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Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new stealthy malware loader called BabbleLoader that has been observed in the wild delivering information stealer families such as WhiteSnake and Meduza . BabbleLoader is an "extremely evasive loader, packed with defensive mechanisms, that is designed to bypass antivirus and sandbox environments to deliver stealers into memory," Intezer security researcher Ryan Robinson said in a report published Sunday. Evidence shows that the loader is being used in several campaigns targeting both English and Russian-speaking individuals, primarily singling out users looking for generic cracked software as well as business professionals in finance and administration by passing it off as accounting software. Loaders have become an increasingly prevalent method to deliver malware, like stealers or ransomware, often acting as the first stage in an attack chain in a manner that sidesteps traditional antivirus defenses by incorporating a be...

A newer version of a malware loader called  Hijack Loader  has been observed incorporating an updated set of anti-analysis techniques to fly under the radar. "These enhancements aim to increase the malware's stealthiness, thereby remaining undetected for longer periods of time," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Muhammed Irfan V A  said  in a technical report. "Hijack Loader now includes modules to add an exclusion for Windows Defender Antivirus, bypass User Account Control (UAC), evade inline API hooking that is often used by security software for detection, and employ process hollowing." Hijack Loader, also called IDAT Loader, is a malware loader that was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company in September 2023. In the intervening months, the tool has been used as a conduit to deliver various malware families. This includes Amadey, Lumma Stealer (aka LummaC2), Meta Stealer, Racoon Stealer V2, Remcos RAT, ...

CrowdStrike is named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection Platforms for the fifth consecutive time, positioned highest on Ability to Execute and furthest to the right on Completeness of Vision.

Cisco has published multiple security advisories concerning critical flaws in Cisco Security Manager (CSM) a week after the networking equipment maker quietly released patches with version 4.22 of the platform. The development comes after Code White researcher Florian Hauser (frycos) yesterday publicly disclosed proof-of-concept ( PoC ) code for as many as 12 security vulnerabilities affecting the  web interface of CSM  that makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution (RCE) attacks. The flaws were responsibly reported to Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) three months ago, on July 13. "Since Cisco PSIRT became unresponsive and the published release 4.22 still doesn't mention any of the vulnerabilities,"  claimed frycos  in a tweet, citing the reasons for going public with the PoCs yesterday. Cisco Security Manager  is an end-to-end enterprise solution that allows organizations to enforce access po...

The RSA Conference , the world's leading information security conference and exposition, held its 29th annual event in San Francisco last week. According to the organizers, over 36,000 attendees, 704 speakers, and 658 exhibitors gathered at the Moscone Center to discuss privacy, Machine Learning, and AI, policy and government, applied crypto and blockchain, and, new for the RSA Conference 2020, open source tools, product security and anti-fraud. Despite several large vendors including Verizon and IBM canceling their presence in light of the spiraling panic around coronavirus, the event was one of the brightest and innovative, according to numerous stakeholders expressing their excitement in the media and on social networks. We decided to gather some feedback from the attendees, journalists, and security experts involved in RSA 2020 to understand the most recent cybersecurity trends after this milestone event. Below is our selection of 10 most innovative cybersecurity com...

Advanced persistent threats (APTs) have emerged to be legitimate concerns for all organizations. APTs are threat actors that breach networks and infrastructures and stealthily lurk within them over extended spans of time. They typically perform complex hacks that allow them to steal or destroy data and resources. According to Accenture , APTs have been organizing themselves into groups that enable them to share tactics and tools to carry out attacks at scale. Russian group Silence APT, for instance, has been reported to be actively targeting financial institutions and have successfully stolen millions of dollars from various banks worldwide. Smaller organizations also need to be wary of such threats. APT groups also use automated tools and botnets to gain access to networks, and these tactics don't discriminate based on size, industry, or value. Any vulnerable infrastructure can be breached. It is now critical for all organizations to understand how APTs operate and impleme...

Apple has removed almost all popular security apps offered by well-known cyber-security vendor Trend Micro from its official Mac App Store after they were caught stealing users' sensitive data without their consent. The controversial apps in question include Dr Cleaner, Dr Cleaner Pro, Dr Antivirus, Dr Unarchiver, App Uninstall, Dr. Battery, and Duplicate Finder for Mac computers. The apps were removed just two days after Apple kicked out another popular "Adware Doctor" application for collecting and sending browser history data from users' Safari, Chrome, and Firefox to a server in China. "This was a one-time data collection, done for security purposes (to analyze whether a user had recently encountered adware or other threats, and thus to improve the product & service)," Trend Micro argued. The suspicious behavior of Trend Micro apps was initially reported by a user on the Malwarebytes forum in December 2017, which was last weekend re-con...

Good news for Skype users who are concerned about their privacy. Microsoft is collaborating with popular encrypted communication company Signal to bring end-to-end encryption support to Skype messenger. End-to-end encryption assured its users that no one, not even the company or server that transmits the data, can decrypt their messages. Signal Protocol is an open source cryptographic protocol that has become an industry-wide standard—which is used in  Facebook Messenger , Whatsapp , and Google Allo for secure messaging. Dubbed Private Conversations , the new feature which is about to be introduced in Skype will offer end-to-end encryption for audio calls, text, and multimedia messages like videos and audio files. "Skype Private Conversations give you enhanced security through end-to-end encryption with an additional layer of security for conversations between you and your friends and family," the company announced .  "Private Conversations can only be betwe...

Recent data breaches have taught us something very important — online users are spectacularly bad at choosing their strong passwords. Today majority of online users are vulnerable to cyber attacks, not because they are not using any best antivirus or other security measures, but because they are using weak passwords that are easy to remember and reuse same passwords on multiple accounts and reusable passwords to secure their online accounts. Ideally, your password should be at least 16 characters long and should contain a combination of digits, symbols, uppercase letters and lowercase letters. Most of us know about this good password practice, but we just ignore it because it is really painful for us to memorize complex password strings for different accounts. Here comes the need of a Password Manager OR  Password Management Software . Password Manager can significantly reduce your password memorizing problem, along with the cure for your bad habit of setting weak pass...

Cyber security is a major challenge in today's world, as cyber attacks have become more automated and difficult to detect, where traditional cyber security practices and systems are no longer sufficient to protect businesses, governments, and other organizations. In past few years, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning had made a name for itself in the field of cyber security, helping IT and security professionals more efficiently and quickly identify risks and anticipate problems before they occur. The good news is that if you are a Windows 10 user, Microsoft will now offer you a machine learning based threat intelligence feature via its inbuilt Windows security service, which will improve the security capabilities available on Windows 10 devices. But, the bad news is that it is not free. The company is offering this "differentiated intelligence" feature on its newly added service to Windows 10, dubbed Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDAT...

After TrueCrypt mysteriously discontinued its service, VeraCrypt became the most popular open source disk encryption software used by activists, journalists, as well as privacy conscious people. First of all, there is no such thing as a perfect, bug-free software. Even the most rigorously tested software, like the ones that operate SCADA Systems, medical devices, and aviation software, have flaws. Vulnerabilities are an unfortunate reality for every software product, but there is always space for improvements. Due to the enormous popularity of VeraCrypt, security researchers from the OSTIF (The Open Source Technology Improvement Fund) agreed to audit VeraCrypt independently and hired researchers from QuarksLab in August to lead the audit. And it seems like VeraCrypt is not exactly flawless either. Now after one month of the audit, researchers have discovered a number of security issues, including 8 critical, 3 medium, and 15 low-severity vulnerabilities in the popular...

Microsoft has released its monthly Patch Tuesday update including a total of 10 security bulletin, and you are required to apply the whole package of patches altogether, whether you like it or not. That's because the company is kicking off a controversial new all-or-nothing patch model this month by packaging all security updates into a single payload, removing your ability to pick and choose which individual patches to install. October's patch bundle includes fixes for at least 5 separate dangerous zero-day vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Edge, Windows and Office products that attackers were already exploiting in the wild before the patch release. The patches for these zero-day flaws are included in MS16-118, MS16-119, MS16-120, MS16-121 and MS16-126. All the zero-days are being exploited in the wild, allowing attackers to execute a remote command on victim's system. Although none of the zero-day flaws were publicly disclosed prior to Tuesday, the company wa...

After TrueCrypt mysteriously discontinued itself, VeraCrypt became the most popular open source disk encryption software used by activists, journalists, and privacy conscious people. Due to the huge popularity of VeraCrypt, security researchers from the OSTIF ( The Open Source Technology Improvement Fund ) announced at the beginning of this month that it had agreed to audit VeraCrypt independently. Using funds donated by DuckDuckGo and VikingVPN, the OSTIC hired vulnerability researchers from QuarksLab to lead the audit, which would look for zero-day vulnerabilities and other security holes in VeraCrypt's code. Now, the most troubling part comes here: The OSTIF announced Saturday that its confidential PGP-encrypted communications with QuarkLabs about the security audit of VeraCrypt were mysteriously intercepted. "We have now had a total of four email messages disappear without a trace, stemming from multiple independent senders." the OSTIF said . "Not ...

Breaking News for Today: Antivirus company Avast Software is planning to acquire Dutch rival AVG Technologies for $1.3 Billion in cash. Avast announced today that it would buy Amsterdam-based AVG Technologies for $25 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.3 Billion in an aim to expand its presence in the emerging markets. With more than 230 Million users worldwide, Avast provides free and paid security software packages for both PCs as well as mobile devices to businesses and individuals. The deal between the two popular security software companies will provide Avast with 400 Million endpoints -- devices that have some form of Avast or AVG application installed. Around 160 Million of those are mobile. However, AVG technologies was in controversies for updating its policy that clearly said that the company will be allowed to collect and sell users' "non-personal data" to online advertisers in order to "make money" from their "free of...

Encrypting your sensitive data is important. As you may know, CIA... C onfidentiality I ntegrity A vailability ...are the essential elements of Information Security. There are a number of tools and methods available out there, but not all encryption tools are same. We are now living in an era where everyone is watching everyone else, and now you need to pay extra attention before choosing any tool. VeraCrypt , a TrueCrypt alternative, is an open source file encryption software designed to protect your online privacy. VeraCrypt enters the market within months after TrueCrypt died , almost similar to it, but with enhancements to further secure your data. A week ago, latest version VeraCrypt 1.12 released with a new feature called PIM, which stands for " Personal Iterations Multiplier ". PIM (Personal Iterations Multiplier) is a new parameter introduced in VeraCrypt 1.12 to secure your data. PIM is basically a secret numerical value that...