Information

NIST to Retire 27-Year-Old SHA-1 Cryptographic Algorithm

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) this week recommended that IT professionals replace the SHA-1 cryptographic algorithm with newer, more secure ones. The first widely used method of securing electronic information and in use since 1995, SHA-1 is a slightly modified version of SHA, or ‘secure hash algorithm’, the very first standardized hash function. According to NIST, SHA-1 ‘has reached the end of its useful life’, given that the high computing capabilities…

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GitHub Announces Free Secret Scanning, Mandatory 2FA

Microsoft-owned code hosting platform GitHub this week announced multiple security improvements, including free secret scanning for public repositories and mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA) for developers and contributors. The secret scanning program is meant to help developers and organizations identify exposed secrets and credentials in their code. In 2022, it helped identify 1.7 million potential secrets exposed in public repositories. “Secret scanning alerts notify you directly about leaked secrets in your code. We’ll still notify our…

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Unmasking MirrorFace: Operation LiberalFace targeting Japanese political entities

ESET researchers discovered a spearphishing campaign targeting Japanese political entities a few weeks before the House of Councillors elections, and in the process uncovered a previously undescribed MirrorFace credential stealer ESET researchers discovered a spearphishing campaign, launched in the weeks leading up to the Japanese House of Councillors election in July 2022, by the APT group that ESET Research tracks as MirrorFace. The campaign, which we have named Operation LiberalFace, targeted Japanese political entities; our…

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API Security Firm FireTail Raises $5 Million

API security startup FireTail this week announced that it has raised $5 million in an early-stage financing round led by Paladin Capital Group, with participation from General Advance, Secure Octane, Zscaler, and angel investors. Founded in 2021, the Mclean, Virginia-based firm proposes a new approach to securing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), helping organizations build API inventories and eliminate security issues associated with them. Already seeing early adopters across North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, FireTail says…

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Six Charged in Mass Takedown of DDoS-for-Hire Sites

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) today seized four-dozen domains that sold “booter” or “stresser” services — businesses that make it easy and cheap for even non-technical users to launch powerful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks designed knock targets offline. The DOJ also charged six U.S. men with computer crimes related to their alleged ownership of the popular DDoS-for-hire services. The booter service OrphicSecurityTeam[.]com was one of the 48 DDoS-for-hire domains seized by the…

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Microsoft Patch Tuesday, December 2022 Edition

Microsoft has released its final monthly batch of security updates for 2022, fixing more than four dozen security holes in its various Windows operating systems and related software. The most pressing patches include a zero-day in a Windows feature that tries to flag malicious files from the Web, a critical bug in PowerShell, and a dangerous flaw in Windows 11 systems that was detailed publicly prior to this week’s Patch Tuesday. The security updates include…

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Cybersecurity Trends 2023: Securing our hybrid lives

ESET experts offer their reflections on what the continued blurring of boundaries between different spheres of life means for our human and social experience – and especially our cybersecurity and privacy The future isn’t what it used to be. This adage, if a little trite, has taken on a whole new meaning after our lives turned on a dime with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. And as the world was bouncing back from the…

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Top tips for security‑ and privacy‑enhancing holiday gifts

Think outside the (gift) box. Here are a few ideas for security and privacy gifts to get for your relatives – or even for yourself. Some don’t cost a penny! Thanks to a decade or more of big-name data breaches, global privacy scandals and consumer rights legislation like the GDPR, we’re all more aware of cybersecurity and privacy issues today. And now that many of us are working more from home and our personal and…

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COVID-bit: the wireless spyware trick with an unfortunate name

by Paul Ducklin If you’re a regular Naked Security reader, you can probably guess where on the planet we’re headed in this virtual journey…. …we’re off once more to the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Researchers in the department’s Cyber-Security Research Center regularly investigate security issues related to so-called airgapped networks. As the name suggests, an airgapped network is deliberately disconnected not only from the…

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Patch Tuesday: 0-days, RCE bugs, and a curious tale of signed malware

by Paul Ducklin Another month, another Microsoft Patch Tuesday, another 48 patches, another two zero-days… …and an astonishing tale about a bunch of rogue actors who tricked Microsoft itself into giving their malicious code an official digital seal of approval. For a threat researcher’s view of the Patch Tuesday fixes for December 2002, please consult the Sophos X-Ops writeup on our sister site Sophos News: For a deep dive into the saga of the signed…

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