A “perfect storm” of surging threats, economic headwinds and evolving regulations will see many organizations miss out on cyber-insurance in 2023, experts have warned. Insurers have been increasing premiums whilst reducing coverage over recent months in response to the rising frequency, severity and cost of cyber-attacks. UK pricing increased 102% in the first quarter of 2022,
Month: August 2022
by Paul Ducklin Popular collaboration tool Slack (not to be confused with the nickname of the world’s longest-running Linux distro, Slackware) has just owned up to a cybersecurity SNAFU. According to a news bulletin entitled Notice about Slack password resets, the company admitted that it had inadvertently been oversharing personal data “when users created or
A new botnet named Orchard has been observed using Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s account transaction information to generate domain names to conceal its command-and-control (C2) infrastructure. “Because of the uncertainty of Bitcoin transactions, this technique is more unpredictable than using the common time-generated [domain generation algorithms], and thus more difficult to defend against,” researchers from
Let’s be honest – many of us parents aren’t big fans of gaming. In fact, some of us have probably even been known to roll our eyes or groan when we think about just how long our kids spend playing online games. But if there is one thing I’ve learned after 25 years of parenting,
North Korea stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto assets in at least one major hack, according to a confidential United Nations (UN) report seen by Reuters on Thursday. The document also reportedly suggests the US previously accused North Korea of carrying out cyber-attacks to fund its nuclear and missile programs. “Other cyber activity
Facebook parent company Meta disclosed that it took action against two espionage operations in South Asia that leveraged its social media platforms to distribute malware to potential targets. The first set of activities is what the company described as “persistent and well-resourced” and undertaken by a hacking group tracked under the moniker Bitter APT (aka
Private tech companies gather tremendous amounts of user data. These companies can afford to let you use social media platforms free of charge because it’s paid for by your data, attention, and time. Big tech derives most of its profits by selling your attention to advertisers — a well-known business model. Various documentaries (like Netflix’s
A team of security researchers from CloudSEK has discovered a new phishing tactic used by threat actors (TA) to target Indian banking customers via preview domains from Hosting Provider Hostinger. The new feature enables access to a site before it is accessible globally. In other words, it enables the viewing of website content without a
by Paul Ducklin We’ve written about PQC, short for post-quantum cryptography, several times before. In case you’ve missed all the media excitement of the past few years about so-called quantum computing… …it is (if you will pardon what some experts will probably consider a reckless oversimplification) a way of building computing devices that can keep
Learn the basics of zero-trust, and how building a zero-trust environment can protect your organization. This week, ESET’s security evangelist Tony Anscombe participated in a panel on zero-trust architecture during ChannelCon. He explains what zero-trust means, and the basic practises any organisation should implement to protect themselves. Watch the video to learn more.
A new IoT botnet malware dubbed RapperBot has been observed rapidly evolving its capabilities since it was first discovered in mid-June 2022. “This family borrows heavily from the original Mirai source code, but what separates it from other IoT malware families is its built-in capability to brute force credentials and gain access to SSH servers
Your digital footprint grows with every internet account you make. While your old Tumblr account may be fun for reminiscing, dormant accounts are actually one of the most significant sources of user data on the internet. These accounts can be used by data brokers or third parties to access your personal information. To improve your
ReversingLabs researchers discovered a new ransomware family targeting Linux-based systems in South Korea. Dubbed GwisinLocker, the malware was detected by ReversingLabs on July 19 while undertaking successful campaigns targeting firms in the industrial and pharmaceutical space. “In those incidents, it often launched attacks on public holidays and during the early morning hours (Korean time) – looking to
by Paul Ducklin The word “protocol” crops up all over the place in IT, usually describing the details of how to exchange data between requester and replier. Thus we have HTTP, short for hypertext transfer protocol, which explains how to communicate with a webserver; SMTP, or simple mail transfer protocol, which governs sending and receiving
A threat actor working to further Iranian goals is said to have been behind a set of disruptive cyberattacks against Albanian government services in mid-July 2022. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant said the malicious activity against a NATO state represented a “geographic expansion of Iranian disruptive cyber operations.” The July 17 attacks, according to Albania’s National Agency
Whether using the internet for play or work, you want to spend your time online enjoying the peace of mind that comes with having a secure network. You don’t want to contend with someone taking your personal data — whether it’s credit card information, passwords, or bank account details — via malware or a data
Cybersecurity experts from Deepwatch spotted activity from threat actors (TA) that “highly likely” exploited a security flaw in the Atlassian Confluence server (CVE-2022-26134) to deploy a new backdoor dubbed “Ljl” against a number of unnamed organizations. Deepwatch’s Adversary Tactics and Intelligence group (ATI) described the findings in an advisory published on Tuesday. After gaining initial
by Paul Ducklin 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. Or just
Are you on Tinder? With 75 million monthly active users, you might be able to find the right one. However there are also traps you need to look out for. Read more about catfishing, sextortion, phishing and other practices used by scammers. “It’s a match” is now a common expression in the dating scene, and
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a recently disclosed high-severity vulnerability in the Zimbra email suite to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The issue in question is CVE-2022-27924 (CVSS score: 7.5), a command injection flaw in the platform that could lead to the execution of
A recent report by Javelin Strategy and Research found that identity theft cost Americans $56 billion in 2020, with imposter scams accounting for 20% of online fraud. While most internet platforms have stringent data security measures in place to curb cyber fraud, they aren’t always fool-proof. Your user information is available online as a result
Security researchers from ThreatLabz have uncovered a new strain of a large-scale phishing campaign using adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) techniques along with several evasion tactics. According to an advisory published by the company on Tuesday, similar AiTM phishing techniques were used in a separate phishing campaign described by Microsoft last month. Now, ThreatLabz revealed that using intelligence
by Paul Ducklin Just over a year ago, we wrote about a “cybersecurity researcher” who posted almost 4000 pointlessly poisoned Python packages to the popular repository PyPI. This person went by the curious nickname of Remind Supply Chain Risks, and the packages had project names that were generally similar to well-known projects, presumably in the
Cisco on Wednesday rolled out patches to address eight security vulnerabilities, three of which could be weaponized by an unauthenticated attacker to gain remote code execution (RCE) or cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on affected devices. The most critical of the flaws impact Cisco Small Business RV160, RV260, RV340, and RV345 Series routers. Tracked as
If you’re the parent of a tween or teen, chances are they’re not the only ones going back to school. Their smartphones are going back too. Our recent global research showed just how many tweens and teens use a smartphone. Plenty. Depending on the age band, that figure ranges anywhere from 76% to 93%, with
A Sentinel One investigation revealed threat actors (TA) have been abusing the Windows Defender command line tool to decrypt and load Cobalt Strike payloads. The cybersecurity experts detailed their findings in an advisory last week, in which they said the TA managed to carry out the attacks after obtaining initial access via the Log4Shell vulnerability
by Paul Ducklin Cryptocurrency protocol Nomad (not to be confused with Monad, which is what PowerShell was called when it first came out) describes itself as “an optimistic interoperability protocol that enables secure cross-chain communication,” and promises that it’s a “security-first cross-chain messaging protocol.” In plain English, it’s supposed to let you swap cryptocurrency tokens
Whether you are getting ready for back-to-school season, getting new work laptop or fancying a new gamer’s pc, learn the steps to protect your new PC from cyberthreats. With Windows 11 making headlines for all the right reasons, it could be a great time to invest in a new PC for the family or the
Virtualization services provider VMware on Tuesday shipped updates to address 10 security flaws affecting multiple products that could be abused by unauthenticated attackers to perform malicious actions. The issues tracked from CVE-2022-31656 through CVE-2022-31665 (CVSS scores: 4.7 – 9.8) affect the VMware Workspace ONE Access, Workspace ONE Access Connector, Identity Manager, Identity Manager Connector, vRealize
Security experts from online platform Zscaler have published an analysis of the new variant of the known Raccoon Stealer malware. Writing in an advisory last Friday, Zscaler said the new version of the malware is written in C, unlike previous versions which were mainly written in C++. Raccoon Stealer 2.0 features a new back-end and