British AI cybersecurity vendor Darktrace will not be acquired by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo. In a statement to the London Stock Exchange (LSE) on Thursday 8, 2022, Darktrace said “discussions with Thoma Bravo have terminated,” putting an end to the £6bn ($6.9m) deal that could have been one of the most significant M&A
Month: September 2022
by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can also listen directly on Soundcloud. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found.
Misconfigured remote access services continue to give bad actors an easy access path to company networks – here’s how you can minimize your exposure to attacks misusing Remote Desktop Protocol As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, many of us, myself included, turned to working full-time from home. Many of ESET’s employees were already
A malicious campaign mounted by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group is targeting energy providers around the world, including those based in the United States, Canada, and Japan. “The campaign is meant to infiltrate organizations around the world for establishing long-term access and subsequently exfiltrating data of interest to the adversary’s nation-state,” Cisco Talos said in
Most every parent loves a new school year. Most likely because the beloved milestone offers us a clean slate and a chance to do things better, shape new habits, and close those digital safety gaps. The hope that fuels change is a powerful thing. However, if you want to ensure your new habits stick, there’s
High street retailer Halfords has been fined £30,000 by the UK’s privacy regulator for breaking the law governing nuisance marketing. The bike shop chain sent 498,179 emails to people in July 2020 regarding a “Fix Your Bike” government voucher scheme, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The marketing email encouraged recipients to book a
Focused mostly on Asia, this new cyberespionage group uses undocumented tools, including steganographically extracting PowerShell payloads from PNG files ESET researchers recently found targeted attacks that used undocumented tools against various high-profile companies and local governments mostly in Asia. These attacks were conducted by a previously unknown espionage group that we have named Worok and
An international law enforcement operation has resulted in the dismantling of WT1SHOP, an online criminal marketplace that specialized in the sales of stolen login credentials and other personal information. The seizure was orchestrated by Portuguese authorities, with the U.S. officials taking control of four domains used by the website: “wt1shop[.]net,” “wt1store[.]cc,” “wt1store[.]com,” and “wt1store[.]net.” The
Over half (52%) of global organizations know a partner that has been compromised by ransomware, yet few are doing anything to improve the security of their supply chain, according to Trend Micro. The security vendor polled nearly 3000 IT decision makers across 26 countries to produce its latest report, Everything is connected: Uncovering the ransomware
by Paul Ducklin Just three days after Chrome’s previous update, which patched 24 security holes that were not in the wild… …the Google programmers announced the release of Chrome 105.0.5195.102, where the last of the four numbers in the quadruplet jumps up from 52 on Mac and Linux and 54 on Windows. The release notes
Cybersecurity researchers have offered insight into a previously undocumented software control panel used by a financially motivated threat group known as TA505. “The group frequently changes its malware attack strategies in response to global cybercrime trends,” Swiss cybersecurity firm PRODAFT said in a report shared with The Hacker News. “It opportunistically adopts new technologies in
The UK government has updated its guidance on financial sanctions to tackle what it believes could be a digital loophole in the previous rules. Under the new sanctions regime, cryptocurrency exchanges are required to notify the Treasury if a client is on the officially designated list. It will be considered a criminal offense not to
A vulnerable anti-cheat driver for the Genshin Impact video game has been leveraged by a cybercrime actor to disable antivirus programs to facilitate the deployment of ransomware, according to findings from Trend Micro. The ransomware infection, which was triggered in the last week of July 2022, banked on the fact that the driver in question
A vulnerability in Chromium-based browsers allows web-pages to replace the content of the system clipboard without the user’s consent or interaction. The bug was discovered by developer Jeff Johnson, who detailed his findings in a blog post on August 28. The security expert also said the issue affects Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox as well, but
by Paul Ducklin We don’t often write obituaries on Naked Security, but this is one of the times we’re going to. You might not have heard of Peter Eckersley, PhD, but it’s very likely that you’ve relied on a cybersecurity innovation that he not only helped to found, but also to build and establish across
Google on Friday shipped emergency fixes to address a security vulnerability in the Chrome web browser that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. The issue, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-3075, concerns a case of insufficient data validating in Mojo, which refers to a collection of runtime libraries that provide a platform-agnostic mechanism for
Various law enforcement agencies in Southern California and North Carolina have deployed an obscure cellphone tracking tool dubbed ‘Fog Reveal,’ sometimes without search warrants, a new investigation by the Associated Press (AP) has revealed. The tool gave police offers the ability to search billions of records from 250 million mobile devices and harness the ensuing data
by Paul Ducklin Here’s an interesting paper from the recent 2022 USENIX conference: Mining Node.js Vulnerabilities via Object Dependence Graph and Query. We’re going to cheat a little bit here by not digging into and explaining the core research presented by the authors of the paper (some mathematics, and knowledge of operational semantics notation is
What if your organization is hit by a cyberattack that is attributed to a nation state? Would your insurance cover the costs of the attack? As cyber-insurance is, and will continue to be, a budget item for organizations looking to protect themselves from the escalating and unforeseen consequences of cyberattacks, one important question arises –
South Korean chaebol Samsung on Friday said it experienced a cybersecurity incident that resulted in the unauthorized access of some customer information, the second time this year it has reported such a breach. “In late July 2022, an unauthorized third-party acquired information from some of Samsung’s U.S. systems,” the company disclosed in a notice. “On
“But everyone else has one.” Those are familiar words to a parent, especially if you’re having the first smartphone conversation with your tween or pre-teen. In their mind, everyone else has a smartphone so they want a one too. But does “everyone” really have one? Well, your child isn’t wrong. Our recent global study found
A new ransomware group operating under the name BianLian emerged in late 2021 and has become increasingly active since. The threat actor already has twenty alleged victims across several industries (insurance, medicine, law and engineering), according to a research paper from US cybersecurity firm Redacted, published on September 1, 2022. The majority of the victim
by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can also listen directly on Soundcloud. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found.
Researchers have identified functional similarities between a malicious component used in the Raspberry Robin infection chain and a Dridex malware loader, further strengthening the operators’ connections to the Russia-based Evil Corp group. The findings suggest that “Evil Corp is likely using Raspberry Robin infrastructure to carry out its attacks,” IBM Security X-Force researcher Kevin Henson
Fears and phobias. We all have them. But what are your biggest ones? I absolutely detest snakes but spiders don’t worry me at all. Well, new research by McAfee shows that cybercriminals and the fear of being hacked are now the 5th greatest fear among Aussies. With news of data breaches and hacking crusades filling
A leading industry standards community has published its first guidelines for the testing of IoT security products, in a bid to drive independent benchmarking and certification efforts. The Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) said its Guidelines for Testing of IoT Security Products document was produced with input from testers and vendors. AMTSO board member, Vlad
by Paul Ducklin Well, we didn’t expect this! Our much-loved iPhone 6+, now nearly eight years old but in pristine, as-new condition until a recent UDI (unintended dismount incident, also known as a bicycle prang, which smashed the screen but left the device working fine otherwise), hasn’t received any security updates from Apple for almost
Do you have a plan for what will happen to your digital self when you pass away? Here’s how to put your digital affairs in order on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other major online services. There’s no easy way to put it: We’re all going to die. And once dead, why would we care about
Researchers have identified 1,859 apps across Android and iOS containing hard-coded Amazon Web Services (AWS) credentials, posing a major security risk. “Over three-quarters (77%) of the apps contained valid AWS access tokens allowing access to private AWS cloud services,” Symantec’s Threat Hunter team, a part of Broadcom Software, said in a report shared with The