WannaCry Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Council of the European Union has imposed its first-ever sanctions against persons or entities involved in various cyber-attacks targeting European citizens, and its member states. The directive has been issued against six individuals and three entities responsible for or involved in various cyber-attacks, out of which some publicly known are ' WannaCry ', ' NotPetya ', and ' Operation Cloud Hopper ,' as well as an attempted cyber-attack against the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. Out of the six individuals sanctioned by the EU include two Chinese citizens and four Russian nationals. The companies involved in carrying out cyberattacks include an export firm based in North Korea, and technology companies from China and Russia. The sanctions imposed include a ban on persons traveling to any EU countries and a freeze of assets on persons and entities. Besides this, EU citizens and entities are also forbidden from doing any busin

Cybersecurity researchers have spotted a new cyberattack that is believed to be the very first but an amateur attempt to weaponize the infamous BlueKeep RDP vulnerability in the wild to mass compromise vulnerable systems for cryptocurrency mining. In May this year, Microsoft released a patch for a highly-critical remote code execution flaw, dubbed  BlueKeep , in its Windows Remote Desktop Services that could be exploited remotely to take full control over vulnerable systems just by sending specially crafted requests over RDP. BlueKeep, tracked as CVE-2019-0708 , is a wormable vulnerability because it can be weaponized by potential malware to propagate itself from one vulnerable computer to another automatically without requiring victims' interaction. BlueKeep has been considered to be such a serious threat that since its discovery, Microsoft and even government agencies [ NSA and GCHQ ] had continuously been encouraging Windows users and admins to apply security patches bef

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

Marcus Hutchins, better known as MalwareTech, has been sentenced to "time served" and one year of supervised release for developing and selling the Kronos banking malware. Yes, Hutchins will not go to prison, United States District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller ruled today in Milwaukee County Court, after describing his good work as "too many positives on the other side of the ledger." In response to today's sentencing Hutchins said : "Sentenced to time served! Incredibly thankful for the understanding and leniency of the judge, the wonderful character letter you all sent, and everyone who helped me through the past two years, both financially and emotionally." Marcus Hutchins, 25, is the same British malware analyst who gained notoriety in cybersecurity circles for "accidentally" helping to stop the WannaCry ransomware outbreak in 2017 that wreaked havoc in over 150 countries and brought down companies across all industries. Hutchins was a

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—the world's largest makers of semiconductors and processors—was forced to shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories over the weekend after being hit by a computer virus. Now, it turns out that the computer virus outbreak at Taiwan chipmaker was the result of a variant of WannaCry —a massive ransomware attack that wreaked havoc across the world by shutting down hospitals, telecom providers, and many businesses in May 2017. TSMC shut down an entire day of production this weekend after several of its factories systems were halted by a computer virus in the middle of the ramp-up for chips to be used by Apple's future lines of iPhones, which could impact revenue by approx $256 million. According to the semiconductor manufacturer, its computer systems were not direct attacked by any hacker, but instead, were exposed to the malware "when a supplier installed tainted software without a virus scan" to TSMC&