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A virtual private network (VPN) is the perfect solution for a lot of issues you might experience online- accessing blocked sites, hiding your browsing activity, getting rid of internet throttling, finding better deals, and much more.  But does a VPN protect you from hackers? Is your private information and files safer on the internet with a VPN? How much of a difference does it make in terms of data protection?  The answer to these questions isn't as simple as Yes or No. So, keep reading to find out. Does a VPN Prevent Hacking?  You should definitely use a VPN on a public network or your home wi-fi because it significantly protects your privacy. But a VPN can't simply protect you from every single type of cyber attack. Some attacks are very sophisticated and complex, which even a VPN can't prevent.  But let's look at some of the cyber attacks that a VPN can stop. 1  —  MITM (Man-in-the-Middle) Attack  A MITM attack is when a hacker comes in bet...

A North Korean threat actor has been discovered taking advantage of two exploits in Internet Explorer to infect victims with a custom implant as part of a strategic web compromise (SWC) targeting a South Korean online newspaper. Cybersecurity firm Volexity  attributed  the watering hole attacks to a threat actor it tracks as InkySquid, and more widely known by the monikers ScarCruft and APT37. Daily NK, the publication in question, is said to have hosted the malicious code from at least late March 2021 until early June 2021. The "clever disguise of exploit code amongst legitimate code" and the use of custom malware enables the attackers to avoid detection, Volexity researchers said. The attacks involved tampering with the jQuery JavaScript libraries hosted on the website to serve additional obfuscated JavaScript code from a remote URL, using it to leverage exploits for two Internet Explorer flaws that were patched by Microsoft in  August 2020  and  March 20...

Details have emerged about a new unpatched security vulnerability in Fortinet's web application firewall (WAF) appliances that could be abused by a remote, authenticated attacker to execute malicious commands on the system. "An OS command injection vulnerability in FortiWeb's management interface (version 6.3.11 and prior) can allow a remote, authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the system, via the SAML server configuration page," cybersecurity firm Rapid7  said  in an advisory published Tuesday. "This vulnerability appears to be related to  CVE-2021-22123 , which was addressed in  FG-IR-20-120 ." Rapid7 said it discovered and reported the issue in June 2021. Fortinet is expected to release a patch at the end of August with version Fortiweb 6.4.1. The command injection flaw is yet to be assigned a CVE identifier, but it has a severity rating of 8.7 on the CVSS scoring system. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability can allow auth...

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...

A new social engineering-based malvertising campaign targeting Japan has been found to deliver a malicious application that deploys a banking trojan on compromised Windows machines to steal credentials associated with cryptocurrency accounts. The application masquerades as an animated porn game, a reward points application, or a video streaming application, Trend Micro researchers Jaromir Horejsi and Joseph C Chen  said  in an analysis published last week, attributing the operation to a threat actor it tracks as Water Kappa, which was  previously found  targeting Japanese online banking users with the Cinobi trojan by leveraging exploits in Internet Explorer browser. The switch in tactics is an indicator that the adversary is singling out users of web browsers other than Internet Explorer, the researchers added. Water Kappa's latest infection routine commences with malvertisements for either Japanese animated porn games, reward points apps, or video streaming s...

The Incident Response (IR) services market is in accelerated growth due to the rise in cyberattacks that result in breaches. More and more organizations, across all sizes and verticals, choose to outsource IR to 3rd party service providers over handling security incidents in-house. Cynet is now launching a first-of-its-kind offering, enabling any Managed Security Provider (MSP) or Security Integrator (SI) to add Incident Response to its services portfolio, without building an in-house team of incident responders, by using Cynet's IR team and technology at no cost. Managed Service providers interested to add Incident Response to their service portfolio with no investment in people or technology can apply here . As cyber threats grow in sophistication and volume, there is an increasing number of cases in which attackers succeed in compromising the environments they target. This, in turn, fuels a rapidly growing demand for IR technologies and services. Since in most cases ...

Taiwanese chip designer Realtek is warning of  four security vulnerabilities  in three software development kits (SDKs) accompanying its WiFi modules, which are used in almost 200 IoT devices made by at least 65 vendors. The flaws, which affect Realtek SDK v2.x, Realtek "Jungle" SDK v3.0/v3.1/v3.2/v3.4.x/v3.4T/v3.4T-CT, and Realtek "Luna" SDK up to version 1.3.2, could be abused by attackers to fully compromise the target device and execute arbitrary code with the highest level of privilege — CVE-2021-35392  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Heap buffer overflow vulnerability in 'WiFi Simple Config' server due to unsafe crafting of SSDP NOTIFY messages CVE-2021-35393  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Stack buffer overflow vulnerability in 'WiFi Simple Config' server due to unsafe parsing of the UPnP SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE Callback header CVE-2021-35394  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities and an arbitrary command injection vulnerability in 'UD...

Weaknesses in the implementation of TCP protocol in  middleboxes  and censorship infrastructure could be weaponized as a vector to stage reflected denial of service (DoS) amplification attacks against any target, surpassing many of the existing UDP-based amplification factors to date. Detailed by a group of academics from the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado Boulder at the USENIX Security Symposium, the volumetric attacks take advantage of TCP-non-compliance in-network middleboxes — such as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and deep packet inspection (DPI) boxes — to amplify network traffic, with hundreds of thousands of IP addresses offering  amplification factors  exceeding those from DNS, NTP, and Memcached. The research, which received a Distinguished Paper Award at the conference, is the first of its kind to describe a technique to carry out DDoS reflected amplification attacks over the TCP protocol by abusing middlebox misconfigu...