CyberSecurity Updates

25 Jan

Veterans bring high-value, real-life experience as potential cybersecurity employees

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Johanna Wood was an armored crewman with Lord Strathcona’s Horse, a Canadian Army regiment. At first glance, Wood’s military role may seem incompatible with civilian work; there’s not a lot of call for tank operators in private companies. But Wood believes her experience working in tanks gives her a significant edge as she enters the cybersecurity profession. “I was trained in reconnaissance, so I’m already trained to look for threats, I’m already trained to look…

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24 Jan

Learning to Lie: AI Tools Adept at Creating Disinformation

Information, News

Artificial intelligence is writing fiction, making images inspired by Van Gogh and fighting wildfires. Now it’s competing in another endeavor once limited to humans — creating propaganda and disinformation. When researchers asked the online AI chatbot ChatGPT to compose a blog post, news story or essay making the case for a widely debunked claim — that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, for example — the site often complied, with results that were regularly indistinguishable from similar…

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24 Jan

CYGNVS exits stealth, trumpeting its cyberattack recovery platform

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

Cyber recovery startup CYGNVS announced its emergence from stealth today, having raised $55 million in series A funding and created a highly functional “cyber crisis” platform which promises to help organizations recover from major breaches. The company’s product is in its name – CYGNVS says it’s an acronym for Cyber GuidaNce Virtual Space. It’s effectively an all-in-one disaster recovery system for cyberattacks. It provides out-of-band communications between key team members, since corporate networks may become…

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24 Jan

Administrator of RSOCKS Proxy Botnet Pleads Guilty

Information, Insights

Denis Emelyantsev, a 36-year-old Russian man accused of running a massive botnet called RSOCKS that stitched malware into millions of devices worldwide, pleaded guilty to two counts of computer crime violations in a California courtroom this week. The plea comes just months after Emelyantsev was extradited from Bulgaria, where he told investigators, “America is looking for me because I have enormous information and they need it.” A copy of the passport for Denis Emelyantsev, a.k.a.…

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24 Jan

Apple Patches Critical Security Vulnerabilities Actively Exploited In The Wild

Attacks, Malware

The latest versions of the Safari browser, macOS, iOS, and watchOS address several recently discovered vulnerabilities. Not only does Binary Defense recommend that users upgrade their Apple devices to the latest software versions, but the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a notice for Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to patch their devices to secure them “against active threats.” https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/apple/apple-fixes-actively-exploited-ios-zero-day-on-older-iphones-ipads/ https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213597

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24 Jan

Chinese Cybercrime Group Using Golang Code Interpreter to Evade Detection

Attacks, Malware

DragonSpark does not appear to have any notable ties to other Chinese based threat actors. Based on the attacks that the group is carrying out, especially in regards to the locations of the victims as well as the choice of tools primarily developed by Chinese authors, researchers are fairly certain that the group has ties to China. It highly recommended that companies that either have ties to Eastern Asia or do a lot of business…

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24 Jan

P-to-P fraud most concerning cyber threat in 2023: CSI

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

US financial institutions see peer-to-peer fraud and other digital fraud as the biggest cybersecurity concern in 2023. It was cited by 29% of respondents in a survey by Computer Systems Inc. (CSI), followed by data breaches (23%), ransomware (20%) and a breach at a third party (15%).  Industry respondents also expressed concerns over identity theft at 4%, unavailable or unaffordable cyber insurance at 4%, geopolitical risks at 3%, DDoS attacks at 2% and website defacement at…

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24 Jan

CISA Releases Protecting Our Future: Partnering to Safeguard K–12 organizations from Cybersecurity Threats

Attacks, Insights, Malware

Original release date: January 24, 2023 Today, CISA released Protecting Our Future: Partnering to Safeguard K–12 organizations from Cybersecurity Threats. The report provides recommendations and resources to help K-12 schools and school districts address systemic cybersecurity risk. It also provides insight into the current threat landscape specific to the K-12 community and offers simple steps school leaders can take to strengthen their cybersecurity efforts. The report’s findings state that K-12 organizations need resources, simplicity and…

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24 Jan

ServiceNow to detect open source security vulnerabilities with Snyk integration

Data Breaches, Malware, Social Engineering

ServiceNow Vulnerability Response users will now have access to Snyk Open Source, a software composition analysis (SCA) platform designed to help developers find, prioritize, and fix security vulnerabilities and license issues in open source dependencies. Snyk Open Source is backed by the Israeli-US company’s own security intelligence that relies on a combination of public sources, data from the developer community, proprietary expert research, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop AI.  ServiceNow Vulnerability Response is part of ServiceNow Security Operations…

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24 Jan

Hybrid play: Leveling the playing field in online video gaming and beyond

Information

Does VALORANT’s approach to cheating signal a turning point in how we deal with the continued hacks afflicting our hybrid world of work and play? First social apps, now gaming? The growth of cloud-powered apps like Telegram and Teams has created mega communities out of their users. Many of these apps have opened the door to personal self-expression and the types of risk-taking notorious on social media platforms. Oversharing, connecting with strangers, clickbait, and phishing…

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