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The recent tsunami of ransomware has brought to life the fears of downtime and data loss cybersecurity pros have warned about, as attacks on the energy sector, food supply chain, healthcare industry, and other critical infrastructure have grabbed headlines. For the industry experts who track the evolution of this threat, the increased frequency, sophistication, and destructiveness of ransomware suggests that businesses still have some major gaps in their defense strategies. It's no surprise that a new, multi-layered approach to protection is needed to stem the damage caused by ransomware. But what changes should an IT team implement to close those gaps? During a recent panel, a team of cybersecurity experts outlined a three-step plan to do just that -- centered around embracing new technologies, improving security processes, and ensuring their people know how to help curb the threat. 1  —  New Strains Overwhelm Old Defenses Many new ransomware strains now act like advanced pe

Web applications suffer continuously evolving attacks, where a web application firewall (WAF) is the first line of defense and a necessary part of organizations' cybersecurity strategies. WAFs are getting more sophisticated all the time, but as its core protection starts with efficient pattern matching, typically using Regular Expressions, and classifying malicious traffic to block cyber attacks. Evading pattern matching However, unfortunately, this technique is no silver bullet against determined attackers. Once it's known that there is a protection layer enabled, malicious actors find ways to bypass it, and most of the time, they even succeed. It usually can be achieved when the same attacking payload, blocked by WAF , can be disguised to make it 'invisible' to the pattern matching mechanism to evade security. Context-Specific Obfuscation The web uses many technologies, and they all have different rules for what comprises valid syntax in their grammar

Over the past two years, a shocking  51% of organizations surveyed in a leading industry report have been compromised by a cyberattack.  Yes, over half.  And this, in a world where enterprises deploy  an average of 53 different security solutions  to safeguard their digital domain.  Alarming? Absolutely. A recent survey of CISOs and CIOs, commissioned by Pentera and conducted by Global Surveyz Research, offers a quantifiable glimpse into this evolving battlefield, revealing a stark contrast between the growing risks and the tightening budget constraints under which cybersecurity professionals operate. With this report, Pentera has once again taken a magnifying glass to the state of pentesting to release its annual report about today's pentesting practices. Engaging with 450 security executives from North America, LATAM, APAC, and EMEA—all in VP or C-level positions at organizations with over 1,000 employees—the report paints a current picture of modern security validation prac

Just one day after Microsoft released its new operating system, over 14 Million Windows users  upgraded their PCs to Windows 10 . Of course, if you are one of the Millions, you should aware of Windows 10's Wi-Fi Sense feature that lets your friends automatically connects to your wireless network without providing the Wi-Fi password. Smells like a horrible Security Risk! It even triggered a firestorm among some security experts, who warned that Wi-Fi Sense is a terrible and dangerous feature and that you should disable it right away. Even some researchers advised Windows 10 users to rename their Wi-Fi access points. Before discussing the risks of Wi-Fi Sense, let's first know how it works. Also Read:  How to Fix 35+ Windows 10 Privacy Issues With Just One Click . How Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense works? Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense feature allows you to share your Wi-Fi password with your friends or contacts, as well as lets you automatically connect to networ

Imagine… You drive to work in your Smart-Car connected to the GPS automatically, but a hacker breaks into your car's network, takes control of the steering wheel, crashes you into a tree, and BOOM ! Believe it or not, such cyber attacks on smart devices are becoming reality. Car Hacking was recently demonstrated by a pair of security researchers who controlled a Jeep Cherokee remotely from miles away, which shows a rather severe threat to the growing market of the Internet of Things (IoT) . Internet of Things (IoT) — A technology that connects objects to a network or the Internet, and enables interaction among varied devices such as: Smart Cars Smart TVs Refrigerators Wearables Routers Other embedded computing as well as non-computing devices. Few days back, I had read about Smart Dustbins that are the latest smart objects to become Wi-Fi-enabled. Internet of Things to make Cities Smart or Dumb? Cities around the world are becoming

There are several encrypted messaging apps for mobile and desktop platforms that shipped with "The Most Secure" tagline but ends up in de-anonymizing the real identity of its users in some or the other way. In fact, very few encrypted messaging apps available today deal with the core problem of Metadata .  The majority of apps offer end-to-end encryption that kept the content of your messages away from prying eyes, but your metadata will still be accessible to them, which is enough to know who you really are, and who you're talking to. But, one messenger app stands out of the crowd by providing superb anonymity to its users, and it is dubbed as " Ricochet ." Ricochet is a peer-to-peer instant messaging system available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and you can trust it as the app has already cleared its first professional security audit carried out by cyber security company NCC Group . What's so Promising about Ricochet? Unlike

A team of security researchers has discovered a new malware evasion technique that could help malware authors defeat most of the modern antivirus solutions and forensic tools. Dubbed Process Doppelgänging , the new fileless code injection technique takes advantage of a built-in Windows function and an undocumented implementation of Windows process loader. Ensilo security researchers Tal Liberman and Eugene Kogan, who discovered the Process Doppelgänging attack, presented their findings today at Black Hat 2017 Security conference held in London. Process Doppelgänging Works on All Windows Versions Apparently, Process Doppelgänging attack works on all modern versions of Microsoft Windows operating system, starting from Windows Vista to the latest version of Windows 10. Tal Liberman, the head of the research team at enSilo, told The Hacker New that this malware evasion technique is similar to Process Hollowing—a method first introduced years ago by attackers to defeat the m

A group of academics from Ruhr University Bochum and New York University Abu Dhabi have uncovered security flaws in 4G LTE and 5G networks that could potentially allow hackers to impersonate users on the network and even sign up for paid subscriptions on their behalf. The impersonation attack — named " IMPersonation Attacks in 4G NeTworks " (or IMP4GT ) — exploits the mutual authentication method used by the mobile phone and the network's base station to verify their respective identities to manipulate data packets in transit. "The IMP4GT attacks exploit the missing integrity protection for user data, and a reflection mechanism of the IP stack mobile operating system. We can make use of the reflection mechanism to build an encryption and decryption oracle. Along with the lack of integrity protection, this allows to inject arbitrary packets and to decrypt packets," the researchers explained. The research was presented at the Network Distributed System Se

A few days ago, a friend and I were having a rather engaging conversation that sparked my excitement. We were discussing my prospects of becoming a red teamer as a natural career progression. The reason I got stirred up is not that I want to change either my job or my position, as I am a happy camper being part of Cymulate's blue team. What upset me was that my friend could not grasp the idea that I wanted to keep working as a blue teamer because, as far as he was concerned, the only natural progression is to move to the red team.  Red teams include many roles ranging from penetration testers to attackers and exploit developers. These roles attract most of the buzz, and the many certifications revolving around these roles (OSCP, OSEP, CEH) make them seem fancy. Movies usually make hackers the heroes, while typically ignoring the defending side, the complexities and challenges of blue teamers' roles are far less known. While blue teams' defending roles might not sound as

Every year hundreds of millions of malware attacks occur worldwide, and every year businesses deal with the impact of viruses, worms, keyloggers, and ransomware. Malware is a pernicious threat and the biggest driver for businesses to look for cybersecurity solutions.  Naturally, businesses want to find products that will stop malware in its tracks, and so they search for solutions to do that. But  malware protection  alone is not enough, instead what's needed is a more holistic approach. Businesses need to defend against malware entering the network, and then on top of that have systems and processes in place to restrict the damage that malware can do if it infects a user device.  This approach will not only help stop and mitigate the damage from malware, but defend against other types of threats too, such as credential theft as a result of phishing, insider threats, and supply-chain attacks.  Element 1: Malware Protection and Web Filtering The first and most sensible place to

An anti-malware detection service provider and premium security firm has been accused of leaking terabytes of confidential data from several Fortune 1000 companies, including customer credentials, financial records, network intelligence and other sensitive data. However, in response to the accusations, the security firm confirmed that they are not pulling sensitive files from its customers; instead, it's up to companies—who are accidentally (but explicitly) sharing their sensitive data to leverage an optional cloud-based anti-malware service. On Wednesday, Information security firm DirectDefense published a blog post, claiming that they found a major issue with endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution offered by US-based company Carbon Black, alleging that the company is leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive files from its customers. Carbon Black is a leading incident response and threat hunting company that offers security products to nearly thirty of the larg

Microsoft has released patches to address  73 security flaws  spanning its software lineup as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for February 2024, including two zero-days that have come under active exploitation. Of the 73 vulnerabilities, 5 are rated Critical, 65 are rated Important, and three and rated Moderate in severity. This is in addition to  24 flaws  that have been fixed in the Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the January 2024 Patch Tuesday updates . The two flaws that are listed as under active attack at the time of release are below - CVE-2024-21351  (CVSS score: 7.6) - Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2024-21412  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Internet Shortcut Files Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability "The vulnerability allows a malicious actor to inject code into  SmartScreen  and potentially gain code execution, which could potentially lead to some data exposure, lack of system availability, or both," Microsoft said a