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Okta Hack Blamed on Employee Using Personal Google Account on Company Laptop

Okta is blaming the recent hack of its support system on an employee who logged into a personal Google account on a company-managed laptop, exposing credentials that led to the theft of data from multiple Okta customers. A brief post-mortem from Okta security chief David Bradbury said the internal lapse was the “most likely avenue” for the breach that ensnared hundreds of Okta customers, including cybersecurity companies BeyondTrust and Cloudflare. “We can confirm that from…

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Countries at a UK Summit Pledge to Tackle AI’s Potentially ‘Catastrophic’ Risks

Delegates from 28 nations, including the U.S. and China, agreed Wednesday to work together to contain the potentially “catastrophic” risks posed by galloping advances in artificial intelligence. The first international AI Safety Summit, held at a former codebreaking spy base near London, focused on cutting-edge “frontier” AI that some scientists warn could pose a risk to humanity’s very existence. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the declaration was “a landmark achievement that sees the world’s…

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Mozi Botnet Likely Killed by Its Creators

The recent shutdown of the Mozi botnet is believed to be the work of its operators, who may have been forced to kill their creation by Chinese authorities. This is a theory from cybersecurity firm ESET, whose researchers recently discovered a kill switch suggesting that the takedown was deliberate.  Mozi emerged in September 2019 and at one point it was a highly active botnet, accounting for a large chunk of the traffic associated with IoT…

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Dozens of Kernel Drivers Allow Attackers to Alter Firmware, Escalate Privileges

VMware Carbon Black’s Threat Analysis Unit (TAU) has identified dozens of previously unknown vulnerable kernel drivers that could be exploited by attackers to alter firmware or escalate privileges. It’s not uncommon for threat actors, including cybercriminals and state-sponsored groups, to abuse kernel drivers in their operations. Such drivers can allow malicious hackers to manipulate system processes, maintain persistence on a system, and evade security products. VMware’s TAU collected roughly 18,000 Windows driver samples from VirusTotal…

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Cybersecurity Leaders Spooked by SEC Lawsuit Against SolarWinds CISO

In a development sparking chatter and debate through the cybersecurity world, the lawsuit filed by the the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of SolarWinds is leaving CISOs across the industry spooked and reevaluating their roles. The lawsuit alleges that former SolarWinds CISO Timothy Brown failed to disclose critical information regarding the massive cyberattack on the company’s software supply chain that occurred in late 2020. The complex attack,…

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SEC Charges SolarWinds and Its CISO With Fraud and Cybersecurity Failures

In a surprising development on Monday that is spooking the cybersecurity community, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed charges against SolarWinds and its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Timothy G. Brown, alleging that the software company misled investors about its cybersecurity practices and known risks. The charges stem from alleged fraud and internal control failures related to known cybersecurity weaknesses that took place between the company’s October 2018 initial public offering (IPO) and…

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In Other News: Ex-NSA Employee Spying for Russia, EU Threat Landscape, Cyber Education Funding

SecurityWeek is publishing a weekly cybersecurity roundup that provides a concise compilation of noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar. We provide a valuable summary of stories that may not warrant an entire article, but are nonetheless important for a comprehensive understanding of the cybersecurity landscape. Each week, we will curate and present a collection of noteworthy developments, ranging from the latest vulnerability discoveries and emerging attack techniques to significant policy changes and…

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Advanced ‘StripedFly’ Malware With 1 Million Infections Shows Similarities to NSA-Linked Tools

A highly sophisticated piece of malware posing as a cryptocurrency miner has stayed under the radar for five years, infecting more than one million devices, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky warns. Dubbed StripedFly, the threat contains code sequences previously observed in the malware used by the threat actor known as the Equation Group, which has been linked to the US National Security Agency. Designed as a modular framework, StripedFly can target both Windows and Linux and comes…

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F5 Warns of Critical Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in BIG-IP

Security and application delivery solutions provider F5 on Thursday warned customers of a critical-severity vulnerability in its BIG-IP product. Tracked as CVE-2023-46747 (CVSS score of 9.8) and impacting the Traffic Management User Interface of the solution, the vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code remotely. “This vulnerability may allow an unauthenticated attacker with network access to the BIG-IP system through the management port and/or self IP addresses to execute arbitrary system commands. There…

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Critical Mirth Connect Vulnerability Could Expose Sensitive Healthcare Data

Open source data integration platform Mirth Connect is affected by a remote code execution vulnerability that can be exploited without authentication, cybersecurity firm Horizon3.ai warns. Developed by NextGen HealthCare, Mirth Connect is a cross-platform interface engine that healthcare organizations rely on for information management. Tracked as CVE-2023-43208, the newly disclosed issue is a bypass for a critical-severity RCE flaw (CVE-2023-37679, CVSS score of 9.8) that was disclosed in August 2023 and which was addressed with…

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