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In today's rapidly evolving SaaS environment, the focus is on human users. This is one of the most compromised areas in SaaS security management and requires strict governance of user roles and permissions, monitoring of privileged users, their level of activity (dormant, active, hyperactive), their type (internal/ external), whether they are joiners, movers, or leavers, and more.  Not surprisingly, security efforts have mainly been human-centric. Configuration options include tools like MFA and SSO for human authentication. Role-based access control (RBAC) limits the level of access; password complexity guidelines block unauthorized humans from accessing the application. Yet, in the world of SaaS, there is no shortage of access granted to non-human actors, or in other words, 3rd party connected apps.  Service accounts, OAuth authorizations, and API keys are just a few of the non-human identities that require SaaS access. When viewed through the lens of the application, no...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the indictment of a 38-year-old Chinese national and a California resident for allegedly stealing proprietary information from Google while covertly working for two China-based tech companies. Linwei Ding (aka Leon Ding), a former Google engineer who was arrested on March 6, 2024, "transferred sensitive Google trade secrets and other confidential information from Google's network to his personal account while secretly affiliating himself with PRC-based companies in the AI industry," the DoJ  said . The defendant is said to have pilfered from Google over 500 confidential files containing artificial intelligence (AI) trade secrets with the goal of passing them on to two unnamed Chinese companies looking to gain an edge in the ongoing AI race. "While Linwei Ding was employed as a software engineer at Google, he was secretly working to enrich himself and two companies based in the People's Republic of China," sa...

Facebook messages are being used by threat actors to distribute a Python-based information stealer dubbed Snake that's designed to capture credentials and other sensitive data. "The credentials harvested from unsuspecting users are transmitted to different platforms such as Discord, GitHub, and Telegram," Cybereason researcher Kotaro Ogino  said  in a technical report. Details about the campaign  first emerged  on the social media platform X in August 2023. The attacks entail sending prospective users seemingly innocuous RAR or ZIP archive files that, upon opening, activate the infection sequence. The intermediate stages involve two downloaders – a batch script and a cmd script – with the latter responsible for downloading and executing the information stealer from an actor-controlled GitLab repository. Cybereason said it detected three different variants of the stealer, the third one being an executable assembled by PyInstaller. The malware, for its part, is d...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

Threat actors have been leveraging fake websites advertising popular video conferencing software such as Google Meet, Skype, and Zoom to deliver a variety of malware targeting both Android and Windows users since December 2023. "The threat actor is distributing Remote Access Trojans (RATs) including  SpyNote RAT  for Android platforms, and  NjRAT  and  DCRat  for Windows systems," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers  said . The spoofed sites are in Russian and are hosted on domains that closely resemble their legitimate counterparts, indicating that the attackers are using typosquatting tricks to lure prospective victims into downloading the malware. They also come with options to download the app for Android, iOS, and Windows platforms. While clicking on the button for Android downloads an APK file, clicking on the Windows app button triggers the download of a batch script. The malicious batch script is responsible for executing a PowerShell script, ...

Threat actors are targeting misconfigured and vulnerable servers running Apache Hadoop YARN, Docker, Atlassian Confluence, and Redis services as part of an emerging malware campaign designed to deliver a cryptocurrency miner and spawn a reverse shell for persistent remote access. "The attackers leverage these tools to issue exploit code, taking advantage of common misconfigurations and exploiting an N-day vulnerability, to conduct Remote Code Execution (RCE) attacks and infect new hosts," Cado security researcher Matt Muir  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity has been codenamed  Spinning YARN  by the cloud security company, with overlaps to cloud attacks attributed to  TeamTNT ,  WatchDog , and a cluster dubbed  Kiss-a-dog . It all starts with deploying four novel Golang payloads that are capable of automating the identification and exploitation of susceptible Confluence, Docker, Hadoop YARN, and Redis hosts. The spreader ut...

The threat actors behind the  BlackCat ransomware  have shut down their darknet website and likely pulled an exit scam after uploading a bogus law enforcement seizure banner. "ALPHV/BlackCat did not get seized. They are exit scamming their affiliates," security researcher Fabian Wosar  said . "It is blatantly obvious when you check the source code of the new takedown notice." "There is absolutely zero reason why law enforcement would just put a saved version of the takedown notice up during a seizure instead of the original takedown notice." The U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA)  told  Reuters that it had no connection to any disruptions to the BlackCat infrastructure. Recorded Future security researcher Dmitry Smilyanets  posted  screenshots on the social media platform X in which the BlackCat actors claimed that the "feds screwed us over" and that they intended to sell the ransomware's source code for $5 million. The disappearing...

An in-depth look into a proactive website security solution that continuously detects, prioritizes, and validates web threats, helping to mitigate security, privacy, and compliance risks.  Reflectiz  shields websites from client-side attacks, supply chain risks, data breaches, privacy violations, and compliance issues. You Can't Protect What You Can't See Today's websites are connected to dozens of third-party web apps, trackers, and open-source tools like pixels, tag managers, and JavaScript frameworks. Some of these elements are stored on public CDNs, while others are loaded from third-party web servers that may be unfamiliar. These external web components and data items are not always visible to standard security controls, and they often expose you to security threats such as supply chain risks, client-side attacks, and vulnerabilities in your online software. This means that these serious challenges will frequently go unnoticed. Moreover, security and privacy regulatio...

Every Google Workspace administrator knows how quickly Google Drive becomes a messy sprawl of loosely shared confidential information. This isn't anyone's fault; it's inevitable as your productivity suite is purposefully designed to enable real-time collaboration – both internally and externally.  For Security & Risk Management teams, the untenable risk of any Google Drive footprint lies in the toxic combinations of sensitive data, excessive permissions, and improper sharing. However, it can be challenging to differentiate between typical business practices and potential risks without fully understanding the context and intent.  Material Security, a company renowned for its innovative method of protecting sensitive data within employee mailboxes, has recently launched  Data Protection for Google Drive  to safeguard the sprawl of confidential information scattered throughout Google Drive with a powerful discovery and remediation toolkit. How Material Security ...

The U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two individuals and five entities associated with the Intellexa Alliance for their role in "developing, operating, and distributing" commercial spyware designed to target government officials, journalists, and policy experts in the country. "The proliferation of commercial spyware poses distinct and growing security risks to the United States and has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses and the targeting of dissidents around the world for repression and reprisal," the agency  said . "The Intellexa Consortium, which has a global customer base, has enabled the proliferation of commercial spyware and surveillance technologies around the world, including to authoritarian regimes." The Intellexa Alliance is a consortium of several companies, including Cytrox, linked to a mercenary spyware solution called Predator . In July 2023, the U.S. government  added  Cytrox an...