CyberSecure Specialist

31 Jan

CISA and FBI Release Secure by Design Alert Urging Manufacturers to Eliminate Defects in SOHO Routers

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published guidance on Security Design Improvements for SOHO Device Manufacturers as a part of the new Secure by Design (SbD) Alert series that focuses on how manufacturers should shift the burden of security away from customers by integrating security into product design and development. This third publication in CISA’s SbD Alert series examines how manufacturers can eliminate the path threat actors—particularly the People’s Republic of China…

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30 Jan

Fla. Man Charged in SIM-Swapping Spree is Key Suspect in Hacker Groups Oktapus, Scattered Spider

Information, Insights

On Jan. 9, 2024, U.S. authorities arrested a 19-year-old Florida man charged with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiring with others to use SIM-swapping to steal cryptocurrency. Sources close to the investigation tell KrebsOnSecurity the accused was a key member of a criminal hacking group blamed for a string of cyber intrusions at major U.S. technology companies during the summer of 2022. A graphic depicting how 0ktapus leveraged one victim to attack another. Image…

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30 Jan

New Mitigations to Defend Against Exploitation of Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways

Attacks, Insights, Malware

CISA is releasing this alert to provide cyber defenders with new mitigations to defend against threat actors exploiting Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways vulnerabilities in Ivanti devices (CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887).   Threat actors are continuing to leverage vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways to capture credentials and/or drop webshells that enable further compromise of enterprise networks. Some threat actors have recently developed workarounds to current mitigations and detection methods and…

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27 Jan

Assessing and mitigating supply chain cybersecurity risks

Information

Business Security Blindly trusting your partners and suppliers on their security posture is not sustainable – it’s time to take control through effective supplier risk management Phil Muncaster 25 Jan 2024  •  , 5 min. read The world is built on supply chains. They are the connective tissue that facilitates global trade and prosperity. But these networks of overlapping and inter-related companies are increasingly complex and opaque. Most involve the supply of software and digital…

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27 Jan

Blackwood hijacks software updates to deploy NSPX30 – Week in security with Tony Anscombe

Information

Video The previously unknown threat actor used the implant to target Chinese and Japanese companies, as well as individuals in China, Japan, and the UK 26 Jan 2024 This week, ESET researchers released their findings about an attack where a previously unknown threat actor deployed a sophisticated multistage implant, which ESET named NSPX30, through adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks hijacking update requests from legitimate software such as Tencent QQ, WPS Office, and Sogou Pinyin. Blackwood, the name…

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26 Jan

Who is Alleged Medibank Hacker Aleksandr Ermakov?

Information, Insights

Authorities in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States this week levied financial sanctions against a Russian man accused of stealing data on nearly 10 million customers of the Australian health insurance giant Medibank. 33-year-old Aleksandr Ermakov allegedly stole and leaked the Medibank data while working with one of Russia’s most destructive ransomware groups, but little more is shared about the accused. Here’s a closer look at the activities of Mr. Ermakov’s alleged hacker…

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26 Jan

Guidance: Assembling a Group of Products for SBOM

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Today, CISA published Guidance on Assembling a Group of Products created by the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) Tooling & Implementation Working Group, one of the five SBOM community-driven workstreams facilitated by CISA. CISA’s community-driven working groups publish documents and reports to advance and refine SBOM and ultimately promote adoption. Specifically, software producers often need to assemble and test products together before releasing them to customers. These products may contain components that experience version changes over time,…

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25 Jan

Using Google Search to Find Software Can Be Risky

Information, Insights

Google continues to struggle with cybercriminals running malicious ads on its search platform to trick people into downloading booby-trapped copies of popular free software applications. The malicious ads, which appear above organic search results and often precede links to legitimate sources of the same software, can make searching for software on Google a dicey affair. Google says keeping users safe is a top priority, and that the company has a team of thousands working around…

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25 Jan

NSPX30: A sophisticated AitM-enabled implant evolving since 2005

Information

ESET researchers provide an analysis of an attack carried out by a previously undisclosed China-aligned threat actor we have named Blackwood, and that we believe has been operating since at least 2018. The attackers deliver a sophisticated implant, which we named NSPX30, through adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks hijacking update requests from legitimate software. Key points in this blogpost: We discovered the NSPX30 implant being deployed via the update mechanisms of legitimate software such as Tencent QQ,…

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