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Researchers have disclosed security vulnerabilities in handover, a fundamental mechanism that undergirds modern cellular networks, which could be exploited by adversaries to launch denial-of-service (DoS) and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks using low-cost equipment. The "vulnerabilities in the handover procedure are not limited to one handover case only but they impact all different handover cases and scenarios that are based on unverified measurement reports and signal strength thresholds," researchers Evangelos Bitsikas and Christina Pöpper from the New York University Abu Dhabi said in a  new paper . "The problem affects all generations since 2G (GSM), remaining unsolved so far." Handover , also known as handoff, is a process in telecommunications in which a phone call or a data session is transferred from one  cell site  (aka base station) to another cell tower without losing connectivity during the transmission. This method is crucial to establishing cellul...

The last several years have seen an ever-increasing number of cyber-attacks, and while the frequency of such attacks has increased, so too has the resulting damage. One needs only to look at  CISA's list of significant cyber incidents  to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. In May of 2021, for example, a ransomware attack brought down the Colonial Pipeline, causing a serious fuel disruption for much of the United States. Just last month, a hacking group gained access to call logs and text messages from telecommunications carriers all over the world. These are just two of dozens of cyber-attacks occurring this year. Because of these and other cyber security incidents, the Department of Homeland Security issues a  compulsory directive  to federal agencies to better protect federal information systems and the data that they contain against cyber-attack. This directive is based around  CISA's catalog of vulnerabilities  that are known to pose a signific...

A U.S. federal government commission associated with international rights has been targeted by a backdoor that reportedly compromised its internal network in what the researchers described as a "classic APT-type operation."  "This attack could have given total visibility of the network and complete control of a system and thus could be used as the first step in a multi-stage attack to penetrate this, or other networks more deeply," Czech security company Avast  said  in a report published last week. The name of the federal entity was not disclosed, but reports from  Ars Technica  and  The Record  tied it to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom ( USCIRF ). Avast said it was making its findings public after unsuccessful attempts to directly notify the agency about the intrusion and through other channels put in place by the U.S. government. At this stage, only "parts of the attack puzzle" have been uncovered, leaving the door open ...

A malicious Android app with more than 500,000 downloads from the Google Play app store has been found hosting malware that stealthily exfiltrates users' contact lists to an attacker-controlled server and signs up users to unwanted paid premium subscriptions without their knowledge. The latest Joker malware was found in a messaging-focused app named  Color Message  ("com.guo.smscolor.amessage"), which has since been removed from the official app marketplace. In addition, it has been observed simulating clicks in order to generate revenue from malicious ads and connecting to servers located in Russia. Color Message "accesses users' contact list and exfiltrates it over the network [and] automatically subscribes to unwanted paid services," mobile security firm Pradeo  noted . "To make it difficult to be removed, the application has the capability to hides it icon once installed." "We is [sic] committed to ensuring that the app is as useful ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an entirely new attack vector that enables adversaries to exploit the Log4Shell vulnerability on servers locally by using a JavaScript WebSocket connection. "This newly-discovered attack vector means that anyone with a vulnerable Log4j version on their machine or local private network can browse a website and potentially trigger the vulnerability," Matthew Warner, CTO of Blumira,  said . "At this point, there is no proof of active exploitation. This vector significantly expands the attack surface and can impact services even running as localhost which were not exposed to any network." WebSockets  allow for two-way communications between a web browser (or other client application) and a server, unlike HTTP, which is unidirectional where the client sends the request and the server sends the response. While the issue can be resolved by updating all local development and internet-facing environments to Log4j 2.16.0, Apache o...

The issues with Log4j continued to stack up as the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) on Friday rolled out yet another patch — version 2.17.0 — for the widely used logging library that could be exploited by malicious actors to stage a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. Tracked as  CVE-2021-45105  (CVSS score: 7.5), the new vulnerability affects all versions of the tool from 2.0-beta9 to 2.16.0, which the open-source nonprofit shipped earlier this week to remediate a second flaw that could result in remote code execution ( CVE-2021-45046 ), which, in turn, stemmed from an "incomplete" fix for  CVE-2021-44228 , otherwise called the Log4Shell vulnerability. "Apache Log4j2 versions 2.0-alpha1 through 2.16.0 did not protect from uncontrolled recursion from self-referential lookups," the ASF  explained  in a revised advisory. "When the logging configuration uses a non-default Pattern Layout with a Context Lookup (for example, $${ctx:loginId}), attackers with control o...

Meta Platforms on Thursday revealed it took steps to deplatform seven cyber mercenaries that it said carried out "indiscriminate" targeting of journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition, and human rights activists located in over 100 countries, amid mounting scrutiny of surveillance technologies. To that end, the company  said  it alerted 50,000 users of Facebook and Instagram that their accounts were spied on by the companies, who offer a variety of services that run the spyware gamut from hacking tools for infiltrating mobile phones to creating fake social media accounts to monitor targets. It also removed 1,500 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to these firms. "The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across the internet to collect intelligence, manipulate them into revealing information and compromise their devices and accounts," Meta's David Agranovich and Mike Dvilyanski said. "These compa...