The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

The iPhone of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , the world's richest man, was reportedly hacked in May 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message from the personal account of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman , the Guardian newspaper revealed today. Citing unnamed sources familiar with digital forensic analysis of the breach, the newspaper claimed that a massive amount of data was exfiltrated from Bezos's phone within hours after he received a malicious video file from the Saudi prince. The mysterious file was sent when crown prince Salman and Bezos were having a friendly WhatsApp conversation, and it's 'highly probable' that it exploited an undisclosed zero-day vulnerability of WhatsApp messenger to install malware on Bezos's iPhone. "The forensic analysis found that within hours of receipt of the MP4 video file from the Crown Prince's account, massive and (for Bezos' phone) unprecedented exfiltration of data from the phone began, increasing da...

What are the key considerations security decision-makers should take into account when designing their 2020 breach protection? To answer this, we polled 1,536 cybersecurity professionals in The State of Breach Protection 2020 survey ( Download the full survey here ) to understand the common practices, prioritization, and preferences of the organization today in protecting themselves from breaches. Security executives face significant challenges when confronting the evolving threat landscape. For example: What type of attacks pose the greatest risk, and what security products would best address them? Is it better to build a strong team in-house, outsource the entire security operation, or search for a sweet spot between the two? What type and level of automation should be introduced into the breach protection workflows? The State of Breach Protection 2020 survey provides insights into these questions and others. Here are a few of the insights the survey unveils: 1)...

Imagine receiving an email from US VP Mike Pence's official email account asking for help because he has been stranded in the Philippines. Actually, you don't have to. This actually happened. Pence's email was hacked when he was still the governor of Indiana, and his account was used to attempt to defraud several people. How did this happen? Is it similar to how the DNC server was hacked? Email hacking is one of the most widespread cyber threats at present. It is estimated that around 8 out of 10 people who use the internet have received some form of phishing attack through their emails. Additionally, according to Avanan's 2019 Global Phish Report , 1 in 99 emails is a phishing attack. BitDam is aware of how critical emails are in modern communication. BitDam published a new study on the email threat detection weaknesses of the leading players in email security, and the findings command attention. The research team discovered how Microsoft's Office365 ...

Citrix has finally started rolling out security patches for a critical vulnerability in ADC and Gateway software that attackers started exploiting in the wild earlier this month after the company announced the existence of the issue without releasing any permanent fix. I wish I could say, "better late than never," but since hackers don't waste time or miss any opportunity to exploit vulnerable systems, even a short window of time resulted in the compromise of hundreds of Internet exposed Citrix ADC and Gateway systems. As explained earlier on The Hacker News, the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-19781 , is a path traversal issue that could allow unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on several versions of Citrix ADC and Gateway products, as well as on the two older versions of Citrix SD-WAN WANOP. Rated critical with CVSS v3.1 base score 9.8, the issue was discovered by Mikhail Klyuchnikov, a security researcher at Positive Technologies, w...

Testing security controls is the only way to know if they are truly defending your organization. With many different testing frameworks and tools to choose from, you have lots of options. But what do you specifically want to know? And how are the findings relevant to the threat landscape you face at this moment? "Decide what you want to know and then choose the best tool for the job." Security teams typically use several different testing tools to evaluate infrastructure. According to SANS , 69.9% of security teams use vendor-provided testing tools, 60.2% use pen-testing tools, and 59.7% use homegrown tools and scripts. While vendor-provided tools test a specific security solution—whether it's a web application firewall (WAF), EDR solution, or something else—pen testing is frequently used to verify that controls meet compliance requirements, such as PCI DSS regulations, and by red teams as part of broader testing assessments and exercises. Automated pen test...

Internet Explorer is dead, but not the mess it left behind. Microsoft earlier today issued an emergency security advisory warning millions of Windows users of a new zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) browser that attackers are actively exploiting in the wild — and there is no patch yet available for it. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-0674 and rated moderated, is a remote code execution issue that exists in the way the scripting engine handles objects in memory of Internet Explorer and triggers through JScript.dll library. A remote attacker can execute arbitrary code on targeted computers and take full control over them just by convincing victims into opening a maliciously crafted web page on the vulnerable Microsoft browser. "The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as...

Penetration tests have long been known as a critical security tool that exposes security weaknesses through simulated attacks on an organization's IT environments. These test results can help prioritize weaknesses, providing a road-map towards remediation. However, the results are also capable of doing even more. They identify and quantify security risk, and can be used as a keystone in cybersecurity policies. The same can be said about broader penetration testing practices. Organizations gain real value from learning about others' penetration testing experiences, trends, and the role they play in today's threat landscape. The world of pen testing can be an interesting balance of open collaboration and closely guarded privacy. While pen testers may engage in teaming exercises, or happily talk technique when they attend Black Hat, most organizations are extremely reluctant when it comes to discussing their pen testing practices and results. Of course, confidentia...