Read more about election security: Potential ransomware attacks during the 2024 election cycle have been deemed unlikely to compromise the security or accuracy of vote casting or counting. The news comes from a public service announcement (PSA) issued on August 15 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Month: August 2024
Aug 20, 2024Ravie LakshmananMalware / Cyber Espionage Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a threat actor known as Blind Eagle that has persistently targeted entities and individuals in Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Panama, and other Latin American nations. Targets of these attacks span several sectors, including governmental institutions, financial companies, energy and oil and gas companies.
National Public Data, a US background check company, suffered a data breach in April 2024 that could have exposed sensitive data records of millions of US, UK and Canadian residents. The Florida-based data broker, which provides access to data from various public record databases, court records, state and national databases and other repositories nationwide, confirmed
Aug 19, 2024Ravie LakshmananCybercrime / Network Security Cybersecurity researchers have discovered new infrastructure linked to a financially motivated threat actor known as FIN7. The two clusters of potential FIN7 activity “indicate communications inbound to FIN7 infrastructure from IP addresses assigned to Post Ltd (Russia) and SmartApe (Estonia), respectively,” Team Cymru said in a report published
Microsoft has announced it is mandating multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all Azure sign-ins. Customers can select from multiple MFA options through Microsoft Entra to meet their needs. These are: Users approving sign-ins from a mobile app using push notifications, biometrics, or one-time passcodes though Microsoft Authenticator FIDO2 security keys, enabling sign-ins without a username or
Video Business email compromise (BEC) has once again proven to be a costly issue, with a company losing $60 million in a wire transfer fraud scheme 16 Aug 2024 A Luxembourg-based chemicals and manufacturing company has recently suffered one of the largest-ever business email compromise (BEC) attacks. According to a filing to the U.S. Securities
OpenAI on Friday said it banned a set of accounts linked to what it said was an Iranian covert influence operation that leveraged ChatGPT to generate content that, among other things, focused on the upcoming U.S. presidential election. “This week we identified and took down a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that were generating content for
Two US House of Representatives members have called on the US Department of Commerce to investigate Chinese-made Wi-Fi routers deployed in the US over hacking and espionage concerns. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a
Aug 16, 2024Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Application Security A large-scale extortion campaign has compromised various organizations by taking advantage of publicly accessible environment variable files (.env) that contain credentials associated with cloud and social media applications. “Multiple security missteps were present in the course of this campaign, including the following: Exposing environment variables, using long-lived
Read more about cybersecurity at the Paris Olympics: A new report has revealed a surge in malicious online activities leading up to the Paris Olympic Games, which started on July 26, 2024. Published by cybersecurity researchers at BforeAI today, the new data shows threat actors exploited the popularity of the event by setting up fake
Scams Here’s how to spot and dodge scams when searching for stuff on the classified ads website that offers almost everything under the sun Phil Muncaster 12 Aug 2024 • , 5 min. read People have been buying and selling items on Craigslist for nearly three decades. As a platform for digital classified ads, its
Aug 15, 2024Ravie LakshmananEnterprise Security / Vulnerability SolarWinds has released patches to address a critical security vulnerability in its Web Help Desk software that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code on susceptible instances. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-28986 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as a deserialization bug. “SolarWinds Web Help Desk was found
A new sophisticated phishing attack featuring a stealthy infostealer malware that exfiltrates a wide range of sensitive data has been uncovered by threat analysts. This malware not only targets traditional data types like saved passwords but also includes session cookies, credit card information, Bitcoin-related extensions and browsing history. The collected data is then sent as a
Scams Your phone number is more than just a way to contact you – scammers can use it to target you with malicious messages and even exploit it to gain access to your bank account or steal corporate data Márk Szabó 13 Aug 2024 • , 5 min. read Last month, we looked at how
Aug 15, 2024Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Cybercrime Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new variant of the Gafgyt botnet that’s targeting machines with weak SSH passwords to ultimately mine cryptocurrency on compromised instances using their GPU computational power. This indicates that the “IoT botnet is targeting more robust servers running on cloud native environments,” Aqua Security
Australian gold mining firm Evolution Mining recently reported a ransomware attack on its IT systems, identified on August 8, 2024. In a Monday filing with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), the company stated that the incident was contained. “The incident has been proactively managed with a focus on protecting the health, safety and privacy of
Privacy What if your favorite dating, social media or gaming app revealed your exact coordinates to someone you’d rather keep at a distance? Tony Anscombe 12 Aug 2024 • , 3 min. read In today’s digital age, geolocation features in many apps offer undeniable convenience. Just before writing this blog, I needed to locate some
Aug 14, 2024Ravie LakshmananWindows Security / Vulnerability Microsoft on Tuesday shipped fixes to address a total of 90 security flaws, including 10 zero-days, of which six have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 90 bugs, seven are rated Critical, 79 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. This is
A newly discovered vulnerability, identified as CVE-2024-6768, has surfaced in the Common Log File System (CLFS.sys) driver of Windows. This issue, identified by Fortra cybersecurity researcher, Ricardo Narvaja, highlights a flaw that could allow an unprivileged user to cause a system crash, resulting in Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The vulnerability exists due to improper input
Aug 13, 2024Ravie LakshmananThreat Intelligence / Malware The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new phishing campaign that masquerades as the Security Service of Ukraine to distribute malware capable of remote desktop access. The agency is tracking the activity under the name UAC-0198. More than 100 computers are estimated to
OpenAI has a tool to automatically watermark AI-generated content, but company leadership is split on whether to release it to the public. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company behind ChatGPT started developing a tool capable of labeling content generated by its large language models (LLMs) two years ago. People familiar with the matter
Critical Infrastructure In this high-stakes year for democracy, the importance of robust election safeguards and national cybersecurity strategies cannot be understated Tony Anscombe 09 Aug 2024 • , 3 min. read The mention of election security, especially in a year where the majority of the world is destined to vote, brings to mind images of
Aug 12, 2024Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Malware The Russian government and IT organizations are the target of a new campaign that delivers a number of backdoors and trojans as part of a spear-phishing campaign codenamed EastWind. The attack chains are characterized by the use of RAR archive attachments containing a Windows shortcut (LNK) file that,
In early July 2024, some of the world’s leading AI companies joined forces to create the Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI). During a conversation with Infosecurity at Black Hat USA 2024, Jason Clinton, CISO at Anthropic, one of CoSAI’s founding members, explained some of the key goals of the new coalition and the cybersecurity focus
Video Unsurprisingly, many discussions focused on the implications of the recent CrowdStrike outage, including the lessons it may have offered for bad actors 09 Aug 2024 This week was that time of the year when thousands of cybersecurity experts descended on Las Vegas to attend Black Hat USA, one of the world’s top cybersecurity conferences.
Aug 10, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Mobile Security As many as 10 security flaws have been uncovered in Google’s Quick Share data transfer utility for Android and Windows that could be assembled to trigger remote code execution (RCE) chain on systems that have the software installed. “The Quick Share application implements its own specific application-layer communication
One of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) flagship initiatives is Secure by Design, launched in 2023. Now, the agency is imploring software customers to take the approach of Secure by Demand. This was the message given by CISA director Jen Easterly during the primary stage talk at Black Hat USA. “You have to
Business Security Cyber insurance is not only a safety net, but it can also be a catalyst for advancing security practices and standards Tony Anscombe 08 Aug 2024 • , 3 min. read If there was ever any doubt about the relationship between cybersecurity and the cyber insurance industry, then Black Hat USA 2024 dispelled
Aug 09, 2024Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Data Protection Cybersecurity researchers have discovered multiple critical flaws in Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings that, if successfully exploited, could result in serious consequences. “The impact of these vulnerabilities range between remote code execution (RCE), full-service user takeover (which might provide powerful administrative access), manipulation of AI modules, exposing
As the 2024 US election approaches, cybersecurity leaders intensify their efforts to safeguard the democratic process, drawing insights from global partners to address evolving threats. Jen Easterly, the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) spoke at Black Hat USA about her confidence in the integrity of the nation’s election officials. However,