Apple on Thursday released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari to address a new WebKit flaw that it said may have been actively exploited in the wild, making it the company’s third zero-day patch since the start of the year. Tracked as CVE-2022-22620, the issue concerns a use-after-free vulnerability in the WebKit component
Month: February 2022
A leader of the hacking group Team-Xecuter has been sentenced to prison for participating in a piracy conspiracy against multiple gaming companies. Canadian national Gary Bowser, who is also known as GaryOPA, was arrested in the Dominican Republic in September 2020 on suspicion of creating and selling illegal software and devices that enabled users to play pirated
Don’t be the next victim – spot the signs of a faux romance in time and send that scammer ‘packing’ It is a truth universally acknowledged that we’re all looking for a special someone to share our lives with. Some of us are lucky enough to find that person. For the rest, the search goes
French data protection regulators on Thursday found the use of Google Analytics a breach of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws in the country, almost a month after a similar decision was reached in Austria. To that end, the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) ruled that the transatlantic movement of
by Paul Ducklin Here on Naked Security, we’ve been lamenting the mysterious nature of Apple’s security updates for ages. For example, even when widely-known security problems appear in components that are part of Apple’s operating system, Apple routinely refuses to say when, or even if, it plans to address the issues itself. Back in February
Nearly half of emails destined for inboxes in 2021 were classed as spam, with Russia the biggest culprit, according to Kaspersky. In its new Spam and Phishing in 2021 report, the Russian AV company revealed that it detected spam rates at an average of 46% over the year, peaking at 48% in June. Most of it came from
A trip into the dark corners of Telegram, which has become a magnet for criminals peddling everything from illegal drugs to fake money and COVID-19 vaccine passes Just a few years ago, illicit services and online contraband were firmly sourced in the hidden, largely untraceable depths of the internet: the dark web. People frequenting dark
A previously unknown hacking group has been linked to targeted attacks against human rights activists, human rights defenders, academics, and lawyers across India in an attempt to plant “incriminating digital evidence.” Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne attributed the intrusions to a group it tracks as “ModifiedElephant,” an elusive threat actor that’s been operational since at least 2012,
by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW 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.
The evolution of cyber-threats and the confluence of new systems and legacy systems are the most significant current challenges for security teams, according to a panel of CISOs speaking during a virtual event organized by HP Wolf Security. Moderated by Ed Amoroso, chief executive officer of TAG Cyber LLC, the session began with a simple question to
A view of the T3 2021 threat landscape as seen by ESET telemetry and from the perspective of ESET threat detection and research experts While 2020 was the year of supply-chain attacks (and, yes, the start of the global COVID-19 crisis), 2021 was defined by shockingly severe vulnerabilities (…and by vaccines). The year started with
Cybersecurity authorities from Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. have published a joint advisory warning of an increase in sophisticated, high-impact ransomware attacks targeting critical infrastructure organizations across the world in 2021. The incidents singled out a broad range of sectors, including defense, emergency services, agriculture, government facilities, IT, healthcare, financial services, education, energy, charities,
by Naked Security writer The story as we know it now sounds simple, but the investigation wasn’t. It all started, according to court papers, with a security breach reported in August 2016 by the Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex. (The court application for an arrest warrant refers to the company only as “VCE”, short for Virtual Currency
The UK’s Foreign Office was the target of “a serious cybersecurity incident,” according to a document accidentally published on a government website. The BBC reported that the tender document revealed that unidentified hackers infiltrated Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) systems, but were detected. It added that cybersecurity company BAE Systems Applied Intelligence was called
No more turning a blind eye to algorithmic bias and discrimination if US lawmakers get their way For years, tech has claimed that AI decisions are very hard to explain, but still pretty darn good. If US lawmakers get their way, that will have to change. Citing potential for fraud and techno-fiddling to get the
An advanced persistent threat (APT) group with ties to Iran has refreshed its malware toolset to include a new backdoor dubbed Marlin as part of a long-running espionage campaign that started in April 2018. Slovak cybersecurity company ESET attributed the attacks — code named Out to Sea — to a threat actor called OilRig (aka
by Paul Ducklin Yesterday, we wrote that Microsoft had decided to turn off a handy software deployment feature, even though the company described itself as “thrilled” by the feature, and described its functionality as “popular”. #ICYMI, that was about the use of so-called App Bundles to make software available for download via your browser. By
Pornographic websites will be legally obliged to introduce robust checks to verify the age of users under new plans published by the UK government. The measure is designed to protect children from accessing pornography from commercial providers. Announced on Safer Internet Day, the standalone provision has been added to the UK’s Online Safety Bill. The obligation
A financially motivated campaign that targets Android devices and spreads mobile malware via SMS phishing techniques since at least 2018 has spread its tentacles to strike victims located in France and Germany for the first time. Dubbed Roaming Mantis, the latest spate of activities observed in 2021 involve sending fake shipping-related texts containing a URL
by Paul Ducklin Late last year (November 2021), we reported on an unusual campaign of scammy emails warning recipients that they were in big trouble at work. If you saw one of these, you’ll probably remember it: a customer had made a formal complaint and the company was scrambling to hold a meeting to investigate
The UK government has unveiled plans to strengthen its Online Safety Bill, which includes the creation of new criminal offenses. The legislation, first drafted in May 2021, will place new obligations on social media sites and other services hosting user-generated content or allowing people to talk to others online to remove and limit the spread of illegal
Systems hosting content pertaining to the National Games of China were successfully breached last year by an unnamed Chinese-language-speaking hacking group. Cybersecurity firm Avast, which dissected the intrusion, said that the attackers gained access to a web server 12 days prior to the start of the event on September 3 to drop multiple reverse web
Lithuanian-based cybersecurity companies and rival virtual private network (VPN) providers Nord Security and Surfshark have finalized a merger agreement. The companies said that the merger would “open new technical knowledge-sharing opportunities and enable more focused market diversification.” Both companies will continue to operate autonomously and maintain separate infrastructure and product roadmaps. Since both companies are privately owned entities, the transaction
Users of the Argo continuous deployment (CD) tool for Kubernetes are being urged to push through updates after a zero-day vulnerability was found that could allow an attacker to extract sensitive information such as passwords and API keys. The flaw, tagged as CVE-2022-24348 (CVSS score: 7.7), affects all versions and has been addressed in versions
Security researchers at Apiiro have discovered a significant software supply chain zero-day vulnerability in the popular open-source continuous delivery platform, Argo CD. Used by thousands of organizations globally, Argo CD is a tool that reads environment configurations (written as a helm chart, kustomize files, jsonnet or plain YAML files) from git repositories and applies it Kubernetes namespaces. The
QR codes are all the rage and scammers have taken notice. Look out for dangers lurking behind those little black-and-white squares. QR codes are having a moment. The humble squares may have been around since 1994, but it wasn’t until the COVID-19 era that they became a truly household name. These days, you can spot
Microsoft on Friday shared more of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the Russia-based Gamaredon hacking group to facilitate a barrage of cyber espionage attacks aimed at several entities in Ukraine over the past six months. The attacks are said to have singled out government, military, non-government organizations (NGO), judiciary, law enforcement, and
by Paul Ducklin To misquote (and, indeed, to mispunctuate) Charles Dickens: it was the best of blockhains; it was the worst of blockchains. This week, cryptocurrency company Wormhole lived up to its name by exposing an exploitable vulnerability that apparently allowed cybercriminals to run off with an eye-watering 120,000 Ether tokens. Assuming a conversion rate
Cyber-criminals are making and laundering millions through non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to new data from Chainalysis. NFTs are technically unique records on a blockchain that are each linked to a piece of digital content. They can be minted and sold by the content creator to investors, fans and collectors. Their popularity soared last year, according to
A now-patched security vulnerability in Apple iOS that was previously found to be exploited by Israeli company NSO Group was also separately weaponized by a different surveillance vendor named QuaDream to hack into the company’s devices. The development was reported by Reuters, citing unnamed sources, noting that “the two rival businesses gained the same ability