CyberSecure Specialist

24 Aug

NGate Android malware relays NFC traffic to steal cash

Information

ESET researchers uncovered a crimeware campaign that targeted clients of three Czech banks. The malware used, which we have named NGate, has the unique ability to relay data from victims’ payment cards, via a malicious app installed on their Android devices, to the attacker’s rooted Android phone. Key points of this blogpost: Attackers combined standard malicious techniques – social engineering, phishing, and Android malware – into a novel attack scenario; we suspect that lure messages…

Read More
23 Aug

Local Networks Go Global When Domain Names Collide

Information, Insights

The proliferation of new top-level domains (TLDs) has exacerbated a well-known security weakness: Many organizations set up their internal Microsoft authentication systems years ago using domain names in TLDs that didn’t exist at the time. Meaning, they are continuously sending their Windows usernames and passwords to domain names they do not control and which are freely available for anyone to register. Here’s a look at one security researcher’s efforts to map and shrink the size…

Read More
23 Aug

CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog for Versa Networks Director

Attacks, Insights, Malware

CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. CVE-2024-39717 Versa Director Dangerous File Type Upload Vulnerability These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise. Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that…

Read More
23 Aug

How regulatory standards and cyber insurance inform each other

Information

Business Security Should the payment of a ransomware demand be illegal? Should it be regulated in some way? These questions are some examples of the legal minefield that cybersecurity teams must deal with Tony Anscombe 21 Aug 2024  •  , 3 min. read Governments create legislation and regulations primarily to protect public interests and keep order, ensuring society functions as it should. When related to cyber insurance and cybersecurity, regulation is aimed at ethical conduct,…

Read More
21 Aug

Be careful what you pwish for – Phishing in PWA applications

Information

In this blogpost we discuss an uncommon type of phishing campaign targeting mobile users and analyze a case that we observed in the wild that targeted clients of a prominent Czech bank. This technique is noteworthy because it installs a phishing application from a third-party website without the user having to allow third-party app installation. For iOS users, such an action might break any “walled garden” assumptions about security. On Android, this could result in…

Read More
21 Aug

ASD’s ACSC, CISA, FBI, and NSA, with the support of International Partners Release Best Practices for Event Logging and Threat Detection

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC), CISA, FBI, NSA, and international partners are releasing Best Practices for Event Logging and Threat Detection. This guide will assist organizations in defining a baseline for event logging to mitigate malicious cyber threats. The increased prevalence of malicious actors employing living off the land (LOTL) techniques, such as living off the land binaries (LOLBins) and fileless malware, highlights the importance of implementing and maintaining…

Read More
20 Aug

Implementation Challenges in Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning

Insights

In this post, we talk with Dr. Xiaowei Huang and Dr. Yi Dong (University of Liverpool), Dr. Mat Weldon (United Kingdom (UK) Office of National Statistics (ONS)), and Dr. Michael Fenton (Trūata) who were winners in the UK-US Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) Prize Challenges. We discuss implementation challenges of privacy-preserving federated learning (PPFL) – specifically, the areas of threat modeling and real world deployments. Threat Modeling In research on privacy-preserving federated learning (PPFL), the protections of…

Read More
19 Aug

National Public Data Published Its Own Passwords

Data Breaches, Information, Insights

New details are emerging about a breach at National Public Data (NPD), a consumer data broker that recently spilled hundreds of millions of Americans’ Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that another NPD data broker which shares access to the same consumer records inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available from its homepage until today. In April, a cybercriminal named USDoD began…

Read More
17 Aug

How a BEC scam cost a company $60 Million – Week in security with Tony Anscombe

Information

Video Business email compromise (BEC) has once again proven to be a costly issue, with a company losing $60 million in a wire transfer fraud scheme 16 Aug 2024 A Luxembourg-based chemicals and manufacturing company has recently suffered one of the largest-ever business email compromise (BEC) attacks. According to a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), an employee was tricked into making multiple wire transfers to cybercriminals, losing the company $60 million. …

Read More
15 Aug

NationalPublicData.com Hack Exposes a Nation’s Data

Data Breaches, Information, Insights

A great many readers this month reported receiving alerts that their Social Security Number, name, address and other personal information were exposed in a breach at a little-known but aptly-named consumer data broker called NationalPublicData.com. This post examines what we know about a breach that has exposed hundreds of millions of consumer records. We’ll also take a closer look at the data broker that got hacked — a background check company founded by an actor…

Read More