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

A novel hardware attack dubbed  PACMAN  has been demonstrated against Apple's M1 processor chipsets, potentially arming a malicious actor with the capability to gain arbitrary code execution on macOS systems. It leverages "speculative execution attacks to bypass an important memory protection mechanism, ARM Pointer Authentication, a security feature that is used to enforce pointer integrity," MIT researchers Joseph Ravichandran, Weon Taek Na, Jay Lang, and Mengjia Yan  said  in a new paper. What's more concerning is that "while the hardware mechanisms used by PACMAN cannot be patched with software features, memory corruption bugs can be," the researchers added. The vulnerability is rooted in pointer authentication codes ( PACs ), a line of defense introduced in arm64e architecture that aims to detect and secure against unexpected changes to  pointers  — objects that reference an address location in memory. PACs aim to solve a common problem in software...

A new research undertaken by a group of academics from the University of California San Diego has revealed for the first time that Bluetooth signals can be fingerprinted to track smartphones (and therefore, individuals). The identification, at its core, hinges on imperfections in the Bluetooth chipset hardware introduced during the manufacturing process, resulting in a "unique physical-layer fingerprint." "To perform a physical-layer fingerprinting attack, the attacker must be equipped with a Software Defined Radio sniffer: a radio receiver capable of recording raw IQ radio signals," the researchers  said  in a  new paper   titled  "Evaluating Physical-Layer BLE Location Tracking Attacks on Mobile Devices." The  attack  is made possible due to the ubiquitous nature of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons that are continuously transmitted by modern devices to enable crucial functions such as  contact tracing  during public health emergencie...

Cybercriminals are impersonating popular crypto platforms such as Binance, Celo, and Trust Wallet with spoofed emails and fake login pages in an attempt to steal login details and deceptively transfer virtual funds. "As cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) become more mainstream, and capture headlines for their volatility, there is a greater likelihood of more individuals falling victim to fraud attempting to exploit people for digital currencies," Proofpoint  said  in a new report. "The rise and proliferation of cryptocurrency has also provided attackers with a new method of financial extraction." The targeting of sensitive cryptocurrency data by threat actors was recently echoed by the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team, which warned about the emerging threat of  cryware  wherein private keys, seed phrases, and wallet addresses are plundered with the goal of siphoning virtual currencies by means of fraudulent transfers. The  swift popularity o...

As many as four zero-day security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the HID Mercury access controller system that's used widely in healthcare, education, transportation, and government facilities. "The vulnerabilities uncovered allowed us to demonstrate the ability to remotely unlock and lock doors, subvert alarms and undermine logging and notification systems," Trellix security researchers Steve Povolny and Sam Quinn said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The issues, in a nutshell, could be weaponized by a malicious actor to gain full system control, including the ability to manipulate door locks. One of the bugs (CVE-2022-31481) includes an unauthenticated remote execution flaw that's rated 10 out of 10 for severity on the CVSS scoring system. HID Mercury controllers, which feature highly flexible configurations, are utilized by over 20 OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners to design and deploy a broad range of access control systems, with ...

A newly designed privacy-sensitive architecture aims to enable developers to create smart home apps in a manner that addresses data sharing concerns and puts users in control over their personal information.  Dubbed  Peekaboo  by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the  system  "leverages an in-home hub to pre-process and minimize outgoing data in a structured and enforceable manner before sending it to external cloud servers." Peekaboo operates on the principle of data minimization, which refers to the practice of limiting data collection to only what is required to fulfill a specific purpose. To achieve this, the system requires developers to explicitly declare the relevant data collection behaviors in the form of a manifest file that's then fed into an in-home trusted hub to transmit sensitive data from smart home apps such as smart doorbells on a need-to-know basis. The hub not only functions as a mediator between raw data from IoT devices and...

Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off what they call a "nearly-impossible-to-detect" Linux malware that could be weaponized to backdoor infected systems. Dubbed  Symbiote  by threat intelligence firms BlackBerry and Intezer, the stealthy malware is so named for its ability to conceal itself within running processes and network traffic and drain a victim's resources like a  parasite . The operators behind Symbiote are believed to have commenced development on the malware in November 2021, with the threat actor predominantly using it to target the financial sector in Latin America, including banks like Banco do Brasil and Caixa, based on the domain names used. "Symbiote's main objective is to capture credentials and to facilitate backdoor access to a victim's machine," researchers Joakim Kennedy and Ismael Valenzuela said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "What makes Symbiote different from other Linux malware is that it infec...

Common cybercriminals are a menace, there's no doubt about it – from bedroom hackers through to ransomware groups, cybercriminals are causing a lot of damage. But both the tools used and the threat posed by common cybercriminals pale in comparison to the tools used by more professional groups such as the famous hacking groups and state-sponsored groups. In fact, these tools can prove almost impossible to detect – and guard against. BVP47 is a case in point. In this article, we'll outline how this powerful state-sponsored malware has been quietly circulating for years, how it so cleverly disguises itself, and explain what that means for cybersecurity in the enterprise. Background story behind BVP47 It's a long story, fit for a spy novel. Earlier this year, a Chinese cybersecurity research group called Pangu Lab published an in-depth, 56-page report covering a piece of malicious code that the research group decided to call BVP47 (because BVP was the most common string in ...