millions of dollars in losses. The Ukrainian attorney general’s office said it worked with the National Police
While Gartner does not have a dedicated Magic Quadrant for Bug Bounties or Crowd Security Testing yet, Gartner Peer Insights already lists 24 vendors in the “Application Crowdtesting Services” category. We have compiled the top 5 most promising bug bounty platforms for those of you who are looking to enhance your existing software testing arsenal
Twin cyber operations conducted by state-sponsored Iranian threat actors demonstrate their continued focus on compiling detailed dossiers on Iranian citizens that could threaten the stability of the Islamic Republic, including dissidents, opposition forces, and ISIS supporters, and Kurdish natives. Tracing the extensive espionage operations to two advanced Iranian cyber-groups Domestic Kitten (or APT-C-50) and Infy,
Major vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Realtek RTL8195A Wi-Fi module that could have been exploited to gain root access and take complete control of a device’s wireless communications. The six flaws were reported by researchers from Israeli IoT security firm Vdoo. The Realtek RTL8195A module is a standalone, low-power-consumption Wi-Fi hardware module targeted at
Google on Thursday removed The Great Suspender, a popular Chrome extension used by millions of users, from its Chrome Web Store for containing malware. It also took the unusual step of deactivating it from users’ computers. “This extension contains malware,” read a terse notification from Google, but it has since emerged that the add-on stealthily
A new distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) vector has ensnared Plex Media Server systems to amplify malicious traffic against targets to take them offline. “Plex’s startup processes unintentionally expose a Plex UPnP-enabled service registration responder to the general Internet, where it can be abused to generate reflection/amplification DDoS attacks,” Netscout researchers said in a Thursday alert.
Google has patched a zero-day vulnerability in Chrome web browser for desktop that it says is being actively exploited in the wild. The company released 88.0.4324.150 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with a fix for a heap buffer overflow flaw (CVE-2021-21148) in its V8 JavaScript rendering engine. “Google is aware of reports that an exploit
Cisco has rolled out fixes for multiple critical vulnerabilities in the web-based management interface of Small Business routers that could potentially allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code as the root user on an affected device. The flaws — tracked from CVE-2021-1289 through CVE-2021-1295 (CVSS score 9.8) — impact RV160, RV160W, RV260, RV260P,
Phishing and Malware Among the major cyber threats, the malware remains a significant danger. The 2017 WannaCry outbreak that cost businesses worldwide up to $4 billion is still in recent memory, and other new strains of malware are discovered on a daily basis. Phishing has also seen a resurgence in the last few years, with
A nascent malware campaign has been spotted co-opting Android devices into a botnet with the primary purpose of carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Called “Matryosh” by Qihoo 360’s Netlab researchers, the latest threat has been found reusing the Mirai botnet framework and propagates through exposed Android Debug Bridge (ADB) interfaces to infect Android devices
Today’s admins certainly have plenty on their plates, and boosting ecosystem security remains a top priority. On-premises, and especially remote, accounts are gateways for accessing critical information. Password management makes this possible. After all, authentication should ensure that a user is whom they claim to be. This initial layer of security is crucial for protecting
The dynamic nature of cybersecurity, the changes in the threat landscape, and the expansion of the attack surface lead organizations to add more security solutions—from different vendors—creating a layered security infrastructure that introduces new challenges to any team, with a much more significant impact on small ones. And yet, sophisticated attacks continue to bypass these
Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed three severe security vulnerabilities impacting SolarWinds products, the most severe of which could have been exploited to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges. Two of the flaws (CVE-2021-25274 and CVE-2021-25275) were identified in the SolarWinds Orion Platform, while a third separate weakness (CVE-2021-25276) was found in the company’s Serv-U
New details have emerged about a vast network of rogue extensions for Chrome and Edge browsers that were found to hijack clicks to links in search results pages to arbitrary URLs, including phishing sites and ads. Collectively called “CacheFlow” by Avast, the 28 extensions in question — including Video Downloader for Facebook, Vimeo Video Downloader,
Security Operations is a 24 x 7 job. It does not stop for weekends or holidays or even that much-needed coffee break after the first hour of the shift is complete. We all know this. Every SOC engineer is hoping for some rest at some point. One of my favorite jokes when talking about Security
The Office of the Washington State Auditor (SAO) on Monday said it’s investigating a security incident that resulted in the compromise of personal information of more than 1.6 million people who filed for unemployment claims in the state in 2020. The SAO blamed the breach on a software vulnerability in Accellion’s File Transfer Appliance (FTA)
Security researchers on Tuesday uncovered new delivery and evasion techniques adopted by Agent Tesla remote access trojan (RAT) to get around defense barriers and monitor its victims. Typically spread through social engineering lures, the Windows spyware not only now targets Microsoft’s Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) in an attempt to defeat endpoint protection software, it also
SonicWall on Monday warned of active exploitation attempts against a zero-day vulnerability in its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series devices. The flaw, which affects both physical and virtual SMA 100 10.x devices (SMA 200, SMA 210, SMA 400, SMA 410, SMA 500v), came to light after the NCC Group on Sunday alerted it had