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Meta on Monday announced plans to offer an ad-free option to access Facebook and Instagram for users in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland to comply with "evolving" data protection regulations in the region. The ad-free subscription, which costs €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android, is expected to be officially available starting next month. The company's proposal for a subscription version of its service was  first reported  by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. "In November, we will be offering people who use Facebook or Instagram and reside in these regions the choice to continue using these personalized services for free with ads, or subscribe to stop seeing ads," the company  said . "While people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads." While the fee covers all linked accounts for a user, beginning March 1, 2024, the company plans to levy an additional fee ...

A pro-Hamas hacktivist group has been observed using a new Linux-based wiper malware dubbed  BiBi-Linux Wiper , targeting Israeli entities amidst the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war. "This malware is an x64 ELF executable, lacking obfuscation or protective measures," Security Joes  said  in a new report published today. "It allows attackers to specify target folders and can potentially destroy an entire operating system if run with root permissions." Some of its other capabilities include  multithreading  to corrupt files concurrently to enhance its speed and reach, overwriting files, renaming them with an extension containing the hard-coded string "BiBi" (in the format "[RANDOM_NAME].BiBi[NUMBER]"), and excluding certain file types from being corrupted. "While the string 'bibi' (in the filename), may appear random, it holds significant meaning when mixed with topics such as politics in the Middle East, as it is a common nickname used...

Modern web app development relies on cloud infrastructure and containerization. These technologies scale on demand, handling millions of daily file transfers – it's almost impossible to imagine a world without them. However, they also introduce multiple attack vectors that exploit file uploads when working with public clouds, vulnerabilities in containers hosting web applications, and many other persistent threats. We surveyed organizations responsible for securing critical web applications used by healthcare, financial services, technology, and other critical infrastructure verticals to learn how they tackle the most destructive threats and summarized our findings in the OPSWAT 2023 State of Web Application Security Report. The survey report revealed that: 97% of organizations use or will deploy containers in their web hosting environments. 75% use cloud storage access solutions and want to prevent malware, secure sensitive data, and mitigate security compliance risks. 94% c...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

Earlier this week, ServiceNow  announced on its support site  that misconfigurations within the platform could result in "unintended access" to sensitive data. For organizations that use ServiceNow, this security exposure is a critical concern that could have resulted in major data leakage of sensitive corporate data.  ServiceNow has since taken steps to fix this issue .  This article fully analyzes the issue, explains why this critical application misconfiguration could have had serious consequences for businesses, and remediation steps companies would take, if not for the ServiceNow fix. (Although, recommended to double check that the fix has closed the organization's exposure.) In a Nutshell ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform used for automating IT service management, IT operations management, and IT business management for customer service, as well as HR, security operations, and a wide variety of additional domains. This SaaS application is considered to b...

A new ongoing campaign dubbed  EleKtra-Leak  has set its eyes on exposed Amazon Web Service (AWS) identity and access management (IAM) credentials within public GitHub repositories to facilitate cryptojacking activities. "As a result of this, the threat actor associated with the campaign was able to create multiple AWS Elastic Compute (EC2) instances that they used for wide-ranging and long-lasting cryptojacking operations," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers William Gamazo and Nathaniel Quist  said  in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The operation, active since at least December 2020, is designed to mine Monero from as many as 474 unique Amazon EC2 instances between August 30 and October 6, 2023. A standout aspect of the attacks is the automated targeting of AWS IAM credentials within four minutes of their initial exposure on GitHub, indicating that threat actors are  programmatically cloning and scanning the repositories  to captur...

Three unpatched high-severity security flaws have been disclosed in the  NGINX Ingress controller  for Kubernetes that could be weaponized by a threat actor to steal secret credentials from the cluster. The vulnerabilities are as follows -  CVE-2022-4886  (CVSS score: 8.8) -  Ingress-nginx  path sanitization can be bypassed to obtain the credentials of the ingress-nginx controller CVE-2023-5043  (CVSS score: 7.6) - Ingress-nginx annotation injection causes arbitrary command execution CVE-2023-5044  (CVSS score: 7.6) - Code injection via nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/permanent-redirect annotation "These vulnerabilities enable an attacker who can control the configuration of the Ingress object to steal secret credentials from the cluster," Ben Hirschberg, CTO and co-founder of Kubernetes security platform ARMO, said of CVE-2023-5043 and CVE-2023-5044. Successful exploitation of the flaws could allow an adversary to inject arbitrary code into...

A new cyber attack campaign has been observed using spurious  MSIX  Windows app package files for popular software such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Grammarly, and Cisco Webex to distribute a novel malware loader dubbed  GHOSTPULSE . "MSIX is a Windows app package format that developers can leverage to package, distribute, and install their applications to Windows users," Elastic Security Labs researcher Joe Desimone  said  in a technical report published last week. "However, MSIX requires access to purchased or stolen code signing certificates making them viable to groups of above-average resources." Based on the installers used as lures, it's suspected that potential targets are  enticed  into downloading the MSIX packages through known techniques such as compromised websites, search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, or malvertising. Launching the MSIX file opens a Windows prompting the users to click the Install button, doing so...

New findings have shed light on what's said to be a lawful attempt to covertly intercept traffic originating from jabber[.]ru (aka xmpp[.]ru), an  XMPP -based instant messaging service, via servers hosted on Hetzner and Linode (a subsidiary of Akamai) in Germany. "The attacker has issued several new TLS certificates using Let's Encrypt service which were used to hijack encrypted  STARTTLS connections  on port 5222 using transparent [man-in-the-middle] proxy," a security researcher who goes by the alias ValdikSS  said  earlier this week. "The attack was discovered due to the expiration of one of the MiTM certificates, which haven't been reissued." Evidence gathered so far points to the traffic redirection being configured on the hosting provider network, ruling out other possibilities, such as a server breach or a spoofing attack. The wiretapping is estimated to have lasted for as long as six months, from April 18, 2023, although it's been confi...

The North Korea-aligned  Lazarus Group  has been attributed as behind a new campaign in which an unnamed software vendor was compromised through the exploitation of known security flaws in another high-profile software. The attack sequences, according to Kaspersky, culminated in the deployment of malware families such as SIGNBT and  LPEClient , a known hacking tool used by the threat actor for victim profiling and payload delivery. "The adversary demonstrated a high level of sophistication, employing advanced evasion techniques and introducing SIGNBT malware for victim control," security researcher Seongsu Park  said . "The SIGNBT malware used in this attack employed a diverse infection chain and sophisticated techniques." The Russian cybersecurity vendor said the company that developed the exploited software had been a victim of a Lazarus attack several times, indicating an attempt to steal source code or poison the software supply chain, as in the case of the...

When organizations start incorporating cybersecurity regulations and cyber incident reporting requirements into their security protocols, it's essential for them to establish comprehensive plans for preparation, mitigation, and response to potential threats. At the heart of your business lies your operational technology and critical systems. This places them at the forefront of cybercriminal interest, as they seek to exploit vulnerabilities, compromise your data, and demand ransoms. In today's landscape, characterized by the ever-present risk of ransomware attacks and the challenges posed by fragmented security solutions, safeguarding your organization is paramount. This is where  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) advocates  for the development of resilient, reliable security systems capable of foreseeing, enduring, and rebounding from cyberattacks.  In this guide, we'll explore strategies to fortify your defenses against cyber threats and ensur...