Search results for cyber | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

At least two federal agencies in the U.S. fell victim to a "widespread cyber campaign" that involved the use of legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) software to perpetuate a phishing scam. "Specifically, cyber criminal actors sent phishing emails that led to the download of legitimate RMM software – ScreenConnect (now ConnectWise Control) and AnyDesk – which the actors used in a refund scam to steal money from victim bank accounts," U.S. cybersecurity authorities  said . The joint advisory comes from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), National Security Agency (NSA), and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). The attacks, which took place in mid-June and mid-September 2022, have financial motivations, although threat actors could weaponize the unauthorized access for conducting a wide range of activities, including selling that access to other hacking crews. Usage of remote software by criminal grou

The German software company behind TeamViewer, one of the most popular software in the world that allows users to access and share their desktops remotely, was reportedly compromised in 2016, the German newspaper Der Spiegel revealed today. TeamViewer is popular remote-support software that allows you to securely share your desktop or take full control of other's PC over the Internet from anywhere in the world. With millions of users making use of its service, TeamViewer has always been a target of interest for attackers. According to the publication , the cyber attack was launched by hackers with Chinese origin who used Winnti trojan malware, activities of which have previously been found linked to the Chinese state intelligence system. Active since at least 2010, Winnti advanced persistent threat (APT) group has previously launched a series of financial attacks against software and gaming organizations primarily in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. The group i

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

The United States could soon have a geek gap on its hands unless it starts graduating more computer science majors.   At time when computer hacking and security have become crucial issues for the government and the private sector, the U.S. is producing only 9,000 computer science graduates a year—of whom only 700 are computer and information systems security majors. That's not nearly enough, when you consider that a single defense contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, alone needs 1,000 computer security specialists.   Meanwhile, the military is dealing with the rapid onset of cyber warfare. It is becoming increasingly clear that while it is highly unlikely that the United States would be attacked by a military force, the nation's economic system could be vulnerable to a cyber attack. Conversely, the U.S. can use its cyber strength to attack other countries. In September, Iran's nuclear program was disrupted by a computer virus. Although there is no confirmation of who launche

To succeed as a cybersecurity analyst, you need to understand the traits, values, and thought processes of hackers, along with the tools they use to launch their attacks.  During a  webinar called The Hacker Mindset,  a Red Team Researcher shared how you can use some of these tools for your own detection and prevention of breaches. He also demonstrated how an attack takes place using the  Follina exploit  as an example. So, what does "the hacker mindset" mean?  The hacker mindset can be characterized by three core values: a strong sense of curiosity, an adversarial attitude, and persistence.  3 core values of a hacker's mindset  1  —  "Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it had nine lives." Curiosity drives hackers to explore and understand systems, networks, and software in order to identify vulnerabilities. Not only are they constantly seeking new knowledge and skills to improve their abilities and stay ahead of security measures, they're cons

The FBI officers have arrested a 20-year-old Tennessee man and charged with federal computer hacking for allegedly conspiring to launch cyber attacks on five organizations in 2013, including two universities and three companies in the US and Canada, federal law enforcement officials announced today. The accused named Timothy Justin French , who go online by the name " Orbit ," is a key member of the collective "NullCrew" hacking group , that claimed responsibility for dozens of high-profile computer attacks against corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies. NullCrew is a hacktivist group that came into light in 2012 after a successful cyber attack against the World Health Organization (WHO) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 2012, which resulted in plain-text username and passwords being posted online on Pastebin. The group, represent itself as a part of Anonymous hacking collective, has since 2012 carried out a number of similar high profi

Let's Play a Game of Cyber Security at  CSAW CTF 2011   Ready for a little game of capture the flag? What if you weren't running around a field like a crazy person trying to grab a flag out of someone's belt, but instead were navigating around a network overcoming technical challenges to find markers that you are awarded points for once submitted? Then CSAW CTF 2011 is where it's at. CSAW CTF 2011 is hosting the qualifying round from Friday September 23, 2011 to Sunday September 25, 2011. The competition will begin at 8PM that Friday night, and is used to determine who will proceed on to the finals taking place in New York November 10-11 at NYU-Poly.   The event is centered on assessing application security abilities. For the qualification round there is no limit to the number of team members you can have, but if you move on to the final round your team will be limited to four players. If you attend the event you'll have the chance to rub elbows with anyone and everyone inter

Last week, the Researchers at the German security company G Data Software have reported about the most complex and sophisticated rootkit  malware, Uroburos which is designed to steal data from secure facilities and has ability to take control of an infected machine, execute arbitrary commands and hide system activities. Recently, British cyber specialist BAE  has disclosed the parent Russian malware campaign dubbed as ' SNAKE ' that remained almost undetected for least eight years while penetrating highly secured systems. Uroburos rootkit was one of the components of this campaign. In a separate Investigation, Western intelligence officers have found another piece of spyware , infecting hundreds of government computers across Europe and the United States, known as ' Turla '. Researchers believed that  Turla  campaign is linked to a previously known campaign ' Red October ', a massive global cyber spying operation targeting diplomatic, military and nuclear

Cyber criminals become hyper active during festivals. Diwali is no exception. Shantanu Ghosh, Vice-President and Managing Director (India Product Operations) of Internet security solutions company Symantec has observed that malware authors and spammers are using Diwali (The festival of lights that's celebrated across the world (primarily in the Indian sub-continent) as the latest event to lure unsuspecting users into downloading malware, buying products, and falling for scams. Shantanu said cyber criminals attempt to 'poison' web search engine results to take advantage of huge rush in search activity during popular events. " We have observed that cyber attackers are using various techniques to make the most of Diwali, " he warned. Cyber-attackers make use of social engineering tactics to lure users to purchase from or register on unknown websites. Users may be exposing personal information to Internet scammers. " Before giving into the temptation of clicking on a link in

Days after the Conti ransomware group broadcasted a pro-Russian message pledging its allegiance to Vladimir Putin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, an anonymous security researcher using the Twitter handle @ContiLeaks has leaked the syndicate's internal chats. The file dump, published by malware research group  VX-Underground , is said to contain 13 months of chat logs between affiliates and administrators of the Russia-affiliated ransomware group from June 2020 to February 2022, in a move that's expected to offer  unprecedented   insight  into the criminal enterprise's inner workings. "Glory to Ukraine," the leaker said in their message. The shared conversations show that Conti used fake front companies to attempt to schedule product demos with security firms like CarbonBlack and Sophos to obtain code signing certificates, with the operators working in scrum sprints to complete the software development tasks. Additionally, the messages  confirm  the  shu

Microsoft has become the latest victim of to Cyber attack and confirm that small number of its computers, including some in its Mac software business unit, were infected with malware . Microsoft added , malicious software used in a cyber attack is very similar to those experienced by Facebook and Apple recently. Microsoft gave few other details about the break-in, " We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing. " " During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations. We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing, " Microsoft said. " This type of cyber attack is no surprise to Microsoft and other companies that must grapple with determined and persistent adversaries ," the company said. Last week, Apple said its

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is  urging  manufacturers to get rid of default passwords on internet-exposed systems altogether, citing severe risks that could be exploited by malicious actors to gain initial access to, and move laterally within, organizations. In an alert published last week, the agency called out Iranian threat actors affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for exploiting operational technology devices with default passwords to gain access to critical infrastructure systems in the U.S. Default passwords  refer to factory default software configurations for embedded systems, devices, and appliances that are typically publicly documented and identical among all systems within a vendor's product line. As a result, threat actors could scan for internet-exposed endpoints using tools like Shodan and attempt to breach them through default passwords, often gaining root or administrative privileges to  perform po

The recent "disconcerting" reports that India was being spied upon by American intelligence agencies has opened an all new chapter in the cyber security space. The revelation that the Indian embassy in the US was among the list of 38 diplomatic missions which were being spied upon by American intelligence agencies, as per the latest top secret US National Security Agency documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden has raised questions like How much of liberty should the cyber space grant to maintain national security and at what cost?  So far, legality is the main rationale US officials have used to defend the government's PRISM spying program. It's all perfectly legal, approved by govt. and the courts, but a more potent argument might be just because something is legal doesn't necessarily make it a good thing. In the context of the recent findings and the debate that it has just drawn, The Hackers Conference 2013 will raise important questions on the th

The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday announced sanctions against Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and its Minister of Intelligence, Esmaeil Khatib, for engaging in cyber-enabled activities against the nation and its allies. "Since at least 2007, the MOIS and its cyber actor proxies have conducted malicious cyber operations targeting a range of government and private-sector organizations around the world and across various critical infrastructure sectors," the Treasury  said . The agency also accused Iranian state-sponsored actors of  staging disruptive attacks  aimed at Albanian government computer systems in mid-July 2022, an incident that forced the latter to temporarily suspend its online services. The development comes months nearly nine months after the U.S. Cyber Command characterized the advanced persistent threat (APT) known as MuddyWater as a  subordinate element  within MOIS. It also comes almost two years following the Treasury's sa

Data breaches and security incidents are a constant in the headlines these days. Hackers and cyber criminals   are motivated by status or money and finding new innovative and more creative attacks to achieve this. One of them are, Digital Bank robbery  - where the thieves didn't need masks and guns to pull off the job, all they need are - Hacking Skills, a computer and the Internet. Another way is  Cyber extortion  - threat of attack against an enterprise or a bank, coupled with a demand for money to avert or stop the attack. According to Haaretz news, A Hacker - who is the operator of a biggest botnet malware network in the Israel, has threatens 3 major Israeli banks, i.e. Israel Discount Bank, Bank Yahav and the First International Bank of Israel. " Bank received an e-mail message threatening that unless they handed over a certain sum in Bitcoins by the end of next week, a list of customers' details would be given to hostile elements. " Banks database, network an

A man from the U.K. city of Nottingham has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for illegally breaking into the phones and computers of a number of victims, including women and children, to spy on them and amass a collection of indecent images. Robert Davies, 32, is said to have purchased an arsenal of cyber crime tools in 2019, including crypters and remote administration tools (RATs), which can be used as a backdoor to steal personal information and conduct surveillance through microphones and cameras, catching the attention of the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA). The cyber voyeur's modus operandi involved catfishing potential targets by using fake profiles on different messaging apps such as Skype, leveraging the online encounters to send rogue links hosting the malware through the chats. "Davies was infecting his victims' phones or computers with malicious software by disguising it with the crypters so their antivirus protection would not detect it,&qu

As the digital age evolves and continues to shape the business landscape, corporate networks have become increasingly complex and distributed. The amount of data a company collects to detect malicious behaviour constantly increases, making it challenging to detect deceptive and unknown attack patterns and the so-called "needle in the haystack". With a growing number of cybersecurity threats, such as data breaches, ransomware attacks, and malicious insiders, organizations are facing significant challenges in successfully monitoring and securing their networks. Furthermore, the talent shortage in the field of cybersecurity makes manual threat hunting and log correlation a cumbersome and difficult task. To address these challenges, organizations are turning to predictive analytics and Machine Learning (ML) driven network security solutions as essential tools for securing their networks against cyber threats and the unknown bad. The Role of ML-Driven Network Security Solutions

Japan developing cyber weapons for Counter Attack Japanese technology firm Fujitsu is developing a ' seek and destroy ' virus which could identify and combat hacking and other cyber threats in a more effective way. The weapon is the culmination of a 179 million yen three-year project entrusted by the government to technology maker Fujitsu Ltd to develop a virus and equipment to monitor and analyse attacks, the daily said. The chief snag for the plan is that Japanese law currently forbids the manufacturing of computer viruses. However, we would suspect that a compromise can be reached in due course, given the project is being carried out in the interest of national security. Japan was a notable victim of hacking in 2011, which proved to be a year in which cyber crimes and threats rose to prominence.  Japan's parliament had its computer system hacked into, while a number of cyber espionage campaigns including one targeting almost 50 US companies were waged on governments and firms a

The United States House of Representatives on Thursday voted to approve the highly controversial  cyber security bill CISPA , which stands for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. The Bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was presented under the guise National Security , but in reality opens up a loop hole for companies that collect personal information about their users and in some cases want to trade of even sell these to other companies for money or other services.  This was the second time that the US House of Representatives passed the CISPA. Senators had earlier rejected the first draft of this bill on the grounds that it wasn't providing enough for protecting the privacy. Some lawmakers and privacy activists worry that the legislation would allow the government to monitor citizens' private information and companies to misuse it. The first parts of CISPA are relevant and necessary. If we're " hacked ," CISPA a

Indonesian and Australian police launched Cyber Crime Investigation Center Indonesian and Australian police officially launched a joint project called the Cyber Crime Investigation Center. The center was officiated by Indonesian National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo and Australian Federal Police chief Comr. Tony Negus at the National Police Headquarters in Jakarta on Thursday. Timur said the center had been planned since six months ago. " Today, we launch the center, which will be equipped with tools needed to carry out cyber crime investigation ," Timur said, adding that its communication technology equipment was being provided by the Australian government." Of course, this [center] will improve our capacity to detect and [investigate cyber] crimes, particularly transnational crimes ," he said. Negus said the center would allow the Indonesian National Police to deal with technology and IT-related crimes. He added that the Australian police force was looki