Cybersecurity official Anne Neuberger has implored American businesses to actively prepare for a seasonal surge in cybercrime. In a statement issued through the White House on Thursday, the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology explained why threat actors like to time their attacks with the holidays. “Historically we have seen
Meta Platforms on Thursday revealed it took steps to deplatform seven cyber mercenaries that it said carried out “indiscriminate” targeting of journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition, and human rights activists located in over 100 countries, amid mounting scrutiny of surveillance technologies. To that end, the company said it alerted 50,000 users
by Paul Ducklin Amidst the ongoing brouhaha created by the apparently omnipresent Log4Shell insecurity featuresecurity vulnerability, it’s easy to lose track of all the other things that you should, and normally would, be working on anyway. Indeed, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is warning that: Remediating [the Log4Shell] issue is likely to take
A trio of healthcare providers in New Jersey has agreed to pay $425,000 and adopt new security measures to settle a legal claim involving a double data breach. The state of New Jersey alleged that Regional Cancer Care Associates LLC, RCCA MSO LLC, and RCCA MD LLC (collectively “RCCA”) failed to adequately safeguard the personal data and
Cybercriminals make people uneasy about the safety of their identity and online accounts. McAfee is your partner who’ll work tirelessly to restore your confidence in your online activities. Check out this roundup of privacy protection, identity protection, and device security best practices to boost your confidence in the safety of your personal information and technology. Privacy Protection Privacy protection means keeping the information you’d rather keep to yourself from getting
The grand finale of our series dedicated to demystifying Latin American banking trojans ESET started this blogpost series dedicated to demystifying Latin American banking trojans in August 2019. Since then, we have covered the most active ones, namely Amavaldo, Casbaneiro, Mispadu, Guildma, Grandoreiro, Mekotio, Vadokrist, Ousaban and Numando. Latin American banking trojans share a lot
Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated a new attack technique that makes it possible to leverage a device’s Bluetooth component to directly extract network passwords and manipulate traffic on a Wi-Fi chip. The novel attacks work against the so-called “combo chips,” which are specialized chips that are equipped to handle different types of radio wave-based wireless communications,
by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can also listen directly on Soundcloud. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found.
Virginia is fighting cyber-fires on two fronts after ransomware attacks affected both its state legislature and an agency within its executive branch. In an attack that struck on the evening of December 12, key IT systems under the Division of Legislative Automated Systems (DLAS) were rendered inaccessible. The attack was focused on certain internal servers, impacting the
Before you take the fun-looking quiz that popped up in your social media feed, think twice. The person holding the answers may be a hacker. Where people go, hackers are sure to follow. So it’s no surprise hackers have set up shop on social media. This has been the case for years, yet now social media-based crime is on the rise. In 2019, total reported losses to this
Hundreds of thousands of attempts to exploit the vulnerability are under way In many cases, updating IT systems and patching security vulnerabilities is a quiet matter that business leaders may be little concerned with other than knowing that they have approved a budget for the IT team to get it done. That quiet approach is
Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, has announced that it’s expanding its bug bounty program to start rewarding valid reports of scraping vulnerabilities across its platforms as well as include reports of scraping data sets that are available online. “We know that automated activity designed to scrape people’s public and private data targets
Hundreds of financial applications are being targeted by a threat campaign featuring a new strain of the Anubis Android banking trojan malware. The malicious campaign was detected by researchers at cybersecurity company and integrated endpoint-to-cloud provider Lookout. Researchers observed the banking malware masquerading as an account management application created by France’s largest telecommunications company, Orange S.A., to target customers of
By Sriram P & Lakshya Mathur Hancitor, a loader that provides Malware as a Service, has been observed distributing malware such as FickerStealer, Pony, CobaltStrike, Cuba Ransomware, and many more. Recently at McAfee Labs, we observed Hancitor Doc VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) samples dropping the payload using the Windows clipboard through Selection.Copy method. This blog focuses on
By spotting these early warning signs of identity theft, you can minimize the impact on you and your family We’re all spending more of our time online. Last year, US adults spent one hour more per day on digital activities across all of their devices than they did in 2019. By the end of 2022,
Romanian cybersecurity technology company Bitdefender on Monday revealed that attempts are being made to target Windows machines with a novel ransomware family called Khonsari as well as a remote access Trojan named Orcus by exploiting the recently disclosed critical Log4j vulnerability. The attack leverages the remote code execution flaw to download an additional payload, a
by Paul Ducklin Amongst all the brouhaha about Log4Shell, it’s easy to forget all the other updates that surround us. Not only is it Patch Tuesday (keep your eye on our sister site news.sophos.com for the latest on that score later in the day)… …but it’s also time to check your Apple devices, because Apple
Police have arrested a professor at a Louisiana university after child sexual abuse material was discovered on his office desktop computer. An investigation was begun in East Baton Rouge on Thursday after officials at Louisiana State University’s (LSU’s) Agricultural Center (AgCenter) were contacted by concerned employees in the center’s IT department. The IT workers raised the alarm
Like many consumers around the world, you’re probably scouring the internet to find the perfect gifts for your friends and family in time for the holidays. While buyers prepare for the festivities, cybercriminals look for opportunities to scam shoppers with various tricks. In 2020, the FBI received over 17,000 complaints regarding goods that were never delivered, totaling losses of more than
The critical flaw in the ubiquitous Log4j utility has sent shockwaves far beyond the security industry – here’s what we know so far Just as the holiday season is approaching our doorstep, a critical vulnerability in an Apache code library called Log4j 2 has come knocking at the door. Log4j is an open-source Java-based logging
Google has rolled out fixes for five security vulnerabilities in its Chrome web browser, including one which it says is being exploited in the wild, making it the 17th such weakness to be disclosed since the start of the year. Tracked as CVE-2021-4102, the flaw relates to a use-after-free bug in the V8 JavaScript and
by Paul Ducklin In this article, we explain the Apache Log4Shell vulnerability in plain English, and give you some simple educational code that you can use safely and easily at home (or even directly on your own servers) in order to learn more. Just to be clear up front: we’re not going to show you
Cyber-thieves hacked into the computer network of Swedish car manufacturer Volvo and exfiltrated research and development secrets. The carmaker posted a notice on its website yesterday stating that it had suffered a cybersecurity breach in which a limited amount of data was stolen. Though the quantity of data swiped in the incident was small, Volvo warned that its loss
Something’s not right. Maybe your phone is losing its charge way too quickly. Or one day it suddenly starts turning itself off and on again. Perhaps it’s running hot, so hot it’s hard to hold. Likewise, you might see outgoing calls that you never dialed or strange spikes in your data usage. Signs like these could mean that your smartphone’s been
As many as 1.6 million WordPress sites have been targeted by an active large-scale attack campaign originating from 16,000 IP addresses by exploiting weaknesses in four plugins and 15 Epsilon Framework themes. WordPress security company Wordfence, which disclosed details of the attacks, said Thursday it had detected and blocked more than 13.7 million attacks aimed
An investigation into the springtime cyber-attack on HSE Ireland has found that criminals spent two months inside the healthcare system’s computer network before deploying ransomware. The attack, which struck HSE Ireland with Conti ransomware in mid-May, forced the health service to take its IT systems offline, leading to the cancellation of multiple hospital appointments. An investigation
Overview: On December 9th, a vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) was released on Twitter along with a POC on Github for the Apache Log4J logging library. The bug was originally disclosed to Apache on November 24th by Chen Zhaojun of Alibaba Cloud Security Team. The impact of this vulnerability has the potential to be massive due to its
Details have emerged about what’s the first Rust-language-based ransomware strain spotted in the wild that has already amassed “some victims from different countries” since its launch last month. The ransomware, dubbed BlackCat, was disclosed by MalwareHunterTeam. “Victims can pay with Bitcoin or Monero,” the researchers said in a series of tweets detailing the file-encrypting malware.
by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can also listen directly on Soundcloud. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found.
A cyber-attack has been carried out against major German logistics provider Hellmann Worldwide Logistics. The security incident forced Hellmann to take its central data center offline yesterday. Today, operations at the Osnabrück-based company remain disrupted. Hellmann said that since the attack was discovered, it has been under the constant observation of its Global Crisis Taskforce, which