Data Breaches

Russian national indicted for ransomware attacks against the US

Russian national, Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev, has been charged and indicted for launching ransomware attacks against thousands of victims in the US and across the world, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a press release. The US Department of State has also announced an award of up to $10 million for information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of the Russian national. “According to the indictment obtained in the District of New Jersey,…

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IBM acquires Polar Security, bolstering data security capabilities

IBM has purchased application security startup Polar Security, in an attempt to address the security of application data in the cloud and help organizations track vulnerable information. In a statement issued this morning, IBM said that the increased cloud adoption driven by the pandemic has strained organizational capacity to track certain aspects of their application frameworks, including certain types of app data, permissions and more. The company said that this has led to “shadow data,”…

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Researchers show ways to abuse Microsoft Teams accounts for lateral movement

With organizations increasingly adopting cloud-based services and applications, especially collaboration tools, attackers have pivoted their attacks as well. Microsoft services consistently rank at the top of statistics when it comes to malicious sign-in attempts, and Microsoft Teams is one application that recently seems to have attracted attackers’ interest. Researchers from security firm Proofpoint investigated how attackers could abuse access to a Teams account and found some interesting attack vectors that could allow hackers to move…

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Entro exits stealth with context-based secrets management

Entro, the Israeli cybersecurity company focused on protection for secrets and programmatic access to cloud services and data, has exited stealth with its first-ever product offering context-based secrets management. The new offering is the first and only holistic secrets security platform that detects, safeguards, and provides context for secrets stored across vaults, source code, collaboration tools, cloud environments, and SaaS platforms, Entro claimed. “Entro implements proactive measures to secure secrets, such as real-time discovery, end-to-end visibility,…

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Attacker uses the Azure Serial Console to gain access to Microsoft VM

Financially motivated threat actor UNC3944 is using phishing and SIM swapping attacks to take over Microsoft Azure admin accounts and gain access to virtual machines (VM), according to cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Using access to virtual machines the attackers employed malicious use of the Serial Console on Azure Virtual Machines to install third-party remote management software within client environments, Mandiant said in a blog. UNC3944 has been active since May 2022. The threat actor has been…

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Insider threats surge across US CNI as attackers exploit human factors

Over three-quarters (77%) of organizations across US critical national infrastructure (CNI) have seen a rise in insider-driven cyberthreats in the last three years, according to new research from cybersecurity services firm Bridewell. The Cyber Security in CNI: 2023 report surveyed 525 cybersecurity decision makers in the US in the transport and aviation, utilities, finance, government, and communications sectors. It revealed that increased insider threat could be linked to heightened economic pressures and remote working. Threats…

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Security breaches push digital trust to the fore

As digital transactions with customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders grow, digital trustworthiness is set to become one of the most important enterprise-wide initiatives with the biggest potential impact (both negative and positive), even though it often has the smallest budget allocation. “Organizations are focusing on security and privacy, but if your customers don’t trust you, they will go elsewhere,” says Mark Thomas president of Escoute Consulting, which specializes in compliance. This view is borne…

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Arnica’s real-time, code-risk scanning tools aim to secure supply chain

Software supply chain security provider Arnica has added new real-time scanning tools to its namesake code-security suite, including static application security testing (SAST), infrastructure as code (IaC) scanning, software component analysis (SCA), and third-party package reputation checks. With the enhancements, the company claims to provide a comprehensive security solution that identifies and prevents the introduction of code risks in real time using a pipeline-less approach. “Arnica implements a pipeline-less security approach, which means that all…

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Aqua Security releases Real-Time CSPM to tackle multi-cloud security risks

Cloud native security vendor Aqua Security has announced the launch of Real-Time CSPM, a new cloud security posture management solution designed to provide visibility and risk prioritization across multi-cloud security risks. Real-Time CSPM uses “real-time scanning” to pinpoint threats that evade agentless detection and reduce noise so security practitioners can identify, prioritize, and remediate the most important cloud security risks, according to the firm. It is the latest addition to the Aqua Cloud Security Platform.…

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New APT targets South and Southeast Asia with custom-written backdoor

Lancefly, an APT group, is using a custom-written backdoor in attacks targeting government, aviation, education, and telecom organizations in South and Southeast Asia in an activity that has been ongoing for the past five years, according to Symantec. The group has been seen carrying out the activity with the motive of intelligence gathering. Lancefly has been deploying the Merdoor backdoor in highly targeted attacks since 2018 to establish persistence, execute commands, and perform keylogging on…

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