CyberSecure Specialist

01 Mar

Vulnerabilities in business VPNs under the spotlight

Information

Virtual Private Network (VPN) services have emerged as essential tools for modern businesses in recent years, doubly so since helping save the day for many of them amid the pandemic-fueled, pell-mell rush to remote work in 2020. By creating an encrypted tunnel for corporate data traveling between company networks and employee devices, VPNs help secure sensitive information without compromising employee productivity or crippling companies’ mission-critical operations. As many organizations have since settled into a hybrid…

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29 Feb

Fulton County, Security Experts Call LockBit’s Bluff

Data Breaches, Information, Insights

The ransomware group LockBit told officials with Fulton County, Ga. they could expect to see their internal documents published online this morning unless the county paid a ransom demand. LockBit removed Fulton County’s listing from its victim shaming website this morning, claiming the county had paid. But county officials said they did not pay, nor did anyone make payment on their behalf. Security experts say LockBit was likely bluffing and probably lost most of the…

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29 Feb

CISA and Partners Release Advisory on Threat Actors Exploiting Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways Vulnerabilities

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, CISA and the following partners released joint Cybersecurity Advisory Threat Actors Exploit Multiple Vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways:  Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)  Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC)  Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC)  United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK)  Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), a part of the Communications Security Establishment  New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ)  CERT-New Zealand (CERT…

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29 Feb

CISA, FBI, and MS-ISAC Release Advisory on Phobos Ransomware

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), #StopRansomware: Phobos Ransomware, to disseminate known tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs), which are from incident response investigations tied to Phobos ransomware activity from as recently as February, 2024. Structured as a ransomware as a service (RaaS) model, Phobos ransomware actors have targeted entities including municipal and county…

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29 Feb

10 things to avoid posting on social media – and why

Information

Social Media Do you often take to social media to broadcast details from your life? Here’s why this habit may put your privacy and security at risk. Phil Muncaster 26 Feb 2024  •  , 5 min. read Hundreds of millions of us log on to our favorite social media sites every day. We shop, share photos and news, like posts and comments, send private messages, and much more. In fact, Northern and Western Europe are…

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28 Feb

Calendar Meeting Links Used to Spread Mac Malware

Information, Insights

Malicious hackers are targeting people in the cryptocurrency space in attacks that start with a link added to the target’s calendar at Calendly, a popular application for scheduling appointments and meetings. The attackers impersonate established cryptocurrency investors and ask to schedule a video conference call. But clicking the meeting link provided by the scammers prompts the user to run a script that quietly installs malware on macOS systems. KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader who…

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28 Feb

CISA Releases Resource Guide for University Cybersecurity Clinics

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, CISA released a Resource Guide for Cybersecurity Clinics to outline ways CISA can partner with and support cybersecurity clinics and their clients. University cybersecurity clinics train students from diverse backgrounds and academic expertise to strengthen the digital defenses of non-profits, hospitals, municipalities, small businesses, and other under-resourced organizations. They can help address the national cyber workforce gap by developing a talent pipeline for cyber civil defense and helping students see themselves in a cybersecurity…

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28 Feb

Updates on NIST’s Interagency International Cybersecurity Standardization Working Group

Insights

Last November, I was pleased to chair the most recent meeting of the Interagency International Cybersecurity Standardization Working Group (IICSWG) – a group NIST created in 2016. Our charge, from the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014, was to build a coordination mechanism for government agencies to discuss international cybersecurity standardization issues, consistent with agencies’ responsibilities under OMB Circular A-119. Since then, IICSWG has grown as a forum to discuss cybersecurity and privacy standardization topics, examine the…

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27 Feb

CISA, FBI, and HHS Release an Update to #StopRansomware Advisory on ALPHV Blackcat

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an update to the joint advisory #StopRansomware: ALPHV Blackcat to provide new indicators of compromise (IOCs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) associated with the ALPHV Blackcat ransomware as a service (RaaS). ALPHV Blackcat affiliates have been observed primarily targeting the healthcare sector. CISA, the FBI, and HHS urge network defenders to review the updated joint advisory…

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27 Feb

Data Distribution in Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning

Insights

This post is part of a series on privacy-preserving federated learning. The series is a collaboration between NIST and the UK government’s Responsible Technology Adoption Unit (RTA), previously known as the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. Learn more and read all the posts published to date at NIST’s Privacy Engineering Collaboration Space or RTA’s blog.  Our first post in the series introduced the concept of federated learning and described how it’s different from traditional centralized learning…

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