Security

The Agenda ransomware group has been observed developing new malware using the Rust programming language and using it to breach several companies. “The threat actors not only claimed that they were able to breach the servers of these companies but also threatened to publish their files,” wrote Trend Micro researchers, who recently discovered the new malicious

by Paul Ducklin If you’re a regular Naked Security reader, you can probably guess where on the planet we’re headed in this virtual journey…. …we’re off once more to the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Researchers in the department’s Cyber-Security Research Center regularly investigate security

The US Senate passed a bill on Wednesday banning federal employees from using the TikTok app on devices provided by the government. The No TikTok on Government Devices Act was approved after no senators objected to the measure authored by Missouri republican senator Josh Hawley. “TikTok is a Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party. It’s

by Paul Ducklin PWNING THE WINDOWS KERNEL 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

Prominent threat actors have been spotted exploiting legitimately signed Microsoft drivers in active intrusions into telecommunication, business process outsourcing (BPO), managed security service providers (MSSP) and financial services companies. The findings from SentinelLabs, Sophos and Mandiant were first shared with Microsoft in October 2022. On Tuesday, the four companies released advisories detailing the attacks. Investigations into

by Paul Ducklin Another month, another Microsoft Patch Tuesday, another 48 patches, another two zero-days… …and an astonishing tale about a bunch of rogue actors who tricked Microsoft itself into giving their malicious code an official digital seal of approval. For a threat researcher’s view of the Patch Tuesday fixes for December 2022, please consult

Social media company Twitter has issued a public statement regarding allegations that it was hacked earlier this year. Writing in a blog post on Friday, the Elon Musk-owned platform said it learned that someone had potentially exploited a vulnerability that Twitter reportedly discovered in January and fixed in June 2022. The flaw enabled someone submitting

by Paul Ducklin Apple has just published a wide range of security fixes for all its supported platforms, from the smallest watch to the biggest laptop. In other words, if you’ve got an Apple product, and it’s still officially supported, we urge you to do an update check now. Remember that even if you’ve set

The cost of the cyber-attack that hit the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) last year has officially reached €80m ($83.75m). The figures come from a letter from HSE chief information officer Fran Thompson sent to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín last Friday. The missive, viewed by The Irish Times, comes months after the Department of Health

by Paul Ducklin You’ve probably heard of Pwn2Own, a hacking contest that started life alongside the annual CanSecWest cybersecurity event in Vancouver, Canada. Pwn2Own is now a multi-million “hackers’ brand” in its own right, having been bought up by anti-virus outfit Trend Micro and extended to cover many more types of bug than just browsers

A subgroup of the Iran-based Cobalt Mirage threat group has been observed leveraging Drokbk malware to achieve persistence on victims’ systems. The claims come from Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers, who shared an advisory about Drokbk with Infosecurity before publication. According to the security team, the attacks come from Cobalt Mirage’s subgroup, Cluster B.

Business email compromise (BEC) scams have been increasingly targeting mobile devices, particularly with SMS-focused attacks. According to a new advisory by cybersecurity specialists at Trustwave, the trend indicates a broader shift towards phishing scams via text messages. “Phishing scams are prevalent in the SMS threat landscape, and now, BEC attacks are also going mobile,” reads

Threat group Silence has been spotted infecting an increasing number of devices using Truebot malware. The findings come from Cisco Talos researchers, who have also suggested a connection between Silence and the infamous hacking group Evil Corp (tracked by Cisco as TA505). According to an advisory published on Thursday, the campaigns observed by the firm

by Paul Ducklin DATA BREACHES – THE STING IN THE TAIL 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

Indiana’s attorney general filed two separate lawsuits against social media firm TikTok Wednesday alleging the platform promoted content to young users that isn’t age-appropriate and did not adequately protect the safety of users’ data. According to court documents, the TikTok algorithm “promotes a variety of inappropriate content to 13-17-year-old users throughout the United States.” Indiana’s

by Paul Ducklin Researchers at application security company Jscrambler have just published a cautionary tale about supply chain attacks… …that is also a powerful reminder of just how long attack chains can be. Sadly, that’s long merely in terms of time, not long in terms of technical complexity or the number of links in the

Threat actors have been observed targeting companies operating within the cryptocurrency industry for financial gain. According to a new advisory published by Microsoft on Tuesday, attacks targeting this market have taken several forms over the past few months, including fraud, vulnerability exploitation, fake applications and info stealer deployment. “We are also seeing more complex attacks

by Paul Ducklin BUSINESS RISKS FROM AFTER-HOURS MALWARE 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

The Canadian branch of the human rights organization Amnesty International reported on Monday a sophisticated cyber-attack linked to China. The non-profit said it first spotted suspicious activity on October 05, 2022, and immediately engaged a team of forensic investigators and cybersecurity experts from Secureworks to protect its systems and investigate the source of the attack. According to

by Naked Security writer A Florida man who was part of a cybercrime gang who went after cryptocoin wallets has been sentenced for his part in a cyberheist that allegedly netted the participants more than $20,000,000. The scammers, including one Nicholas Truglia, 25, got control of various online accounts belonging to the victim by using

Cloud company Rackspace has revealed it experienced a cybersecurity incident causing it to temporarily suspend its Hosted Exchange environment, which has now been restored. “On Friday, Dec 2, 2022, we became aware of an issue impacting our Hosted Exchange environment. We proactively powered down and disconnected the Hosted Exchange environment while we triaged to understand the

by Paul Ducklin One of the first low-level network tools that any computer user learns about is the venerable ping utility. Named after the eponymous sound effect from any and every old-school war movie scene involving submarines, the command is a metaphorical echo (see what we did there?) of the underwater version of RADAR known

Attackers have been increasingly encrypting malware in archives before releasing it in the wild.  According to HP Wolf Security’s latest Threat Insights Report Q3 2022, 44% of malware was delivered via archive files in the third quarter of 2022, an 11% increase from the previous quarter and substantially more than the 32% delivered through Office files. The

by Paul Ducklin It’s just under two weeks since Google rushed out a Chrome patch for the then-current version 107 to seal off a bug that was already being used in real-life attacks. The company said nothing more about that bug than to describe it as a “heap buffer overflow in GPU” [sic], and to

Threat actors have been spotted using criminal proxy networks to obfuscate their illegal activities by hiding behind hijacked IP addresses and using the same to create an appearance of legitimacy. The findings come from security researchers at DomainTools, who have said that while these networks were initially used as part of botnets, their lucrative nature

by Paul Ducklin Forget Sergeant Pepper and his Lonely Hearts Club Band, who taught the band to play a mere 20 years ago today. December 2022 sees the 35th anniversary of the first major self-spreading computer virus – the infamous CHRISTMA EXEC worm that temporarily crushed the major mainframe networks of the day… … not

The annual number of memory safety vulnerabilities in Android dropped from 223 in 2019 to 85 in 2022 as Google gradually transitioned towards memory-safe languages. The tech giant made the announcement in a blog post on Thursday, where it wrote that for over a decade, 65% of all vulnerabilities across products and the industry were

by Paul Ducklin It’s just under a month since iOS 16.1.1 came out for Apple iPhone users, fixing a pair of bugs that were listed with the worrying words “a remote user may be able to cause unexpected app termination or arbitrary code execution”. Both macOS 13 Ventura and iPadOS got updated at the same

Colombian healthcare provider Keralty reported a ransomware attack on Sunday, which affected its systems as well as two of its subsidiaries: EPS Sanitas and Colsanitas. The attack has been reported on by Colombian news outlet El Tiempo, and would have disrupted the companies’ IT operations, websites and scheduling of medical appointments. Keralty said on Monday

by Paul Ducklin Back in August 2022, popular password manager company LastPass admitted to a data breach. The company, which is owned by sofware-as-a-service business GoTo, which used to be LogMeIn, published a very brief but nevertheless useful report about that incident about a month later: Briefly put, LastPass concluded that the attackers managed to