The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor known as MuddyWater has been attributed to a new swarm of attacks targeting Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula with the goal of deploying remote access trojans (RATs) on compromised systems. “The MuddyWater supergroup is highly motivated and can use unauthorized access to conduct espionage, intellectual property theft, and deploy ransomware
Month: March 2022
A lengthy investigation into the online trade of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has led to the arrest of dozens of individuals based in New Zealand. Led by New Zealand’s Te Tari Taiwhenua Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), the two-year international operation identified more than 90,000 online accounts that possessed or traded CSAM. DIA’s Digital
Most consumers prefer to bank digitally rather than in person but are worried about the risk of fraud, according to new research by payments and data security company, Entrust. A survey of 1350 consumers who made or received digital payments in the past 12 months found that 88% of respondents prefer to do their banking online in some
by Paul Ducklin Max Kellermann, a coder and security researcher for German content management software creators CM4all, has just published a fascinating report about a Linux kernel bug that was patched recently. He called the vulnerability Dirty Pipe, because it involves insecure interaction between a true Linux file (one that’s saved permanently on disk) and
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles about how we can help our elder parents get the most out of digital life—the ways we can help them look after their finances and health online, along with how they can use the internet to keep connected with friends and family, all safely
International Women’s Day serves as an important reminder that each and every one of us plays a role in recognizing and addressing gender bias. Together, we can make a difference in creating a more equitable world for all. At McAfee, we know that genuine change requires continuous commitment. And while we’re proud of the efforts
Organizations worldwide should remain on high alert for cyberattacks as the risk of major cyber-spillover from the crisis in Ukraine continues to loom large Contests between states in the so-called gray zone between war and peace have been increasing for some time in cyberspace. In Ukraine, cyberattacks have been recorded more frequently over the past
No sector or organization is immune to rapidly escalating cyberthreats, but when it comes to healthcare, the stakes couldn’t be higher Even prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there was considerable fear that military escalation would bleed (further) into cyberspace and be followed by a rash of impactful digital assaults with international implications. Organizations worldwide
Three high-impact security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in APC Smart-UPS devices that could be abused by remote adversaries as a physical weapon to access and control them in an unauthorized manner. Collectively dubbed TLStorm, the flaws “allow for complete remote takeover of Smart-UPS devices and the ability to carry out extreme cyber-physical attacks,” Ben Seri
Threat actors have been observed abusing a high-impact reflection/amplification method to stage sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks for up to 14 hours with a record-breaking amplification ratio of 4,294,967,296 to 1. The attack vector – dubbed TP240PhoneHome (CVE-2022-26143) – has been weaponized to launch significant DDoS attacks targeting broadband access ISPs, financial institutions, logistics companies,
by Paul Ducklin Popular open-source computer hardware company Adafruit Industries accidentally exposed customer data… …via the GitHub account of a former employee. As you’ve probably figured out already, Adafruit is named after after Ada Lovelace, a nineteenth-century British intellectual who was a computer programmer long before any programmable computers existed. As mysterious as that might
When Aussie school opened their doors this year, the lifespan of parents around the country drastically improved. The combination of homeschooling, working from home, and not going anywhere has completely drained many Aussie working parents, me included!! Many of us have been in survival mode – just focusing on the basics to get through! Well,
Tesla boss Elon Musk has admitted that users of his Starlink satellite communications system in Ukraine could attract enemy fire. The warning came last week, as a truckload of satellite dishes arrived in the war-torn Eastern European country after a government request. Starlink terminals communicate with a constellation of around 2000 satellites in a low
Cyber-attacks keep increasing and evolving but, regardless of the degree of complexity used by hackers to gain access, get a foothold, cloak their malware, execute their payload or exfiltrate data, their attack will begin with reconnaissance. They will do their utmost to uncover exposed assets and probe their target’s attack surface for gaps that can
Cyber-criminals are exploiting Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to commit digital fraud. In a blog post published Friday, researchers at Bitdefender Labs said they had witnessed “waves of fraudulent and malicious emails,” some of which were engineered to exploit the charitable intentions of global citizens towards the people of Ukraine. Since March 1, researchers have been tracking two specific
Cybersecurity company Imperva on Friday said it recently mitigated a ransom distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting an unnamed website that peaked at 2.5 million requests per second (RPS). “While ransom DDoS attacks are not new, they appear to be evolving and becoming more interesting with time and with each new phase,” Nelli Klepfish, security analyst
by Paul Ducklin Mozilla has published Firefox 97.0.2, an “out-of-band” update that closes two bugs that are officially listed as critical. Mozilla reports that both of these holes are already actively being exploited, making them so-called zero-day bugs, which means, in simple terms, that the crooks got there first: We have had reports of attacks
The United States Senate has passed legislation requiring critical infrastructure operators and federal agencies to report cyber-attacks within 72 hours and ransomware payments within 24 hours. America’s Upper House approved the Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act of 2022 on Tuesday. The Act combines language from three bills, including the cyber-incident reporting bill, introduced to the Senate by the Senate Homeland Security and
Here are a few tips that will help you get your ‘go bag’ ready if you have to leave at a moment’s notice and need your communications and data to survive If you live in an area where emergencies aren’t rare (like I do; our area has one of the highest rates of fire evacuations
Details have emerged about a now-patched high-severity vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could potentially be abused to escape a container in order to execute arbitrary commands on the container host. The shortcoming resides in a Linux kernel feature called control groups, also referred to as cgroups version 1 (v1), which allows processes to be
Some 97% of multinational cybersecurity vendors have exposed assets in their AWS environments, many of them classed as high severity issues, according to Reposify. The US startup used its scanning technology to analyze the cloud environments of a sample of 35 vendors and over 350 subsidiaries. During a two-week window in January, Reposify’s external attack surface
Press play to hear Aryeh Goretsky, Jean-Ian Boutin and Robert Lipovsky discuss how recent malware attacks in Ukraine tie into years of cyberattacks against the country Long before the first Russian soldier set foot on Ukrainian soil, the country had been a target of sophisticated digital operations spying on its officials, and sabotaging its critical
Cyber criminals and hacktivist groups are increasingly using the Telegram messaging app for their activities, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict enters its eighth day. A new analysis by Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point Research has found that “user volume grew a hundred folds daily on Telegram related groups, peaking at 200,000 per group.” Prominent among the
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.
“You’re sold on the idea of zero trust. Now you need to implement it,” was the overarching theme of a star-studded panel discussion session titled ‘Best Policy: A Guide to Implementing Zero Trust and Reducing Overall Risk’ on day one of this year’s Cloud and Cyber Security Expo in Excel, London. Tim Holman, chief executive officer of 2|SEC Consulting,
A group of academics from the North Carolina State University and Dokuz Eylul University have demonstrated what they say is the “first side-channel attack” on homomorphic encryption that could be exploited to leak data as the encryption process is underway. “Basically, by monitoring power consumption in a device that is encoding data for homomorphic encryption,
by Paul Ducklin Just over a year ago, graphics card behemoth Nvidia announced an unexpected software “feature”: anti-cryptomining code baked into the drivers for its latest graphics processing units (GPUs). Simply put, if the driver software thinks you’re using the GPU to perform calculations related to Ethereum cryptocurrency calculations, it cuts the execution speed of
Cryptocurrency has boomed in the last several years, with beginners and experts alike jumping into the industry. It’s proven now to be more than a passing hobby or trend. Cryptocurrency is a way of conducting business and making money for people around the world. As the intrigue and interaction with crypto grows, cybercriminals are finding
The emergence of hybrid work and growing reliance on cloud technology means that zero trust security model is “becoming the de facto posture at many organizations.” This was the message delivered by Fredrik Hult, chief information security officer at PagoNxt, during his “Master class: Adopting the Zero Trust Security Model” session on the first day
As the conflict in Ukraine heightens the risk of cyberattacks globally, what can organizations do to improve their resiliency? Due to the current attack by Russian forces on Ukraine, do you expect there to be more cyberattacks? This is the most common question I am being asked post Russia unleashing its offensive in Ukraine. The