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Epic Games has reached a $520 million settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations that the  Fortnite  creator violated online privacy laws for children and tricked users into making unintended purchases in the video game. To that end, the company will pay a record $275 million monetary penalty for breaching the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ( COPPA ) by collecting the personal information of Fortnite players under the age of 13 without seeking permission from their parents. It will also pay $245 million to reimburse customers who were deceived by its  dark pattern  tricks to make accidental purchases as well as for allowing children to rack up unauthorized charges through in-game content purchases without requiring any parental or card holder action or consent. "Epic Games possessed actual knowledge that it collected personal information from children, including their names, email addresses, and identifiers used to keep tr...

Microsoft has disclosed details of a now-patched security flaw in Apple macOS that could be exploited by an attacker to get around security protections imposed to prevent the execution of malicious applications. The shortcoming, dubbed  Achilles  ( CVE-2022-42821 , CVSS score: 5.5), was addressed by the iPhone maker in  macOS Ventura 13 ,  Monterey 12.6.2 , and  Big Sur 11.7.2 , describing it as a logic issue that could be weaponized by an app to circumvent Gatekeeper checks. "Gatekeeper bypasses such as this could be leveraged as a vector for initial access by malware and other threats and could help increase the success rate of malicious campaigns and attacks on macOS," Jonathan Bar Or of the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  said . Gatekeeper is a  security mechanism  designed to ensure that only trusted apps run on the operating system. This is  enforced  by means of an extended attribute called "com.apple.quarantine" that's...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that impersonates a software development kit (SDK) for SentinelOne, a major cybersecurity company, as part of a campaign dubbed  SentinelSneak . The package, named  SentinelOne  and now taken down, is said to have been published between December 8 and 11, 2022, with nearly two dozen versions pushed in quick succession over a period of two days. It claims to offer an easier method to access the  company's APIs , but harbors a malicious backdoor that's engineered to amass sensitive information from development systems, including access credentials, SSH keys, and configuration data. What's more, the threat actor has also been observed releasing two more packages with similar naming variations –  SentinelOne-sdk  and  SentinelOneSDK  – underscoring the  continued threats  lurking in open source repositories. "The SentinelOne ...

The operators of the Glupteba botnet resurfaced in June 2022 as part of a renewed and "upscaled" campaign, months after Google disrupted the malicious activity. The ongoing attack is suggestive of the malware's resilience in the face of takedowns, cybersecurity company Nozomi Networks said in a write-up. "In addition, there was a tenfold increase in TOR hidden services being used as C2 servers since the 2021 campaign," it  noted . The malware, which is distributed through fraudulent ads or software cracks, is also equipped to retrieve additional payloads that enable it to steal credentials, mine cryptocurrencies, and expand its reach by exploiting vulnerabilities in IoT devices from  MikroTik  and  Netgear . It's also an instance of an unusual malware that leverages blockchain as a mechanism for command-and-control (C2)  since at least 2019 , rendering its infrastructure resistant to takedown efforts as in the case of a traditional server. Specifically...

Threat actors continue to adapt to the latest technologies, practices, and even data privacy laws—and it's up to organizations to stay one step ahead by implementing strong cybersecurity measures and programs.  Here's a look at how cybercrime will evolve in 2023 and what you can do to secure and protect your organization in the year ahead.  Increase in digital supply chain attacks  With the rapid modernization and digitization of supply chains come new security risks. Gartner predicts that  by 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks  on their software supply chains—this is a three-fold increase from 2021. Previously, these types of attacks weren't even likely to happen because supply chains weren't connected to the internet. But now that they are, supply chains need to be secured properly.  The introduction of new technology around software supply chains means there are likely security holes that have yet to be identified, bu...

A Rust variant of a ransomware strain known as  Agenda  has been observed in the wild, making it the latest malware to adopt the cross-platform programming language after  BlackCat, Hive, Luna, and RansomExx . Agenda , attributed to an operator named Qilin, is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group that has been linked to a spate of attacks primarily targeting manufacturing and IT industries across different countries. A previous version of the ransomware, written in Go and customized for each victim, singled out healthcare and education sectors in countries like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Thailand. Agenda, like Royal ransomware , expands on the idea of partial encryption (aka intermittent encryption) by configuring parameters that are used to determine the percentage of file content to be encrypted. "This tactic is becoming more popular among ransomware actors as it lets them encrypt faster and avoid detections that heavily rely on read/write file ...

Meta Platforms disclosed that it took down no less than 200 covert influence operations since 2017 spanning roughly 70 countries across 42 languages. The social media conglomerate also took steps to disable accounts and block infrastructure operated by spyware vendors, including in China, Russia, Israel, the U.S. and India, that targeted individuals in about 200 countries. "The global surveillance-for-hire industry continues to grow and indiscriminately target people – including journalists, activists, litigants, and political opposition – to collect intelligence, manipulate and compromise their devices and accounts across the internet," the company  noted  in a report published last week. The networks that were found to engage in coordinated inauthentic behavior ( CIB ) originated from 68 countries. More than 100 nations are said to have been targeted by at least one such network, either foreign or domestic. With 34 operations, the U.S. emerged as the most frequently ta...

Google on Friday announced that its client-side encryption for Gmail is in beta for Workspace and education customers as part of its efforts to secure emails sent using the web version of the platform. The development comes at a time when concerns about online privacy and data security are at an all-time high, making it a welcome change for users who value the protection of their personal data. To that end, Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers can apply to sign up for the beta until January 20, 2023. It's not available to personal Google Accounts. "Using client-side encryption in Gmail ensures sensitive data in the email body and attachments are indecipherable to Google servers," the company  said  in a post. "Customers retain control over encryption keys and the identity service to access those keys." It is important to know that the latest safeguards offered by Gmail is different from end-to-end encryption. ...

Samba has released software updates to remediate multiple vulnerabilities that, if successfully exploited, could allow an attacker to take control of affected systems. The high-severity flaws, tracked as  CVE-2022-38023, CVE-2022-37966, CVE-2022-37967, and CVE-2022-45141 , have been patched in versions 4.17.4, 4.16.8 and 4.15.13  released  on December 15, 2022. Samba is an open source Windows interoperability suite for Linux, Unix, and macOS operating systems that offers file server, printing, and Active Directory services. A brief description of each of the weaknesses is below - CVE-2022-38023  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Use of weak RC4-HMAC Kerberos encryption type in the  Netlogon Secure Channel   CVE-2022-37966  (CVSS score: 8.1) - An elevation of privilege vulnerability in Windows Kerberos RC4-HMAC CVE-2022-37967  (CVSS score: 7.2) - An elevation of privilege vulnerability in Windows Kerberos CVE-2022-45141  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Use of...