Information

Cyber insurance, human risk, and the potential for cyber-ratings

Business Security Could human risk in cybersecurity be managed with a cyber-rating, much like credit scores help assess people’s financial responsibility? Tony Anscombe 08 Oct 2024  •  , 5 min. read It’s undeniable that cyber insurance and cybersecurity are intrinsically linked. One requires the other, and they are a perfect pairing, even if they may deny the relationship. Looking ahead, however, we probably need to add a third party into the relationship: the business. Now…

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Lamborghini Carjackers Lured by $243M Cyberheist

The parents of a 19-year-old Connecticut honors student accused of taking part in a $243 million cryptocurrency heist in August were carjacked a week later — while out house-hunting in a brand new Lamborghini. Prosecutors say the couple was beaten and briefly kidnapped by six young men who traveled from Florida as part of a botched plan to hold the parents for ransom. Image: ABC7NY.  youtube.com/watch?v=xoiaGzwrunY Late in the afternoon of Aug. 25, 2024 in…

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Mind the (air) gap: GoldenJackal gooses government guardrails

ESET researchers discovered a series of attacks on a governmental organization in Europe using tools capable of targeting air-gapped systems. The campaign, which we attribute to GoldenJackal, a cyberespionage APT group that targets government and diplomatic entities, took place from May 2022 to March 2024. By analyzing the toolset deployed by the group, we were able to identify an attack GoldenJackal carried out earlier, in 2019, against a South Asian embassy in Belarus that, yet…

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Patch Tuesday, October 2024 Edition

Microsoft today released security updates to fix at least 117 security holes in Windows computers and other software, including two vulnerabilities that are already seeing active attacks. Also, Adobe plugged 52 security holes across a range of products, and Apple has addressed a bug in its new macOS 15 “Sequoia” update that broke many cybersecurity tools. One of the zero-day flaws — CVE-2024-43573 — stems from a security weakness in MSHTML, the proprietary engine of…

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The complexities of attack attribution – Week in security with Tony Anscombe

Video As highlighted by new ESET research this week, attributing a cyberattack to a specific threat actor is a complex affair 04 Oct 2024 Attributing a cyberattack to a specific threat actor is no easy task, as highlighted by new ESET research published this week. ESET experts recently uncovered a new China-aligned APT group that they named CeranaKeeper and that takes aim at governmental institutions in Thailand, leveraging some tools previously attributed to Mustang Panda.…

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Separating the bee from the panda: CeranaKeeper making a beeline for Thailand

ESET researchers observed several campaigns targeting governmental institutions in Thailand, starting in 2023. These attacks leveraged revamped versions of components previously attributed by other researchers to the China-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) group Mustang Panda, and later, a new set of tools that abuse service providers such as Pastebin, Dropbox, OneDrive, and GitHub to execute commands on compromised computers and exfiltrate sensitive documents. Based on our findings, we decided to track this activity cluster as…

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A Single Cloud Compromise Can Feed an Army of AI Sex Bots

Organizations that get relieved of credentials to their cloud environments can quickly find themselves part of a disturbing new trend: Cybercriminals using stolen cloud credentials to operate and resell sexualized AI-powered chat services. Researchers say these illicit chat bots, which use custom jailbreaks to bypass content filtering, often veer into darker role-playing scenarios, including child sexual exploitation and rape. Image: Shutterstock. Researchers at security firm Permiso Security say attacks against generative artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure…

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Cybersecurity Awareness Month needs a radical overhaul – it needs legislation

Digital Security Despite their benefits, awareness campaigns alone are not enough to encourage widespread adoption of cybersecurity best practices Tony Anscombe 01 Oct 2024  •  , 3 min. read As we enter October, governments, non-profit organizations, cybersecurity vendors and many companies with corporate social responsibility teams are all likely gearing up to push out some useful tips on staying safe online. Without even looking at the official theme of this year’s edition of the campaign,…

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Why system resilience should mainly be the job of the OS, not just third-party applications

Business Security Building efficient recovery options will drive ecosystem resilience Tony Anscombe 01 Oct 2024  •  , 4 min. read Last week, a US congressional hearing regarding the CrowdStrike incident in July saw one of the company’s executives answer questions from policy makers. One point that caught my interest during the ensuing debate was the suggestion that future incidents of this magnitude could be avoided by some form of automated system recovery. Without getting into…

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Crooked Cops, Stolen Laptops & the Ghost of UGNazi

A California man accused of failing to pay taxes on tens of millions of dollars allegedly earned from cybercrime also paid local police officers hundreds of thousands of dollars to help him extort, intimidate and silence rivals and former business partners, a new indictment charges. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that many of the man’s alleged targets were members of UGNazi, a hacker group behind multiple high-profile breaches and cyberattacks back in 2012. A photo released by…

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