Data Breaches

11 Jan

Cybercriminals bypass Windows security with driver-vulnerability exploit

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

The Scattered Spider cybercrime group has recently been observed attempting to deploy a malicious kernel driver using a tactic called bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) — a warning to security professionals that the technique, which exploits longstanding deficiencies in Windows kernel protections, is still being employed by cybercriminals, according to cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. In this latest BYOVD attack, which was observed and stopped by CrowdStrike’s Falcon security system, Scattered Spider attempted to deploy a…

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11 Jan

Study shows attackers can use ChatGPT to significantly enhance phishing and BEC scams

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Security researchers have used the GPT-3 natural language generation model and the ChatGPT chatbot based on it to show how such deep learning models can be used to make social engineering attacks such as phishing or business email compromise scams harder to detect and easier to pull off. The study, by researchers with security firm WithSecure, demonstrates that not only can attackers generate unique variations of the same phishing lure with grammatically correct and human-like…

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11 Jan

Timeline of the latest LastPass data breaches

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

On November 30, 2022, password manager LastPass informed customers of a cybersecurity incident following unusual activity within a third-party cloud storage service. While LastPass claims that users’ passwords remain safely encrypted, it admitted that certain elements of customers’ information have been exposed. The security incident was the latest to affect the service in recent times in the wake of unauthorized access to its development environment in August last year, serious vulnerabilities in 2017, a phishing…

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10 Jan

Data leak exposes information of 10,000 French social security beneficiaries

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on the Le Monde Informatique website.] More than 10,000 beneficiaries of a local branch of the French social security agency CAF, or Family Allowance Fund, saw their data exposed for about 18 months, after a file containing personal information was sent to a service provider. The mistake, discovered by France Info — Radio France’s news and investigation service — just before the year-end holidays, could hit the CAF hard.…

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10 Jan

Cybercriminals are using ChatGPT to create malware

Attacks, Data Breaches

Malicious actors have been using artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to build malware, dark web sites and other tools for enacting cyber attacks, reserach by threat intelligence company Check Point Research has found.  When asked by Cyber Security Hub, cyber security experts predicted that a top threat to cyber security in 2023 would be crime-as-a-service; platforms where malicious actors can offer their services to those who would otherwise be unable to carry out…

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10 Jan

Intel boosts VM security, guards against stack attacks in new Xeon release

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Intel today announced the rollout of the fourth generation of its Xeon family of server chipsets, detailing several new features under the company’s confidential computing umbrella of security features. Improvements to Intel’s trusted execution environment and a new technique for combatting jump- and return-oriented programming attacks were the most notable upgrades. Xeon’s fourth generation introduces a number of new features across the board, including marked improvements to energy efficiency, AI processing, and edge workload handling,…

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09 Jan

Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credit Reports

Data Breaches, Information, Insights

Identity thieves have been exploiting a glaring security weakness in the website of Experian, one of the big three consumer credit reporting bureaus. Normally, Experian requires that those seeking a copy of their credit report successfully answer several multiple choice questions about their financial history. But until the end of 2022, Experian’s website allowed anyone to bypass these questions and go straight to the consumer’s report. All that was needed was the person’s name, address,…

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09 Jan

If governments are banning TikTok, why is it still on your corporate devices?

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

TikTok, the viral app resident on millions of devices, was recently banned from executive branch devices in the United States, as set out in in the recent Omnibus Bill signed by President Joe Biden. The Omnibus Bill, as detailed in CSO Online’s overview, highlighted that the “legislation required the Office of Management and Budget in consultation with the administrator of general services, the director of CISA, the director of national intelligence, and the secretary of…

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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

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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