Data generated by OnePoll from April 28 to May 3 2022 on behalf of AT&T shows that the average person happens upon a suspicious online site or social media account 6.5 times a day. The recent survey of 2000 general population Americans also found that 54% of consumers said they were unaware of the difference between active and passive
Month: July 2022
by Paul Ducklin It’s prime vacation season in the Northern Hemipshere, and in some countries, July and August aren’t just months when some people take some days off, but a period of extended family holidays, often involving weeks away from home or on the road. The good news, of course, is that if you’ve had
New survey reveals lack of staff, skills, and resources driving smaller teams to outsource security. As business begins its return to normalcy (however “normal” may look), CISOs at small and medium-size enterprises (500 – 10,000 employees) were asked to share their cybersecurity challenges and priorities, and their responses were compared the results with those of
Our How I Got Here series spotlights the stories of team members who have successfully grown their careers here at McAfee. This journey features Jeremy whose passion for learning has seen him grow his career in our Technology Services Team. My McAfee career journey In 2015, I started as a contract worker to help manage network cabling
The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System (VCU) has warned almost 4500 transplant participants about a privacy breach affecting their healthcare information. The company warned that some transplant recipients’ medical records contained their donor’s information, while recipient information also showed up in some donors’ records. It has been inappropriately exposing this information since 2006 in some
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.
The heavyweights are now moving into API security, cementing it as “A Thing” As swarms of IoT gear, seeking richer data retrieval from their cloud mother ships, the more robust – and more potentially dangerously hackable – API interfaces get a fresh push toward center stage. With Google’s API security initiative Apigee, API security is
Joshua Schulte, a former programmer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has been found guilty of leaking a trove of classified hacking tools and exploits dubbed Vault 7 to WikiLeaks. The 33-year-old engineer had been charged in June 2018 with unauthorized disclosure of classified information and theft of classified material. Schulte also faces a
Your smartphone comes with built-in location services, which are useful if you lose it or if you use an app that needs to know your location. But what if you don’t want your phone to be tracked? Can the phone be located if you turn off location services? The answer is yes, it’s possible to
Microsoft patched a zero-day bug in its latest Patch Tuesday update this week that allowed remote execution on Windows machines and which is already being exploited in the wild. CVE-2022-22047 is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Client/Server Runtime Subsystem (CSRSS), which is responsible for Windows features, including console windows and the shutdown process.
by Paul Ducklin Have you ever come really close to clicking a phishing link simply through coincidence? We’ve had a few surprises, such as when we bought a mobile phone from a click-and-collect store a couple of years back. Having lived outside the UK for many years before that, this was our first-ever purchase from
In a world of ever-evolving cyberthreats, collaboration and knowledge exchange are vital for keeping an edge on attackers Cybersecurity is a cornerstone of today’s digital society, and progress and development in this field wouldn’t be possible without collaboration and the sharing of information on the latest cyberthreats. Such information exchange between various stakeholders from the
Security researchers have uncovered yet another vulnerability affecting numerous older AMD and Intel microprocessors that could bypass current defenses and result in Spectre-based speculative-execution attacks. Dubbed Retbleed by ETH Zurich researchers Johannes Wikner and Kaveh Razavi, the issues are tracked as CVE-2022-29900 (AMD) and CVE-2022-29901 (Intel), with the chipmakers releasing software mitigations as part of
Cyber insurance companies are looking for new ways to assess risk as they grow increasingly wary of rising claims, said a report from cybersecurity company Panaseer released this week. The 2022 Cyber Insurance Market Trends Report found a lack of confidence in underwriting processes. Only 44% of insurers said they were very confident in evaluating cyber risk, with 46.5% warning
by Paul Ducklin Paying money to ransomware criminals is a contentious issue. After all, ransomware demands boil down to one thing, whether you know it in everyday language as extortion, blackmail or standover, namely: demanding money with menaces. Usually, the attackers leave all your precious files where they are, so you can see them sitting
It’s all fun and games until you get hacked – and this is just one risk of downloading cracked games Revenue in the global video games market is set to grow by nearly 11% this year to reach almost $209bn. But when we see this much growth, revenue and users concentrated in one place, there
Microsoft released its monthly round of Patch Tuesday updates to address 84 new security flaws spanning multiple product categories, counting a zero-day vulnerability that’s under active attack in the wild. Of the 84 shortcomings, four are rated Critical, and 80 are rated Important in severity. Also separately resolved by the tech giant are two other
McAfee announces a partnership that will grant new and existing Telstra customers easy access to McAfee’s leading security solutions to deliver holistic security and privacy protection through its integrated suite of services including Antivirus, Parental Controls, Identity Protection, Secure VPN and more, to protect and secure multiple devices including mobiles, PCs and laptops. The partnership
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last Friday that a Florida resident named Ron Aksoy has been arrested and charged for allegedly selling thousands of fraudulent and counterfeit Cisco products over the course of 12 years. Also known as Dave Durden, Aksoy, 38, would have run at least 19 companies formed in New Jersey
by Paul Ducklin Remember 1999? Well, the Melissa virus just called, and it’s finding life tough in 2022. It’s demanding a return to the freewheeling days of the last millennium, when Office macro viruses didn’t face the trials and tribulations that they do today. In the 1990s, you could insert VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)
GitHub Actions and Azure virtual machines (VMs) are being leveraged for cloud-based cryptocurrency mining, indicating sustained attempts on the part of malicious actors to target cloud resources for illicit purposes. “Attackers can abuse the runners or servers provided by GitHub to run an organization’s pipelines and automation by maliciously downloading and installing their own cryptocurrency
Disneyland’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were taken over on Thursday by a self-proclaimed “super hacker” who posted a series of racist and homophobic posts. Operating under the name “David Do,” the threat actor claimed he was seeking “revenge” on Disneyland employees after some of them had allegedly insulted him. “I am a super hacker that
LockBit ransomware attacks are constantly evolving by making use of a wide range of techniques to infect targets while also taking steps to disable endpoint security solutions. “The affiliates that use LockBit’s services conduct their attacks according to their preference and use different tools and techniques to achieve their goal,” Cybereason security analysts Loïc Castel
In this digital age, communicating online and through our devices has become the norm. From sharing highlights of last night’s game to sending cute animal videos back and forth, so much of our connectedness happens virtually. It’s become so easy to chat with friends and loved ones through social media that we don’t even have
Cybersecurity solutions provider Emsisoft has released a free decryption tool to enable AstraLocker and Yashma ransomware victims to recover their files without paying a ransom. The company made the announcement in a series of Twitter posts earlier today, providing a download link and related instructions for the tool. “The AstraLocker decryptor is for the Babuk-based one using .Astra or .babyk extension, and they
Scammers don’t take the summer off – be on your guard when buying your Crit’Air sticker If you drive your own vehicle in certain regions of France at certain times, you will need to purchase a special ‘clean air sticker’ called Crit’Air or risk facing a fine from the French government. Similar schemes already exist
A newly observed phishing campaign is leveraging the recently disclosed Follina security vulnerability to distribute a previously undocumented backdoor on Windows systems. “Rozena is a backdoor malware that is capable of injecting a remote shell connection back to the attacker’s machine,” Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin said in a report this week. Tracked as
A fake LinkedIn job offer was the reason behind Axie Infinity’s $600m hack, according to a new investigation by The Block. The digital assets-focused outlet said on Wednesday that while the US government attributed the attack to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus, full details of how the exploit was executed had not been disclosed. The Block said that according
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 Paul Ducklin and Chester Wisniewski. 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.
Vacations are a great time to unwind, but if you’re not careful, you may face a digital disaster. Here’s how to keep your devices and data secure while you’re on the move Vacations are the perfect time to unwind, but if you’re not careful, you may face a digital disaster. Being outside of their normal