CyberSecure Specialist

24 Feb

Microsoft tells Exchange admins to revert previously recommended antivirus exclusions

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Microsoft is advising Exchange Server administrators to remove some of the endpoint antivirus exclusions that the company’s own documentation recommended in the past. The rules are no longer needed for server stability and their presence could prevent the detection of backdoors deployed by attackers. “Times have changed, and so has the cybersecurity landscape,” the Exchange Server team said in a blog post. “We’ve found that some existing exclusions — namely the Temporary ASP.NET Files and…

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24 Feb

Dutch Police Arrest Three Ransomware Group Members

Attacks, Malware

The threat of leaking data if a ransom is not paid is a common tactic amongst ransomware actors. In this case, the group would still leak data even if ransom was paid. By using this model, the group was setting themselves up to not get paid by anyone because there would be no benefit to paying. Although this is a risk taken by companies paying a ransom, most groups do not follow this model to…

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24 Feb

Microsoft Urges Exchange Administrators to Remove Some Antivirus Exclusions

Attacks, Malware

This new recommendation from Microsoft demonstrates how adding over-encompassing AV exclusions can negatively impact and organization’s security. Especially in the current threat landscape, many actors make use of PowerShell and malicious IIS extensions to perform their attacks. Having these exclusions in place allows for a large gap in visibility where the threat actors can go unnoticed. On top of removing these exclusions and following the other recommendations from Microsoft, it is also recommended to frequently…

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24 Feb

Watch on Demand: Attack Surface Management Summit

Information, News

As security teams look to foundational strategies to protect corporate assets, the reduction of attack surface throughout the organization has taken center stage. All sessions from SecurityWeek’s 2023 Attack Surface Management Summit are now available to watch on demand. If you missed any sessions, you can watch them now in the virtual conference center: Fireside Chat With Jason Chan, Former Netflix Security Chief What Our 2022 Data Reveals About the Most Pressing Exposures on Your Attack…

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24 Feb

A Year of Conflict: Cybersecurity Industry Assesses Impact of Russia-Ukraine War

Information, News

Marking the first anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine, several cybersecurity companies have published reports summarizing the impact of various types of cyber operations, just as the United States has issued a fresh warning for the West.  In the weeks before and immediately after Russia launched its war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia appeared to intensify its attacks in cyberspace, with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, disruptive wiper malware, and misinformation campaigns.  While everyone…

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24 Feb

11 Countries Take Part in Military Cyberwarfare Exercise

Information, News

The biggest military cyberwarfare exercise in Western Europe took place recently in Estonia. A total of 34 teams from 11 countries took part in a live-fire cyber battle.  Countries such as the US, UK, Japan, India, Italy, Estonia, Ukraine, Ghana, Kenya and Oman were represented by 750 experts at the Defence Cyber Marvel 2 (DCM2) exercise. Many of them participated remotely.  The seven-day event, led by the British Army, tested the response of participants to…

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24 Feb

Edgio adds advanced DDoS protection with other WAAP enhancements

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Content delivery network (CDN) service provider Edgio has added a new Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) scrubbing ability along with improved Web Application and API Interface (WAAP) to its network security offering. Designed to reduce severe damages from sophisticated DDoS attacks, Edgio’s scrubbing solution impersonates the customer’s network by routing the customer’s IP traffic through its scrubbing point-of-presence (PoP) and only sending the “clean” traffic back to the customer’s infrastructure, according to Richard Yew, senior…

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24 Feb

WinorDLL64: A backdoor from the vast Lazarus arsenal?

Information

The targeted region, and overlap in behavior and code, suggest the tool is used by the infamous North Korea-aligned APT group ESET researchers have discovered one of the payloads of the Wslink downloader that we uncovered back in 2021. We named this payload WinorDLL64 based on its filename WinorDLL64.dll. Wslink, which had the filename WinorLoaderDLL64.dll, is a loader for Windows binaries that, unlike other such loaders, runs as a server and executes received modules in…

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24 Feb

S3 Ep123: Crypto company compromise kerfuffle [Audio + Text]

Information, Malware

by Paul Ducklin LEARNING FROM OTHERS The first search warrant for computer storage. GoDaddy breach. Twitter surprise. Coinbase kerfuffle. The hidden cost of success. 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. Or…

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