Security

Security professionals are overwhelmingly positive about GenAI’s impact on cybersecurity, despite the technology making cyber-attacks more dangerous. This is according to Ivanti’s Generative AI and Cybersecurity: Risk and Reward report, published on December 3. The report found that security professionals are eight-times more likely to say gen AI is a net positive versus a net

Russia has arrested a notorious ransomware operator in the exclave of Kaliningrad, according to Russian media. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on November 29 a court document had been filed in Kaliningrad relating to a man detained and charged with creating malware. While the document does not mention the identity of the man,

UK cybercrime victims are being failed by the justice system, with perpetrators hardly ever facing charges and convictions, according to a report by The Cyber Helpline, a charity supporting individuals impacted by cybercrime and other online harms. The analysis The Funnel of Justice, found that victims of cybercrime in England and Wales are seven-times less

Romania’s national security council has warned that cyber-attacks are being used to influence the fairness of the country’s live presidential election. The Supreme Council of National Defense revealed it was presented with assessments on the actions of state and non-state cyber actors targeting election infrastructure and processes in a meeting on Thursday, November 28. While

An infamous ransomware group has claimed to have compromised sensitive data from a children’s hospital in Liverpool, UK. On November 28, INC Ransom posted on its data leak site that it has obtained large-scale data patient records, donor reports and procurement data for 2018-2024 from Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. The Trust quickly acknowledged

Public-facing instances of ProjectSend, an open-source file-sharing web application, have been exploited by attackers, according to vulnerability intelligence provider VulnCheck. ProjectSend was created by software developer Ignacio Nelson and is maintained by a group of over 50 people. It has received support from 1500 people on GitHub. The web application has been affected by an

A pro-Russian hacktivist group has launched its own ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations to advance its causes. Researchers from SentinelLabs has observed the CyberVolk hacktivist collective advertise its branded ransomware since June, 2024, and has claimed responsibility for multiple ransomware attacks between June and October. The hacktivist group, which originated in India, has also promoted and shared

Software vendor Blue Yonder, which supplies supply chain management tools to major retailers worldwide, has been hit by a ransomware attack which has affected Starbucks and some UK supermarkets. Blue Yonder confirmed on November 21 that it was experiencing disruptions to its managed services-hosted environment due to the attack. Those disruption have extended to some

A network of four public relations (PR) firms has been operating pro-China influence operations online since at least 2022, according to Google. In a report published on November 22, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group revealed it has removed hundreds of domains from its search and news indexes. These domains were part of a complex ecosystem of

A Russian-aligned hacking group is conducting a cyber espionage campaign across Europe and Asia, according to Recorded Future. Insikt Group, Recorded Future’s threat intelligence team, has shared in a November 21 report that a group it tracks as TAG-110 has been using custom malware to compromise government entities, human rights groups and educational institutions. The

Microsoft has seized 240 fraudulent websites associated with “do-it-yourself” phishing kits used by cybercriminals globally to break into customer accounts. The action was enabled by a civil court order in the Eastern District of Virginia which allowed the malicious technical infrastructure to be directed to Microsoft. This permanently stops the use of these domains in

Consumers have been warned that 77% of Black Friday-themed spam emails in 2024 have been identified as scams, with the remainder marketing lures, according to new figures from Bitdefender. This represents a 7% rise in the proportion of spam emails identified as scams compared to Black Friday 2023, and a 21% increase compared to 2022.

Read more about Lumma Stealer: Instant messaging app Telegram is gaining traction as a malware-spreading platform, according to cybersecurity firm McAfee. Two McAfee researchers analyzed in a November 20 blog post how Lumma Stealer, one of the most used infostealers, is being distributed on Telegram. The researchers believe that threat actors have identified the messaging

Apple has urged customers to apply emergency security updates, which fixes two actively exploited vulnerabilities on its devices. The fixes are included in the iOS 18.1.1 and iPadOS 18.1.1, Safari 18.1.1, visionOS 2.1.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 updates, available across a range of Apple devices, including iPhones, iPads, macOS and Apple Vision Pro. These address

A 42-year-old Russian national has appeared in court in the US on suspicion of administering the sale, distribution and operation of Phobos ransomware, according to the Justice Department (DoJ). Evgenii Ptitsyn was in the US District Court for the District of Maryland on November 4 after being extradited from South Korea, according to documents unsealed

Read more about North Korean fake IT workers: North Korean hackers have used the BeaverTail malware in phishing campaigns that target job seekers in the technology sector via fake recruiters, according to Palo Alto Networks. Unit 42, Palo Alto’s research team, observed that a North Korean IT worker activity cluster tracked as CL-STA-0237 and likely

The hacker behind one of the largest cryptocurrency heists in history will spend five years in a US prison. US resident Ilya Lichtenstein, 35, was sentenced on November 14 to five years in jail after he hacked into Bitfinex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms, in 2016. Lichtenstein stole 120,000 bitcoins and started laundering the

An unauthenticated remote command execution (RCE) vulnerability against Palo Alto Networks’ internet-exposed firewall management interfaces is actively being exploited, according to the cybersecurity provider. On November 8, Palo Alto published a security advisory to warn of a zero-day vulnerability affecting some of its PAN-OS firewall management interfaces. The flaw is an unauthenticated RCE vulnerability affecting

Cloud ransomware attacks have become a common approach from malicious actors to compromise the IT systems of their targets, according to SentinelOne. Attackers are increasingly leverage cloud providers’ services to directly compromise their victims or exfiltrate data, according to a new report by SentinelLabs. On the one hand, they target cloud-based storage services to compromise

Security experts have warned of the soaring cost and volume of API security incidents after revealing that 83% of UK organizations were impacted over the past 12 months. Akamai polled 404 UK CIOs, CISOs and other security professionals between June and July 2024, to help compile its API Security Impact Study 2024. It recorded a

A threat actor who posted 2.8 million lines of Amazon employee data last week has taken to the dark web to claim they are doing so to raise awareness of poor security practice. The individual, who goes by the online moniker “Nam3L3ss,” claimed in a series of posts to have obtained data from 25 organizations

Energy services supplier Halliburton has revealed that an August ransomware breach cost the firm $35m, highlighting the major financial impact of cyber-threats. The Dubai-headquartered multinational, which is one of the largest providers of products and services to the energy industry – especially the US fracking sector – made the disclosure in its Q3 financials. “We

Scammers have hijacked another popular news story to increase the effectiveness of a phishing campaign – in this case, one related to the government’s recently announced cut to winter fuel payments for pensioners. UK policing group the Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU) Network urged the elderly to be on the lookout for texts claiming to

A ransomware attack has significantly disrupted the operations of a key supplier to the US oil industry. In a regulatory filing sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 7, Texan company Newpark Resources said an unauthorized third party gained access to some of its internal information systems on October 29, an

Russian-associated cyber-attacks on South Korea have ramped up following the deployment of North Korean troops in Ukraine, South Korea’s President’s Office has warned. The activity by pro-Kremlin groups has primarily been distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against government websites and private companies, which the Seoul government is actively responding to. The President’s Office said that access

A notorious North Korean affiliated threat actor is targeting crypto firms using multi-stage malware and a novel persistence mechanism, SentinelLabs has reported. The campaign, dubbed ‘Hidden Risk’, is assessed with high confidence to be perpetrated by the BlueNoroff advanced persistent threat (APT) group, known for financially-motivated attacks. It is designed to target macOS devices. The

The government of Canada has required TikTok owner ByteDance to shut down its Canadian subsidiary, TikTok Technology Canada, Inc. The Chinese company will have to close its offices in Toronto and Vancouver. The decision was announced by François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry on November 6. It was made under the Investment

Google is rolling out mandatory multifactor authentication (MFA) on all Google Cloud accounts to protect against phishing and data theft. The new requirement will be implemented in phases throughout 2025, all Google Cloud users worldwide will be mandated to enable MFA for sign-on by year’s end. This change will not apply to owners of Google’s

One of the UK’s biggest high street lenders has warned that hundreds of Oasis fans keen to get their hands on tickets have been scammed in just the first month since the reunion shows were announced. Fans of the Mancunian dad-rock band comprise around 70% of all reported concert ticket scams since August 27, according

All of the UK local authorities targeted by Russian hacktivists last week appear to have restored online services. A group known as “NoName057(16)” took to X (formerly Twitter) last Monday to publish details of a DDoS campaign which it claimed was retribution for British military support for Ukraine. “The Russian embassy in the UK has