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A cybercrime group that has previously struck Docker and Kubernetes cloud environments has evolved to repurpose genuine cloud monitoring tools as a backdoor to carry out malicious attacks, according to new research. "To our knowledge, this is the first time attackers have been caught using legitimate third party software to target cloud infrastructure," Israeli cybersecurity firm Intezer said in a Tuesday analysis. Using software called Weave Scope , which is used as a visualization and monitoring tool for Docker and Kubernetes services, the TeamTNT threat actor not only mapped the cloud environment of their victims but also executed system commands without having to deploy malicious code on the target server explicitly. TeamTNT has been active at least since late April this year, directing their attacks on misconfigured Docker ports to install a cryptocurrency mining malware and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) bot. Then last month , the crypto-mining gan

Cyberattacks on small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are continuing at a relentless pace, with the vast majority of data breaches coming from outside the organization . Some believe hackers are aggressively targeting these smaller firms because they believe SMBs lack adequate resources and enterprise-grade security tools, making them easier prey than larger businesses. A new report from Cisco, however, challenges this assumption. SMBs have made significant strides enhancing their security protocols and are closing the gap with their bigger counterparts. The report notes 87 percent of SMB business owners rank security a top priority, and more than 99 percent have a dedicated resource focusing on security. SMBs are also becoming more diligent about defining metrics to assess their security effectiveness and implementing security controls and tools at rates similar to large enterprises. No doubt, the emergence of security solutions developed specifically for SMBs is support

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

Cybercriminal groups are constantly evolving to find new ways to pilfer financial information, and the latest trick in their arsenal is to leverage the messaging app Telegram to their benefit. In what's a new tactic adopted by Magecart groups, the encrypted messaging service is being used to send stolen payment details from compromised websites back to the attackers. "For threat actors, this data exfiltration mechanism is efficient and doesn't require them to keep up infrastructure that could be taken down or blocked by defenders," Jérôme Segura of Malwarebytes said in a Monday analysis . "They can even receive a notification in real time for each new victim, helping them quickly monetize the stolen cards in underground markets." The TTP was first publicly documented by security researcher @AffableKraut in a Twitter thread last week using data from Dutch cybersecurity firm Sansec. Injecting e-skimmers on shopping websites by exploiting a known

"In today's knowledge economy, continual learning is an imperative." — Those words from Aytekin Tank, the founder of JotForm, are particularly important for anyone working in IT or development. With over 1,000 premium courses ( complete list ) from top instructors, StackSkills Unlimited provides endless learning opportunities. Right now, you can grab lifetime membership for $59 . Categories of courses include: Animation and 3D Audio Bundles Business Applications CAD Databases Game Design and Development Graphics and Page Layout Internet and Web Design Multimedia and Video Networking and Security Operating Systems Programming, and Project Management Wondering what these courses cover? Here are five top skills: Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Finding the weaknesses in software, websites, and networks is an important task. For this reason, white hat hackers are in demand, with top pros earning over $100k a year. StackSkills Unlimite

One new security technology we keep hearing about is Extended Detection and Response (XDR). This new technology merges multiple prevention and detection technologies on a single platform to better understand threat signals so that you don't need to purchase, integrate, and manage various control and integration technologies. Think of XDR as prepackaged EDR, NTA, UEBA (and perhaps other prevention and detection) technologies all tightly integrated on a SOAR-like platform. Of course, you don't need SOAR technology with XDR as the entire platform is integrated and orchestrated out of the box. In Gartner's recently published Top 9 Security and Risk Trends for 2020 , XDR was listed first. Cybersecurity company Cynet just released an interesting XDR eBook [ Download it here ] that provides an excellent primer on this promising new technology. According to Cynet, the expense and issues involved with combining multiple siloed control technologies usually make an effort n

Web applications suffer continuously evolving attacks, where a web application firewall (WAF) is the first line of defense and a necessary part of organizations' cybersecurity strategies. WAFs are getting more sophisticated all the time, but as its core protection starts with efficient pattern matching, typically using Regular Expressions, and classifying malicious traffic to block cyber attacks. Evading pattern matching However, unfortunately, this technique is no silver bullet against determined attackers. Once it's known that there is a protection layer enabled, malicious actors find ways to bypass it, and most of the time, they even succeed. It usually can be achieved when the same attacking payload, blocked by WAF , can be disguised to make it 'invisible' to the pattern matching mechanism to evade security. Context-Specific Obfuscation The web uses many technologies, and they all have different rules for what comprises valid syntax in their grammar

As software eats the world, the world faces a software security crisis. The movement to modern software such as cloud technologies and microservice architectures is essential to innovate quickly. Yet, nearly three in four developers say that security slows down Agile and DevOps. Neither developers nor security teams are to blame. DevOps speed is held back by a 15-year-old, scan-based application security (AppSec) model designed for the early 2000s. Traditional security tools cannot keep up with today's rapid development pace or modern application portfolio scale. However, sacrificing security for development speed places critical and confidential personal and business information at risk—from financial to healthcare data—and can disrupt operations or even cause outages. Code Scanners Cannot Meet Modern DevOps Legacy AppSec approaches that rely on point-in-time scanning are plagued by development delays and highly inaccurate results. Scans take many hours, if not days—not id

Citrix today released patches for multiple new security vulnerabilities affecting its Citrix Endpoint Management (CEM) , also known as XenMobile, a product made for enterprises to help companies manage and secure their employees' mobile devices remotely. Citrix Endpoint Management offers businesses mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM) capabilities. It allows companies to control which apps their employees can install while ensuring updates and security settings are applied to keep business information protected. According to Citrix, there are a total of 5 vulnerabilities that affect on-premise instances of XenMobile servers used in enterprises to manage all apps, devices, or platforms from one central location. "Remediations have already been applied to cloud versions, but hybrid rights users need to apply the upgrades to any on-premises instance," the company sai d in a post today. If left unpatched and exploited successfully,

A security researcher earlier today publicly revealed details and proof-of-concept exploit code for an unpatched, critical zero-day remote code execution vulnerability affecting the widely used internet forum software vBulletin that's already under active exploitation in the wild. vBulletin is a widely used proprietary Internet forum software package based on PHP and MySQL database server that powers over 100,000 websites on the Internet, including Fortune 500 and Alexa Top 1 million companies websites and forums. In September last year, a separate anonymous security researcher publicly disclosed a then-zero-day RCE vulnerability in vBulletin , identified as CVE-2019-16759 , and received a critical severity rating of 9.8, allowing attackers to execute malicious commands on the remote server without requiring any authentication to log into the forum. A day after the disclosure of CVE-2019-16759, the vBulletin team released security patches that resolved the issue, but it t

Cybersecurity researchers today highlighted an evasive phishing technique that attackers are exploiting in the wild to target visitors of several sites with a quirk in domain names, and leverage modified favicons to inject e-skimmers and steal payment card information covertly. "The idea is simple and consists of using characters that look the same in order to dupe users," Malwarebytes researchers said in a Thursday analysis . "Sometimes the characters are from a different language set or simply capitalizing the letter 'i' to make it appear like a lowercase 'l'." Called an internationalized domain name (IDN) homograph attack , the technique has been used by a Magecart group on multiple domains to load the popular Inter skimming kit hidden inside a favicon file . The visual trickery typically involves leveraging the similarities of character scripts to create and register fraudulent domains of existing ones to deceive unsuspecting users into

For much of this year, IT professionals all over the globe have had their hands full, finding ways to help businesses cope with the fallout of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In many cases, it involved a rapid rollout of significant remote work infrastructure. That infrastructure was called into service with little to no warning and even less opportunity for testing. Needless to say, the situation wasn't ideal from a cybersecurity standpoint. And hackers all over the world knew it. Almost immediately, Google reported a significant increase in malicious activity, and Microsoft noted trends that appeared to back that up. The good news is that the wave of cyberattacks unleashed by the pandemic peaked in April and has since died down. Fortunately, that's allowing IT professionals and network administrators everywhere to take a deep breath and take stock of the new security environment they're now operating in. The trouble is, there's still so much uncertainty

Apple earlier this year fixed a security vulnerability in iOS and macOS that could have potentially allowed an attacker to gain unauthorized access to a user's iCloud account. Uncovered in February by Thijs Alkemade , a security specialist at IT security firm Computest, the flaw resided in Apple's implementation of TouchID (or FaceID) biometric feature that authenticated users to log in to websites on Safari, specifically those that use Apple ID logins. After the issue was reported to Apple through their responsible disclosure program, the iPhone maker addressed the vulnerability in a server-side update . An Authentication Flaw The central premise of the flaw is as follows. When users try to sign in to a website that requires an Apple ID, a prompt is displayed to authenticate the login using Touch ID. Doing so skips the two-factor authentication step since it already leverages a combination of factors for identification, such as the device (something you have) and

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered critical vulnerabilities in industrial VPN implementations primarily used to provide remote access to operational technology (OT) networks that could allow hackers to overwrite data, execute malicious code, and compromise industrial control systems (ICS). A new report published by industrial cybersecurity company Claroty demonstrates multiple severe vulnerabilities in enterprise-grade VPN installations, including Secomea GateManager M2M Server, Moxa EDR-G902, and EDR-G903, and HMS Networks eWon's eCatcher VPN client. These vulnerable products are widely used in field-based industries such as oil and gas, water utilities, and electric utilities to remotely access, maintain and monitor ICS and field devices, including programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and input/output devices. According to Claroty researchers, successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities can give an unauthenticated attacker direct access to the ICS devices an

Lazarus Group, the notorious hacking group with ties to the North Korean regime, has unleashed a new multi-platform malware framework with an aim to infiltrate corporate entities around the world, steal customer databases, and distribute ransomware. Capable of targeting Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems, the MATA malware framework — so-called because of the authors' reference to the infrastructure as "MataNet" — comes with a wide range of features designed to carry out a variety of malicious activities on infected machines. The MATA campaign is said to have begun as early as April of 2018, with the victimology traced to unnamed companies in software development, e-commerce and internet service provider sectors situated in Poland, Germany, Turkey, Korea, Japan, and India, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said in its Wednesday analysis. The report offers a comprehensive look at the MATA framework, while also building on previous evidence gathered by researche