A cyber-criminal who defrauded American telecommunications giant AT&T out of more than $200m through a phone-unlocking bribery scheme has been sentenced to prison. Muhammad Fahd, a 35-year-old citizen of Pakistan and Grenada, led a seven-year conspiracy in which AT&T employees were bribed to unlawfully unlock nearly two million customers’ cell phones for profit. The plot began in
Month: September 2021
Summary The REvil (also known as Sodinokibi) ransomware was first identified on April 17, 2019. It is used by the financially motivated GOLD SOUTHFIELD threat group, which distributes ransomware via exploit kits, scan-and-exploit techniques, RDP servers, and backdoored software installers. Secureworks® Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) analysis suggests that REvil is likely associated with the GandCrab
For this week’s executive spotlight, I’m highlighting Kathleen Curry, senior vice president, Global Enterprise Channels at McAfee Enterprise. Curry was named one of CRN’s 2021 Channel Chiefs. Joining the company in April 2020, she was acknowledged for her contributions expanding our partner program initiatives to reward partners for servicing customers in line with their modern needs
Analysis of Numando banking trojan, steps to mitigate attack surface, and more! – Week in security with Tony Anscombe In this edition of Week in security, Tony looks at these topics: ESET Research continues its series on Latin American banking trojans, this time dissecting Numando, which targets mainly Brazil and rarely Mexico and Spain. An
New details have been revealed about a recently remediated critical vulnerability in Netgear smart switches that could be leveraged by an attacker to potentially execute malicious code and take control of vulnerable devices. The flaw — dubbed “Seventh Inferno” (CVSS score: 9.8) — is part of a trio of security weaknesses, called Demon’s Cries (CVSS
More Native American tribes are going to be given enhanced access to critical databases containing national crime information for the United States. In an announcement made September 16, the Department of Justice said that 12 tribes have been newly selected to participate in the Tribal Access Program for National Crime Information (TAP), bringing the total number of
Sadly, online job scams targeting older adults have been an issue for years. However, in a pandemic job market, cybercriminals are working overtime to devise schemes that exploit job seekers’ need for financial security. According to the Better Business Bureau, Americans lost more than $62 million in employment scams in 2020. In addition, with federal unemployment benefits ending this month, that number is expected to rise as more
The (probably) penultimate post in our occasional series demystifying Latin American banking trojans. Before concluding our series, there is one more LATAM banking trojan that deserves a closer look – Numando. The threat actor behind this malware family has been active since at least 2018. Even though it is not nearly as lively as Mekotio
A targeted phishing campaign aimed at the aviation industry for two years may be spearheaded by a threat actor operating out of Nigeria, highlighting how attackers can carry out small-scale cyber offensives for extended periods of time while staying under the radar. Cisco Talos dubbed the malware attacks “Operation Layover,” building on previous research from
Summary The activities of some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) challenge governments on politically sensitive issues such as social, humanitarian, and environmental policies. As a result, these organizations are often exposed to increased government-directed threats aimed at monitoring their activities, discrediting their work, or stealing their intellectual property. BRONZE PRESIDENT is a likely People’s Republic of China
Over $133m has already been lost this year to romance scams, with victims increasingly urged to invest in fraudulent cryptocurrency opportunities, according to the FBI. A new Public Service Announcement was published yesterday revealing that the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 1,800 complaints from January 1 to June 31 this year, resulting in soaring
Why am I here? There’s a lot of information out there on critical vulnerabilities; this short bug report contains an overview of what we believe to be the most news and noteworthy vulnerabilities. We don’t rely on a single scoring system like CVSS to determine what you need to know about; this is all about
Discover the best ways to mitigate your organization’s attack surface, in order to maximize cybersecurity. In almost all coverage of modern breaches you’ll hear mention of the “cyberattack surface” or something similar. It’s central to understanding how attacks work and where organizations are most exposed. During the pandemic the attack surface has grown arguably further
A number of malicious samples have been created for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with the goal of compromising Windows machines, highlighting a sneaky method that allows the operators to stay under the radar and thwart detection by popular anti-malware engines. The “distinct tradecraft” marks the first instance where a threat actor has been
The following analysis was compiled and published to Threat Intelligence clients in April 2019. The Secureworks® Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) research team is publicly sharing insights about BRONZE VINEWOOD and its use of the HanaLoader malware and DropboxAES RAT to increase visibility of the threat group’s activities. Summary BRONZE VINEWOOD (also known as APT31 and ZIRCONIUM) is
by Paul Ducklin The September 2021 Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft came out this week. The fix that everyone was waiting for with bated breath was the patch for CVE-2021-40444, a zero-day remote code execution bug in MSHTML that was announced by Microsoft just days before Patch Tuesday came around: Windows zero-day MSHTML attack –
Three big-name UK brands have been collectively fined nearly half a million pounds by the privacy regulator after sending hundreds of millions of nuisance marketing messages to consumers. We Buy Any Car was fined £200,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after bombarding consumers with over 191 million emails and 3.6 million nuisance texts. Saga Services and Saga Personal
The COVID-19 pandemic flipped the world on its head in so many ways. Offices and schools stood empty while living rooms were transformed into classrooms and workspaces. Misinformation ran rampant and made people unsure of what to believe. Cybercriminals took advantage of the confusion and new way of daily life, giving rise to many COVID-19
The most recent Patch Tuesday includes a fix for the previously disclosed and actively exploited remote code execution flaw in MSHTML. The arrival of the second Tuesday of the month can only mean one thing in cybersecurity terms, Microsoft is rolling out patches for security vulnerabilities in Windows and its other offerings. This time round Microsoft’s
Continuous integration vendor Travis CI has patched a serious security flaw that exposed API keys, access tokens, and credentials, potentially putting organizations that use public source code repositories at risk of further attacks. The issue — tracked as CVE-2021-41077 — concerns unauthorized access and plunder of secret environment data associated with a public open-source project
The following analysis was compiled and published to Threat Intelligence clients in March 2019. The Secureworks® Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) research team is publicly sharing insights about BRONZE VINEWOOD and its use of the HanaLoader malware and DropboxAES RAT, to increase visibility of the threat group’s activities. Summary DropboxAES is a simple remote access trojan (RAT) used
by Paul Ducklin [01’28”] Apple patches two zero-day bugs. [09’25”] Microsoft patches one zero-day bug. [15’49”] A security researcher finds a fast-food bug (non-insect sort). [23’04”] Oh! No! A touchpad user turns right into left, and vice versa. (See also: Big Office bug squashed for September 2021 Patch Tuesday.) With Paul Ducklin and Doug Aamoth.
Three former members of the United States military or United States Intelligence Community (USIC) have been fined for providing hacking-related services to a foreign government. United States citizens, 49-year-old Marc Baier and 34-year-old Ryan Adams, and 40-year-old former US citizen Daniel Gericke were investigated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) over claims that they had violated U.S.
A special thanks to our Professional Services’ IR team, ShadowServer, for historical context on C2 domains, and Thomas Roccia/Leandro Velasco for malware analysis support. Executive Summary Following a recent Incident Response, McAfee Enterprise‘s Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team worked with its Professional Services IR team to support a case that initially started as a malware
The Facebook-owned messaging service plans to roll out the feature to both iOS and Android users in the coming weeks. While users already had the option to back up their message history using cloud-based services, they will soon be able to store their backups end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), WhatsApp has announced. The introduction of the new feature
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday disclosed it fined three intelligence community and military personnel $1.68 million in penalties for their role as cyber-mercenaries working on behalf of a U.A.E.-based cybersecurity company. The trio in question — Marc Baier, 49, Ryan Adams, 34, and Daniel Gericke, 40 — are accused of “knowingly and
The following analysis was compiled and published to Threat Intelligence clients in November 2018. The Secureworks® Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) research team is publicly sharing insights about BRONZE VINEWOOD and its use of the HanaLoader malware and DropboxAES RAT, to increase visibility of the threat group’s activities. In mid-2018, Secureworks® Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) researchers identified
by Paul Ducklin Articles in our Serious Security series are often fairly technical, although we nevertheless aim to keep them free from jargon. In the past, we’ve dug into into topics that include: website hacking (and how to avoid it), numeric computation (and how to get it right), and post-quantum cryptography (and why we’re getting
Global financial services firms spent more than $2m on average recovering from a ransomware attack last year, according to new data from Sophos. The UK security vendor polled 550 IT decision-makers in mid-sized financial sector firms around the globe to compile its State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2021 report. It found that a third (34%) of firms
Authored by Fernando Ruiz McAfee Mobile Malware Research Team has identified malware targeting Mexico. It poses as a security banking tool or as a bank application designed to report an out-of-service ATM. In both instances, the malware relies on the sense of urgency created by tools designed to prevent fraud to encourage targets to use them. This malware can steal authentication factors crucial to accessing