Social Engineering

Attack campaign uses PHP-based infostealer to target Facebook business accounts

Over the past year, a group of attackers has targeted Facebook business account owners by spreading information stealing malware through malicious Google ads or fake Facebook profiles. The infection chain uses DLL sideloading via legitimate apps, as well as self-contained executable files written in various programming languages such as Rust, Python, and PHP. “We have seen SYS01stealer attacking critical government infrastructure employees, manufacturing companies, and other industries,” researchers from security firm Morphisec said in a…

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Akamai releases new threat hunting tool backed by Guardicore capabilities

Akamai on Tuesday launched Akamai Hunt, a visibility tool that uses the infrastructure of microsegmentation platform Guardicore to allow customers to identify and remediate threats and risks in their cloud environments. Akamai acquired Guardicore in October 2022 for about $600 million. Akamai Hunt combines Akamai’s historic data with Guardicore’s network segmentation and visualization capabilities to help identify and eliminate threats. “An earlier version of Hunt was available through Guardicore to a limited set of customers,”…

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What is zero trust? A model for more effective security

Security leaders are embracing zero trust, with the vast majority of organizations either implementing or planning to adopt the strategy. The 2022 State of Zero-Trust Security report found that 97% of those surveyed either have or plan to have a zero-trust initiative in place within 18 months. In fact, the percentage of organizations with zero trust already in place more than doubled in just one year, jumping from 24% in 2021 to 55% in the…

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PayPal sued for negligence in data breach that affected 35,000 users

A pending class action lawsuit accuses online payments giant PayPal of failing to adequately safeguard the personal information of its users, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft and related ills at the hands of the unidentified perpetrators of a data breach that occurred late last year. Nearly 35,000 people were affected by the cyberattack, which used previously compromised usernames and passwords to gain access to PayPal’s systems. PayPal’s notice to users whose personal information was…

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Open letter demands OWASP overhaul, warns of mass project exodus

For more than two decades, the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) has provided free and open resources for improving the security of software. Led by the non-profit OWASP Foundation, OWASP has brought together community-led open-source software projects, hundreds of local chapters worldwide, tens of thousands of members, and educational and training conferences for developers and technologists to secure the web. However, an open letter signed by dozens of OWASP members, contributors, and supporters questioned…

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Municipal CISOs grapple with challenges as cyber threats soar

On February 10, the City of Oakland, California, announced it had been hit by a ransomware attack that knocked many of its systems offline. Four days later, Oakland declared a state of emergency as it grappled with the wide-ranging impact of the incident, which left city phone systems and multiple non-emergency services inoperable, including its 311 phone system. As of February 24, many city services were still down, including the 311 system, just as a…

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Tracking device technology: A double-edged sword for CISOs

The transportation industry has doubled down in the area of fleet tracking in recent years, which has come with great benefits and not a few security headaches. On the consumer side, we’ve spoken of Apple’s AirTag and how it has been used to find personal items of import — and also its potential to be abused by the nefarious to track and trace individuals. Now we see that Google is jumping into the fray, with…

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HPE to acquire Axis Security to deliver a unified SASE offering

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has agreed to buy cloud security services provider Axis Security, its third acquistion since January, to deliver a unified secure access service edge (SASE) offering. The acquisition is aimed at incorporating the Axis security service edge (SSE) platform into HPE’s edge-to-cloud network security capabilities with to deliver integrated networking and security solutions as-a-service. SSE is considered a subset of the broader SASE framework. “As we transition from a post-pandemic world, and a…

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Iron Tiger updates malware to target Linux platform

Iron Tiger, an advanced persistent threat (APT) group, has updated their SysUpdate malware to include new features and add malware infection support for the Linux platform, according to a report by Trend Micro. The earliest sample of this version was observed in July 2022 and after finding multiple similar payloads in late October 2022, Trend Micro researchers started looking into it and found similarities with the SysUpdate malware family. Iron Tiger is a group of China-based…

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IBM partners up with Cohesity for better data defense in new storage suite

IBM and data security and backup provider Cohesity have formed a new partnership, calling for Cohesity’s data protection functionality to be incorporated into an upcoming IBM storage product suite, dubbed Storage Defender, for better protection of end-user organizations’ critical information. The capabilities of Cohesity’s DataProtect backup and recovery product will be one of four main feature sets in the Storage Defender program, according to an announcement from IBM Thursday. The Storage Defender suite is designed…

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