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Cybersecurity researcher Mordechai Guri from Israel's Ben Gurion University of the Negev recently demonstrated a new kind of malware that could be used to covertly steal highly sensitive data from air-gapped and audio-gapped systems using a novel acoustic quirk in power supply units that come with modern computing devices. Dubbed ' POWER-SUPPLaY ,' the latest research builds on a series of techniques leveraging electromagnetic, acoustic, thermal, optical covert channels, and even power cables to exfiltrate data from non-networked computers. "Our developed malware can exploit the computer power supply unit (PSU) to play sounds and use it as an out-of-band, secondary speaker with limited capabilities," Dr. Guri outlined in a paper published today and shared with The Hacker News. "The malicious code manipulates the internal switching frequency of the power supply and hence controls the sound waveforms generated from its capacitors and transformers....

Days after cybersecurity researchers sounded the alarm over two critical vulnerabilities in the SaltStack configuration framework , a hacking campaign has already begun exploiting the flaws to breach servers of LineageOS, Ghost, and DigiCert. Tracked as CVE-2020-11651 and CVE-2020-11652 , the disclosed flaws could allow an adversary to execute arbitrary code on remote servers deployed in data centers and cloud environments. The issues were fixed by SaltStack in a release published on April 29th. "We expect that any competent hacker will be able to create 100% reliable exploits for these issues in under 24 hours," F-Secure researchers had previously warned in an advisory last week. LineageOS, a maker of an open-source operating system based on Android, said it detected the intrusion on May 2nd at around 8 pm Pacific Time. "Around 8 pm PST on May 2nd, 2020, an attacker used a CVE in our SaltStack master to gain access to our infrastructure," the company n...

Two severe security flaws have been discovered in the open-source SaltStack Salt configuration framework that could allow an adversary to execute arbitrary code on remote servers deployed in data centers and cloud environments. The vulnerabilities were identified by F-Secure researchers earlier this March and disclosed on Thursday, a day after SaltStack released a patch (version 3000.2) addressing the issues , rated with CVSS score 10. "The vulnerabilities, allocated CVE IDs CVE-2020-11651 and CVE-2020-11652 , are of two different classes," the cybersecurity firm said . "One being authentication bypass where functionality was unintentionally exposed to unauthenticated network clients, the other being directory traversal where untrusted input (i.e., parameters in network requests) was not sanitized correctly allowing unconstrained access to the entire filesystem of the master server." The researchers warned that the flaws could be exploited in the wild imm...

In the last few months, multiple groups of attackers successfully compromised corporate email accounts of at least 156 high-ranking officers at various firms based in Germany, the UK, Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Dubbed ' PerSwaysion ,' the newly spotted cyberattack campaign leveraged Microsoft file-sharing services—including Sway, SharePoint, and OneNote—to launch highly targeted phishing attacks. According to a report Group-IB Threat Intelligence team published today and shared with The Hacker News, PerSwaysion operations attacked executives of more than 150 companies around the world, primarily with businesses in finance, law, and real estate sectors. "Among these high-ranking officer victims, more than 20 Office365 accounts of executives, presidents, and managing directors appeared." So far successful and still ongoing, most PerSwaysion operations were orchestrated by scammers from Nigeria and South Africa who used a Vue.js JavaScript framewor...

A new type of mobile banking malware has been discovered abusing Android's accessibility features to exfiltrate sensitive data from financial applications, read user SMS messages, and hijack SMS-based two-factor authentication codes. Called "EventBot" by Cybereason researchers, the malware is capable of targeting over 200 different financial apps, including banking, money transfer services, and crypto-currency wallets such as Paypal Business, Revolut, Barclays, CapitalOne, HSBC, Santander, TransferWise, and Coinbase. "EventBot is particularly interesting because it is in such early stages," the researchers said. "This brand new malware has real potential to become the next big mobile malware, as it is under constant iterative improvements, abuses a critical operating system feature, and targets financial applications." The campaign, first identified in March 2020, masks its malicious intent by posing as legitimate applications (e.g., Adobe Fl...

The Scouts acknowledged the necessity to "Be Prepared" over 100 years (!) ago; the industry should have, as well. Yet COVID-19 took businesses – more like the entire world – by surprise. Very few were prepared for the explosion of remote access, and the challenge of instantly shifting an entire organization to work from anywhere. Cato Networks shared its increase in remote access usage post coronavirus outbreak. The trend is clear. Remote access has become an essential pillar for ensuring business continuity; nevertheless, the requirements to enable this, especially at a time of crisis, can be overwhelming. The industry is undergoing a paradigm shift. In the past, most works were performed from the office, and only a subset of the business operated remotely. Today, most (if not all) users require secure and optimized access to applications from remote. Legacy VPN isn't suited to support this shift. It was designed for sporadic access by a subset of the us...

Security researchers are sounding the alarm over newly discovered vulnerabilities in some popular online learning management system ( LMS ) plugins that various organizations and universities use to offer online training courses through their WordPress-based websites. According to the Check Point Research Team, the three WordPress plugins in question — LearnPress , LearnDash , and LifterLMS — have security flaws that could permit students, as well as unauthenticated users, to pilfer personal information of registered users and even attain teacher privileges. "Because of coronavirus, we're doing everything from our homes, including our formal learning," Check Point Research's Omri Herscovici said. "The vulnerabilities found allow students, and sometimes even unauthenticated users, to gain sensitive information or take control of the LMS platforms." The three LMS systems are installed on approximately 100,000 different educational platforms, includi...