by Paul Ducklin [00’22”] Guess what? iOS 12 wasn’t dead, it was just resting. [03’04”] Let’s Encrypt brings HTTPS to everyone. [12’12”] Researchers rediscover an Outlook data leakage issue. [25’34”] VMware keeps it real. [28’47”] Oh! No! When the mouse is away, the cat will play. With Paul Ducklin and Doug Aamoth. Intro and outro
by Paul Ducklin You might be forgiven for thinking that cybercrime is almost all about ransomware and cryptocoins these days. In a ransomware attack, the crooks typically blackmail you to send them cryptocurrency in return for giving you your stolen data back (or for not selling it on to someone else). In a cryptocoin attack,
Summary In late June 2021, Secureworks® Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) researchers discovered a flaw in the protocol used by the Azure Active Directory Seamless Single Sign-On feature. This flaw allows threat actors to perform single-factor brute-force attacks against Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) without generating sign-in events in the targeted organization’s tenant. CTU™ researchers reported
Welcome back to our executive blog series, where I chat with some of the pivotal players behind McAfee Enterprise and the Advanced Threat Research Team to hear their takes on today’s security trends, challenges, and opportunities for companies across the globe. Q: What got you interested in technology and threat research? As a little kid, I was
This month Microsoft released patches for 86 vulnerabilities. While many of these vulnerabilities are important and should be patched as soon as possible, there is one critical vulnerability that McAfee Enterprise wants to immediately bring to your attention due to the simplicity of what is required to exploit, and evidence that possible exploitation is already
Executive Summary Today, enterprises tend to use multiple layers of security defenses, ranging from perimeter defense on network entry points to host based security solutions deployed at the end user’s machines to counter the ever-increasing threats. This includes inline traffic filtering and management security solutions deployed at access and distribution layers in the network, as
Overview On March 21st, 2021, the McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team released several vulnerabilities it discovered in the Netop Vision Pro Education software, a popular schooling software used by more than 9,000 school systems around the world. Netop was very responsive and released several updates to address many of the critical findings, creating
Chances are, you’ve heard the term VPN more and more lately but still can’t figure out exactly what it does or if your family needs one. You aren’t alone. The short answer is yes—you need a VPN on your family devices—and here’s why. One of the main reasons you’re hearing more about VPNs is that cybercrime and data breaches are skyrocketing—especially since the pandemic.
You can’t automate every business process. While I love automation and promote the concept, I know its limitations. This viewpoint needs to be recognized and observed as more security officials implement automation within their organizations. I’d estimate that for most enterprises, the first 80 percent of migrating and integrating processes to automation is easy to
I spoke with Anand Ramanathan, VP of Products and Marketing who brings over 20 years of enterprise SaaS product experience ranging from high growth startups to established market leaders. Read the interview below to understand his thoughts on McAfee Enterprise and where he see’s the company going in the coming years. Q: What is your
When it comes to crime, what do people worry about most? Having their car stolen? A break-in while they’re not at home? Good answers, but not the top answer by a long shot. In this U.S.-based survey, hacker-related crime weighed in at 72%, with a home burglary at 35% and auto theft at 34%, indicating that people’s concerns
The latest gadget on the tech and fashion streets is Ray-Ban Stories, a sunglasses collaboration between Facebook and Ray-Ban. These pair of shades feature two cameras that capture video, audio, and photos and sync to a mobile app. Social media fanatics are excited about this new ability to capture and share hands-free content. Do gadgets like Ray-Ban Stories make you immediately think,
The security operations center (SecOps) team sits on the front lines of a cybersecurity battlefield. The SecOps team works around the clock with precious and limited resources to monitor enterprise systems, identify and investigate cybersecurity threats, and defend against security breaches. One of the important goals of SecOps is a faster and more effective collaboration
Misconfigurations of cloud resources can lead to various security incidents and ultimately cost your organization dearly. Here’s what you can do to prevent cloud configuration conundrums. Forget shadowy attackers deploying bespoke zero-day exploits from afar. A risk that is far more real for organizations as they embark on ambitious digital transformation projects is human error.
Yet another APT group that exploited the ProxyLogon vulnerability in March 2021 ESET researchers have uncovered a new cyberespionage group targeting hotels, governments, and private companies worldwide. We have named this group FamousSparrow and we believe it has been active since at least 2019. Reviewing telemetry data during our investigation, we realized that FamousSparrow leveraged
While Apple did issue a patch for the vulnerability, it seems that the fix can be easily circumvented Researchers have uncovered a flaw in Apple’s macOS Finder system that could allow remote threat actors to dupe unsuspecting users into running arbitrary commands on their devices. The security loophole affects all versions of the macOS Big
The emergency release comes a mere three days after Google’s previous update that plugged another 19 security loopholes Google has released an emergency update for its Chrome web browser to fix a zero-day vulnerability that is known to be actively exploited in the wild by malicious actors. The security loophole affects the Windows, macOS, and
What your organization should consider when it comes to choosing a VPN solution and hardening it against attacks The NSA and CISA have released joint guidance to help organizations select their Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution and hardening it against compromise. Vulnerable VPN servers are attractive targets for threat actors, as they provide great opportunities
A view of the T2 2021 threat landscape as seen by ESET telemetry and from the perspective of ESET threat detection and research experts Despite threats seemingly looming around every corner (I’m looking at you, Delta), the past four months were the time of summer vacations for many of us located in the northern hemisphere,
Flaws in Apple Pay and Visa could allow criminals to make arbitrary contactless payments – no authentication needed, research finds Cybercriminals could make fraudulent purchases by circumventing an iPhone’s Apple Pay lock screen where the device’s wallet has a Visa card set up in so-called transit mode. The attackers could also bypass the contactless limit
The campaign may last for a month, but we should remember that cybersecurity is a year-round affair The month of October is associated with a variety of themes, but it also ushers in the start of autumn and pumpkin-spiced lattes and culminates with one of the scariest days of the year – Halloween. However, beyond
Facebook on Wednesday announced it’s open-sourcing Mariana Trench, an Android-focused static analysis platform the company uses to detect and prevent security and privacy bugs in applications created for the mobile operating system at scale. “[Mariana Trench] is designed to be able to scan large mobile codebases and flag potential issues on pull requests before they
Russian authorities on Wednesday arrested and detained Ilya Sachkov, the founder of cybersecurity firm Group-IB, for two months in Moscow on charges of state treason following a search of its office on September 28. The Russian company, which is headquartered in Singapore, confirmed the development but noted the “reason for the search was not yet
Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed a previously undocumented backdoor likely designed and developed by the Nobelium advanced persistent threat (APT) behind last year’s SolarWinds supply chain attack, joining the threat actor’s ever-expanding arsenal of hacking tools. Moscow-headquartered firm Kaspersky codenamed the malware “Tomiris,” calling out its similarities to another second-stage malware used during the campaign,
The IDC cloud security survey 2021 states that as many as 98% of companies were victims of a cloud data breach within the past 18 months. Fostered by the pandemic, small and large organizations from all over the world are migrating their data and infrastructure into a public cloud, while often underestimating novel and cloud-specific
Professional developers want to embrace DevSecOps and write secure code, but their organizations need to support this seachange if they want that effort to grow. The cyber threat landscape is becoming more complex by the day. Attackers are constantly scanning networks for vulnerable applications, programs, cloud instances, and the latest flavor of the month is
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed an unpatched security vulnerability in the protocol used by Microsoft Azure Active Directory that potential adversaries could abuse to stage undetected brute-force attacks. “This flaw allows threat actors to perform single-factor brute-force attacks against Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) without generating sign-in events in the targeted organization’s tenant,” researchers from Secureworks
Google on Thursday pushed urgent security fixes for its Chrome browser, including a pair of new security weaknesses that the company said are being exploited in the wild, making them the fourth and fifth actively zero-days plugged this month alone. The issues, designated as CVE-2021-37975 and CVE-2021-37976, are part of a total of four patches,
In yet another indicator of how hacking groups are quick to capitalize on world events and improvise their attack campaigns for maximum impact, threat actors have been discovered impersonating Amnesty International to distribute malware that purports to be security software designed to safeguard against NSO Group’s Pegasus surveillanceware. “Adversaries have set up a phony website
A formerly unknown Chinese-speaking threat actor has been linked to a long-standing evasive operation aimed at South East Asian targets as far back as July 2020 to deploy a kernel-mode rootkit on compromised Windows systems. Attacks mounted by the hacking group, dubbed GhostEmperor by Kaspersky, are also said to have used a “sophisticated multi-stage malware