Security

Multinational company Omnicell recently confirmed that it had experienced a data breach after following a reported ransomware attack, impacting internal systems. The company, headquartered in Mountain View, California, USA, learned of the ransomware attack, which it disclosed on May 9 2022 in a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More details are likely

by Paul Ducklin Apple’s latest security updates have arrived. All still-supported flavours of macOS (Monterey, Big Sur and Catalina), as well as all current mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs and Apple Watches), get patches. Additionally, programmers using Apple’s Xcode development system get an update too. The details are below. All the details and bulletin

US manufacturing company Parker-Hannifin Corporation has announced a data breach exposing employees’ personal identifiable information (PII) after Conti ransomware actors published reportedly stolen data last month. The firm, one of the largest companies in the world in motion control technologies, revealed in a press release that an unauthorized third party gained access to its IT

A former banking IT security boss has been named as the co-chair of the government’s National Cyber Advisory Board, a key institution created as part of its new cybersecurity strategy. Sharon Barber was until recently chief resilience and security officer at Lloyds Banking Group, and will now lead efforts to shape a dialogue between society and

by Paul Ducklin Late last week, our Slackware Linux distro announced an update to follow the scheduled-and-expected Firefox 100 release, which came out at the start of the month. The new version is 100.0.1, and we’re running it happily… …but when we clicked on What’s new two days later, to see what was new, we

The cyber implications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict were discussed by a panel of international security leaders during the opening plenary session at CYBERUK 2022. The discussion was moderated by NCSC’s CEO Lindy Cameron, who was joined on the stage by the director of the US’ National Security Agency (NSA), Robert Joyce, head of the Australian Cyber

by Paul Ducklin You may not have heard of Curl (or curl, as it is more properly written), but it’s one of those open source toolkits that you’ve almost certainly used anyway, probably very often, without knowing. The open source world provides numerous tools of this sort – ubiquitous, widely used in software projects all over

The European Union (EU) has reached political agreement on new legislation that will impose common cybersecurity standards on critical industry organizations. The new directive will replace the EU’s existing rules on the security of network and information systems (NIS Directive), which requires updating because “of the increasing degree of digitalization and interconnectedness of our society and the

by Paul Ducklin What does the word Glib mean to you? Does it make you think of a popular programming library from the GNOME project? Do you see it as a typo for glibc, a low-level C runtime library used in many Linux distros? Do you picture someone with the gift of the gab trying

Oklahoma City Indian Clinic (OKCIC) this week announced that it experienced a data breach exposing personally identifiable information (PII) of nearly 40,000 individuals. According to a notice posted on the clinic’s website, on May 12, the clinic identified a data security incident that affected its computer system. To investigate the incident, OKCIC enlisted the help

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. Listen on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found.Or simply drop the URL

A British man has been charged in New York with unauthorized computer intrusion, securities fraud, wire fraud and other crimes, causing more than $5m of losses. According to a 10-count complaint made public yesterday, Idris Dayo Mustapha, 32, a UK citizen, and others used phishing and other means to obtain user credentials from January 2011 to

by Paul Ducklin If you were in the US this time last year, you won’t have forgotten, and you may even have been affected by, the ransomware attack on fuel-pumping company Colonial Pipeline. The organisation was hit by ransomware injected into its network by so-called affiliates of a cybercrime crew known as DarkSide. DarkSide is

The Spanish government has sacked its spy chief Paz Esteban amid a dual phone-hacking scandal involving Pegasus spyware, the country’s defense minister said today. The National Intelligence Center (CNI) that Esteban headed faced controversy recently for reportedly using Pegasus, developed by Israel’s NSO Group, to spy on leaders of the Catalan independence movement. CNI was

by Paul Ducklin Popular package management site RubyGems.org, which stores and supplies hundreds of thousands of modules for the widely-used programming language Ruby, just patched a dangerous server-side vulnerability. The bug, dubbed CVE-2022-29176, could have allowed attackers to remove a package that wasn’t theirs (yanking it, in RubyGems jargon), and then to replace it with

Russians tuning in to view the country’s Victory Day parade today were shocked to find anti-war messages after the country’s television listings system was hacked. The hack affected several major networks, including Channel One, Rossiya-1 and NTV-Plus, the BBC reported. The name of every program was replaced with a message stating, per the BBC’s translation: “On your

A trainee solicitor and special police constable has been handed a two-year suspended sentence after using encrypted channels to post messages about child sexual abuse. Jack Mallinson, 26, who was employed by West Yorkshire Police while training to be a solicitor, was arrested on January 7 2021 by officers from the UK’s National Crime Agency

by Paul Ducklin Google’s May 2022 updates for Android are out. As usual, the core of Android received two different patch versions. The first is dubbed 2022-05-01, and contains fixes for 13 CVE-numbered vulnerabilities. Fortunately, none of these are currently being exploited, meaning that there are no zero-day holes known this month; none of them

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has updated its guidance on supply chain cybersecurity. The revised publication, Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management Practices for Systems and Organizations, gives organizations key practices to adopt as they manage cybersecurity risks across their supply chains. In particular, it advises organizations to consider vulnerabilities in the components of a

by Paul Ducklin Remember the jokes (OK, they were sold as “jokes” when you were at school to add a touch of excitement to Eng. Lang. lessons) about creating valid and allegedly meaningful sentences with a single word repeated many times? There’s an very dubious one with the word BUFFALO seven times in a row,

IKEA says that it has notified Canada’s privacy watchdog following a large data breach involving the personal information of approximately 95,000 customers. In a statement, the furniture retailer said that some of its customers’ personal information appeared in the results of a “generic search” performed by a co-worker at IKEA Canada between March 1-3 using

The owner of a Delaware computer repair shop, who alerted the FBI to the contents of a laptop reportedly owned by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is suing a politician and several news media outlets for allegedly defaming him. John Paul Mac Isaac said Hunter’s MacBook Pro was dropped off at his shop in April 2019 and

by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can also listen directly on Soundcloud. [00’23”] Fun Fact. What comes after “123”? [01’57”] World Password Day. (We still need it!) [04’20”] GitHub authentication troubles. [11’55”] This Week in Tech History. Sasser, the sassy Windows worm. [15’55”] Firefox hits

A book on cybersecurity that doesn’t feature any words written by individuals who identify as male has been published by JupiterOne. Reinventing Cybersecurity, which came out on Tuesday, claims to be “the first cybersecurity book written entirely by women and non-binary experts.”  The publication is a collection of original stories from 17 female and non-binary security professionals. Linking

by Paul Ducklin Back in the late 1960s and the start of the 1970s (or so we’ve heard), primary school children in the UK got a special treat. Unlike their parents and grandparents before them, they were exempted from learning how to do calculations involving money. Their teachers were no longer expected to show them

A former executive of eBay has pleaded guilty to taking part in a disturbing cyber stalking campaign waged against a married couple from Massachusetts. The couple’s terrifying experience began after they wrote about eBay in an online newsletter aimed at eBay sellers, which they edited and published.  Under the campaign, parcels with horrifying contents were anonymously sent

by Paul Ducklin Firefox has followed Chromium to the century mark, reaching a score of 100* with its latest scheduled almost-monthly release. For readers without the sporting good fortune of living in a cricket-playing country, an individual score of 100 in a single innings, known as a century or a ton, is considered a noteworthy

Spyware has been detected on the cell phones of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the country’s defense minister, Margarita Robles. In a press conference given Monday morning, the Spanish government said that the phones had been infected with Pegasus spyware and extracted data from both devices.  The minister for the presidency, Félix Bolaños, said that the

A Texas school district employee has tendered their resignation after being caught secretly mining cryptocurrency on school premises.  Pings picked up by Galveston Independent School District’s firewall a couple of weeks ago aroused the suspicion of the district’s IT department. An investigation into the activity determined that multiple cryptocurrency mining machines were operating on the

The Bioeconomy Information Sharing and Analysis Center (BIO-ISAC) and New York Metro InfraGard Members Alliance (NYM-IMA) are coming together to tackle cyber threats facing the bioeconomy.  The partnership, which aims to protect economic activity in the United States involving the use of biotechnology and biomass in the production of goods, services or energy, was announced on Thursday.