CyberSecure Specialist

09 Jan

11 top XDR tools and how to evaluate them

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Little in the modern IT world lends itself to manual or siloed management, and this is doubly true in the security realm. The scale of modern enterprise computing and modern application stack architecture requires security tools that can bring visibility into the security posture of modern IT components and integrate tightly to bring real-time threat detection, possibly even automating aspects of threat mitigation. This need has given rise to extended detection and response (XDR) tools.…

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06 Jan

Ransomware target list – Week in security with Tony Anscombe

Information

Why schools, hospitals, local governments and other public sector organizations are in a sweet spot for ransomware attacks Why are schools, hospitals and local governments firmly in the crosshairs of cybercriminals and why do public-sector entities fall into a sweet spot for ransomware attacks? What are the latest trends on the ransomware scene? A report released this week looks at publicly disclosed ransomware incidents in the United States in 2022 in order to help organizations…

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06 Jan

RSA crypto cracked? Or perhaps not!

Information

by Paul Ducklin There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in the technology media over the past few days about whether the venerable public-key cryptosystem known as RSA might soon be crackable. RSA, as you probably know, is short for Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, the three cryptographers who devised what turned into an astonishingly useful and long-lived encryption system by means of which two people can communicate securely… …without meeting up first to agree on a secret encryption…

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06 Jan

SpyNote Android Malware Infections Surge Following Leak of CypherRat Source Code

Attacks, Malware

While no official statement has been released as to how the malware variants are spreading, it can be assumed that these are likely spreading through phishing campaigns and malicious websites. From an enterprise level, the best course of action to take to prevent against this malware would be to educate end users on the best practices to take when browsing the internet, to verify application legitimacy, and to read application reviews prior to installation. Applications…

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06 Jan

Bitdefender Releases Decryptor for MegaCortex Ransomware

Attacks, Malware

MegaCortex was first discovered in 2019 and was observed targeting corporate network with attacks that included adjustable ransom demands based on the companies that were attacked and the amount of data stolen. In October 2021, officials arrested 12 individuals related to thousands of MegaCortex and LockerGoga ransomware attacks. Along with the arrests, authorities discovered the private keys used in attacks, which lead to Bitdefender releasing the decryptor for the LockerGoga ransomware. Bitdefender did not release…

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06 Jan

Rackspace: Customer Email Data Accessed in Ransomware Attack

Attacks, Malware

Since discovering the attack on December 2 and confirming the resulting outage was caused by a ransomware attack, Rackspace has been offering affected customers free licenses to migrate their email from its Hosted Exchange platform to Microsoft 365. The cloud computing provider also provided affected customers with download links to recovered historic mailbox data (containing email messages before December 2) through its customer portal via an automated queue. Rackspace added that its Hosted Exchange environment…

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06 Jan

XDR and the Age-old Problem of Alert Fatigue

Information, News

XDR’s fully loaded value to threat detection, investigation and response will only be realized when it is viewed as an architecture According to 451 Research’s M&A Knowledgebase, cybersecurity M&A activity in 2021 reached an all-time high total deal value of $74.1 billion. Contributing to that growth, extended detection and response (XDR) went from zero to 28 deals in 19 months and is expected to drive continued M&A activity, with good reason. Extending its research into…

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06 Jan

IOTW: Almost 50,000 UK government workers vulnerable to cyber attacks

Attacks, Data Breaches

A large number of UK government ministers and civil servants have been warned that they are vulnerable to hackers after their personal information was posted online and remained visible for months. The personal information for more than 45,000 civil servants was available until March 2020 via the Government Communication Service (GCS) website. The information included names, email addresses, phone numbers and job titles as well as links to social media profiles including Twitter and LinkedIn.…

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06 Jan

Many of 13 New Mac Malware Families Discovered in 2022 Linked to China

Information, Malware, News

More than a dozen new Mac malware families were discovered in 2022, including information stealers, cryptocurrency miners, loaders, and backdoors, and many of them have been linked to China. Mac security expert Patrick Wardle has compiled a list of the macOS malware that came to light over the course of last year. The number of new malware appears to be increasing as only eight new families were spotted in 2021. The first malware to emerge…

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06 Jan

14 UK schools suffer cyberattack, highly confidential documents leaked

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

More than a dozen schools in the UK have suffered a cyberattack which has led to highly confidential documents being leaked online by cybercriminals. That’s according to a report from the BBC which claimed that children’s SEN information, child passport scans, staff pay scales and contract details have been stolen by notorious cybercrime group Vice Society, known for disproportionately targeting the education sector with ransomware attacks in the UK and other countries. Passport, contract data…

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