Security

by Paul Ducklin Java programmers love string interpolation features. If you’re not a coder, you’re probably confused by the word “interpolation” here, because it’s been borrowed as programming jargon where it’s not a very good linguistic fit… …but the idea is simple, very powerful, and sometimes spectacularly dangerous. In other programming ecosystems it’s often known

Multiple phishing domains impersonating Absher, the Saudi government service portal, have been set up to provide fake services to citizens and steal their credentials. The discovery comes from cybersecurity researchers at CloudSEK, who published an advisory about the threat on Thursday. “The threat actors are targeting individuals by sending an SMS, along with a link, urging

by Paul Ducklin Sadly, we’ve needed to cover the DEADBOLT ransomware several times before on Naked Security. For almost two years already, this niche player in the ransomware cybercrime scene has been preying mainly on home users and small businesses in a very different way from most contemporary ransomware attacks: If you were involved in

Ransomware has grown by 466% since 2019 and is increasingly being used as a precursor to physical war. The findings come from Ivanti’s Ransomware Index Report Q2–Q3 2022, which the company shared with Infosecurity earlier today. The data also shows ransomware groups continuing to grow in volume and sophistication, with 35 vulnerabilities becoming associated with ransomware

by Paul Ducklin WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “DOESN’T MEET THE BAR FOR SECURITY SERVICING”? 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,

From the warning banner ‘Be afraid and expect the worst’ that was shown on several Ukrainian government websites on January 13, 2022, after a cyber-attack took them down, the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) cybersecurity director, Rob Joyce, knew that something was going to be different, and very aggressive, between Ukraine and Russia, and that

by Paul Ducklin The US Postal Service just issued a commemorative stamp to remember the service of some 11,000 women cryptologists during World War 2. Like their Bletchley Park counterparts in the UK, these wartime heros didn’t finish the war with any sort of hero’s welcome back into civilian life. Indeed, they got no public

Video messaging platform Zoom released a new patch last week to a high-severity flaw in its client for macOS devices. The vulnerability (tracked CVE-2022-28762) refers to a debugging port misconfiguration affecting versions between 5.10.6 and 5.12.0 (excluded) and has a common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) of 3.1 of 7.3 out of 10. “When camera mode

by Paul Ducklin Popular and ubiquitous (software isn’t always both of those things!) cloud meeting company Zoom recently announced an oops-that-wasn’t-supposed-to-happen bug in the Mac version of its software. The security bulletin is, forgivably, written in the typically staccato and jargon-soaked style of bug-hunters, but the meaning is fairly clear. The bug is denoted CVE-2022-28762,

A novel ransomware campaign has been spotted targeting organizations in the transportation and logistics industries in Ukraine and Poland using a previously unidentified ransomware payload. Dubbed “Prestige ranusomeware” by its creators, the malware was observed by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), targeting several organizations on October 11 in attacks occurring within an hour of

by Naked Security writer Chinese company Zoetop, former owner of the wildly popular SHEIN and ROMWE “fast fashion” brands, has been fined $1,900,000 by the State of New York. As Attorney General Letitia James put it in a statement last week: SHEIN and ROMWE’s weak digital security measures made it easy for hackers to shoplift

The education sector experienced a 44% increase in cyber-attacks when compared to 2021, with an average of 2297 attacks against organizations every week, according to Check Point’s 2022 Mid-Year Report. The research paper suggests that part of the appeal is the sheer number of personal details that threat actors can obtain by targeting organizations in this

Zoetop, the holding company behind retailer giant Romwe and Shein, has been fined $1.9m after it failed to properly inform customers of a data breach that reportedly affected millions of users. According to a notice from New York’s attorney general’s office this week, the 2018 data breach saw Zoetop failing to secure customers’ data, not

by Paul Ducklin We use Apple’s Mail app all day, every day for handling work and personal email, including a plentiful supply of very welcome Naked Security comments, questions, article ideas, typo reports, podcast suggestions and much more. (Keep ’em coming – we get far more positive and useful messages that we get trolls, and

Performance and security company Cloudflare reported that it stopped a 2.5Tbps distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in Q3 2022 launched by a Mirai botnet against Minecraft server Wynncraft. The data comes from the company’s latest DDoS Threat Report, which includes insights and trends about the DDoS threat landscape in the third quarter of 2022. “Multi-terabit strong

by Paul Ducklin We’re not quite sure what to call it right now, so we referred to it in the headline by the hybrid name Microsoft Office 365. (The name “Office” as the collective noun for Microsoft’s word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and collaboration apps is being killed off over the next month or two, to

A new threat cluster, tracked by SentinelLabs as WIP19, has been targeting telecommunications and IT service providers across the Middle East and Asia. According to the security experts, the group is characterized by the use of a legitimate, stolen digital certificate issued by DEEPSoft, a Korean company specializing in messaging solutions.  “Throughout this activity, the

by Paul Ducklin THREE DEEP QUESTIONS Should hospital ransomware attackers get life in prison? Who was the Countess of Computer Science, and just how close did we come to digital music in the 19th century? And could a weirdly wacky email brick your iPhone? With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by

FormBook is the most prevalent malware in the wild worldwide, and Vidar, an infostealer, has entered the top 10 list in eighth place for the first time following a fake Zoom campaign. The new data comes from Check Point Research (CPR), which shared with Infosecurity its September 2022’s Most Wanted Malware report earlier today. According to the new

by Paul Ducklin Two weeks ago we reported on two zero-days in Microsoft Exchange that had been reported to Microsoft three weeks before that by a Vietnamese company that claimed to have stumbled across the bugs on an incident response engagement on a customer’s network. (You may need to read that twice.) As you probably

Following Google’s acquisition of cybersecurity groups Siemplify and Mandiant, the US tech giant has sought to bring all of its cloud capabilities under one roof with the launch of Chronicle Security Operations. Google’s Cloud Next division unveiled the cloud-born software suite on October 11, 2022, which it said can “better enable cybersecurity teams to detect,

by Paul Ducklin The second Tuesday of every month is Microsoft’s regular day for security updates, still known by almost everyone by its unofficial nickname of “Patch Tuesday”. But the second Tuesday in October is also Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating Ada, Countess of Lovelace. Ada was a true pioneer not only of computing, but also

Representatives from Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP) and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) recently met to discuss strengthening cooperation and networking. The working meeting was held during the visit to ENISA HQ in Athens as a part of the Cybersecurity East Project. Viktor Zhora, SSSCIP deputy head, said after

by Paul Ducklin Naked Security meets Sophos X-Ops! (Read or listen according to your preference.) We dig into OAuth 2.0, a well-known protocol for authorization. Microsoft calls it “Modern Auth”, though it’s a decade old, and is finally forcing Exchange Online customers to switch to it. We look at the what, the why and the

Lloyd’s of London, the London-based insurance market heavily involved in implementing sanctions against Russia, may have been hit by a cyber-attack. On Wednesday, October 5, 2022, the British insurance market revealed it had detected “unusual activity” on its systems and has turned off all external connectivity “as a precautionary measure.” “We have informed market participants

by Paul Ducklin Scam calls are a nuisance at best, because they’re intrusive, and a social and financial evil at worst, because they prey on those who are vulnerable. You probably get dozens or hundreds of them a year, often in waves of several a day, where the caller claims to be from Amazon (about

Chinese state–sponsored threat actors continue to exploit known vulnerabilities to target US and allied networks and companies, according to a new advisory published on October 06, 2022, by the US National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Worse, they use “an increasing array of new and

by Naked Security writer Joe Sullivan, who was Chief Security Officer at Uber from 2015 to 2017, has been convicted in a US federal court of covering up a data breach at the company in 2016. Sullivan was charged with obstructing proceedings conducted by the FTC (the Federal Trade Commission, the US consumer rights body),

A number of notable software supply chain cyber incidents have been linked to ‘LofyGang,’ an attack group that has been operating for over a year, according to a new analysis by Checkmarx. The researchers discovered around 200 malicious packages with thousands of installations linked to LofyGang. These included several classes of malicious payloads, general password

by Paul Ducklin If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em! Actually, the original quote doesn’t quite go like that, but you get the idea: if you can’t stop people downloading bogus, malware-tainted apps that pretend to be backed by your powerful, global brand… …why not use your powerful, global brand to sue the creators of