Tech Support Scams | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

If you have ever contacted Microsoft for support in the past 14 years, your technical query, along with some personally identifiable information might have been compromised. Microsoft today admitted a security incident that exposed nearly 250 million "Customer Service and Support" (CSS) records on the Internet due to a misconfigured server containing logs of conversations between its support team and customers. According to Bob Diachenko, a cybersecurity researcher who spotted the unprotected database and reported to Microsoft, the logs contained records spanning from 2005 right through to December 2019. In a blog post, Microsoft confirmed that due to misconfigured security rules added to the server in question on December 5, 2019, enabled exposure of the data, which remained the same until engineers remediated the configuration on December 31, 2019. Microsoft also said that the database was redacted using automated tools to remove the personally identifiable info

January 14, 2020, is a day cybersecurity stakeholders should pay attention to, as it marks the end of Microsoft support in Windows 7. From a security perspective, both the routine monthly security patches as well as hotfixes for attacks in the wild will not be available, effectively making any newly discovered vulnerability a Windows 7 zero-day. Cynet 360 autonomous breach protection is a good example of a multilayered advanced protection solution that can enable organizations who run Windows 7 to remain secure despite the end of support ( to learn more click here ). Let's dig a bit deeper to understand the risk. The reality is that all software contains bugs. Ideally, these bugs are discovered during the development process. In practice, many of them surface only following the product release in the course of their interactions with real users. Bugs that can be exploited for malicious purposes are called vulnerabilities. Microsoft conducts rigorous and ongoing research

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Do you always uncomfortable trusting companies with your data? If so, you're not alone. While companies do much to protect themselves from external threats, insiders always pose the highest risk to a company's data. Unfortunately, when we say companies can't eliminate insider threat completely, cybersecurity firms, who are meant to protect others, are not an exception. Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro has disclosed a security incident this week carried out by an employee who improperly accessed the personal data of thousands of its customers with a "clear criminal intent" and then sold it to a malicious third-party tech support scammers earlier this year. According to the security company, an estimated number of customers affected by the breach is 68,000, which is less than one percent of the company's 12 million customer base. Trend Micro first became aware of the incident in early August 2019 when it found that some of its consumer customers were r