Elderly men and women were the main targets of the romance scams operated by the fraudsters. A United States Army Reservist has been sentenced to 46 months and ordered to and pay approximately US$1.8 million in restitution after he was found to be involved in a scheme to commit romance and business email compromise (BEC) scams against
Month: September 2021
Russian internet giant Yandex has been the target of a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack by a new botnet called Mēris. The botnet is believed to have pummeled the company’s web infrastructure with millions of HTTP requests, before hitting a peak of 21.8 million requests per second (RPS), dwarfing a recent botnet-powered attack that came
Cloud security company Menlo Security has appointed Devin Ertel as its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Ertel takes up the post following nearly 20 years of experience as an information security professional. Most recently, he was CISO at FinTech firm BlackHawk Network, where he managed a global team responsible for security, risk and compliance. Prior
According to research from the FBI and FTC, cybercrimes against older adults cost more than $650 million in losses each year. Why? Unlike millennials and Generation Z, your grandparents weren’t born with a smartphone in their hands. On top of that, older adults tend to have more significant financial funds like retirement accounts, making them an ideal target for cybercriminals. With Grandparent’s Day
The university suffered a ransomware attack, however there is no evidence so far of data being accessed or stolen. Howard University, a private research university based out of Washington D.C. admitted that it suffered a cyberattack on Friday. The university alerted both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the D.C. city government about the incident
The Linux community was caught unprepared when, in December 2020, as part of a change in the way Red Hat supports and develops CentOS, Red Hat suddenly announced that it’s cutting the official CentOS 8 support window from ten years – to just two, with support ending Dec 31, 2021. It created a peculiar situation
by Paul Ducklin [00’18”] Sign up free for our Security SOS Week 2021! [02’54”] Overlooked security flaw leaves web code vulnerable. [13’51”] A home alarm system that almost anyone can turn off. [25’06”] Some fascinating Firefox bugs fixed. [31’02”] Oh! No! When you grab your laptop… but it’s not yours. With Paul Ducklin and Doug
Securing the new hybrid workplace may require significant changes to culture, policy and technology after new HP research revealed significant pushback from remote workers during the pandemic. The tech giant surveyed over 1000 IT decision-makers and more than 8400 workers across the globe to compile its latest HP Wolf Security study, Rebellions & Rejections. It revealed that nearly
Co-authored with Intel471 and McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Research (ATR) would also like to thank Coveware for its contribution. Executive Summary McAfee Enterprise ATR believes, with high confidence, that the Groove gang is associated with the Babuk gang, either as a former affiliate or subgroup. These cybercriminals are happy to put aside previous Ransomware-as-a-Service hierarchies
ESET researchers have investigated a targeted mobile espionage campaign against the Kurdish ethnic group, and that has been active since at least March 2020. ESET researchers have investigated a targeted mobile espionage campaign against the Kurdish ethnic group. This campaign has been active since at least March 2020, distributing (via dedicated Facebook profiles) two Android
The operators behind the REvil ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) staged a surprise return after a two-month hiatus following the widely publicized attack on technology services provider Kaseya on July 4. Two of the dark web portals, including the gang’s Happy Blog data leak site and its payment/negotiation site, have resurfaced online, with the most recent victim added
by Paul Ducklin Details are scarce so far, but Microsoft is warning Office users about a bug that’s dubbed CVE-2021-40444, and described as Microsoft MSHTML Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. The bug doesn’t have a patch yet, so it’s what’s known as a zero-day, shorthand for “the Good Guys were zero days ahead of the Bad
Over half (51%) of cybersecurity professionals are kept up at night by the stress of the job and work challenges, according to CIISec’s 2020/21 State of the Profession report. The survey of 557 security professionals found that stress and burnout have become a major issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is partly due to overwork — the study found
Security professionals and technologists old enough to remember renting movies at Blockbuster on Friday nights likely also remember a time when the internet was a new phenomenon full of wonder and promise. These same individuals probably view it through a more skeptical lens seeing it now as a cesspool of malware and great risk. It’s
Following the incident the company has updated its website and privacy policy to clarify its legal obligations to its userbase ProtonMail a Swiss-based secure email provider has been at the center of some controversy after it was forced to share the IP address of one of its clients, a climate activist, with law enforcement agencies
The work-from-anywhere economy has opened up the possibility for your human resources team to source the best talent from anywhere. To scale their operations, organizations are leveraging the cloud to accelerate essential HR functions such as recruiting, onboarding, evaluating, and more. SAP is leading this HR transformation with its human capital management (HCM) solution, SAP
Germany has accused Russia of attempting to influence its upcoming general election through a wave of cyber-attacks. The German Foreign Ministry said it had “reliable information” that hackers working for Russia’s GRU military intelligence service tried to steal login details of federal and state lawmakers. This is likely for the purpose of misleading voters by
The maintainers of Jenkins—a popular open-source automation server software—have disclosed a security breach after unidentified threat actors gained access to one of their servers by exploiting a recently disclosed vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence service to install a cryptocurrency miner. The “successful attack,” which is believed to have occurred last week, was mounted against its Confluence
by Paul Ducklin Not long ago, independent software developer Tim Perry, creator of the HTTP Toolkit for intercepting and debugging web traffic… …decided to add proxy support to his product, which, like lots of software these days, is written using Node.js. ICYMI, Node.js is the project that took the JavaScript language out of your browser
US government security experts have urged system administrators to patch two critical flaws in widely used Cisco and Atlassian products, exposing them to compromise. In a rare move, US Cyber Command took to Twitter before the Labor Day holiday weekend on Friday to address the Atlassian bug. “Mass exploitation of Atlassian Confluence CVE-2021-26084 is ongoing
Les chercheurs d’ESET expliquent les détails d’une faille découverte dans VaxiCode Vérif, l’application mobile permettant la vérification des preuves vaccinales québécoise La sortie d’applications mobiles permettant le stockage et la vérification du passeport vaccinal par le gouvernement du Québec (VaxiCode et VaxiCode Vérif) a fait couler beaucoup d’encre la semaine dernière. C’est avec raison; l’application
End-to-end encrypted email service provider ProtonMail has drawn criticism after it ceded to a legal request and shared the IP address of anti-gentrification activists with law enforcement authorities, leading to their arrests in France. The Switzerland-based company said it received a “legally binding order from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice” related to a collective
Another Accellion breach victim has been named nine months after threat actors exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in the company’s File Transfer Application. Beaumont Health has notified approximately 1500 patient that their personal data may have been compromised in the December attack on Accellion software. Goodwin Procter LLP, which was hired by Beaumont to provide legal services, used Accellion’s File Transfer software
Authored by ChanUng Pak McAfee’s Mobile Research team recently found a new Android malware, Elibomi, targeting taxpayers in India. The malware steals sensitive financial and private information via phishing by pretending to be a tax-filing application. We have identified two main campaigns that used different fake app themes to lure in taxpayers. The first campaign from November 2020 pretended to be a fake IT certificate application while the second campaign, first seen in May 2021, used the fake tax-filing theme. With this discovery,
Vaccination passports may facilitate the return to normalcy, but there are also concerns about what kinds of personal data they collect and how well they protect it. Here’s what you should know. Technology has been front and center throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but not without presenting a few issues and challenges. Proof of vaccination and
Microsoft has shared technical details about a now-fixed, actively exploited critical security vulnerability affecting SolarWinds Serv-U managed file transfer service that it has attributed with “high confidence” to a threat actor operating out of China. In mid-July, the Texas-based company remedied a remote code execution flaw (CVE-2021-35211) that was rooted in Serv-U’s implementation of the
Two new senior cybersecurity appointments have been announced by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Former lead solution engineer at Salesforce, David Larrimore, has been named as the Department’s chief technology officer. Between 2016 and 2019, Larrimore occupied the same position at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component. Other roles held by Larrimore include an
You open your laptop and see an email from a healthcare organization that you don’t recognize. The subject line reads “URGENT – PROOF OF VACCINATION NEEDED.” Impulsively, you open the email and click on the link. You’re redirected to a website that asks you to enter your name, date of birth, Social Security Number, and a photo of
Smartphones are kids’ trusty companions both in- and outside the classroom, and as they return to their desks, we’ve prepared some handy tips on how to keep their devices secure. While in some parts of the world kids have already returned to their classrooms, in virtual form or in person, in others they are just gearing
Apple is temporarily hitting the pause button on its controversial plans to screen users’ devices for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) after receiving sustained blowback over worries that the tool could be weaponized for mass surveillance and erode the privacy of users. “Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we have decided