Social Engineering

Action1 launches threat actor filtering to block remote management platform abuse

Action1 has announced new AI-based threat actor filtering to detect and block abuse of its remote management platform. The cloud-native patch management, remote access, and remote monitoring and management (RMM) firm stated its platform has been upgraded to spot abnormal user behavior and automatically block threat actors to prevent attackers exploiting its tool to carry out malicious activity. The release comes amid a trend of hackers misusing legitimate systems management platforms to deploy ransomware or…

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The cybersecurity challenges and opportunities of digital twins

Digital twins are a digital representation of objects, structures or systems that give organizations greater insight into the life cycle of these objects, but this same level of insight and control can also open doors for malicious attackers. Digital twins can be created for any physical infrastructure that includes individual components of an engine, turbine and other equipment, or entire factories, and data centers. “What makes a digital twin different from just your normal model…

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The changing role of the MITRE ATT@CK framework

Since its creation in 2013, the MITRE ATT&CK framework has been of interest to security operations professionals. In the early years, the security operations center (SOC) team used MITRE as a reference architecture, comparing alerts and threat intelligence nuggets with the taxonomy’s breakdown of adversary tactics and techniques. Based on ESG research, MITRE ATT&CK usage has reached an inflection point. Security teams not only recognize its value as a security operations foundation but also want…

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What you should know when considering cyber insurance in 2023

As the frequency and severity of ransomware, phishing, and denial of service attacks has increased, so has demand for cyber insurance. About $6.5 billion in direct written premiums were recorded in 2021, a 61% increase over the prior year, according to an October 2022 memorandum from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “Some companies see it as essential to their risk management strategy,” says Heather Engel, managing partner at advisory firm Strategic Cyber Partners. However, experts say…

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Palo Alto Networks looks to shore up healthcare IoT security

Palo Alto Networks today rolled out a new Medical IoT Security offering, designed to provide improved visibility, automated monitoring, and more for hitherto vulnerable healthcare IoT frameworks, thanks to machine learning and adherence to zero-trust principles. Medical device security is a serious problem for most organizations in healthcare, with a long string of reported vulnerabilities in the area stretching back for years. Fundamentally, experts agree, a large part of the problem is that many connected…

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FCC’s proposal to strengthen emergency alert security might not go far enough

In October, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to strengthen the security of the nation’s emergency alert system (EAS) and wireless emergency alerts (WEA). These systems warn the public about emergencies through alerts on their televisions, radios, and wireless phones via AM, FM, satellite radio, broadcast, cable, and satellite TV. Although EAS Participants are required to broadcast presidential alerts, they voluntarily participate in broadcasting state and local EAS…

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When blaming the user for a security breach is unfair – or just wrong

In his career in IT security leadership, Aaron de Montmorency has seen a lot — an employee phished on their first day by someone impersonating the CEO, an HR department head asked to change the company’s direct deposit information by a bogus CFO, not to mention multichannel criminal engagement with threat actors attacking from social media to email to SMS text. In these cases, the users almost fell for it, but something didn’t feel right.…

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Researchers found security pitfalls in IBM’s cloud infrastructure

Security researchers recently probed IBM Cloud’s database-as-a-service infrastructure and found several security issues that granted them access to the internal server used to build database images for customer deployments. The demonstrated attack highlights some common security oversights that can lead to supply chain compromises in cloud infrastructure. Developed by researchers from security firm Wiz, the attack combined a privilege escalation vulnerability in the IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL service with plaintext credentials scattered around the…

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Software projects face supply chain security risk due to insecure artifact downloads via GitHub Actions

The way build artifacts are stored by the GitHub Actions platform could enable attackers to inject malicious code into software projects with CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) workflows that don’t perform sufficient filtering when downloading artifacts. Cybersecurity researchers have identified several popular artifacts download scripts used by thousands of repositories that are vulnerable to this issue. “We have discovered that when transferring artifacts between different workflows, there is a major risk for artifact poisoning…

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8 things to consider amid cybersecurity vendor layoffs

2022 has been a heavy year for layoffs in the technology sector. Whether due to budget restraints, mergers and acquisitions, streamlining, or economic reasons, TrueUp’s tech layoff tracker has recorded over 1000 rounds of layoffs at tech companies globally so far, affecting more than 182,000 people. Some of the biggest tech companies in the world have announced significant staff cuts, including Amazon, Twitter, Meta, and Salesforce. Although perhaps less severely affected, cybersecurity vendors haven’t been…

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