Vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Businesses are firmly in attackers' crosshairs. Financially motivated cybercriminals conduct ransomware attacks with record-breaking ransoms being paid by companies seeking to avoid business interruption. Others, including nation-state hackers, infiltrate companies to steal intellectual property and trade secrets to gain commercial advantage over competitors. Further, we regularly see critical infrastructure being targeted by nation-state cyberattacks designed to act as sleeper cells that can be activated in times of heightened tension. Companies are on the back foot. Leaders must be confident in their cyber posture: Are defenses up to the job of keeping attacks at bay? Does the leadership team have a complete understanding of the threats and risks the company faces? How can CEOs seize the initiative to get ahead of threats? Adoption of zero trust architectures to improve cyber defense Businesses that don't embrace true zero trust will find themselves increasingly vulnerable to br...

It's been reported that a new, generative AI worm dubbed "Morris II" has emerged. And for many, this new, generative AI worm is an understandable reason to panic.  Pushing back against hysteria, however, we discover that Morris II only targets AI apps and AI-enabled email assistants. No attack is a good one, but at least this one's very specific. More importantly, the recognition that just as AI is helping to accelerate and automate attacks, it will also drastically improve security efficacy.  While AI threatens to overwhelm reactive security teams with the pace and sophistication of its onslaught, it can likewise enable proactive prevention through predictive processes and controls. This is critical to giving security teams the chance to withstand the barrage that awaits them. Scaling alongside AI-enabled attacks There are two proactive efforts that scale well when accelerated attacks become the norm. Neither of these efforts need to be AI-powered to be effective against...

Despite the widespread adoption of DDoS protection solutions, disruptive DDoS attacks continue to make headlines. Why? Even "basic" attacks are bypassing established defenses, as evidenced by the recent DDoS attack on X.  Our analysis, based on over 100,000 hours of annual attack simulations, reveals that all deployed DDoS protections are highly vulnerable — gaps that often go unnoticed until an attack successfully disrupts services. With no effective way to address these weaknesses preemptively, organizations remain exposed. This article examines why DDoS attacks persist and continue to inflict significant damage. How Even Simple Attacks Bring Down the Best DDoS Protections In 2024, Cloudflare reported more than 25 million DDoS attacks - representing a 53% YoY increase. This growing number of DDoS attacks and their escalating cost from damage begs the question: What are we missing? And how can the risk of these attacks (and the damage they cause) be reduced?  Unlike oth...

For many organizations, managing IT assets is like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces. Despite massive investments in security tools and controls, many companies still have critical gaps in their ecosystems that leave them vulnerable to breaches. Often, these gaps stem not from a lack of tools—if such a thing exists in security—but from incomplete visibility and integration across those tools. By aggregating and analyzing data from multiple systems, security leaders can gain a more robust picture of their IT inventory and subsequently, their security posture. The challenge with disparate security tools It's not unusual for enterprises to deploy a wide array of security tools. The average organization uses roughly 10 security tools, covering everything from endpoint management to identity and access control. These tools, however, often operate in silos, creating fragmented and occasionally contradictory reports. Let's look at a practical example. Conside...

As I usually say: 'attackers are lazy'. In other words, they always follow the path of least resistance. As defenders catch up with their tactics, techniques, and procedures, the asymmetric gap between offensive and defensive capability shrinks, pushing attackers to shift their battlefield strategy, perpetuating a game that repeats over and over again. Take, for example, endpoint protection. For the last few years, endpoint protection, detection, and response have been the centerpiece of security strategies. As modern endpoint security products get better at anticipating threats based on AI-based engines, providing richer visibility and more contextual detection capabilities, attackers are pivoting away from them, looking for 'blind spots' in your architecture, leveraging vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in network devices, supply chains, and even firmware embedded deep within devices, areas where security visibility is limited. This trend is particularly significant due to the ...

Open-source libraries allow developers to move faster, leveraging existing building blocks instead of diverting resources to building in-house. By leaning on existing open-source packages, engineers can focus on complex or bespoke elements of their products, using package managers and open-source maintainers to make it easy to pull everything together.  However, you can't deny that building software using open source makes your applications more vulnerable to security risks. In an open-source library, attackers have direct access to code, and can search for current and historical vulnerabilities, as well as any issues and tickets managed on websites such as GitHub or GitLab. This helps threat actors to quickly find packages that are vulnerable and launch an attack.  This is where Software Composition Analysis (SCA) comes in, with the purpose of scanning packages and uncovering vulnerabilities. SCA compiles and manages a catalog of software packages, alongside details such ...