Information

10 Jan

Microsoft Patch Tuesday: One 0-day; Win 7 and 8.1 get last-ever patches

Information

by Paul Ducklin As far as we can tell, there are a whopping 2874 items in this month’s Patch Tuesday update list from Microsoft, based on the CSV download we just grabbed from Redmond’s Security Update Guide web page. (The website itself says 2283, but the CSV export contained 2875 lines, where the first line isn’t actually a data record but a list of the various field names for the rest of the lines in…

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10 Jan

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, January 2023 Edition

Information, Insights

Microsoft today released updates to fix nearly 100 security flaws in its Windows operating systems and other software. Highlights from the first Patch Tuesday of 2023 include a zero-day vulnerability in Windows, printer software flaws reported by the U.S. National Security Agency, and a critical Microsoft SharePoint Server bug that allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to make an anonymous connection. At least 11 of the patches released today are rated “Critical” by Microsoft, meaning they…

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10 Jan

Microsoft Patch Tuesday: 97 Windows Vulns, 1 Exploited Zero-Day

Information, Malware, News

Microsoft’s security patching machine hummed into overdrive Tuesday with the release of fixes for at least 97 documented software vulnerabilities, including a zero-day that’s already been exploited to escape the browser sandbox. The zero-day, flagged by researchers at anti-malware company Avast, was exploited in live attacks to elevate privileges and escape a browser’s sandbox mitigation. As has become customary, Microsoft is stingy with details on the vulnerability or the attacks.  An advisory from Redmond marks…

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09 Jan

CircleCI – code-building service suffers total credential compromise

Information

by Paul Ducklin If you’re a programmer, whether you code for a hobby or professionally, you’ll know that creating a new version of your project – an official “release” version that you yourself, or your friends, or your customers, will actually install and use – is always a bit of a white-knuckle ride. After all, a release version depends on all your code, relies on all your default settings, goes out only with your published…

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09 Jan

Microsoft Flags Ransomware Problems on Apple’s macOS Platform

Information, Malware, News

Security researchers at Microsoft are flagging ransomware attacks on Apple’s flagship macOS operating system, warning that financially motivated cybercriminals are abusing legitimate macOS functionalities to exploit vulnerabilities, evade defenses, or coerce users to infect their devices. In a blog post documenting its research into four known macOS ransomware families, Microsoft’s Security Threat Intelligence team published IOCs and technical details to show how ransomware actors target users on macOS-powered devices. “While these malware families are old,…

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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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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!

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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

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

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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