APT Hackers Distributed Android Trojan via Syrian e-Government Portal

An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor has been tracked in a new campaign deploying Android malware via the Syrian e-Government Web Portal, indicating an upgraded arsenal designed to compromise victims. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the group has been publicly observed using malicious Android applications as part of its attacks," Trend Micro researchers Zhengyu...

Reduce End-User Password Change Frustrations

Organizations today must give attention to their cybersecurity posture, including policies, procedures, and technical solutions for cybersecurity challenges.  This often results in a greater burden on the IT service desk staff as end-users encounter issues related to security software, policies, and password restrictions.  One of the most common areas where security may cause challenges for...

Oracle Warns of Critical Remotely Exploitable Weblogic Server Flaws

Oracle on Tuesday released its quarterly Critical Patch Update for July 2021 with 342 fixes spanning across multiple products, some of which could be exploited by a remote attacker to take control of an affected system. Chief among them is CVE-2019-2729, a critical deserialization vulnerability via XMLDecoder in Oracle WebLogic Server Web Services that's remotely exploitable without...

Another Hacker Arrested for 2020 Twitter Hack and Massive Bitcoin Scam

A U.K. citizen has been arrested in the Spanish town of Estepona over his alleged involvement in the July 2020 hack of Twitter, resulting in the compromise of 130 high-profile accounts. Joseph O'Connor, 22, has been charged with intentionally accessing a computer without authorization and obtaining information from a protected computer, as well as for making extortive communications. The Spanish...

Malicious NPM Package Caught Stealing Users' Saved Passwords From Browsers

A software package available from the official NPM repository has been revealed to be actually a front for a tool that's designed to steal saved passwords from the Chrome web browser. The package in question, named "nodejs_net_server" and downloaded over 1,283 times since February 2019, was last updated seven months ago (version 1.1.2), with its corresponding repository leading to non-existent...

XLoader Windows InfoStealer Malware Now Upgraded to Attack macOS Systems

A popular malware known for stealing sensitive information from Windows machines has evolved into a new strain capable of also targeting Apple's macOS operating system. The upgraded malware, dubbed "XLoader," is a successor to another well-known Windows-based info stealer called Formbook that's known to vacuum credentials from various web browsers, capture screenshots, record keystrokes, and...

Several New Critical Flaws Affect CODESYS Industrial Automation Software

Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities impacting CODESYS automation software and the WAGO programmable logic controller (PLC) platform that could be remotely exploited to take control of a company's cloud operational technology (OT) infrastructure. The flaws can be turned "into innovative attacks that could put threat actors in position to remotely...

[eBook] A Guide to Stress-Free Cybersecurity for Lean IT Security Teams

Today’s cybersecurity landscape is enough to make any security team concerned. The rapid evolution and increased danger of attack tactics have put even the largest corporations and governments at heightened risk. If the most elite security teams can’t prevent these attacks from happening, what can lean security teams look forward to?  Surprisingly, leaner teams have a much greater chance than...

New Windows and Linux Flaws Give Attackers Highest System Privileges

Microsoft's Windows 10 and the upcoming Windows 11 versions have been found vulnerable to a new local privilege escalation vulnerability that permits users with low-level permissions access Windows system files, in turn, enabling them to unmask the operating system installation password and even decrypt private keys. The vulnerability has been nicknamed "SeriousSAM.""Starting with Windows 10...

16-Year-Old Security Bug Affects Millions of HP, Samsung, Xerox Printers

Details have emerged about a high severity security vulnerability affecting a software driver used in HP, Xerox, and Samsung printers that has remained undetected since 2005. Tracked as CVE-2021-3438 (CVSS score: 8.8), the issue concerns a buffer overflow in a print driver installer package named "SSPORT.SYS" that can enable remote privilege and arbitrary code execution. Hundreds of millions of...

This New Malware Hides Itself Among Windows Defender Exclusions to Evade Detection

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday lifted the lid on a previously undocumented malware strain dubbed "MosaicLoader" that singles out individuals searching for cracked software as part of a global campaign. "The attackers behind MosaicLoader created a piece of malware that can deliver any payload on the system, making it potentially profitable as a delivery service," Bitdefender researchers...

US and Global Allies Accuse China of Massive Microsoft Exchange Attack

The U.S. government and its key allies, including the European Union, the U.K., and NATO, formally attributed the massive cyberattack against Microsoft Exchange email servers to state-sponsored hacking crews working affiliated with the People's Republic of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). In a statement issued by the White House on Monday, the administration said, "with a high degree of...

Researchers Warn of Linux Cryptojacking Attackers Operating from Romania

A threat group likely based in Romania and active since at least 2020 has been behind an active cryptojacking campaign targeting Linux-based machines with a previously undocumented SSH brute-forcer written in Golang. Dubbed "Diicot brute," the password cracking tool is alleged to be distributed via a software-as-a-service model, with each threat actor furnishing their own unique API keys to...

Turns Out That Low-Risk iOS Wi-Fi Naming Bug Can Hack iPhones Remotely

The Wi-Fi network name bug that was found to completely disable an iPhone's networking functionality had remote code execution capabilities and was silently fixed by Apple earlier this year, according to new research. The denial-of-service vulnerability, which came to light last month, stemmed from the way iOS handled string formats associated with the SSID input, triggering a crash on any...

Five Critical Password Security Rules Your Employees Are Ignoring

According to Keeper Security's Workplace Password Malpractice Report, many remote workers aren't following best practices for password security. Password security was a problem even before the advent of widespread remote work. So, what happened post-pandemic? Keeper Security's Workplace Password Malpractice Report sought to find out. In February 2021, Keeper surveyed 1,000 employees in the U.S....

Researcher Uncovers Yet Another Unpatched Windows Printer Spooler Vulnerability

Merely days after Microsoft sounded the alarm on an unpatched security vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, possibly yet another zero-day flaw in the same component has come to light, making it the fourth printer-related shortcoming to be discovered in recent weeks. "Microsoft Windows allows for non-admin users to be able to install printer drivers via Point and Print," CERT...

New Leak Reveals Abuse of Pegasus Spyware to Target Journalists Globally

A sweeping probe into a data leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers has revealed an extensive misuse of Israeli company NSO Group's Pegasus "military-grade spyware" to facilitate human rights violations by surveilling heads of state, activists, journalists, and lawyers around the world. Dubbed the "Pegasus Project," the investigation is a collaboration by more than 80 journalists from a...

China's New Law Requires Vendors to Report Zero-Day Bugs to Government

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has issued new stricter vulnerability disclosure regulations that mandate software and networking vendors affected with critical flaws to mandatorily disclose them first-hand to the government authorities within two days of filing a report. The "Regulations on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerability" are expected to go into effect...

Instagram Launches 'Security Checkup' to Help Users Recover Hacked Accounts

Instagram earlier this week introduced a new "Security Checkup" feature that aims to keep accounts safe and help users—whose accounts may have been compromised—to recover them. In order to gain access to accounts, users will be prompted to perform a series of steps, which include checking recent login activity, reviewing profile information, and updating contact details such as phone numbers or...

CloudFlare CDNJS Bug Could Have Led to Widespread Supply-Chain Attacks

Web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare last month fixed a critical vulnerability in its CDNJS library that's used by 12.7% of all websites on the internet. CDNJS is a free and open-source content delivery network (CDN) that serves about 4,041 JavaScript and CSS libraries, making it the second most popular CDN for JavaScript after Google Hosted Libraries. The weakness...

Israeli Firm Helped Governments Target Journalists, Activists with 0-Days and Spyware

Two of the zero-day Windows flaws rectified by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update earlier this week were weaponized by an Israel-based company called Candiru in a series of "precision attacks" to hack more than 100 journalists, academics, activists, and political dissidents globally. The spyware vendor was also formally identified as the commercial surveillance company that Google's...

The Definitive RFP Templates for EDR/EPP and APT Protection

Advanced Persistent Threats groups were once considered a problem that concerns Fortune 100 companies only. However, the threat landscape of the recent years tells otherwise—in fact, every organization, regardless of vertical and size is at risk, whether as a direct target, supply chain or collateral damage. The vast majority of security decision-makers acknowledge they need to address the APT...

Facebook Suspends Accounts Used by Iranian Hackers to Target US Military Personnel

Facebook on Thursday disclosed it dismantled a "sophisticated" online cyber espionage campaign conducted by Iranian hackers targeting about 200 military personnel and companies in the defense and aerospace sectors in the U.S., U.K., and Europe using fake online personas on its platform. The social media giant pinned the attacks to a threat actor known as Tortoiseshell (aka Imperial Kitten) based...

Update Your Chrome Browser to Patch New Zero‑Day Bug Exploited in the Wild

Google has pushed out a new security update to Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux with multiple fixes, including a zero-day that it says is being exploited in the wild. The latest patch resolves a total of eight issues, one of which concerns a type confusion issue in its V8 open-source and JavaScript engine (CVE-2021-30563). The search giant credited an anonymous researcher for reporting...

Microsoft Warns of New Unpatched Windows Print Spooler Vulnerability

Microsoft on Thursday shared fresh guidance on yet another vulnerability affecting the Windows Print Spooler service, stating that it's working to address it in an upcoming security update. Tracked as CVE-2021-34481 (CVSS score: 7.8), the issue concerns a local privilege escalation flaw that could be abused to perform unauthorized actions on the system. The company credited security researcher...