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Before yesterdayThe Register - Security

Execs in Japan busted for winning dev bids then outsourcing to North Koreans

Government issues stern warning over despot money-making scheme

Two executives were issued arrest warrants in Japan on Wednesday, reportedly for charges related to establishing a business that outsourced work to North Korean IT engineers.…

China encouraged armed offensive against Myanmar government to protest proliferation of online scams

Report claims Beijing is most displeased by junta's failure to address slave labor scam settlements

The military junta controlling Myanmar has struggled to control all of its territory thanks in part to China backing rebel forces as a way of expressing its displeasure about cyberscam centers operating from the country.…

Apple fans deluged with phony password reset requests

Beware support calls offering a fix

Apple device owners, consider yourselves warned: a targeted multi-factor authentication bombing campaign is under way, with the goal of exhausting iUsers into allowing an unwanted password reset.…

Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

We're dreaming of a white list, because we're just like the ones you used to know

More than half of Americans are using ad blocking software, and among advertising, programming, and security professionals that fraction is more like two-thirds to three-quarters.…

'Thousands' of businesses at mercy of miscreants thanks to unpatched Ray AI flaw

Anyscale claims issue is 'long-standing design decision' – as users are raided by intruders

Thousands of companies remain vulnerable to a remote-code-execution bug in Ray, an open-source AI framework used by Amazon, OpenAI, and others, that is being abused by miscreants in the wild to steal sensitive data and illicitly mine for cryptocurrency.…

Meta accused of snarfing people's Snapchat data via traffic decryption

I ain't afraid of no ghosts, but in this case...

To spy on rival Snapchat and get data on how the app was being used, Meta – when it was operating as Facebook – allegedly initiated a program called Project Ghostbusters, which intercepted data traffic from mobile apps. And it used that data to harm its competitors' ad business.…

Miscreants are exploiting enterprise tech zero days more and more, Google warns

Crooks know where the big bucks are

The discovery and exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in enterprise-specific software and appliances appears to be outpacing the leveraging of zero-day bugs overall, judging by Google's latest research.…

Street newspaper appears to have Big Issue with Qilin ransomware gang

The days of cybercriminals having something of a moral compass are over

The parent company of The Big Issue, a street newspaper and social enterprise for homeless people, is wrestling with a cybersecurity incident claimed by the Qilin ransomware gang.…

The easy road to pervasive DLP

How Forcepoint Data Security Everywhere does what it says on the tin

Sponsored Post The coronavirus pandemic appears to have changed the employment landscape forever, with estimates suggesting that up to a quarter of staff still spend some of their working week outside of the office compared to just 6 percent prior to 2020.…

Uncle Sam's had it up to here with 'unforgivable' SQL injection flaws

Software slackers urged to up their game

The US has clearly had enough of software vendors shipping products with "unforgivable" vulnerabilities, and is now urging them to launch formal code reviews to stamp out SQL injection flaws.…

Ransomware can mean life or death at hospitals. DEF CON hackers to the rescue?

ARPA-H joins DARPA's AIxCC, adds $20M to cash rewards

Interview As ransomware gangs target critical infrastructure – especially hospitals and other healthcare organizations – DARPA has added another government agency partner to its Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge (AIxCC).…

FreeBSD Foundation hands out Beacon gongs for safer software

Multiple CHERI-related projects win money for important research that prizes safety over speed

The inaugural Beacon Awards has handed three prizes to projects working on safer software for CHERI-enabled hardware running on the CheriBSD operating system.…

UK elections are unaffected by China's cyber-interference, says deputy PM

Sanctions galore for APT31, which has been blamed for two major attacks on democracy

The UK's deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, says China has been unsuccessful in its attempts to undermine UK elections.…

Row breaks out over true severity of two DNSSEC flaws

Some of us would be happy being rated 7.5 out of 10, just sayin'

Updated Two DNSSEC vulnerabilities were disclosed last month with similar descriptions and the same severity score, but they are not the same issue.…

New Zealand to world: China attacked us, too!

Reveals 2021 incident that saw parliamentary agencies briefly probed

The government of South Pacific island nation New Zealand has revealed that it, too, has been attacked by China.…

US charges Chinese nationals with cyber-spying on pretty much everyone for Beijing

Plus: Alleged front sanctioned, UK blames PRC for Electoral Commission theft, and does America need a Cyber Force?

The United States on Monday accused seven Chinese men of breaking into computer networks, email accounts, and cloud storage belonging to numerous critical infrastructure organizations, companies, and individuals, including US businesses, politicians, and their political parties.…

Over 170K users caught up in poisoned Python package ruse

Supply chain attack targeted GitHub community of Top.gg Discord server

More than 170,000 users are said to have been affected by an attack using fake Python infrastructure with "successful exploitation of multiple victims."…

Tech trade union confirms cyberattack behind IT, email outage

Systems have been pulled offline as a precaution

Exclusive The Communications Workers Union (CWU), which represents hundreds of thousands of employees in sectors across the UK economy including tech and telecoms, is currently working to mitigate a cyberattack.…

Mozilla fixes $100,000 Firefox zero-days following two-day hackathon

Users may have to upgrade twice to protect their browsers

Mozilla has swiftly patched a pair of critical Firefox zero-days after a researcher debuted them at a Vancouver cybersec competition.…

GoFetch security exploit can't be disabled on M1 and M2 Apple chips

For now, cryptographic work should be run on slower Icestorm cores

The GoFetch vulnerability found on Apple M-series and Intel Raptor Lake CPUs has been further unpacked by the researchers who first disclosed it.…

Time to examine the anatomy of the British Library ransomware nightmare

Mistakes years in the making tell a universal story that must not be ignored

Opinion Quiz time: name one thing you know about the Library of Alexandria. Points deducted for "it’s a library. In Alexandria." Looking things up is cheating and you know it.…

That Asian meal you eat on holidays could launder money for North Korea

United Nations finds IT contract and crypto scams are just two of DPRK's illicit menu items

If you dine out at an Asian restaurant on your next holiday, the United Nations thinks your meal could help North Korea to launder money.…

Microsoft confirms memory leak in March Windows Server security update

ALSO: Viasat hack wiper malware is back, users are the number one cause of data loss, and critical vulns

Infosec in brief If your Windows domain controllers have been crashing since a security update was installed earlier this month, there's no longer any need to speculate why: Microsoft has admitted it introduced a memory leak in its March patches and fixed the issue.…

Some 300,000 IPs vulnerable to this Loop DoS attack

Easy to exploit, not yet exploited, not widely patched – pick three

As many as 300,000 servers or devices on the public internet are thought to be vulnerable right now to the recently disclosed Loop Denial-of-Service technique that works against some UDP-based application-level services.…

Vans claims cyber crooks didn't run off with its customers' financial info

Just 35.5M names, addresses, emails, phone numbers … no biggie

Clothing and footwear giant VF Corporation is letting 35.5 million of its customers know they may find themselves victims of identity theft following last year's security breach.…

Russia's Cozy Bear caught phishing German politicos with phony dinner invites

Forget the Riesling, bring on the WINELOADER

The Kremlin's cyberspies targeted German political parties in a phishing campaign that used emails disguised as dinner party invitations, according to Mandiant.…

Chinese snoops use F5, ConnectWise bugs to sell access into top US, UK networks

Crew may well be working under contract for Beijing

Chinese spies exploited a couple of critical-severity bugs in F5 and ConnectWise equipment earlier this year to sell access to compromised US defense organizations, UK government agencies, and hundreds of other entities, according to Mandiant.…

3 million doors open to uninvited guests in keycard exploit

As months go by without fixes, hotels take the scenic route to securing rooms

Around 3 million doors protected by popular keycard locks are thought to be vulnerable to security flaws that allow miscreants to quickly slip into locked rooms.…

Hardware-level Apple Silicon vulnerability can leak cryptographic keys

Short of redesigning CPUs, the fix will seriously degrade performance

A side-channel vulnerability has been found in the architecture of Apple Silicon processors that gives malicious apps the ability to extract cryptographic keys from memory that should be off limits. …

NVD slowdown leaves thousands of vulnerabilities without analysis data

Security world reacts as NIST does a lot less of oft criticized, 'almost always thankless' work

Opinion The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has almost completely stopped adding analysis to Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) listed in the National Vulnerability Database. That means big headaches for anyone using CVEs to maintain their security. …

Truck-to-truck worm could infect – and disrupt – entire US commercial fleet

The device that makes it possible is required in all American big rigs, and has poor security

Vulnerabilities in common Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) required in US commercial trucks could be present in over 14 million medium- and heavy-duty rigs, according to boffins at Colorado State University.…

FBI v the bots: Feds urge denial-of-service defense after critical infrastructure alert

You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, they're telling you why

The US government has recommended a series of steps that critical infrastructure operators should take to prevent distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.…

Microsoft faces bipartisan criticism for alleged censorship on Bing in China

Redmond says it does what it's told, but still thinks users are better off

Microsoft is the subject of growing criticism in the US over allegations that its Bing search engine censors results for users in China that relate to sensitive subjects the state wants blocked.…

Congress votes unanimously to ban brokers selling American data to enemies

At least we can all agree on something

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would prohibit data brokers from selling Americans' data to foreign adversaries with an unusual degree of bipartisan support: It passed without a single opposing vote.…

Yacht dealer to the stars attacked by Rhysida ransomware gang

MarineMax may be in choppy waters after 'stolen data' given million-dollar price tag

The Rhysida ransomware group claims it was responsible for the cyberattack at US luxury yacht dealer MarineMax earlier this month.…

UK council won't say whether two-week 'cyber incident' impacted resident data

Security experts insist ransomware is involved but Leicester zips its lips

Leicester City Council continues to battle a suspected ransomware attack while keeping schtum about the key details.…

Exposed: Chinese smartphone farms that run thousands of barebones mobes to do crime

Operators pack twenty phones into a chassis – then rack 'em and stack 'em ready to do evil

Chinese upstarts are selling smartphone motherboards – and kit to run and manage them at scale – to operators of outfits that use them to commit various scams and crimes, according to an undercover investigation by state television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) revealed late last week.…

It's 2024 and North Korea's Kimsuky gang is exploiting Windows Help files

New infostealer may indicate a shift in tactics – and maybe targets too, beyond Asia

North Korea's notorious Kimsuky cyber crime gang has commenced a campaign using fresh tactics, according to infosec tools vendor Rapid7.…

It's tax season, and scammers are a step ahead of filers, Microsoft says

Phishing season started early with crims intent on the hooking early filers

As the digital wolves dress in sheep's tax forms, Microsoft has thrown a spotlight on a crafty 2024 phishing expedition, unraveled in January, that preys on the unsuspecting herd of early tax filers.…

US task force aims to plug security leaks in water sector

From a trickle to a flood, threats now seen as too great to ignore

US government is urging state officials to band together to improve the cybersecurity of the country's water sector amid growing threats from foreign adversaries.…

London Clinic probes claim staffer tried to peek at Princess Kate's records

First: Not being able buy a meat pie with a credit card. Now this

The London Clinic where the Princess of Wales had surgery at the start of this year says it is investigating claims an employee tried to access her medical records.…

Serial extortionist of medical facilities pleads guilty to cybercrime charges

Robert Purbeck even went as far as threatening a dentist with the sale of his child’s data

A cyberattacker and extortionist of a medical center has pleaded guilty to federal computer fraud and abuse charges in the US.…

Stalkerware usage surging, despite data privacy concerns

At least 31,031 people affected last year

Stalkerware has reached "pandemic proportions," according to Kaspersky, which documented a total of 31,031 people affected by the intrusive software in 2023 – up almost six percent on the prior year.…

Five Eyes tell critical infra orgs: Take these actions now to protect against China's Volt Typhoon

Unless you want to be the next Change Healthcare, that is

The Feds and friends yesterday issued yet another warning about China's Volt Typhoon gang, this time urging critical infrastructure owners and operators to protect their facilities against destructive cyber attacks that may be brewing.…

Australian techie jailed for accessing museum's accounting system and buying himself stuff

Also down under, researchers find security-cleared workers leaking details of their gigs

An Australian IT contractor has been sentenced to 30 months jail for ripping off the National Maritime Museum.…

Beijing-backed cyberspies attacked 70+ orgs across 23 countries

Plus potential links to I-Soon, researchers say

Chinese cyberspies have compromised at least 70 organizations, mostly government entities, and targeted more than 116 victims across the globe, according to security researchers.…

Crypto scams more costly to the US than ransomware, Feds say

Latest figures paint grim picture of how viciously the elderly are targeted

The FBI says investment fraud was the form of cybercrime that incurred the greatest financial loss for Americans last year.…

Crypto wallet providers urged to rethink security as criminals drain them of millions

Innovative Ethereum feature exploited as victims say goodbye to assets

Infosec researchers are noting rising cryptocurrency attacks and have encouraged wallet security providers to up their collective game.…

Atos says Airbus flew off, no longer interested in infosec and big data biz

Ailing tech integrator takes a hard hit... share price down by up to 20% this morning

Atos' share price sank as much as 20 percent this morning on confirmation that Airbus is no longer interested in buying the big data and security (BDS) parts of the crumbling tech empire.…

Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase

Warning: Poorly configured Google Cloud databases spill billing info, plaintext credentials

At least 900 websites built with Google's Firebase, a cloud database, have been misconfigured, leaving credentials, personal info, and other sensitive data inadvertently exposed to the public internet, according to security researchers.…

Fujitsu: Miscreants infected our systems with malware, may have stolen customer info

Sneaky software slips past shields, spurring scramble

Fujitsu has confirmed that miscreants have compromised some of its internal computers, deployed malware, and may have stolen some customer information.…

More than 133,000 Fortinet appliances still vulnerable to month-old critical bug

A huge attack surface for a vulnerability with various PoCs available

The volume of Fortinet boxes exposed to the public internet and vulnerable to a month-old critical security flaw in FortiOS is still extremely high, despite a gradual increase in patching.…

Cyber baddies leak 70M+ files online, claim they're from AT&T

Telco reckons data is old, isn't from its systems

More than 70 million records, allegedly stolen from AT&T in 2021, were dumped on a cybercrime forum at the weekend.…

Cyberattack gifts esports pros with cheats, forcing Apex Legends to postpone tournament

Virtual gunslingers forcibly became cheaters via mystery means

Updated Esports pros competing in the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) Pro League tournament were forced to abandon their match today due to a suspected cyberattack.…

Infosec teams must be allowed to fail, argues Gartner

But failing to recover from incidents is unforgivable because 'adrenalin does not scale'

Zero tolerance of failure by information security professionals is unrealistic, and makes it harder for cyber security folk to do the essential part of their job: recovering fast from inevitable attacks, according to Gartner analysts Chris Mixter and Dennis Xu.…

Filipino police free hundreds of slaves toiling in romance scam operation

875 workers liberated after falling for promises of lucrative work, nine arrested

Filipino police rescued 875 "workers" – including 504 foreigners – in a raid late last week on a firm that posed as an online gaming company but in reality operated a forced labor camp that housed romance scam operators.…

Protecting distributed branch office environments from ransomware

As ransomware becomes more sophisticated, detection tools should be upgraded to cover every site and location

Sponsored Feature Ransomware gangs that steal and encrypt vital business data before extorting payment for its decryption and restoration are ramping up global attacks at an ever-increasing rate. In fact, cyber security experts agree that ransomware now represents one of - if not the most - serious cybersecurity threats currently facing governments, public/private sector organisations and enterprises around the world.…

ChatGPT side-channel attack has easy fix: Token obfuscation

Also: Roblox-themed infostealer on the prowl, telco insider pleads guilty to swapping SIMs, and some crit vulns

Infosec in brief Almost as quickly as a paper came out last week revealing an AI side-channel vulnerability, Cloudflare researchers have figured out how to solve it: just obscure your token size.…

In the rush to build AI apps, please, please don't leave security behind

Supply-chain attacks are definitely possible and could lead to data theft, system hijacking, and more

Feature While in a rush to understand, build, and ship AI products, developers and data scientists are being urged to be mindful of security and not fall prey to supply-chain attacks.…

As if working at Helldesk weren't bad enough, IT helpers now targeted by cybercrims

Wave of Okta attacks mark what researchers are calling the biggest security trend of the year

IT helpdesk workers are increasingly the target of cybercriminals – a trend researchers have described as "the most noteworthy" of the past year.…

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