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As cyber threats loom large and data breaches continue to pose increasingly significant risks. Organizations and industries that handle sensitive information and valuable assets make prime targets for cybercriminals seeking financial gain or strategic advantage.  Which is why many highly regulated sectors, from finance to utilities, are turning to military-grade cyber defenses to safeguard their operations. Regulatory Pressures Impacting Cyber Decisions Industries such as finance, healthcare, and government are subject to strict regulatory standards, governing data privacy, security, and compliance. Non-compliance with these regulations can result in severe penalties, legal repercussions, and damage to reputation. To meet regulatory requirements and mitigate the ever-increasing risk, organizations are shifting to adopt more robust cybersecurity measures. Understanding the Increase of Threats Attacks on regulated industries have increased dramatically over the past 5 years, wi...

An analysis of a hybrid biometric access system from Chinese manufacturer ZKTeco has uncovered two dozen security flaws that could be used by attackers to defeat authentication, steal biometric data, and even deploy malicious backdoors. "By adding random user data to the database or using a fake QR code, a nefarious actor can easily bypass the verification process and gain unauthorized access," Kaspersky said . "Attackers can also steal and leak biometric data, remotely manipulate devices, and deploy backdoors." The 24 flaws span six SQL injections, seven stack-based buffer overflows, five command injections, four arbitrary file writes, and two arbitrary file reads. A brief description of each vulnerability type is below - CVE-2023-3938 (CVSS score: 4.6) - An SQL injection flaw when displaying a QR code into the device's camera by passing a specially crafted request containing a quotation mark, thereby allowing an attacker to authenticate as any user in th...

Threat actors linked to North Korea have accounted for one-third of all the phishing activity targeting Brazil since 2020, as the country's emergence as an influential power has drawn the attention of cyber espionage groups. "North Korean government-backed actors have targeted the Brazilian government and Brazil's aerospace, technology, and financial services sectors," Google's Mandiant and Threat Analysis Group (TAG) divisions said in a joint report published this week. "Similar to their targeting interests in other regions, cryptocurrency and financial technology firms have been a particular focus, and at least three North Korean groups have targeted Brazilian cryptocurrency and fintech companies." Prominent among those groups is a threat actor tracked as UNC4899 (aka Jade Sleet, PUKCHONG, and TraderTraitor), which has targeted cryptocurrency professionals with a malware-laced trojanized Python app. The attack chains involve reaching out to pote...

Microsoft on Thursday revealed that it's delaying the rollout of the controversial artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Recall feature for Copilot+ PCs. To that end, the company said it intends to shift from general availability to a preview available first in the Windows Insider Program ( WIP ) in the coming weeks. "We are adjusting the release model for Recall to leverage the expertise of the Windows Insider community to ensure the experience meets our high standards for quality and security," it said in an update. "This decision is rooted in our commitment to providing a trusted, secure and robust experience for all customers and to seek additional feedback prior to making the feature available to all Copilot+ PC users." First unveiled last month, Recall was originally slated for a broad release on June 18, 2024, but has since waded into controversial waters after it was widely panned as a privacy and security risk and an alluring target for threat ac...

The security risks posed by the Pickle format have once again come to the fore with the discovery of a new "hybrid machine learning (ML) model exploitation technique" dubbed Sleepy Pickle. The attack method, per Trail of Bits, weaponizes the ubiquitous format used to package and distribute machine learning (ML) models to corrupt the model itself, posing a severe supply chain risk to an organization's downstream customers. "Sleepy Pickle is a stealthy and novel attack technique that targets the ML model itself rather than the underlying system," security researcher Boyan Milanov said . While pickle is a widely used serialization format by ML libraries like PyTorch , it can be used to carry out arbitrary code execution attacks simply by loading a pickle file (i.e., during deserialization). "We suggest loading models from users and organizations you trust, relying on signed commits, and/or loading models from [TensorFlow] or Jax formats with the from_...

The threat actor known as Arid Viper has been attributed to a mobile espionage campaign that leverages trojanized Android apps to deliver a spyware strain dubbed AridSpy. "The malware is distributed through dedicated websites impersonating various messaging apps, a job opportunity app, and a Palestinian Civil Registry app," ESET researcher Lukáš Štefanko said in a report published today. "Often these are existing applications that had been trojanized by the addition of AridSpy's malicious code." The activity is said to have spanned as many as five campaigns since 2022, with prior variants of AridSpy documented by Zimperium and 360 Beacon Labs . Three out of the five campaigns are still active. Arid Viper, a suspected Hamas-affiliated actor which is also called APT-C-23, Desert Falcon, Grey Karkadann, Mantis, and Two-tailed Scorpion, has a long track record of using mobile malware since its emergence in 2017. "Arid Viper has historically targeted mil...

Recent supply chain cyber-attacks are prompting cyber security regulations in the financial sector to tighten compliance requirements, and other industries are expected to follow. Many companies still don't have efficient methods to manage related time-sensitive SaaS security and compliance tasks. Free SaaS risk assessment tools are an easy and practical way to bring visibility and initial control to SaaS sprawl and Shadow AI. These tools now offer incremental upgrades , helping security professionals meet their company budget or maturity level.  Regulatory pressure, SaaS and AI proliferation, and increased risk of breaches or data leaks through 3rd party apps, make SaaS security one of the hottest areas for practitioners to learn and adopt. New regulations will require robust third-party SaaS risk lifecycle management that begins with SaaS service discovery and third-party risk management (TPRM) and ends with the requirement from CISOs to report incidents in their supply ch...