Security

A patrolman at a Sheriff’s Office in Florida has been arrested on suspicion of sending sexually explicit images to a 16-year-old high school student. Clay County resident Alejandro Carmona-Fonseca had worked for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for 15 years before his arrest on March 15. During that time, he was the subject of 28 complaints from his

by Naked Security writer You’ve almost certainly heard of the LAPSUS$ hacking crew. That’s lapsus, which is as good a Latin word as any for “data breach”, followed by a dollar sign, like a text variable in BASIC. Microsoft refers to this cybergang by the more pedestrian moniker of “the DEV-5037 actor”, and noted, in

A United States Senate committee has questioned whether a new data label created to protect sensitive information is being abused by the Pentagon to prevent the disclosure of important information to the public. The Senate Armed Services Committee, which authorizes defense spending, asked William LaPlante to review the increasing use of the freshly concocted Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) label

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.

Cyber police in India have broken up a cyber-criminal operation selling fake helicopter tickets to pilgrims via fraudulent websites. The scam targeted pilgrims traveling to and from the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, which is in the Trikuta hills, 63km from Jammu City. On Friday, law enforcement officers from Rajasthan Police and Jammu Police’s Cyber Cell arrested four

A woman from New Orleans has been sent to prison for buying patients’ data stolen from a medical clinic and using it to obtain thousands of dollars fraudulently. Ashley Green, aged 41, was arrested in 2015 along with her 32-year-old cousin, Royale Lassai, and 37-year-old Brandon Livas following an investigation by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s

by Paul Ducklin In January 2021, reports surfaced of a backup-busting ransomware strain called Deadbolt, apparently aimed at small businesses, hobbyists and serious home users. As far as we can see, Deadbolt deliberately chose a deadly niche in which to operate: users who needed backups and were well-informed enough to make them, but who didn’t

Four parallel data breach lawsuits have been filed against a 45-year-old background check services company based in Massachusetts. Creative Services, Inc. (CSI), located in Mansfield, provides background screening, drug testing and security consulting services to employers, institutions and governments in the United States and overseas. According to an official filing by the company, on November

by Paul Ducklin CafePress is a web service that lets artists, shops, businesses, fan clubs – anyone who signs up, in fact – turn designs, corporate slogans, logos and the like into fun merchandise they can give away or sell on to others. The days when you had to put in an order for several hundred coffee

New Mexico has appointed its first senior advisor for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure.  New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the appointment of Annie Winterfield Manriquez on Friday  Manriquez will work with key stakeholders across the private sector and government to improve New Mexico’s cybersecurity infrastructure and systems. She will also be tasked with devising

by Paul Ducklin As almost everyone who doesn’t live in North America knows… …American dates are weird! Those of us who care about these things use YYYY-MM-DD, because writing 2022-03-14 is undoubtedly the easiest way of avoiding ambiguity in dates, givem that the four-digit part is obviously the year, and everyone who writes the year

Multiple Ukrainian news websites were allegedly hacked by Russian threat actors, leaving the ‘Z’ symbol on display to visitors. The State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine, the nation’s technical security and intelligence service, confirmed the incident in a web post last night, attributing blame to Russian state-sponsored actors. The organization stated: “As a

by Paul Ducklin The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has just put out a bulletin numbered AA22-074A, with the dramatic title Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Gain Network Access by Exploiting Default Multifactor Authentication Protocols and “PrintNightmare” Vulnerability. To sidestep rumours based on the title alone (which some readers might interpret as an attack

Uganda has arrested an author and activist and a TV journalist for allegedly cyber stalking the country’s President, Yoweri Museveni. Author Norman Tumuhimbise and his colleague Farida Bikobere were reportedly bundled into a van by armed security personnel last week. The pair’s lawyer, Eron Kiiza, confirmed their arrest on Thursday to the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

by Paul Ducklin OpenSSL published a security update this week. The new versions are 3.0.2 and 1.1.1n, corresponding to the two currently-supported flavours of OpenSSL (3.0 and 1.1.1). The patch includes a few general fixes, such as error reporting that’s been tidied up, along with an update for CVE-2022-0778, found by well-known bug eliminator Tavis

A spear-phishing study by security company Barracuda has found that a third of malicious logins into compromised accounts in 2021 came from Nigeria. The finding was included in the Spear Phishing: Top Threats and Trends Vol. 7 – Key findings on the latest social engineering tactics and the growing complexity of attacks  report, released by the company on Wednesday. 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 Paul Ducklin and Chester Wisniewski. 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.

Cyber-criminals are impersonating legitimate aid organizations to steal financial donations intended for the people of Ukraine, according to new research by managed detection and response provider, Expel.  Analysis of attack vectors and incident trends performed by the company’s security operations center (SOC) for Expel’s February Attack Vectors Threat Report found multiple phishing emails referencing the invasion of Ukraine to

Sioux Falls City Council has approved a $10m appropriation toward a Dakota State University (DSU) cybersecurity lab. The funding for the project, which could bring 650 jobs to the Sioux Falls and Madison areas, was approved by a unanimous vote on Tuesday night.  Dakota State University announced its $90m Applied Research Lab (ARL) project on January 26 2022. The

by Paul Ducklin Last year, we wrote about a research paper from SophosLabs that investigated malware known as CryptoRom, an intriguing, albeit disheartening, nexus in the cybercrime underworld. This “confluence of criminality” saw cybercrooks adopting the same techniques as romance scammers to peddle fake cryptocurrency apps instead of false love, and fleece victims out of

The highest court in the United Kingdom has refused to hear an appeal by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges. Australian citizen Assange was indicted by the US Department of Justice in 2019 over his alleged involvement in the acquisition and publication of thousands of classified US diplomatic and

by Paul Ducklin The latest raft of non-emergency Apple security updates are out, patching a total of 87 different CVE-rated software bugs across all Apple products and plaforms. There are 10 security bulletins for this bunch of updates, as follows: APPLE-SA-2022-03-14-1: iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 (HT213182) APPLE-SA-2022-03-14-2: watchOS 8.5 (HT213193) APPLE-SA-2022-03-14-3: tvOS 15.4 (HT213186)

Police in Manitoba, Canada, have arrested an 18-year-old man on suspicion of carrying out cyber-attacks on victims across North America.  Dayne Parrott-Jones, of Brandon, was taken into custody on March 8 by members of the Brandon Police Service Crime Suppression Unit following an 11-month investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and police forces

by Paul Ducklin Ever wanted or needed to buy or sell cryptocoins on a whim, without going online? Ever felt like cashing in 100,000 Satoshis or so at 3am to treat your party buddies to a kebab-fest on the way home from a big night out? Well, if you live in the UK, you can’t

A former employee of the Canadian government has been extradited to the United States to face charges pertaining to a slew of ransomware attacks.  Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, 34, of Gatineau, Quebec, is accused of using NetWalker ransomware to target dozens of victims all over the world, including hospitals and school districts.  The United States launched a global action against the

French bank BNP Paribas has reportedly blocked its Russian-based employees from accessing its internal computer systems. According to a Reuters source, the bank rescinded the access privileges of its Russian workforce over fears that connections to the local network could leave BNP Paribas vulnerable to cyber-attacks by Russian threat actors.  The restriction is reportedly part of the French lender’s

Czech-based multinational cybersecurity software company Avast has suspended the sale and marketing of its products in Russia and Belarus.  In a statement shared Thursday, Avast said it was ceasing business in Russia and offering its premium products free of charge to the people of Ukraine. “With immediate effect, we have withdrawn the availability of all of our products

by Naked Security writer In cybersecurity history, the US Independence Day weekend of 2021 is not remembered for the restful and relaxing summer celebrations that you’d usually associate with the Fourth of July. Instead, it’s remembered as the weekend of the infamous Kaseya ransomware attack. This was ransomware-with-a-difference, and the difference was the ultimate scale

by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW What do ransomware blackmailers ask for when they don’t want money? Why did Firefox get two updates in three days? How did Adafruit get hoist by the petard of “shadow IT”? And what’s with those dirty Linux pipes? Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can

Two 66-year-old women from Colorado have been accused of interfering with election equipment and official misconduct. On Tuesday, a Mesa County grand jury returned a 13-count indictment against clerk and recorder Tina Peters and deputy clerk Belinda Knisley. According to the indictment, the women tampered with the security of Dominion Voting Systems machines in late May 2021. It is