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Thai activists involved in the country's pro-democracy protests have had their smartphones infected with NSO Group's infamous Pegasus government-sponsored spyware. At least 30 individuals, spanning activists, academics, lawyers, and NGO workers, are believed to have been targeted between October 2020 and November 2021, many of whom have been previously detained, arrested and imprisoned for their political activities or criticism of the government. "The timing of the infections is highly relevant to specific political events in Thailand, as well as specific actions by the Thai justice system," the Citizen Lab  said  in a Sunday report. "In many cases, for example, infections occurred slightly before protests and other political activities by the victims." The findings are the result of  threat notifications  sent by Apple last November to alert users it believes have been targeted by state-sponsored attackers. The attacks entailed the use of two zero-cl...

Researchers from Wordfence have  sounded  the alarm about a "sudden" spike in cyber attacks attempting to exploit an unpatched flaw in a WordPress plugin called  Kaswara Modern WPBakery Page Builder Addons . Tracked as  CVE-2021-24284 , the issue is rated 10.0 on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system and relates to an unauthenticated arbitrary file upload that could be abused to gain code execution, permitting attackers to seize control of affected WordPress sites. Although the bug was originally  disclosed  in April 2021 by the WordPress security company, it continues to remain unresolved to date. To make matters worse, the plugin has been closed and is no longer actively maintained. Wordfence, which is protecting over 1,000 websites that have the plugin installed, said it has blocked an average of 443,868 attack attempts per day since the start of the month. The attacks have emanated from 10,215 IP addresses, with a majority of the exploitation att...

With global cybercrime costs expected to reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures, it comes as little surprise that the risk of attack is companies' biggest concern globally. To help businesses uncover and fix the vulnerabilities and misconfigurations affecting their systems, there is an (over)abundance of solutions available.  But beware, they may not give you a full and continuous view of your weaknesses if used in isolation. With huge financial gains to be had from each successful breach, hackers do not rest in their hunt for flaws and use a wide range of tools and scanners to help them in their search. Beating these criminals means staying one step ahead and using the most comprehensive and responsive vulnerability detection support you can.  We'll go through each solution and explain how you can maintain your vigilance. Of course, vulnerability management is just one step businesses must take to prevent a breach; there's also proper...

Industrial engineers and operators are the target of a new campaign that leverages password cracking software to seize control of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and co-opt the machines to a botnet. The software "exploited a vulnerability in the firmware which allowed it to retrieve the password on command," Dragos security researcher Sam Hanson  said . "Further, the software was a malware dropper, infecting the machine with the Sality malware and turning the host into a peer in Sality's peer-to-peer botnet." The industrial cybersecurity firm said the password retrieval exploit embedded in the malware dropper is designed to recover the credential associated with Automation Direct  DirectLOGIC 06 PLC . The exploit, tracked as CVE-2022-2003 (CVSS score: 7.7), has been described as a case of cleartext transmission of sensitive data that could lead to information disclosure and unauthorized changes. The issue was  addressed  in firmware Version 2.72 rele...

Juniper Networks has pushed security updates to address  several vulnerabilities  affecting multiple products, some of which could be exploited to seize control of affected systems. The most critical of the flaws affect Junos Space and Contrail Networking, with the tech company urging customers to update to release versions 22.1R1 and 21.4.0, respectively. Chief among them is a collection of 31 bugs in the Junos Space network management software, including CVE-2021-23017 (CVSS score: 9.4) that could result in a crash of vulnerable devices or even achieve arbitrary code execution. "A security issue in nginx resolver was identified, which might allow an attacker who is able to forge UDP packets from the DNS server to cause 1-byte memory overwrite, resulting in worker process crash or potential other impact," the company  said . The same security vulnerability has also been  remediated  in Northstar Controller in versions 5.1.0 Service Pack 6 and 6.2.2. Addi...

Following the launch of a new "Data safety" section for Android apps on the Play Store, Google appears to be readying to remove the app permissions list from both the mobile app and the web. The change was  highlighted  by Esper's Mishaal Rahman earlier this week. The  Data safety  section, which Google began rolling out in late April 2022, is the company's answer to Apple's Privacy Nutrition Labels in iOS, allowing users to have a unified view of an app's data collection and processing practices. To that end, third-party app developers are required to furnish the required details by July 20, 2022. With this deadline now approaching next week, the tech giant has taken the step of entirely removing the permissions section. The decision also appears to be a hasty one, as a number of popular apps such as Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Amazon (including Amazon Prime Video), DuckDuckGo, Discord, and PhonePe are yet to populate their Data safety sec...

VoIP phones using Digium's software have been targeted to drop a web shell on their servers as part of an attack campaign designed to exfiltrate data by downloading and executing additional payloads. "The malware installs multilayer obfuscated PHP backdoors to the web server's file system, downloads new payloads for execution, and schedules recurring tasks to re-infect the host system," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42  said  in a Friday report. The unusual activity is said to have commenced in mid-December 2021 and targets Asterisk, a widely used software implementation of a private branch exchange (PBX) that runs on the open-source Elastix Unified Communications Server. Unit 42 said the intrusions share similarities with the  INJ3CTOR3 campaign  that Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point disclosed in November 2020, alluding to the possibility that they could be a "resurgence" of the previous attacks. Coinciding with the sudden surge is the public disclos...