Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a letter to the US Senate last week to call for stronger privacy legislation at the federal level. The letter, which was first obtained by MacRumors, comes after the release of a draft of the “American Data Privacy and Protection Act” (ADPPA) bipartisan bill. The drafted legislation examines and discusses several facets of
Month: June 2022
by Paul Ducklin On Thursday this week (16 June 2022 at 15:00 UK time), we’re holding a free webinar in which we’ll give you a live explanation and demonstration of the “Follina” vulnerability. Although this bug is fairly easy to deal with (a simple registry change rolled out via Group Policy will largely immunise your
Five years ago, ESET researchers released their analysis of the first ever malware that was designed specifically to attack power grids On June 12th 2017, ESET researchers published their findings about unique malware that was capable of causing a widespread blackout. Industroyer, as they named it, was the first known piece of malware that was
A technically sophisticated threat actor known as SeaFlower has been targeting Android and iOS users as part of an extensive campaign that mimics official cryptocurrency wallet websites intending to distribute backdoored apps that drain victims’ funds. Said to be first discovered in March 2022, the cluster of activity “hint[s] to a strong relationship with a
Authored by Jyothi Naveen and Kiran Raj McAfee Labs have been observing a spike in phishing campaigns that utilize Microsoft office macro capabilities. These malicious documents reach victims via mass spam E-mail campaigns and generally invoke urgency, fear, or similar emotions, leading unsuspecting users to promptly open them. The purpose of these spam operations is
There has been much activity in recent years around the use of blockchain to provide more integrity and privacy to transactions, but there are some privacy issues organizations need to know about. In a session at the RSA Conference 2022, Jim Amsler, director governance, risk and compliance, at BDO and Greg Schu, partner, national compliance lead,
Technology is understandably viewed as a nuisance to be managed in pursuit of the health organizations’ primary mission For understandable reasons, health delivery organizations center their focus on helping sick people, rather than on fiddling with information technology. Technology is seen as frictional annoyance to be managed in pursuit of their primary goal, so it
The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor tracked under the moniker Lyceum has turned to using a new custom .NET-based backdoor in recent campaigns directed against the Middle East. “The new malware is a .NET based DNS Backdoor which is a customized version of the open source tool ‘DIG.net,'” Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Avinash Kumar
The great thing about the internet is that there’s room for everyone. The not-so-great part? There’s plenty of room for cybercriminals who are hungry to get their hands on our personal information. Fortunately, internet scams don’t have to be a part of your online experience. In this article, we’ll tell you about some of the
A new advanced persistent threat (APT) actor dubbed Aoqin Dragon and reportedly based in China, has been linked to several hacking attacks against government, education and telecom entities mainly in Southeast Asia and Australia since 2013. The news comes from threat researchers Sentinel Labs, who published a blog post on Thursday describing the decade-long events. “We assess
API-based data transfer is so rapid, there’s but little time to stop very bad things happening quickly In the rush to integrate, these lightly defended computer-to-computer portals allow rapid data transfer between systems to enrich and display data across your digital fabric. But the lightly defended part can allow vast vacuuming up of data by
A novel hardware attack dubbed PACMAN has been demonstrated against Apple’s M1 processor chipsets, potentially arming a malicious actor with the capability to gain arbitrary code execution on macOS systems. It leverages “speculative execution attacks to bypass an important memory protection mechanism, ARM Pointer Authentication, a security feature that is used to enforce pointer integrity,”
Say you’re getting married. You and your partner have booked the venue, made the seating arrangements, trained your dog to be the ring bearer – and everything is running smoothly. You’ve used a trusty wedding planning website to make everything a breeze. Nothing could ruin this day for you! Except, there’s an uninvited guest. They’re
There are a few bad IT practices that are dangerous for any organization and particularly for organizations in critical industries like healthcare. At the RSA Conference 2022, Donald Benack, deputy associate director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Joshua Corman, founder of I am the Cavalry, outlined what the US Government sees as
Here are three themes that stood out at the world’s largest gathering of cybersecurity professionals Having just come back from the RSA Conference 2022, Tony looks at three themes that stood out to him at the world’s largest gathering of cybersecurity professionals: the shortage of cybersecurity talent and its ramifications how technology companies attempt to
A new research undertaken by a group of academics from the University of California San Diego has revealed for the first time that Bluetooth signals can be fingerprinted to track smartphones (and therefore, individuals). The identification, at its core, hinges on imperfections in the Bluetooth chipset hardware introduced during the manufacturing process, resulting in a
The explosion of e-commerce sites has changed how we shop today, providing access to millions of online stores with almost unlimited selections. Just as you would take basic precautions in a brick-and-mortar store — perhaps hiding your PIN number while paying and making sure the business is legitimate — you should also practice safe shopping
Threat modeling is an approach that can potentially be overly complicated, but it doesn’t have to be that way, according to Alyssa Miller, business information security officer (BISO) at S&P Global Rating, in a session at the RSA Conference 2022, Miller also explained an approach for plain language threat modeling that can help accelerate DevSecOps efforts.
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.
Digital fiddling somehow got mixed up in a real war This year at the RSA Conference, it’s hard to shake off the fact that all this digital fiddling somehow got mixed up in a real war. I imagine this sort of fantasy where techno purveyors never really thought the cool stuff they were doing would
A newly designed privacy-sensitive architecture aims to enable developers to create smart home apps in a manner that addresses data sharing concerns and puts users in control over their personal information. Dubbed Peekaboo by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the system “leverages an in-home hub to pre-process and minimize outgoing data in a structured and
Mobile banking and finance apps have become increasingly popular in recent years. These apps provide a quick and convenient way to see checking and savings account balances and make and receive payments. It’s no surprise that many people use these third-party apps to manage their finances. In 2021, the U.S. saw 573.1 million finance app
Insights into recent cyber-threat activity was provided by Forescout’s VP of threat defense, Sean Taylor, during a session at the RSA Conference 2022. Setting the scene, Taylor stated that in international threat intelligence, “understanding your adversary is key.” He then highlighted attacks conducted by Russian state-backed attackers on Ukraine prior to the invasion. At the
by Paul Ducklin SSN is an abbreviation that’s specific to America, and DOB is shorthand that’s specific to the English language. Nevertheless, their meanings are widely known throughout the world, not least because of their widespread use in reports and discussions about identity theft and cybercrime. SSN is short for Social Security Number, which is
An unofficial security patch has been made available for a new Windows zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT), even as the Follina flaw continues to be exploited in the wild. The issue — referenced as DogWalk — relates to a path traversal flaw that can be exploited to stash a malicious executable
If you’re like most people, you probably use your computer for most of your online activities. It’s amazing what the internet can do to make our lives easier. But if you’ve spent any time online, you know the internet also comes with some risks. Malware (or malicious software) is one risk of living a connected
The ways federal agencies can strengthen national cybersecurity were discussed in a keynote session on day two of the RSA Conference 2022. Moderated by Bobbie Stempfley, vice president and business unit security officer, Dell Technologies, the session had contributions from three key personnel involved in the US government’s cybersecurity strategy: Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity
by Paul Ducklin Over on our sister site, Sophos News, we’ve just published some fascinating and informative insights into cybercriminals… …answering the truly practical question, “How do they do it?” In theory, the crooks can (and do) use any and all of thousands of different attack techniques, in any combination they like. In real life,
Give employees the knowledge needed to spot the warning signs of a cyberattack and to understand when they may be putting sensitive data at risk There’s an old adage in cybersecurity that humans are the weakest link in the security chain. That’s increasingly true, as threat actors compete to exploit credulous or careless employees. But
The threat cluster dubbed UNC2165, which shares numerous overlaps with a Russia-based cybercrime group known as Evil Corp, has been linked to multiple LockBit ransomware intrusions in an attempt to get around sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury in December 2019. “These actors have shifted away from using exclusive ransomware variants to LockBit — a