Security

by Paul Ducklin LOOPING THE LOOP No audio player below? 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 drop the URL of our RSS

A threat actor associated with Iranian nation-state hackers has been weaponizing N-day vulnerabilities, as well as deploying new techniques to access environments of interest. The threat actor is a sub-group of Mint Sandstorm – a gang also known as Phosphorus and associated with APT35, APT42, Charming Kitten and TA453 – reported an advisory published by Microsoft on

Security researchers have discovered a new malicious software library capable of collecting lists of installed applications, a history of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth device information as well as nearby GPS location data. Dubbed Goldoson by McAfee’s Mobile Research Team, the library can also load web pages without user awareness and perform advertisement fraud by clicking on

by Paul Ducklin We’ve said this before, but we’ll repeat it again here: Imagine that you’d spoken in what you thought was total confidence to a psychotherapist, but the contents of your sessions had been saved for posterity, along with precise personal identification details such as your unique national ID number, and perhaps including additional

The state of Montana in the US has become the first to pass legislation banning TikTok on personal devices. The bill, SB 419, passed by a vote of 54 to 43, mentions several concerns about TikTok, such as alleged surveillance from the Chinese government as well as the encouragement of “dangerous activities” among youth using the app.

by Paul Ducklin If you’d never heard the cybersecurity jargon word “juicejacking” until the last few days (or, indeed, if you’d never heard it at all until you opened this article), don’t get into a panic about it. You’re not out of touch. Here at Naked Security, we knew what it meant, not so much

Automotive manufacturer Hyundai has recently disclosed a breach that has affected an unspecified number of Italian and French car owners as well as individuals who booked a test drive. The company notified affected individuals via email. Several of them posted a screenshot of the message on Twitter earlier this week. “I am sorry to inform

The “Read The Manual” (RTM) Locker group has been observed targeting corporate environments with ransomware and forcing their affiliates to follow a strict set of rules. According to an advisory published on Thursday by Trellix cybersecurity experts, the businesslike approach of the group (also observed in other threat actors, such as Conti) shows its organizational maturity.

Several cybersecurity organizations worldwide have jointly published a new series of guidelines to aid manufacturers in prioritizing cybersecurity practices while designing products. The paper was developed by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the cybersecurity authorities of Australia, Canada, the UK,

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the US confirmed on Tuesday that the personal data of 20,800 Iowans who receive Medicaid was exposed due to a cyber-attack. According to the department, the Iowa Medicaid system itself was not compromised. Instead, the breach was due to an attack on a contractor’s computer systems

by Paul Ducklin I’M SORRY, DAVE, I’M AFRAID… SORRY, MY MISTAKE, I CAN DO THAT EASILY No audio player below? 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

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published the second version of its Zero Trust Maturity Model on Tuesday, which incorporates recommendations from a public comment period. The updated guidelines aim to further the federal government’s progress toward a zero trust approach to cybersecurity in support of the new National Cybersecurity Strategy. Read more

by Paul Ducklin It’s Patch Tuesday Week (if you will allow us our daily pleonasm), and Microsoft’s updates include fixes for a number of security holes that the company has dubbed Critical, along with a zero-day fix, although the 0-day only gets a rating of Important. The 0-day probably got away with not being Critical

Malicious Android apps have been found for sale on the darknet and are being sold for up to $20,000, according to security researchers at Kaspersky. The company described the findings in an article published on Monday, in which it said the team collected examples from nine different darknet forums where these apps are being sold. “Like

by Paul Ducklin If you’re a gamer or an avid squeezer of raw computing power, you’ve probably spent hours tweaking your motherboard settings to eke out every last drop of performance. Over the years, you might even have tried out various unofficial firmware bodges and hacks to let you change settings that would otherwise be

Spanish police have arrested a 19-year-old who they claim represents a national security threat due to the magnitude of the cyber-attacks he has conducted. An investigation into Jose Luis Huertas (aka “Alcasec”) began after he allegedly hacked the national council of the judiciary (CGPJ) and tax agency, and stole data on over half a million Spaniards.

by Paul Ducklin Last week, we warned about the appearance of two critical zero-day bugs that were patched in the very latest versions of macOS (version 13, also known as Ventura), iOS (version 16), and iPadOS (version 16). Zero-days, as the name suggests, are security vulnerabilities that were found by attackers, and put to real-life

When a man arrived in the middle of the night at a North London hospital and was emotionally upset, distressed, with seizure-like movements and unable to speak, Isabel Straw, an NHS emergency doctor, first struggled to find the reason because all the tests her team performed on him did not reveal any issues. That is

by Paul Ducklin We’ve written before, back in 2022, about a code execution hole in the widely-used JavaScript sandbox system vm2. Now we’re writing to let you know about a similar-but-different hole in the same sandbox toolkit, and urging you to update vm2 if you use (or are reponsible for building) any products that depend

Google has unveiled a new policy for Android apps that enable account creation. The rule mandates such apps to provide users with an option to delete both the accounts and the data associated with them. Describing the new feature in a blog post published on Wednesday, Bethel Otuteye, senior director of product management at Android

by Paul Ducklin Apple just issued a short, sharp series of security fixes for Macs, iPhones and iPads. All supported macOS versions (Big Sur, Monterey and Ventura) have patches you need to install, but only the iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 mobile versions currently have updates available. As ever, we can’t yet tell you whether

A mid-sized law firm representing Uber has notified an unknown number of its drivers that sensitive data has been exposed and stolen due to a cyber-attack. New Jersey-based Genova Burns disclosed the breach in an email to customers first obtained by The Register. “We determined that an unauthorized third party gained access to our systems,

Threat actors focusing on phishing techniques have been increasingly using Telegram to automate their activities and provide various services. The findings come from cybersecurity experts at Kaspersky, who described the new trend in a Wednesday advisory authored by web content analyst Olga Svistunova. “To promote their ‘goods,’ phishers create Telegram channels through which they educate

by Paul Ducklin WHEN MALWARE COMES FROM WITHIN No audio player below? 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 drop the URL of

Security teams ought to seize on the opportunities of failures of the past to make meaningful change in how we approach incident response, urged Sarah Armstrong-Smith, chief security advisor at Microsoft, during UK Cyber Week 2023. Learning lessons from the past is crucial to developing an effective incident response strategy in cybersecurity, Armstrong-Smith said. The

by Paul Ducklin Cybersecurity researcher Sam Sabetan yesterday went public with insecurity revelations against IoT vendor Nexx, which sells a range of “smart” devices including door openers, home alarms and remotely switchable power plugs. According to Sabetan, he reported the bugs to Nexx back in January 2023, but to no avail. So he decided to

Threat actors have deployed a new, unique ransomware strain using the Palo Alto Cortex XDR Dump Service Tool, a commercial security product.  Dubbed Rorschach, the malware was discovered by the Check Point Research (CPR) and Check Point Incident Response Team (CPIRT) and discussed in an advisory publisher earlier today. “Unlike other ransomware cases, the threat

by Paul Ducklin Mathematics is a complex and esoteric field that underpins science and engineering, notably including the disciplines of cryptography and cybersecurity. (There… we’ve added a mention of cybersecurity, thus justifying the rest of this article.) The topic of mathematics has been extensively and fervently studied from at least ancient Babylonian times, and the

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has launched a website to accompany its Hack the Pentagon (HtP) program. The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) Directorate for Digital Services (DDS), Craig Martell, unveiled the website last Thursday. It will be a resource for DoD organizations, vendors and security researchers to understand how to conduct a

by Paul Ducklin Cybersecurity researchers in Belgium and the US recently published a paper scheduled for presentation later this year at the USENIX 2023 conference. The three co-authors couldn’t resist a punning title, dubbing their attack Framing Frames, with a slightly easier-to-follow strapline that says Bypassing Wi-Fi encryption by manipulating transmit queues. As security researchers