Security

North Korea stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto assets in at least one major hack, according to a confidential United Nations (UN) report seen by Reuters on Thursday. The document also reportedly suggests the US previously accused North Korea of carrying out cyber-attacks to fund its nuclear and missile programs. “Other cyber activity

A team of security researchers from CloudSEK has discovered a new phishing tactic used by threat actors (TA) to target Indian banking customers via preview domains from Hosting Provider Hostinger. The new feature enables access to a site before it is accessible globally. In other words, it enables the viewing of website content without a

by Paul Ducklin We’ve written about PQC, short for post-quantum cryptography, several times before. In case you’ve missed all the media excitement of the past few years about so-called quantum computing… …it is (if you will pardon what some experts will probably consider a reckless oversimplification) a way of building computing devices that can keep

ReversingLabs researchers discovered a new ransomware family targeting Linux-based systems in South Korea. Dubbed GwisinLocker, the malware was detected by ReversingLabs on July 19 while undertaking successful campaigns targeting firms in the industrial and pharmaceutical space. “In those incidents, it often launched attacks on public holidays and during the early morning hours (Korean time) – looking to

by Paul Ducklin The word “protocol” crops up all over the place in IT, usually describing the details of how to exchange data between requester and replier. Thus we have HTTP, short for hypertext transfer protocol, which explains how to communicate with a webserver; SMTP, or simple mail transfer protocol, which governs sending and receiving

Cybersecurity experts from Deepwatch spotted activity from threat actors (TA) that “highly likely” exploited a security flaw in the Atlassian Confluence server (CVE-2022-26134) to deploy a new backdoor dubbed “Ljl” against a number of unnamed organizations. Deepwatch’s Adversary Tactics and Intelligence group (ATI) described the findings in an advisory published on Tuesday. After gaining initial

by Paul Ducklin 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 are found. Or just

Security researchers from ThreatLabz have uncovered a new strain of a large-scale phishing campaign using adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) techniques along with several evasion tactics. According to an advisory published by the company on Tuesday, similar AiTM phishing techniques were used in a separate phishing campaign described by Microsoft last month. Now, ThreatLabz revealed that using intelligence

by Paul Ducklin Just over a year ago, we wrote about a “cybersecurity researcher” who posted almost 4000 pointlessly poisoned Python packages to the popular repository PyPI. This person went by the curious nickname of Remind Supply Chain Risks, and the packages had project names that were generally similar to well-known projects, presumably in the

A Sentinel One investigation revealed threat actors (TA) have been abusing the Windows Defender command line tool to decrypt and load Cobalt Strike payloads. The cybersecurity experts detailed their findings in an advisory last week, in which they said the TA managed to carry out the attacks after obtaining initial access via the Log4Shell vulnerability

by Paul Ducklin Cryptocurrency protocol Nomad (not to be confused with Monad, which is what PowerShell was called when it first came out) describes itself as “an optimistic interoperability protocol that enables secure cross-chain communication,” and promises that it’s a “security-first cross-chain messaging protocol.” In plain English, it’s supposed to let you swap cryptocurrency tokens

Security experts from online platform Zscaler have published an analysis of the new variant of the known Raccoon Stealer malware. Writing in an advisory last Friday, Zscaler said the new version of the malware is written in C, unlike previous versions which were mainly written in C++. Raccoon Stealer 2.0 features a new back-end and

by Paul Ducklin The best-known cryptographic library in the open-source world is almost certainly OpenSSL. Firstly, it’s one of the most widely-used, to the point that most developers on most platforms have heard of it even if they haven’t used it directly. Secondly, it’s probably the most widely-publicised, sadly because of a rather nasty bug

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has noticed “substantial increases” in complaints about scam robotexts, it warned this week. The Commission issued an alert warning consumers that these texts are on the rise. It added that it was also seeing more reports of scam texts from robocall and robotext blocking services. The FCC tracks consumer complaints rather than

A cyber-attack on the US justice system has compromised a public document management system, revealed lawmakers on the Hill yesterday. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, revealed the attack at a hearing on oversight of the Justice Department on Thursday. Nadler said three hostile actors had breached the Public Access to Court Electronic Records

A bill designed to increase visibility of foreign ransomware attackers has passed in the US House of Representatives. The Reporting Attacks from Nations Selected for Oversight and Monitoring Web Attacks and Ransomware from Enemies Act (also known as the RANSOMWARE Act) will make it easier for the US to respond to ransomware attacks from foreign

by Paul Ducklin If you’ve ever watched a professional plumber at work, or a plasterer, or a bricklayer, or the people who deftly use those improbably long sticks to craft paper-thin pancakes the size of a bicycle wheel… …you’ve probably had the same thoughts that we have. I could do that. I really could. But

Police in Spain have arrested two people on suspicion of hacking the country’s Radioactivity Alert Network (RAR). The RAR, operated by Spain’s General Directorate of Civil Protection and Emergencies, is a network of gamma radiation sensors. It monitors parts of Spain – which operates nuclear power plants – for excessive radiation. The two individuals are

by Paul Ducklin 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 are found. Or just

A database containing 5.4m Twitter users’ data is reportedly for sale on a popular criminal forum. Twitter is investigating the issue, which the seller said exploited a vulnerability in its systems reported in January. The seller, using the nickname ‘devil,’ advertised the data on the Breached Forums site and demanded at least $30,000 for it.

by Paul Ducklin Samba is a widely-used open source toolkit that not only makes it easy for Linux and Unix computers to talk to Windows networks, but also lets you host a Windows-style Active Directory domain without Windows servers at all. The name, in case you’ve ever wondered, is a happy-sounding and easy-to-say derivation from

Banks received the lion’s share of phishing attacks during the first half of 2022, according to figures published by cybersecurity company Vade today. The analysis also found that attackers were most likely to send their phishing emails on weekdays, with most arriving between Monday and Wednesday. Attacks tapered off towards the end of the week, Vade said.

by Paul Ducklin It’s time for this month’s scheduled Firefox update (technically, with 28 days between updates, you sometimes get two updates in one calendar month, but July 2022 isn’t one of those months)… …and the good news is that the worst bugs listed, which get a risk category of High, are those found by

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has updated its cybersecurity guidance for protecting healthcare data. The draft update will provide a more practical guide for healthcare providers to comply with government rules on personal health data security, it claimed. The initial draft of the document is titled ‘Implementing the Health Insurance Portability and

by Paul Ducklin Just under a year ago, the US arm of telecomms giant T-Mobile admitted to a data breach after personal information about its customers was offered for sale on an underground forum. At the time, VICE Magazine claimed to have communicated with the hacker behind the breach via online chat, and to have

Ukrainian radio stations were hacked this week by threat actors to spread fake news about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s health, according to Ukraine’s security officials. A music program on “at least one” out of TAVR Media’s stations – one of Ukraine’s largest radio networks – was interrupted by the false reports just after midday on July 21. The so-far unidentified

Google this week announced the reversing of its recent decision to remove the app permissions list from the Google Play Store for Android. In tweets published on July 21, the Android Developers team stated that “privacy and transparency are core values in the Android community. We heard your feedback that you find the app permissions section in

by Paul Ducklin Apple has disgorged its latest patches, fixing more than 50 CVE-numbered security vulnerabilities in its range of supported products. The relevant security bulletins, update numbers, and where to find them online are as follows: APPLE-SA-2022-07-20-1: iOS 15.6 and iPadOS 15.6, details at HT213346 APPLE-SA-2022-07-20-2: macOS Monterey 12.5, details at HT213345 APPLE-SA-2022-07-20-3: macOS

This week HP released their report The Evolution of Cybercrime: Why the Dark Web is Supercharging the Threat Landscape and How to Fight Back, exploring how cyber-criminals are increasingly operating in a quasi-professional manner, with malware and ransomware attacks being offered on a ‘software-as-a-service’ basis. The report’s findings showed how cybercrime is being supercharged through “plug and

by Paul Ducklin The phrase Office macros is a harmless-sounding, low-tech name that refers, in real life, to program code you can squirrel away inside Office files so that the code travels along with the text of a document, or the formulas of a spreadsheet, or the slides in a presentation… …and even though the