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Apple is temporarily hitting the pause button on its  controversial plans  to screen users' devices for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) after receiving sustained blowback over worries that the tool could be weaponized for mass surveillance and erode the privacy of users. "Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features," the iPhone maker  said  in a statement on its website. The announcement, however, doesn't make it clear as to the kind of inputs it would be gathering, the nature of changes it aims to devise, or how it intends to implement the system in a way that mitigates the privacy and security concerns that could arise once it's deployed. The changes were originally slated to go live with iOS 15 and macOS Monterey later this year, starting with the U.S. In ...

Microsoft has shared technical details about a now-fixed, actively exploited critical security vulnerability affecting SolarWinds Serv-U managed file transfer service that it has attributed with "high confidence" to a threat actor operating out of China. In mid-July, the Texas-based company  remedied  a remote code execution flaw ( CVE-2021-35211 ) that was rooted in Serv-U's implementation of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, which could be abused by attackers to run arbitrary code on the infected system, including the ability to install malicious programs and view, change, or delete sensitive data. "The Serv-U SSH server is subject to a pre-auth remote code execution vulnerability that can be easily and reliably exploited in the default configuration," Microsoft Offensive Research and Security Engineering team said in a  detailed write-up  describing the exploit. "An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by connecting to the open SSH port and sendin...

The U.S. Cyber Command on Friday warned of ongoing mass exploitation attempts in the wild targeting a now-patched critical security vulnerability affecting Atlassian Confluence deployments that could be abused by unauthenticated attackers to take control of a vulnerable system. "Mass exploitation of Atlassian Confluence  CVE-2021-26084  is ongoing and expected to accelerate," the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF)  said  in a tweet. The warning was also echoed by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ( CISA ) and  Atlassian itself  in a series of independent advisories. Bad Packets  noted  on Twitter it "detected mass scanning and exploit activity from hosts in Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Nepal, Romania, Russia and the U.S. targeting Atlassian Confluence servers vulnerable to remote code execution." Atlassian Confluence is a widely popular web-based documentation service that allows teams to create, collaborate, and organiz...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details about a new malware family that relies on the Common Log File System ( CLFS ) to hide a second-stage payload in registry transaction files in an attempt to evade detection mechanisms. FireEye's Mandiant Advanced Practices team, which made the discovery, dubbed the malware PRIVATELOG , and its installer, STASHLOG . Specifics about the identities of the threat actor or their motives remain unclear. Although the malware is yet to be detected in real-world attacks aimed at customer environments or be spotted launching any second-stage payloads, Mandiant suspects that PRIVATELOG could still be in development, the work of a researcher, or deployed as part of a highly targeted activity. CLFS is a general-purpose logging subsystem in Windows that's accessible to both kernel-mode as well as user-mode applications such as database systems, OLTP systems, messaging clients, and network event management systems for building and sharing h...

A recent wave of spear-phishing campaigns leveraged weaponized Windows 11 Alpha-themed Word documents with Visual Basic macros to drop malicious payloads, including a JavaScript implant, against a point-of-sale (PoS) service provider located in the U.S. The attacks, which are believed to have taken place between late June to late July 2021, have been attributed with "moderate confidence" to a financially motivated threat actor dubbed FIN7, according to researchers from cybersecurity firm Anomali. "The specified targeting of the Clearmind domain fits well with FIN7's preferred modus operandi," Anomali Threat Research  said  in a technical analysis published on September 2. "The group's goal appears to have been to deliver a variation of a JavaScript backdoor used by FIN7 since at least 2018." An Eastern European group active since at least mid-2015, FIN7 has a checkered history of targeting restaurant, gambling, and hospitality industries in th...