Insights

CISA and NSA Release Joint Guidance on Defending Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Environments

Today, CISA, together with the National Security Agency (NSA), released a Cybersecurity Information Sheet (CSI) to provide recommendations and best practices for organizations to strengthen the security of their CI/CD pipelines against the threat of malicious cyber actors (MCAs). Recognizing the various types of security threats that could affect CI/CD operations and taking steps to defend against each one is critical in securing a CI/CD environment. Organizations will find in this guide a list of…

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U.K. Cyber Thug “PlugwalkJoe” Gets 5 Years in Prison

Joseph James “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor, a 24-year-old from the United Kingdom who earned his 15 minutes of fame by participating in the July 2020 hack of Twitter, has been sentenced to five years in a U.S. prison. That may seem like harsh punishment for a brief and very public cyber joy ride. But O’Connor also pleaded guilty in a separate investigation involving a years-long spree of cyberstalking and cryptocurrency theft enabled by “SIM swapping,” a crime…

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CISA Releases SCuBA TRA and eVRF Guidance Documents

CISA has released several documents as part of the Secure Cloud Business Applications (SCuBA) project: The Technical Reference Architecture (TRA) document, previously released for public comment on April 19, 2022, is the final version of a security guide that agencies can use to adopt technology for cloud deployment, adaptable solutions, secure architecture, and zero trust frameworks.  The extensible Visibility Reference Framework (eVRF) guidebook provides an overview of the eVRF framework, which enables organizations to identify visibility…

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CISA Adds Five Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

CISA has added five new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. CVE-2023-32434 Apple Multiple Products Integer Overflow Vulnerability CVE-2023-32435 Apple iOS and iPadOS WebKit Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2023-32439 Apple iOS, iPadOS, and macOS WebKit Type Confusion Vulnerability CVE-2023-20867 VMware Tools Authentication Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-27992 Mozilla Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird Use-After-Free Vulnerability These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise. Note: To view…

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SMS Phishers Harvested Phone Numbers, Shipment Data from UPS Tracking Tool

The United Parcel Service (UPS) says fraudsters have been harvesting phone numbers and other information from its online shipment tracking tool in Canada to send highly targeted SMS phishing (a.k.a. “smishing”) messages that spoofed UPS and other top brands. The missives addressed recipients by name, included details about recent orders, and warned that those orders wouldn’t be shipped unless the customer paid an added delivery fee. In a snail mail letter sent this month to…

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SSDF and IoT Cybersecurity Guidance: Building Blocks for IoT Product Security

Credit: Shutterstock NIST’s IoT cybersecurity guidance has long recognized the importance of secure software development (SSDF) practices, highlighted by the NIST IR 8259 series—such as the recommendation for documentation in Action 3.d of NIST IR 8259B, that manufacturers have considered and documented their “secure software development and supply chain practices used.” The NIST SSDF (NIST SP 800-218) describes software development practices that can aid manufacturers in developing IoT products by providing guidance for the secure…

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Why Malware Crypting Services Deserve More Scrutiny

If you operate a cybercrime business that relies on disseminating malicious software, you probably also spend a good deal of time trying to disguise or “crypt” your malware so that it appears benign to antivirus and security products. In fact, the process of “crypting” malware is sufficiently complex and time-consuming that most serious cybercrooks will outsource this critical function to a handful of trusted third parties. This story explores the history and identity behind Cryptor[.]biz,…

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CISA Order Highlights Persistent Risk at Network Edge

The U.S. government agency in charge of improving the nation’s cybersecurity posture is ordering all federal agencies to take new measures to restrict access to Internet-exposed networking equipment. The directive comes amid a surge in attacks targeting previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used security and networking appliances. Under a new order from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), federal agencies will have 14 days to respond to any reports from CISA about misconfigured or…

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