Security

North Korean state-backed hackers and insecure decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols helped to make 2022 a record year for cryptocurrency heists, according to Chainalysis. The blockchain analysis company teased the figures ahead of an upcoming annual crypto crime report. A total of $3.8bn was stolen from cryptocurrency firms last year, 82% of which resulted from targeting

by Paul Ducklin It’s been a newsworthy few weeks for password managers – those handy utilities that help you come up with a different password for every website you use, and then to keep track of them all. At the end of 2022, it was the turn of LastPass to be all over the news,

Security researchers have discovered underground cybercrime sites selling cheating services, leaked courses and fake certificates to help unscrupulous individuals gain security qualifications and/or a leg up in their careers.  Dov Lerner, head of threat research at Cybersixgill, said in a new report out today that his team found fake CompTIA CySA+ diplomas, among other security-related

by Paul Ducklin Another day, another access-token-based database breach. This time, the victim (and in some ways, of course, also the culprit) is Microsoft’s GitHub business. GitHub claims that it spotted the breach quickly, the day after it happened, but by then the damage had been done: On December 6, 2022, repositories from our atom,

Russian hacktivists appear to have been busy again after reports suggested several hospital websites across the US and the Netherlands were downed by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. University of Michigan Hospital and Stanford Health Care Center were among the targeted facilities in the current campaign, which hit a handful of hospitals in the

by Paul Ducklin Samba, simply put, is a super-useful, mega-popular, open-source reimplementation of the networking protocols used in Microsoft Windows, and its historical importance in internetworking (connecting two different sorts of network together) cannot be underestimated. In the late 1990s, Microsoft networking shed its opaque, proprietary nature and became an open standard known as CIFS,

Security experts have warned of several new apps available on Google Play which purport to help the user develop healthy habits in return for rewards, but in reality just bombard them with irritating ads. Lucky Habit: health tracker, Lucky Step-Walking Tracker and WalkingJoy have garnered over 20 million downloads for what appears to be the same

by Paul Ducklin BREACHES, PATCHES, LEAKS AND TWEAKS Latest epidode – 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,

An operation responding to a Black Basta ransomware compromise has revealed the use of a new PlugX malware variant that can automatically infect any attached removable USB media devices. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 shared the findings with Infosecurity earlier today, adding that the new PlugX variant is “wormable” and can infect USB devices in

Researchers have found three separate vulnerabilities in OpenEMR, an open-source software for electronic health records and medical practice management. Clean code experts at Sonar published an advisory Wednesday about the discovered flaws by security researcher Dennis Brinkrolf. “During our security research of popular web applications, we discovered several code vulnerabilities in OpenEMR,” Brinkrolf wrote. “A combination of

by Naked Security writer Six months ago, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) infiltrated the Hive ransomware gang and started “stealing back” the decryption keys for victims whose files had been scrambled. As you are almost certainly, and sadly, aware, ransomware attacks these days typically involve two

Global law enforcers celebrated this week after revealing a coordinated operation to disrupt the Hive ransomware variant. The ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) outfit has targeted more than 1500 victims in over 80 countries since June 2021, making an estimated $100m in the process, according to the Department of Justice (DoJ). Victims included hospitals, schools, financial firms and critical infrastructure

by Paul Ducklin The Public Prosecution Service in the Netherlands [Dutch: Openbaar Ministerie] has just released information about an unnamed suspect arrested back in December 2022 for allegedly stealing and selling personal data about tens of millions of people. The victims are said to live in countries as far apart as Austria, China, Columbia, the

The volume of publicly reported data breaches and leaks remained at a near-record level in 2022, although consumers and businesses are being let down by the paucity of information provided by breached companies, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). The non-profit’s 2022 Data Breach Report is compiled from company announcements, mainstream news media,

by Paul Ducklin Over the years, we’ve written and spoken on Naked Security many times about the thorny problem of DNS hijacking. DNS, as you probably know, is short for domain name system, and you’ll often hear it described as the internet’s “telephone directory” or “gazetteer”. If you’re not familiar with the word gazeteer, it

by Paul Ducklin GoTo is a well-known brand that owns a range of products, including technologies for teleconferencing and webinars, remote access, and password management. If you’ve ever used GoTo Webinar (online meetings and seminars), GoToMyPC (connect and control someone else’s computer for management and support), or LastPass (a password manangement service), you’ve used a

A new string of attacks against East Asian organizations has been spotted by security researchers and attributed to the threat actor known as DragonSpark. The campaign, discovered by SentinelLabs, uses the little-known open-source SparkRAT alongside malware tools to evade detection via source code interpretation techniques based on the Go programming language. “The DragonSpark attacks represent

The UK’s data protection regulator has shared seven tips for SMBs, designed to save them time and money and boost customer confidence. The UK’s SMB community numbers over 5.5 million firms – amounting to over 99% of all businesses in the country. Yet many don’t have the in-house knowledge and resources to ensure they stay

by Paul Ducklin Last year, on the last day of August 2022, we wrote with mild astonishment, and perhaps even a tiny touch of excitement, about an unexpected but rather important update for iPhones stuck back on iOS 12. As we remarked at the time, we’d already decided that iOS 12 had slipped (or perhaps

Security researchers have spotted another innovative technique phishing actors are using to bypass traditional security filters – this time using blank images. The email in question was detected by Check Point business Avanan, and arrived as a legitimate-looking DocuSign message. Although the link in the email body will take the user directly to a regular

UK postal service Royal Mail announced on January 18, 2022, that it has resumed some “limited” international shipping following the ransomware attack that hit the company on January 11. These limited services include “International Standard and International Economy letters which do not require a customs declaration” and “International Business Standard (untracked) and International Business Economy

by Paul Ducklin US mobile phone provider T-Mobile has just admitted to getting hacked, in a filing known as an 8-K that was submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday, 2023-01-19. The 8-K form is described by the SEC itself as “the ‘current report’ companies must file […] to announce major events that

WhatsApp has been hit with a €5.5m ($5.9m) fine for GDPR violations by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC). In addition to the fine, WhatsApp Ireland has been directed to bring its data processing operations into compliance within six months. The case showcased significant disagreements between European data protection authorities about the extent of WhatsApp’s liability.

by Paul Ducklin GUESS YOUR PASSWORD? NO NEED IF IT’S STOLEN ALREADY! Guess your password? Crack your password? Steal your password? What if the crooks already have one of your passwords, and can use it to figure out all your others as well? Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can

The threat actor known as Roaming Mantis (or Shaoye) has reportedly added a DNS changer function to its latest mobile app Wroba.o to infiltrate WiFi routers and undertake DNS hijacking. The findings come from Kaspersky’s SecureList researchers, who published an advisory about Roaming Mantis earlier today. According to the technical write-up, the threat actor has

The Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) known as Vixen Panda has been linked to a new series of attacks targeting the Iranian government between July and December 2022. The claims come from cybersecurity researchers at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, who shared a report about them with Infosecurity via email. Called “Playful Taurus” by Unit

by Paul Ducklin Earlier this month, the NortonLifeLock online identity protection service, owned by Arizona-based technology company Gen Digital, sent a security warning to many of its customers. The warning letter can be viewed online, for example on the website of the Office of the Vermont Attorney General, where it appears under the title NortonLifeLock

The threat actor Vice Society has claimed responsibility for the ransomware attack against the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) in November 2022 and has reportedly published some stolen data on the dark web. UDE made the announcement over the weekend, saying the data publication resulted from the university not complying with the attackers’ ransom demands. At the

by Paul Ducklin Another day, another series of cryptocurrency scams… …these, fortunately, brought to a halt, though sadly not before they’d defrauded “investors” around the globe to the tune of millions of dollars. According to Europol, 216 people were questioned in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany and Serbia; 15 have already been arrested; 22 searches were conducted,

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has confirmed it will soon launch the third part of its ‘Hack the Pentagon’ bug bounty program, first unveiled in 2016. According to a dedicated page on the Sam.Gov website, the initiative will rely on cybersecurity researchers to find vulnerabilities in the government’s Facility Related Controls System (FRCS) network.