CyberSecure Specialist

23 May

CISA and Partners Update the #StopRansomware Guide, Developed through the Joint Ransomware Task Force (JRTF)

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) published an updated version of the #StopRansomware Guide, as ransomware actors have accelerated their tactics and techniques since its initial release in 2020. The update incorporates lessons learned from the past two years and includes additional recommended actions, resources, and tools to maximize its relevancy and effectiveness and to further help reduce the prevalence…

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23 May

Phone scamming kingpin gets 13 years for running “iSpoof” service

Information

by Naked Security writer In November 2022, we wrote about a multi-country takedown against a Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) system known as iSpoof. Although iSpoof advertised openly for business on a non-darkweb site, reachable with a regular browser via a non-onion domain name, and even though using its services might technically have been legal in your country (if you’re a lawyer, we’d love to hear your opinion on that issue once you’ve seen the historical website screenshots…

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23 May

Reducing fraud and friction in consumer experiences

Attacks, Data Breaches

Identity and credit checks during onboarding processes are causing customers to abandon their shopping carts. As regulatory oversight aimed at stopping financial fraud increases, the controls put in place for customer protection can cause friction in the onboarding process, preventing the simple, fast and convenient experience customers want. To overcome this challenge, B2C companies and online retailers must rethink their customer journeys. The cyber security protections put in place must yield fast, accurate, low-friction and…

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23 May

Think security first when switching from traditional Active Directory to Azure AD

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

What enforces your security boundary today? What will enforce it in the next few years? For many years, Microsoft Active Directory has been the backbone and foundation of network authentication, identity, and connection. But for many organizations moving to cloud applications or having a mixture of operating systems, the need for cloud-based network management is on the rise. Some firms are merely adding synchronization between on-premise networks and cloud environments and calling it a day.…

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22 May

Interview With a Crypto Scam Investment Spammer

Information, Insights

Social networks are constantly battling inauthentic bot accounts that send direct messages to users promoting scam cryptocurrency investment platforms. What follows is an interview with a Russian hacker responsible for a series of aggressive crypto spam campaigns that recently prompted several large Mastodon communities to temporarily halt new registrations. According to the hacker, their spam software has been in private use until the last few weeks, when it was released as open source code. Renaud…

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22 May

Meta fined $1.3B for violating EU GDPR data transfer rules on privacy

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Meta has been fined $1.3 billion (€1.2 billion) by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for violating the terms of the EU’s GDPR by continuing to transfer EU users’ data to the US without adequate safeguards. Meta has failed to “address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of Facebook’s European users, the DPC said in a statement. In addition to the fine, Meta has been given five months to stop the transfer of…

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22 May

Microsoft reports jump in business email compromise activity

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Cybersecurity activity around business email compromise (BEC) spiked between April 2022 and April 2023, with over 150,000 daily attempts, on average, detected by the Microsoft Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU). The findings were highlighted in the latest edition of Microsoft’s Cyber Signals, a cyberthreat intelligence report that spotlights security trends and insights gathered from Microsoft’s 43 trillion security signals and 8,500 security experts. “BEC attacks stand apart in the cybercrime industry for their emphasis on…

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22 May

GAO Tells Federal Agencies to Fully Implement Key Cloud Security Practices

Information, News

A new US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report shows that the Departments of Agriculture, Homeland Security (DHS), Labor, and the Treasury have not fully implemented six key cloud security practices for their systems. According to the 60-page GAO report (PDF), only one agency fully implemented four practices for most of its systems, while three other agencies fully implemented three practices for their systems. The remaining practices, GAO says, were either partially implemented or not implemented…

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22 May

Mapping out our Destination: Responsible Innovation via the NIST Identity Roadmap

Insights

RSA Conference week is always a whirlwind. NIST was there front and center last month, and we learned a lot, shared a lot, and made a big announcement during the festivities… We were excited to announce that NIST’s DRAFT Identity and Access Management Roadmap was released for public comment on Friday, April 14th and that the comment period will be extended to June 16th. What is the Roadmap? The Roadmap provides a consolidated view of…

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22 May

Samsung Smartphone Users Warned of Actively Exploited Vulnerability

Information, News

Samsung smartphone users have been warned by the vendor and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) about a recently patched vulnerability being exploited in attacks. The flaw in question is CVE-2023-21492, described as a kernel pointer exposure issue related to log files. The security hole can allow a privileged local attacker to bypass the ASLR exploit mitigation technique. This indicates that it has likely been chained with other bugs. Samsung patched CVE-2023-21492 with…

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