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Before yesterdayThe Register - Security

Two days into the Digital Services Act, EU wields it to deepen TikTok probe

Bloc isn't happy with made-in-China network's efforts to protect kids and data

Two days after its Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect, the European Union used it to open an investigation into made-in-China social network TikTok.…

Vietnam to collect biometrics - even DNA - for new ID cards

Iris scan, voice samples and blood type to be included in database

The Vietnamese government will begin collecting biometric information from its citizens for identification purposes beginning in July this year.…

LockBit ransomware gang disrupted by global operation

Website has been seized and replaced with law enforcement logos from eleven nations

Updated Notorious ransomware gang LockBit's website has been taken over by law enforcement authorities, who claim they have disrupted the group's operations and will soon reveal the extent of an operation against the group.…

ALPHV gang claims it's the attacker that broke into Prudential Financial, LoanDepot

Ransomware group continues to exploit US regulatory requirements to its advantage

The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group is claiming responsibility for attacks on both Prudential Financial and LoanDepot, making a series of follow-on allegations against them.…

Safeguarding cyber-physical systems for a smart future

A useful buyers checklist can ascertain whether solutions can meet certain sets of key requirements

Sponsored Feature Cyber-physical systems (CPS) have a vital role to play in our increasingly connected world.…

Feds post $15 million bounty for info on ALPHV/Blackcat ransomware crew

ALSO: EncroChat crims still getting busted; ransomware takes down CO public defenders office; and crit vulns

infosec in brief The US government is offering bounties up to $15 million as a reward for anyone willing to help it take out the APLHV/Blackcat ransomware gang.…

Election security threats in 2024 range from AI to … anthrax?

Unsettling reading as Presidents' Day approaches

In time for the long Presidents' Day weekend in the US there have been multiple warnings about what will undoubtedly be a challenging and potentially dangerous year for voting processes and government workers.…

How to weaponize LLMs to auto-hijack websites

We speak to professor who with colleagues tooled up OpenAI's GPT-4 and other neural nets

AI models, the subject of ongoing safety concerns about harmful and biased output, pose a risk beyond content emission. When wedded with tools that enable automated interaction with other systems, they can act on their own as malicious agents.…

Google open sources file-identifying Magika AI for malware hunters and others

Cool, but it's 2024 – needs more hype, hand wringing, and flashy staged demos to be proper ML

Google has open sourced Magika, an in-house machine-learning-powered file identifier, as part of its AI Cyber Defense Initiative, which aims to give IT network defenders and others better automated tools.…

Zeus, IcedID malware kingpin faces 40 years in slammer

Nearly a decade on the FBI’s Cyber Most Wanted List after getting banks to empty vics' accounts

A Ukrainian cybercrime kingpin who ran some of the most pervasive malware operations faces 40 years in prison after spending nearly a decade on the FBI's Cyber Most Wanted List.…

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

Expert weighs in after Brianna Ghey murder amid worrying rates of child cybercrime

The murder of 16-year-old schoolgirl Brianna Ghey has kickstarted a debate around limiting children's access to the dark web in the UK, with experts highlighting the difficulty in achieving this.…

Quest Diagnostics pays $5M after mixing patient medical data with hazardous waste

Will cough up less than two days of annual profit in settlement – and California calls this a win

Quest Diagnostics has agreed to pay almost $5 million to settle allegations it illegally dumped protected health information – and hazardous waste – at its facilities across California.…

Feds dismantle Russian GRU botnet built on 1,000-plus home, small biz routers

Beijing, now Moscow.… Who else is hiding in broadband gateways?

The US government today said it disrupted a botnet that Russia's GRU military intelligence unit used for phishing expeditions, spying, credential harvesting, and data theft against American and foreign governments and other strategic targets.…

Pentagon launches nuke-spotting satellites amid Russian space bomb rumors

Dungeons and Dragons, high-waisted jeans, Cold War sabre rattling – the '80s are back, baby

Updated Last night's launch of six Pentagon missile-detection satellites was well timed as fears mount that Russia is considering putting nuclear weapons into space.…

Mitigating AI security risks

From APIs to Zero Trust

Webinar It has become possible to swiftly and inexpensively train, validate and deploy AI models and applications, yet while we embrace innovation, are we aware of the security risks?…

Zoom stomps critical privilege escalation bug plus 6 other flaws

All desktop and mobile apps vulnerable to at least one of the vulnerabilities

Video conferencing giant Zoom today opened up about a fresh batch of security vulnerabilities affecting its products, including a critical privilege escalation flaw.…

Cybercriminals are stealing iOS users' face scans to break into mobile banking accounts

Deepfake-enabled attacks against Android and iPhone users are netting criminals serious cash

Cybercriminals are targeting iOS users with malware that steals face scans from the users of Apple devices to break into and pilfer money from bank accounts – thought to be a world first.…

Miscreants turn to ad tech to measure malware metrics

Now that's what you call dual-use tech

Cyber baddies have turned to ad networks to measure malware deployment and to avoid detection, according to HP Wolf Security.…

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

Surprising third-act twist as Russian case means more freedom for all

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that laws requiring crippled encryption and extensive data retention violate the European Convention on Human Rights – a decision that may derail European data surveillance legislation known as Chat Control.…

North Korea running malware-laden gambling websites as-a-service

$5k a month for the site. $3k for tech support. Infection with malware and funding a despot? Priceless

North Korea's latest money-making venture is the production and sale of gambling websites that come pre-infected with malware, according to South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS).…

OpenAI shuts down China, Russia, Iran, N Korea accounts caught doing naughty things

You don't need us to craft phishing emails or write malware, super-lab sniffs

OpenAI has shut down five accounts it asserts were used by government agents to generate phishing emails and malicious software scripts as well as research ways to evade malware detection.…

China's Volt Typhoon spies broke into emergency network of 'large' US city

Jeez, not now, Xi. Can't you see we've got an election and Ukraine and Gaza and cost of living and layoffs and ...

The Chinese government's Volt Typhoon spy team has apparently already compromised a large US city's emergency services network and has been spotted snooping around America's telecommunications' providers as well.…

US Air Force's new cyber, IT skill recruitment plan: Bring back warrant officer ranks

Officer pay, limited command duties and writing 'code for your country'

Skilled IT professionals considering a career change have a new option, as the US Air Force is reintroducing warrant officer ranks exclusively "within the cyber and information technology professions." …

Prudential Financial finds cybercrims lurking inside its IT systems

Some company admin and customers data exposed, but bad guys were there for 'only' a day

Prudential Financial, the second largest life insurance company in the US and eight largest worldwide, is dealing with a digital break-in that exposed some internal company and customer records to a criminal group.…

Romanian hospital ransomware crisis attributed to third-party breach

Emergency impacting more than 100 facilities appears to be caused by incident at software provider

The Romanian national cybersecurity agency (DNSC) has pinned the outbreak of ransomware cases across the country's hospitals to an incident at a service provider.…

Southern Water cyberattack expected to hit hundreds of thousands of customers

Brit utility also curiously disappears from Black Basta leak site

Southern Water has admitted between five and ten percent of its customers had their details stolen from the British utilities giant during a January cyberattack.…

Bumblebee malware wakes from hibernation, forgets what year it is, attacks with macros

Trying to break in with malicious Word documents? How very 2015 of you

The Bumblebee malware loader seemingly vanished from the internet last October, but it's back and - oddly - relying on a vintage vector to try and gain access.…

Australian Tax Office probed 150 staff over social media refund scam

$1.3 billion lost as identity fraud – and greed – saw 57,000 or more seek unearned tax refunds

One hundred and fifty people who worked for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) have been investigated – and some prosecuted – for participating in a tax refund scam promoted on Facebook and TikTok.…

Crims found and exploited these two Microsoft bugs before Redmond fixed 'em

SAP, Adobe, Intel, AMD also issue fixes as well as Google for Android

Patch Tuesday Microsoft fixed 73 security holes in this February's Patch Tuesday, and you better get moving because two of the vulnerabilities are under active attack.…

Just one bad packet can bring down a vulnerable DNS server thanks to DNSSEC

'You don't have to do more than that to disconnect an entire network' El Reg told as patches emerge

Updated A single packet can exhaust the processing capacity of a vulnerable DNS server, effectively disabling the machine, by exploiting a 20-plus-year-old design flaw in the DNSSEC specification.…

QNAP vulnerability disclosure ends up an utter shambles

Two new flaws, one zero-day, countless different patches, but everything's fine!

Network-attached storage (NAS) specialist QNAP has disclosed and released fixes for two new vulnerabilities, one of them a zero-day discovered in early November.…

ALPHV blackmails Canadian pipeline after 'stealing 190GB of vital info'

Gang still going after critical infrastructure because it's, you know, critical

Updated Canada's Trans-Northern Pipelines has allegedly been infiltrated by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware crew, which claims to have stolen 190 GB of data from the oil distributor.…

Crooks hook hundreds of exec accounts after phishing in Azure C-suite pond

Plenty of successful attacks observed with dangerous follow-on activity

The number of senior business executives stymied by an ongoing phishing campaign continues to rise with cybercriminals registering hundreds of cloud account takeovers (ATOs) since spinning it up in November.…

Meta says risk of account theft after phone number recycling isn't its problem to solve

Leaves it to carriers, promoting a complaint to Irish data cops from Big Tech's bΓͺte noire

Meta has acknowledged that phone number reuse that allows takeovers of its accounts "is a concern," but the ad biz insists the issue doesn't qualify for its bug bounty program and is a matter for telecom companies to sort out.…

Infosys subsidiary named as source of Bank of America data leak

Looks like LockBit took a swipe at an outsourced life insurance application

Indian tech services giant Infosys has been named as the source of a data leak suffered by the Bank of America.…

Korean eggheads crack Rhysida ransomware and release free decryptor tool

Great news for victims of gang behind the big British Library hit in October

Some smart folks have found a way to automatically unscramble documents encrypted by the Rhysida ransomware, and used that know-how to produce and release a handy recovery tool for victims.…

Dutch insurers demand nudes from breast cancer patients despite ban

No photos? No, second operation

Updated Dutch health insurers are reportedly forcing breast cancer patients to submit photos of their breasts prior to reconstructive surgery despite a government ban on precisely that.…

FCC gets tough: Telcos must now tell you when your personal info is stolen

Yep, cell carriers didn't have to do this before

The FCC's updated reporting requirements mean telcos in America will have just seven days to officially disclose that a criminal has broken into their systems.…

Jet engine dealer to major airlines discloses 'unauthorized activity'

Pulls part of system offline as Black Basta docs suggest the worst

Willis Lease Finance Corporation has admitted to US regulators that it fell prey to a "cybersecurity incident" after data purportedly stolen from the biz was posted to the Black Basta ransomware group's leak blog.…

Europe's largest caravan club admits wide array of personal data potentially accessed

Experts also put an end to social media security updates

The Caravan and Motorhome Club (CAMC) and the experts it drafted to help clean up the mess caused by a January cyberattack still can't figure out whether members' data was stolen.…

Mon Dieu! Nearly half the French population have data nabbed in massive breach

PLUS: Juniper's support portal leaks customer info; Canada moves to ban Flipper Zero; Critical vulns

Infosec In Brief Nearly half the citizens of France have had their data exposed in a massive security breach at two third-party healthcare payment servicers, the French data privacy watchdog disclosed last week.…

Meet VexTrio, a network of 70K hijacked websites crooks use to sling malware, fraud

Some useful indicators of compromise right here

More than 70,000 presumably legit websites have been hijacked and drafted into a network that crooks use to distribute malware, serve phishing pages, and share other dodgy stuff, according to researchers.…

Ivanti discloses fifth vulnerability, doesn't credit researchers who found it

Software company's claim of there being no active exploits also being questioned

In disclosing yet another vulnerability in its Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA gateways, Ivanti has confused the third-party researchers who discovered it.…

Fortinet's week to forget: Critical vulns, disclosure screw-ups, and that toothbrush DDoS attack claim

An orchestra of fails for the security vendor

We've had to write the word "Fortinet" so often lately that we're considering making a macro just to make our lives a little easier after what the company's reps will surely agree has been a week sent from hell.…

The ever-present state of cyber security alert

Should you be paying more attention to securing your AI models from attack?

Webinar As artificial intelligence (AI) technology becomes increasingly complex so do the threats from bad actors. It is like a forever war.…

India to make its digital currency programmable

Reserve Bank also wants a national 2FA framework

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced on Thursday it would make its digital currency programmable, and ensure it can be exchanged when citizens are offline.…

Crime gang targeted jobseekers across Asia, looted two million email addresses

That listing for a gig that looked too good to be true may have been carrying SQL injection code

Singapore-based infosec firm Group-IB has detected a group that spent the last two months of 2023 stealing personal info from websites operated by jobs boards and retailers websites across Asia.…

Uncle Sam sweetens the pot with $15M bounty on Hive ransomware gang members

Honor among thieves about to be put to the test

The US government has placed an extra $5 million bounty on Hive ransomware gang members – its second such reward in a year. And it also comes a little over 11 months since the FBI said it had shut down the criminal organization's network.…

FBI: Give us warrantless Section 702 snooping powers – or China wins

Never mind the court orders obtained to thwart Volt Typhoon botnet

Analysis The FBI's latest PR salvo, as it fights to preserve its warrantless snooping powers on Americans via FISA Section 702, is more big talk of cyberattacks by the Chinese government.…

Fake LastPass lookalike made it into Apple App Store

No walled garden can keep out every weed, we suppose

LastPass says a rogue application impersonating its popular password manager made it past Apple's gatekeepers and was listed in the iOS App Store for unsuspecting folks to download and install.…

Raspberry Robin devs are buying exploits for faster attacks

One of most important malware loaders to cybercrims who are jumping on vulnerabilities faster than ever

Researchers suspect the criminals behind the Raspberry Robin malware are now buying exploits for speedier cyberattacks.…

Cybercrime duo accused of picking $2.5M from Apple's orchard

Security researcher buddies allegedly tag team a four-month virtual gift card heist at Cupertino tech giant

A cybersecurity researcher and his pal are facing charges in California after they allegedly defrauded an unnamed company, almost certainly Apple, out of $2.5 million.…

Rust can help make software secure – but it's no cure-all

Security is a process, not a product. Nor a language

Memory-safety flaws represent the majority of high-severity problems for Google and Microsoft, but they're not necessarily associated with the majority of vulnerabilities that actually get exploited.…

IT suppliers hacked off with Uncle Sam's demands in aftermath of cyberattacks

Plan says to hand over keys to networks – and report intrusions within eight hours of discovery

Organizations that sell IT services to Uncle Sam are peeved at proposed changes to procurement rules that would require them to allow US government agencies full access to their systems in the event of a security incident.…

Volt Typhoon not the only Chinese crew lurking in US energy, critical networks

Presumably American TLAs are all over Beijing's infrastructure, too ... right?

Volt Typhoon isn't the only Chinese spying crew infiltrating computer networks in America's energy sector and other critical organizations with the aim of wrecking equipment and causing other headaches, the US government has said.…

Half of polled infosec pros say their degree was less than useful for real-world work

The other half paid attention in class?

Half of infosec professionals polled by Kaspersky said any cybersecurity knowledge they picked up from their higher education is at best somewhat useful for doing their day jobs. On the other hand, half said the know-how was at least very useful. We're a glass half-empty lot.…

US says China's Volt Typhoon is readying destructive cyberattacks

12 international govt agencies sound the alarm, critical infrastructure at the heart of threats

The US government today confirmed China's Volt Typhoon crew comprised "multiple" critical infrastructure orgs' IT networks in America – and Uncle Sam warned that the Beijing-backed spies are readying "disruptive or destructive cyberattacks" against those targets.…

Iran's cyber operations in Israel a potential prelude to US election interference

Tactics are more sophisticated and supported in greater numbers

Iran's anti-Israel cyber operations are providing a window into the techniques the country may deploy in the run-up to the 2024 US Presidential elections, Microsoft says.…

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

Windows encryption feature defeated by $10 and a YouTube tutorial

We're very familiar with the many projects in which Raspberry Pi hardware is used, from giving old computers a new lease of life through to running the animated displays so beloved by retailers. But cracking BitLocker? We doubt the company will be bragging too much about that particular application.…

JetBrains urges swift patching of latest critical TeamCity flaw

Cloud version is safe, but no assurances offered about possible on-prem exploits

JetBrains is encouraging all users of TeamCity (on-prem) to upgrade to the latest version following the disclosure of a critical vulnerability in the CI/CD tool.…

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