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Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a free-to-use browser automation framework that's being increasingly used by threat actors as part of their attack campaigns. "The framework contains numerous features which we assess may be utilized in the enablement of malicious activities," researchers from Team Cymru  said  in a new report published Wednesday. "The technical entry bar for the framework is purposefully kept low, which has served to create an active community of content developers and contributors, with actors in the underground economy advertising their time for the creation of bespoke tooling." The U.S. cybersecurity company said it observed command-and-control (C2) IP addresses associated with malware such as  Bumblebee ,  BlackGuard , and  RedLine Stealer  establishing connections to the downloads subdomain of Bablosoft ("downloads.bablosoft[.]com"), the maker of the Browser Automation Studio (BAS). Bablosoft was previously...

In any organization, there are certain accounts that are designated as being privileged. These privileged accounts differ from standard user accounts in that they have permission to perform actions that go beyond what standard users can do. The actions vary based on the nature of the account but can include anything from setting up new user accounts to shutting down mission-critical systems. Privileged accounts are essential tools. Without these accounts, the IT staff would be unable to do its job. At the same time, privileged accounts can pose a serious threat to an organization's security. Added risk of a privileged account  Imagine for a moment that a hacker manages to steal a standard user's password and is able to log in as that user. Even though the hacker would have access to certain resources at that point, they would be constrained by the user's privileges (or lack thereof). In other words, the hacker would be able to browse the Internet, open some applications, and ac...

The maintainers of the Tails project have issued a warning that the Tor Browser that's bundled with the operating system is unsafe to use for accessing or entering sensitive information. "We recommend that you stop using Tails until the release of 5.1 (May 31) if you use Tor Browser for sensitive information (passwords, private messages, personal information, etc.)," the project  said  in an advisory issued this week. Tails, short for The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is a security-oriented Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity by connecting to the internet through the Tor network. The alert comes as Mozilla on May 20, 2022 rolled out fixes for  two critical zero-day flaws  in its Firefox browser, a modified version of which acts as the foundation of the Tor Browser. Tracked as CVE-2022-1802 and CVE-2022-1529, the two vulnerabilities are what's referred to as  prototype pollution  that could be weaponized to gain J...

Twitter, which is in the process of being acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has agreed to pay $150 million to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle allegations that it abused non-public information collected for security purposes to serve targeted ads. In addition to the monetary penalty for "misrepresenting its privacy and security practices," the company has been banned from profiting from the deceptively collected data and ordered to notify all affected users. "Twitter obtained data from users on the pretext of harnessing it for security purposes but then ended up also using the data to target users with ads," FTC Chair Lina M. Khan  said  in a statement. "This practice affected more than 140 million Twitter users, while boosting Twitter's primary source of revenue." According to a  complaint  filed by the U.S. Justice Department, Twitter in May 2013 began enforcing a requirement for users to provide either a phone number or email ad...

A year-long international investigation has resulted in the arrest of the suspected head of the SilverTerrier cybercrime group by the Nigeria Police Force. "The suspect is alleged to have run a transnational cybercrime syndicate that launched mass phishing campaigns and business email compromise schemes targeting companies and individual victims," Interpol  said  in a statement. Operation Delilah, as the coordinated international effort is called, involved tracking the 37-year-old Nigerian man's physical movements, before he was apprehended at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos in March 2022. Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity company Group-IB said it provided threat intelligence that led to the arrest as part of the police operation that commenced in May 2021. According to Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 , which also assisted in the probe into SilverTerrier activity, the unnamed suspect is said to have been active since 2015 and involved in the cr...

A group of academics has devised a system that can be used on a phone or a laptop to identify and locate Wi-Fi-connected hidden IoT devices in unfamiliar physical spaces. With hidden cameras being  increasingly   used  to  snoop  on  individuals  in hotel rooms and Airbnbs, the goal is to be able to pinpoint such rogue devices without much of a hassle. The system, dubbed Lumos , is designed with this intent in mind and to "visualize their presence using an augmented reality interface,"  said  Rahul Anand Sharma, Elahe Soltanaghaei, Anthony Rowe, and Vyas Sekar of Carnegie Mellon University in a new paper. At its core, the platform works by snuffing and collecting encrypted wireless packets over the air to detect and identify concealed devices. Subsequently, it estimates the location of each identified device with respect to the user as they walk around the perimeter of the space. The localization module, for its part, combines signal st...

If one word could sum up the 2021 infosecurity year (well, actually three), it would be these: "supply chain attack".  A software supply chain attack happens when hackers manipulate the code in third-party software components to compromise the 'downstream' applications that use them. In 2021, we have seen a dramatic rise in such attacks: high profile security incidents like the SolarWinds, Kaseya, and  Codecov  data breaches have shaken enterprise's confidence in the security practices of third-party service providers. What does this have to do with secrets, you might ask? In short, a lot. Take the Codecov case (we'll go back to it quickly): it is a textbook example to illustrate how hackers leverage hardcoded credentials to gain initial access into their victims' systems and harvest more secrets down the chain.  Secrets-in-code remains one of the most overlooked vulnerabilities in the application security space, despite being a priority target in hack...