Security

by Paul Ducklin You’ve probably seen story after story in the media in the past week about a critical bug in OpenSSL, though at the time of writing this article[2022-11-01T11:30:00Z], no one covering OpenSSL actually knows what to tell you about the bug, because the news is about an update that is scheduled to come

A major hospital in Osaka, Japan, has suspended routine medical services following a ransomware cyber-attack that disrupted its electronic medical record systems. Emergency operations are continuing, but Osaka General Medical Center officials told reporters on Monday that the hospital system failed earlier today and could not be accessed. They have also reported that a contractor

by Paul Ducklin We’ll start with the important stuff: the widely awaited OpenSSL bugfixes announced last week are out. OpenSSL 1.1.1 goes to version 1.1.1s, and patches one listed security-related bug, but this bug doesn’t have a security rating or an official CVE number. We strongly recommend that you update, but the CRITICAL update that

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a new series of guidelines to help federal agencies defend against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The Capacity Enhancement Guide has been published in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). It provides organizations with proactive steps

by Paul Ducklin 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 information such as notes about your relationship with your family…

The threat actors behind the Raspberry Robin worm have been associated with a complex and interconnected malware ecosystem comprising the Clop and LockBit ransomware groups. The findings come from Microsoft, which has said the worm had alternate infection methods beyond its original USB drive spread. “These infections lead to follow-on hands-on-keyboard attacks and human-operated ransomware

by Paul Ducklin The Clearview AI saga continues! If you haven’t heard of this company before, here’s a very clear and concise recap from the French privacy regulator, CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés), which has very handily been publishing its findings and rulings in this long-running story in both French and English:

A previously undocumented dropper has been spotted installing backdoors and other tools using the new technique of reading commands from apparently innocuous Internet Information Services (IIS) logs. The dropper has been discovered by cybersecurity researchers at Symantec, who said an actor is using the piece of malware dubbed Cranefly (aka UNC3524) to install another piece

by Paul Ducklin Google pushed out a bunch of security fixes for the Chrome and Chromium browser code earlier this week… …only to receive a vulnerability report from researchers at cybersecurity company Avast on the very same day. Google’s response was to push out another update as soon as it could: a one-bug fix dealing

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a new report outlining baseline cybersecurity performance goals (CPGs) for all critical infrastructure sectors. The document is the result of a July 2021 security memorandum signed by President Biden. It has tasked CISA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with creating fundamental cybersecurity

by Paul Ducklin Regular readers will know two things about our attitude to Apple’s security patches: We like to get them as soon as we can. Whether it’s a full version upgrade that also includes a bunch of security fixes, or a point release (one where the leftmost verion number doesn’t change) with the primary

A new cryptojacking campaign has been discovered targeting vulnerable Docker and Kubernetes infrastructure. Dubbed ‘Kiss-a-dog’ by CrowdStrike security researchers, the campaign has used several command-and-control (C2) servers to launch attacks aiming at mining cryptocurrency. The threat actors have also utilized user and kernel mode rootkits to hide the activity, backdoor compromised containers, move laterally in the

by Paul Ducklin WE’RE SCRAPING YOUR FACES FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! (ALLEGEDLY) 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

The threat actor known as Vice Society has been conducting ransomware and extortion campaigns against the global education sector, particularly in the US. The findings come from Microsoft security researchers, who published an advisory about Vice Society (tracked by the tech giant as DEV-0832) on Tuesday. “Shifting ransomware payloads over time from BlackCat, QuantumLocker, and

by Paul Ducklin See Tickets is a major global player in the online event ticketing business: they’ll sell you tickets to festivals, theatre shows, concerts, clubs, gigs and much more. The company has just admitted to a major data breach that shares at least one characteristic with the amplifiers favoured by notorious rock performers Spinal

A total of 108.9 million accounts were breached in the third quarter of 2022, a 70% increase compared to the previous quarter. The top five countries and regions most affected by data breaches in Q3 2022 were Russia, France, Indonesia, the US and Spain. While Russia had the most breaches overall (22.3 million), France had

by Paul Ducklin Apple’s latest collection of security updates has arrived, including the just-launched macOS 13 Ventura, which was accompanied by its own security bulletin listing a whopping 112 CVE-numbered security holes. Of those, we counted 27 arbitrary code execution holes, of which 12 allow rogue code to be injected right into the kernel itself,

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a new joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) warning organizations against the ransomware and data extortion group Daixin Team. Published in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CSA said Daixin Team is actively targeting US businesses, mainly in

by Paul Ducklin Cryptoguru Bruce Schneier (where crypto means cryptography, not the other thing!) just published an intriguing note on his blog entitled On the Randomness of Automatic Card Shufflers. If you’ve ever been to a casino, at least one in Nevada, you’ll know that the blackjack tables don’t take chances with customers known in

Thousands of publicly exposed, active application programming interface (API) tokens have been spotted across the web that could threaten software integrity and allow bad actors to access confidential information, data or private networks. The findings come from security researchers at JFrog, who recently made the discovery while testing a new feature in one of the company’s security

Google called for contributors on Thursday to a new open source project named Graph for Understanding Artifact Composition (GUAC) as part of its efforts to improve software supply chain security. According to the tech giant, GUAC is still in the early stages, but it is set to change how the industry perceives software supply chains.

by Paul Ducklin Java programmers love string interpolation features. If you’re not a coder, you’re probably confused by the word “interpolation” here, because it’s been borrowed as programming jargon where it’s not a very good linguistic fit… …but the idea is simple, very powerful, and sometimes spectacularly dangerous. In other programming ecosystems it’s often known

Multiple phishing domains impersonating Absher, the Saudi government service portal, have been set up to provide fake services to citizens and steal their credentials. The discovery comes from cybersecurity researchers at CloudSEK, who published an advisory about the threat on Thursday. “The threat actors are targeting individuals by sending an SMS, along with a link, urging

by Paul Ducklin Sadly, we’ve needed to cover the DEADBOLT ransomware several times before on Naked Security. For almost two years already, this niche player in the ransomware cybercrime scene has been preying mainly on home users and small businesses in a very different way from most contemporary ransomware attacks: If you were involved in

Ransomware has grown by 466% since 2019 and is increasingly being used as a precursor to physical war. The findings come from Ivanti’s Ransomware Index Report Q2–Q3 2022, which the company shared with Infosecurity earlier today. The data also shows ransomware groups continuing to grow in volume and sophistication, with 35 vulnerabilities becoming associated with ransomware

by Paul Ducklin WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “DOESN’T MEET THE BAR FOR SECURITY SERVICING”? 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,

From the warning banner ‘Be afraid and expect the worst’ that was shown on several Ukrainian government websites on January 13, 2022, after a cyber-attack took them down, the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) cybersecurity director, Rob Joyce, knew that something was going to be different, and very aggressive, between Ukraine and Russia, and that

by Paul Ducklin The US Postal Service just issued a commemorative stamp to remember the service of some 11,000 women cryptologists during World War 2. Like their Bletchley Park counterparts in the UK, these wartime heros didn’t finish the war with any sort of hero’s welcome back into civilian life. Indeed, they got no public

Video messaging platform Zoom released a new patch last week to a high-severity flaw in its client for macOS devices. The vulnerability (tracked CVE-2022-28762) refers to a debugging port misconfiguration affecting versions between 5.10.6 and 5.12.0 (excluded) and has a common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) of 3.1 of 7.3 out of 10. “When camera mode

by Paul Ducklin Popular and ubiquitous (software isn’t always both of those things!) cloud meeting company Zoom recently announced an oops-that-wasn’t-supposed-to-happen bug in the Mac version of its software. The security bulletin is, forgivably, written in the typically staccato and jargon-soaked style of bug-hunters, but the meaning is fairly clear. The bug is denoted CVE-2022-28762,