News

Russia is continuing its campaign of disinformation around the Ukraine war through advanced social engineering delivered by a threat group tracked as TA499. According to a report from Proofpoint, TA499 targets US and European politicians, and leading businessmen and celebrities who have spoken out against Putin’s invasion. The primary purpose is to persuade the victims to take part in phone calls or video chats from which pro-Putin snippets can be elicited and published – thereby…

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A ransomware cyberattack on one of Barcelona’ s main hospitals has crippled the center’s computer system and forced the cancellation of 150 nonurgent operations and up to 3,000 patient checkups, officials said Monday. The attack Sunday on the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona shut down computers at the facility’s laboratories, emergency room and pharmacy at three main centers and several external clinics. “We can’t make any prediction as to when the system will be back up…

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German industrial automation solutions provider Wago has released patches for several of its programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to address four vulnerabilities, including ones that can be exploited to take full control of the targeted device. The vulnerabilities were discovered by Ryan Pickren from the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Cyber-Physical Security Lab. The issues were identified by the researcher as part of a PhD project on the security of industrial control systems (ICS). Pickren previously earned…

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The Biden administration on Friday said it would require states to report on cybersecurity threats in their audits of public water systems, a day after it released a broader plan to protect critical infrastructure against cyberattacks. The Environmental Protection Agency said public water systems are increasingly at risk from cyberattacks that amount to a threat to public health. “Cyberattacks against critical infrastructure facilities, including drinking water systems, are increasing, and public water systems are vulnerable,”…

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Cloud security startup Wiz warns of a widespread redirection campaign in which thousands of websites targeting East Asian audiences have been compromised using legitimate FTP credentials. In many cases, the attackers managed to obtain highly secure auto-generated FTP credentials, and used them to hijack the victim websites to redirect visitors to adult-themed content. Likely ongoing since September 2022, the campaign has resulted in the compromise of at least 10,000 websites, many owned by small companies…

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The BlackLotus bootkit can bypass security protections on fully updated Windows 11 systems and persistently infect them, ESET’s analysis of the threat has revealed. New to the threat landscape – it emerged on underground forums in October 2022 – BlackLotus provides cybercriminals and advanced persistent threat (APT) actors with capabilities previously associated with nation-states, at the price of $5,000. The major threat posed by UEFI bootkits is well known: with control over the operating system’s…

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Internet privacy company Proton can spot attacks on democracy in a country before they hit the headlines, simply by watching demand for its services explode, its chief told AFP. When Russia blocked access to independent news sites following its invasion of Ukraine a year ago, the small company which provides virtual private networks (VPNs) saw “a 9,000 percent increase in sign-ups over just a period of a few days”, company chief executive Andy Yen said…

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Security researchers at Quarkslab have identified a pair of serious security defects in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 reference library specification, prompting a massive cross-vendor effort to identify and patch vulnerable installations. The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2023-1017 and CVE-2023-1018, provide pathways for an authenticated, local attacker to overwrite protected data in the TPM firmware and launch code execution attacks, according to an advisory from Carnegie Mellon’s CERT coordination center.  From the CERT alert: “An…

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The White House is giving all federal agencies 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices, as the Chinese-owned social media app comes under increasing scrutiny in Washington over security concerns. The Office of Management and Budget calls the guidance, issued Monday, a “critical step forward in addressing the risks presented by the app to sensitive government data.” Some agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State, already have restrictions in place;…

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As security teams look to foundational strategies to protect corporate assets, the reduction of attack surface throughout the organization has taken center stage. All sessions from SecurityWeek’s 2023 Attack Surface Management Summit are now available to watch on demand. If you missed any sessions, you can watch them now in the virtual conference center: Fireside Chat With Jason Chan, Former Netflix Security Chief What Our 2022 Data Reveals About the Most Pressing Exposures on Your Attack…

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