two factor authentication | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Over 101,100 compromised OpenAI ChatGPT account credentials have found their way on illicit dark web marketplaces between June 2022 and May 2023, with India alone accounting for 12,632 stolen credentials. The credentials were discovered within information stealer logs made available for sale on the cybercrime underground, Group-IB said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The number of available logs containing compromised ChatGPT accounts reached a peak of 26,802 in May 2023," the Singapore-headquartered company  said . "The Asia-Pacific region has experienced the highest concentration of ChatGPT credentials being offered for sale over the past year." Other countries with the most number of compromised ChatGPT credentials include Pakistan, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt, the U.S., France, Morocco, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. A further analysis has revealed that the majority of logs containing ChatGPT accounts have been breached by the notorious Raccoon info steal...

Twitter has announced that it's limiting the use of SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) to its Blue subscribers. "While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors," the company  said . "We will no longer allow accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers." Twitter users who have not subscribed to Blue that have enrolled for SMS-based 2FA have time till March 20, 2023, to switch to an alternative method such as an authenticator app or a hardware security key. After this cutoff date, non-Twitter Blue subscribers will have their option disabled. The alternative methods "require you to have physical possession of the authentication method and are a great way to ensure your account is secure," Twitter noted. Given that SMS has been the  least secure form of 2FA , the latest enforcement is likely to force people ...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

GitHub has put out an advisory detailing what may be an ongoing phishing campaign targeting its users to steal credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes by impersonating the CircleCI DevOps platform. The Microsoft-owned code hosting service said it learned of the attack on September 16, 2022, adding the campaign impacted "many victim organizations." The fraudulent messages claim to notify users that their CircleCI sessions have expired and that they should log in using GitHub credentials by clicking on a link. Another bogus email  revealed by CircleCI  prompts users to sign in to their GitHub accounts to accept the company's new Terms of Use and Privacy Policy by following the link embedded in the message. Regardless of the lure, doing so redirects the target to a lookalike GitHub login page designed to steal and exfiltrate the entered credentials as well as the Time-based One Time Password (TOTP) codes in real-time to the attacker, effectively allowing ...

The maintainers of the official third-party software repository for Python have begun imposing a new two-factor authentication (2FA) condition for projects deemed "critical." "We've begun rolling out a 2FA requirement: soon, maintainers of critical projects must have 2FA enabled to publish, update, or modify them," Python Package Index (PyPI)  said  in a tweet last week. "Any maintainer of a critical project (both 'Maintainers' and 'Owners') are included in the 2FA requirement," it  added . Additionally, the developers of critical projects who have not previously turned on 2FA on PyPi are being offered free hardware security keys from the Google Open Source Security Team. PyPI, which is run by the Python Software Foundation, houses more than 350,000 projects, of which over  3,500 projects  are said to be tagged with a "critical" designation. According to the repository maintainers, any project accounting for the top 1% ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched bug in Box's multi-factor authentication (MFA) mechanism that could be abused to completely sidestep SMS-based login verification. "Using this technique, an attacker could use stolen credentials to compromise an organization's Box account and exfiltrate sensitive data without access to the victim's phone," Varonis researchers  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity company said it reported the issue to the cloud service provider on November 2, 2021, post which fixes were issued by Box. MFA is an authentication method that relies on a combination of factors such as a password (something only the user knows) and a temporary one-time password aka TOTP (something only the user has) to provide users a second layer of defense against credential stuffing and other account takeover attacks. This two-step authentication can either involve sending the code as an SMS or alternat...

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, on Thursday announced an expansion of its Facebook Protect security program to include human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and government officials who are more likely to be targeted by bad actors across its social media platforms. "These people are at the center of critical communities for public debate," said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Meta. "They enable democratic elections, hold governments and organizations accountable, and defend human rights around the world. Unfortunately this also means that they are highly targeted by bad actors." Facebook Protect , currently being launched globally in phases, enables users who enroll for the initiative to adopt stronger account security protections, like two-factor authentication (2FA), and watch out for potential hacking threats. Meta said more than 1.5 million accounts have enabled Facebook Protect to date, of which nearly 950,000 account...

Google has announced plans to automatically enroll about 150 million users into its two-factor authentication scheme by the end of the year as part of its ongoing efforts to prevent unauthorized access to accounts and improve security. In addition, the internet giant said it also intends to require 2 million YouTube creators to switch on the setting, which it calls two-step verification (2SV), to protect their channels from potential takeover attacks. "2SV is strongest when it combines both 'something you know' (like a password) and 'something you have' (like your phone or a security key)," Google's AbdelKarim Mardini and Guemmy Kim  said  in a post, adding "having a second form of authentication dramatically decreases an attacker's chance of gaining access to an account." The rollout follows the  company's proposals  to beef up account sign-ins earlier this May, when it said it intends to "automatically enrolling users in 2SV i...

Researchers have discovered a new means to target voice-controlled devices by propagating ultrasonic waves through solid materials in order to interact with and compromise them using inaudible voice commands without the victims' knowledge. Called " SurfingAttack ," the attack leverages the unique properties of acoustic transmission in solid materials — such as tables — to "enable multiple rounds of interactions between the voice-controlled device and the attacker over a longer distance and without the need to be in line-of-sight." In doing so, it's possible for an attacker to interact with the devices using the voice assistants, hijack SMS two-factor authentication codes, and even place fraudulent calls, the researchers outlined in the paper, thus controlling the victim device inconspicuously. The research was published by a group of academics from Michigan State University, Washington University in St. Louis, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Un...

Smart doorbells and cameras bring a great sense of security to your home, especially when you're away, but even a thought that someone could be spying on you through the same surveillance system would shiver up your spine. Following several recent reports of hackers gaining access to people's internet-connected Ring doorbell and security cameras, Amazon yesterday announced to make two-factor authentication security feature mandatory for all Ring users. Until now, enabling the two-factor authentication in Ring devices was optional, which definitely would have prevented most Ring hacks, but of course, many never bothered to enable it. That means, from now onwards, at the time of login after entering the account's username and password, every user needs to input a secret six-digit authentication code sent to them via their phone or email. Two-factor authentication is an effective defense because it acts as a deterrent, preventing unauthorized users from gaining acces...

Twitter today finally decided to temporarily disable a feature, called ' Tweeting via SMS ,' after it was abused by a hacking group to compromise Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week and sent a series of racist and offensive tweets to Dorsey's followers. Dorsey's Twitter account was compromised last week when a hacker group calling itself "Chuckling Squad" replicated a mobile phone number associated with the CEO account and abused this particular feature to post racist, offensive messages and bomb threats from it via SMS. Replicating a mobile phone number associated with someone else is a technique known as " SIM swapping ," where attackers social engineer a victim's mobile phone provider and trick the telecom company to transfer target's phone number to their own SIM card. Once they social engineered an AT&T employee and gained access to Dorsey's phone number, the Chuckling Squad hackers used the 'Tweeting via SMS' feat...

The U.S. Department of Justice today announced charges against nine individuals, 6 of which are members of a hacking group called "The Community" and other 3 are former employees of mobile phone providers who allegedly helped them steal roughly $2.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency using a method known as "SIM Swapping." According to the 15-count indictment unsealed today, five Americans and an Irishman related to The Community hacking group are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as well as wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Another three Americans, who reportedly are the former employees of mobile phone providers, are charged in a criminal complaint with the wire fraud. SIM Swapping , or SIM Hijacking , is a type of identity theft that typically involves fraudulently porting of the same number to a new SIM card belonging to the attacker. In SIM swapping, attackers social engineer a victim's mobile phone provider by convincing it ...

Great news. If you have already installed the latest update of Google Play Services released earlier today, and your Android device is running Android version 7.0 Nougat or above—Congratulations! Your device is now FIDO2 Certified. Are you thinking… what the heck that actually means? It means, instead of remembering complex passwords for your online accounts, you can now actually use your Android's built-in fingerprint sensor or FIDO security keys for secure password-less access to log into apps and websites that support the FIDO2 protocols, Google and the FIDO Alliance—a consortium that develops open source authentication standards—announced Monday. FIDO2 (Fast Identity Online) protocol offers strong passwordless authentication based on standard public key cryptography using hardware FIDO authenticators like security keys, mobile phones, and other built-in devices. FIDO2 protocol is a combination of W3C's WebAuthn API that allows developers to integrate FIDO aut...

Google has made several new announcements for its Chrome Web Store that aims at making Chrome extensions more secure and transparent to its users. Over a couple of years, we have seen a significant rise in malicious extensions that appear to offer useful functionalities, while running hidden malicious scripts in the background without the user's knowledge. However, the best part is that Google is aware of the issues and has proactively been working to change the way its Chrome web browser handles extensions. Earlier this year, Google banned extensions using cryptocurrency mining scripts and then in June, the company also disabled inline installation of Chrome extensions completely. The company has also been using machine learning technologies to detect and block malicious extensions. To take a step further, Google announced Monday five major changes that give users more control over certain permissions, enforces security measures, as well as makes the ecosystem more t...

Google just made its Titan Security Key available on its store for $50. First announced last month at Google Cloud Next '18 convention, Titan Security Key is a tiny USB device—similar to Yubico's YubiKey—that offers hardware-based two-factor authentication (2FA) for online accounts with the highest level of protection against phishing attacks. Google's Titan Security Key is now widely available in the United States, with a full kit available for $50, which includes: USB security key, Bluetooth security key, USB-C to USB-A adapter, USB-C to USB-A connecting cable. What Is Google Titan Security Key? Titan Security Keys is based on the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, U2F (universal 2nd factor) protocol and includes a secure element and a firmware developed by Google that verifies the integrity of security keys at the hardware level. It adds an extra layer of authentication to an account on top of your password, and users can quickly log into their acc...

Another day, another significant data breach. This time the victim is Reddit... seems someone is really pissed off with Reddit's account ban policy or bias moderators. Reddit social media network today announced that it suffered a security breach in June that exposed some of its users' data, including their current email addresses and an old 2007 database backup containing usernames and hashed passwords. According to Reddit, the unknown hacker(s) managed to gain read-only access to some of its systems that contained its users' backup data, source code, internal logs, and other files. In a post published to the platform Wednesday, Reddit Chief Technology Officer Christopher Slowe admitted that the hack was a serious one, but assured its users that the hackers did not gain access to Reddit systems. "[The attackers] were not able to alter Reddit information, and we have taken steps since the event to further lock down and rotate all production secrets and API k...

And the hacks just keep on coming. Timehop social media app has been hit by a major data breach on July 4th that compromised the personal data of its more than 21 million users. Timehop is a simple social media app that collects your old photos and posts from your iPhone, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare and acts as a digital time machine to help you find—what you were doing on this very day exactly a year ago. The company revealed on Sunday that unknown attacker(s) managed to break into its Cloud Computing Environment and access the data of entire 21 million users, including their names, email addresses, and approximately 4.7 million phone numbers attached to their accounts. "We learned of the breach while it was still in progress, and were able to interrupt it, but data was taken. Some data was breached," the company wrote in a security advisory posted on its website. Social Media OAuth2 Tokens Also Compromised Moreover, the attackers also got th...

Google has finally been rolling out its new massively redesigned Gmail  for desktop and mobile to 1.4 billion of users worldwide, which might be the most significant single upgrade in Gmail's history. This huge revamped version of the email service now offers plenty of new features such as confidential mode, offline support, email snoozing and more, to make Gmail more smarter, secure, and easier to use. In this article, I have listed details of the most significant changes that you need to know and how to use them. Give it a quick read. New 'Confidential Mode' Features For Security & Privacy Are you afraid of sending sensitive documents in an email due to fear of hacking or being forwarded? Well, now you can simply click the lock icon at the bottom of an email to enable the new Confidential Mode, which lets you add a bunch of extra layers of security (as mentioned below) to the emails of your choice. 1) Self-Destructing Emails:  This feature lets you ...

It is good to be paranoid when it comes to cybersecurity. Google already provides various advanced features such as login alerts and two-factor authentication to keep your Google account secure. However, if you are extra paranoid, Google has just introduced its strongest ever security feature, called " Advanced Protection ," which makes it easier for users, who are usually at high risk of targeted online attacks, to lock down their Google accounts like never before. "We took this unusual step because there is an overlooked minority of our users that are at particularly high risk of targeted online attacks," the company said in a blog post announcing the program on Tuesday.  "For example, these might be campaign staffers preparing for an upcoming election, journalists who need to protect the confidentiality of their sources, or people in abusive relationships seeking safety." Even if a hacker somehow gets your password—using advanced phishing a...