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Google has once again  pushed its plans  to deprecate third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser as it works to address outstanding competition concerns from U.K. regulators over its Privacy Sandbox initiative. The tech giant said it's working closely with the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and hopes to achieve an agreement by the end of the year. As part of the new timeline, it aims to start phasing out third-party cookies early next year, making it the third such extension since the tech giant  announced  the plans in 2020, postponing it from  early 2022 to late 2023 , and again to the  second half of 2024 . Privacy Sandbox refers to a  set of initiatives  that offers privacy-preserving alternatives to tracking cookies and cross-app identifiers in order to serve tailored ads to users. While Google has since  enabled  the features to a subset of Chrome browser users...

A new malware campaign leveraged two zero-day flaws in Cisco networking gear to deliver custom malware and facilitate covert data collection on target environments. Cisco Talos, which dubbed the activity  ArcaneDoor , attributed it as the handiwork of a previously undocumented sophisticated state-sponsored actor it tracks under the name UAT4356 (aka Storm-1849 by Microsoft). "UAT4356 deployed two backdoors as components of this campaign, 'Line Runner' and 'Line Dancer,' which were used collectively to conduct malicious actions on-target, which included configuration modification, reconnaissance, network traffic capture/exfiltration and potentially lateral movement," Talos  said . The intrusions, which were first detected and confirmed in early January 2024, entail the exploitation of  two vulnerabilities  - CVE-2024-20353  (CVSS score: 8.6) - Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense Software Web Services Denial-of-Service Vulner...

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Monday sanctioned two firms and four individuals for their involvement in malicious cyber activities on behalf of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC) from at least 2016 to April 2021. This includes the front companies Mehrsam Andisheh Saz Nik (MASN) and Dadeh Afzar Arman (DAA), as well as the Iranian nationals Alireza Shafie Nasab, Reza Kazemifar Rahman, Hossein Mohammad Harooni, and Komeil Baradaran Salmani. "These actors targeted more than a dozen U.S. companies and government entities through cyber operations, including spear-phishing and malware attacks," the Treasury Department  said . Concurrent with the sanctions, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  unsealed  an indictment against the four individuals for orchestrating cyber attacks targeting the U.S. government and private entities. Furthermore, a  reward of up to $10 ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an ongoing attack campaign that's leveraging phishing emails to deliver a malware called SSLoad . The campaign, codenamed  FROZEN#SHADOW  by Securonix, also involves the deployment of Cobalt Strike and the ConnectWise ScreenConnect remote desktop software. "SSLoad is designed to stealthily infiltrate systems, gather sensitive information and transmit its findings back to its operators," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Once inside the system, SSLoad deploys multiple backdoors and payloads to maintain persistence and avoid detection." Attack chains involve the use of phishing messages to randomly target organizations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, with emails containing links that lead to the retrieval of a JavaScript file that kicks off the infection flow. Earlier this month, Palo Alto Networks uncovered at least two d...

Security vulnerabilities uncovered in cloud-based pinyin keyboard apps could be exploited to reveal users' keystrokes to nefarious actors. The findings come from the Citizen Lab, which discovered weaknesses in eight of nine apps from vendors like Baidu, Honor, iFlytek, OPPO, Samsung, Tencent, Vivo, and Xiaomi. The only vendor whose keyboard app did not have any security shortcomings is that of Huawei's. The vulnerabilities could be exploited to "completely reveal the contents of users' keystrokes in transit," researchers Jeffrey Knockel, Mona Wang, and Zoë Reichert  said . The disclosure builds upon prior research from the interdisciplinary laboratory based at the University of Toronto, which identified  cryptographic flaws  in Tencent's Sogou Input Method last August. Collectively, it's estimated that close to one billion users are affected by this class of vulnerabilities, with Input Method Editors (IMEs) from ...