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Hackers successfully infiltrated the computer system controlling a water treatment facility in the U.S. state of Florida and remotely changed a setting that drastically altered the levels of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) in the water. During a press conference held yesterday, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said an operator managed to catch the manipulation in real-time and restored the concentration levels to undo the damage. "At no time was there a significant effect on the water being treated, and more importantly the public was never in danger," Sheriff Gualtieri  said  in a statement. The water treatment facility, which is located in the city of Oldsmar and serves about 15,000 residents, is said to have been breached for approximately 3 to 5 minutes by unknown suspects on February 5, with the remote access occurring twice at 8:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The attacker briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide from 100 parts-per-million to 11,100 parts-per-million u...

Twin cyber operations conducted by state-sponsored Iranian threat actors demonstrate their continued focus on compiling detailed dossiers on Iranian citizens that could threaten the stability of the Islamic Republic, including dissidents, opposition forces, and ISIS supporters, and Kurdish natives. Tracing the extensive espionage operations to two advanced Iranian cyber-groups  Domestic Kitten  (or APT-C-50) and  Infy , cybersecurity firm Check Point revealed new and recent evidence of their ongoing activities that involve the use of a revamped malware toolset as well as tricking unwitting users into downloading malicious software under the guise of popular apps. "Both groups have conducted long-running cyberattacks and intrusive surveillance campaigns which target both individuals' mobile devices and personal computers," Check Point researchers said in a new analysis. "The operators of these campaigns are clearly active, responsive and constantly seeking new att...

While Gartner does not have a dedicated Magic Quadrant for Bug Bounties or Crowd Security Testing yet, Gartner Peer Insights already lists 24 vendors in the "Application Crowdtesting Services" category. We have compiled the top 5 most promising bug bounty platforms for those of you who are looking to enhance your existing software testing arsenal with knowledge and expertise from international security researchers:  1. HackerOne Being a unicorn backed by numerous reputable venture capitalists,  HackerOne  is probably the most well-known and recognized Bug Bounty brand in the world. According to their most recent annual report, over 1,700 companies trust the HackerOne platform to augment their in-house application security testing capacities. The report likewise says that their security researchers earned approximately $40 million in bounties in 2019 alone and $82 million cumulatively. HackerOne is also famous for hosting US government Bug Bounty programs, including ...

I had the honor of hosting the first episode of the Xposure Podcast live from Xposure Summit 2025. And I couldn't have asked for a better kickoff panel: three cybersecurity leaders who don't just talk security, they live it. Let me introduce them. Alex Delay , CISO at IDB Bank, knows what it means to defend a highly regulated environment. Ben Mead , Director of Cybersecurity at Avidity Biosciences, brings a forward-thinking security perspective that reflects the innovation behind Avidity's targeted RNA therapeutics. Last but not least, Michael Francess , Director of Cybersecurity Advanced Threat at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, leads the charge in protecting the franchise. Each brought a unique vantage point to a common challenge: applying Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) to complex production environments. Gartner made waves in 2023 with a bold prediction: organizations that prioritize CTEM will be three times less likely to be breached by 2026. But here's the kicker -...

Google on Thursday removed The Great Suspender , a popular Chrome extension used by millions of users, from its Chrome Web Store for containing malware. It also took the unusual step of deactivating it from users' computers. "This extension contains malware,"  read  a terse notification from Google, but it has since emerged that the add-on stealthily added features that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code from a remote server, including tracking users online and committing advertising fraud. "The old maintainer appears to have sold the extension to parties unknown, who have malicious intent to exploit the users of this extension in advertising fraud, tracking, and more," Calum McConnell  said  in a GitHub post. The extension, which had more than two million installs before it was disabled, would suspend tabs that aren't in use, replacing them with a blank gray screen until they were reloaded upon returning to the tabs in question. Signs of the...

A new distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) vector has ensnared Plex Media Server systems to amplify malicious traffic against targets to take them offline. "Plex's startup processes unintentionally expose a Plex UPnP-enabled service registration responder to the general Internet, where it can be abused to generate reflection/amplification DDoS attacks," Netscout researchers  said  in a Thursday alert. Plex Media Server  is a personal media library and streaming system that runs on modern Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems, as well as variants customized for special-purpose platforms such as network-attached storage (NAS) devices and digital media players. The desktop application organizes video, audio, and photos from a user's library and from online services, allowing access to and stream the contents to other compatible devices. DDoS attacks typically involve flooding a legitimate target with junk network traffic that comes from a large number o...

Cisco has rolled out fixes for multiple critical vulnerabilities in the web-based management interface of Small Business routers that could potentially allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code as the root user on an affected device. The  flaws  — tracked from CVE-2021-1289 through CVE-2021-1295 (CVSS score 9.8) — impact RV160, RV160W, RV260, RV260P, and RV260W VPN routers running a firmware release earlier than Release 1.0.01.02. Along with the aforementioned three vulnerabilities, patches have also been released for two more  arbitrary file write flaws  (CVE-2021-1296 and CVE-2021-1297) affecting the same set of VPN routers that could have made it possible for an adversary to overwrite arbitrary files on the vulnerable system. All the nine security issues were reported to the networking equipment maker by security researcher Takeshi Shiomitsu, who has previously uncovered  similar critical flaws  in RV110W, RV130W, and RV215...

Google has patched a zero-day vulnerability in Chrome web browser for desktop that it says is being actively exploited in the wild. The company released  88.0.4324.150  for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with a fix for a heap buffer overflow flaw (CVE-2021-21148) in its V8 JavaScript rendering engine. "Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-21148 exists in the wild," the company said in a statement. The security flaw was reported to Google by Mattias Buelens on January 24. Previously on February 2, Google  addressed six issues in Chrome , including one critical use after free vulnerability in Payments (CVE-2021-21142) and four high severity flaws in Extensions, Tab Groups, Fonts, and Navigation features. While it's typical of Google to limit details of the vulnerability until a majority of users are updated with the fix, the development comes weeks after Google and Microsoft  disclosed  attacks carried out by North Korean hackers against securi...

Today's admins certainly have plenty on their plates, and boosting ecosystem security remains a top priority. On-premises, and especially remote, accounts are gateways for accessing critical information. Password management makes this possible. After all, authentication should ensure that a user is whom they claim to be. This initial layer of security is crucial for protecting one's entire infrastructure. Unfortunately, the personal nature of passwords has its shortcomings. Passwords are easily forgotten. They may also be too simplistic; many companies don't enforce stringent password-creation requirements. This is where the Active Directory Password Policy comes in. Additionally, the following is achievable: Changing user passwords Recording password changes and storing them within a history log Active Directory accounts for any impactful changes across user accounts. We'll assess why and how administrators might leverage these core features. Why change user ...

A nascent malware campaign has been spotted co-opting Android devices into a botnet with the primary purpose of carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Called " Matryosh " by Qihoo 360's Netlab researchers, the latest threat has been found reusing the Mirai botnet framework and propagates through exposed Android Debug Bridge (ADB) interfaces to infect Android devices and ensnare them into its network. ADB is a  command-line tool  part of the Android SDK that handles communications and allows developers to install and debug apps on Android devices. While this option is turned off by default on most Android smartphones and tablets, some vendors ship with this feature enabled, thus allowing unauthenticated attackers to connect remotely via the 5555 TCP port and open the devices directly to exploitation. This is not the first time a botnet has taken advantage of ADB to infect vulnerable devices. In July 2018, open ADB ports were used to spread multip...