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Remember NotPetya ? The Ransomware that shut down thousands of businesses, organisations and banks in Ukraine as well as different parts of Europe in June this year. Now, Ukrainian government authorities are once again warning its citizens to brace themselves for next wave of "large-scale" NotPetya-like cyber attack. According to a press release published Thursday by the Secret Service of Ukraine (SBU), the next major cyber attack could take place between October 13 and 17 when Ukraine celebrates Defender of Ukraine Day (in Ukrainian: День захисника України, Den' zakhysnyka Ukrayiny). Authorities warn the cyber attack can once again be conducted through a malicious software update against state government institutions and private companies. The attackers of the NotPetya ransomware also used the same tactic—compromising the update mechanism for Ukrainian financial software provider called MeDoc and swapping in a dodgy update including the NotPetya computer v

DoubleLocker —as the name suggests, it locks device twice. Security researchers from Slovakia-based security software maker ESET have discovered a new Android ransomware that not just encrypts users' data, but also locks them out of their devices by changing lock screen PIN. On top of that: DoubleLocker is the first-ever ransomware to misuse Android accessibility —a feature that provides users alternative ways to interact with their smartphone devices, and mainly misused by Android banking Trojans to steal banking credentials. "Given its banking malware roots, DoubleLocker may well be turned into what could be called ransom-bankers," said Lukáš Štefanko, the malware researcher at ESET. "Two-stage malware that first tries to wipe your bank or PayPal account and subsequently locks your device and data to request a ransom." Researchers believe DoubleLocker ransomware could be upgraded in future to steal banking credentials as well, other than just ext

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

If you receive a message from any of your Facebook Friends asking for urgent help to recover their Facebook account, since they've added you as one of their ' Trusted Contacts '—just don't blindly believe it. Researchers have detected a new Facebook phishing scam that can even trick an experienced technical user into falling victim to the scam, helping an attacker gain access to your Facebook account. This latest social media scam is abusing "Trusted Contact"—a Facebook account recovery feature that sends secret access codes to a few of your close friends in order to help you regain access to your Facebook account in case you forget your password or lost access to your account. According to a public security alert published by AccessNow, the attack initiates by an already compromised account of one of your friends, asking for urgent help to get back into his/her Facebook account. The attacker explains that you are listed as one of his/her Trusted Conta

Since new forms of cybercrime are on the rise, traditional techniques seem to be shifting towards more clandestine that involve the exploitation of standard system tools and protocols, which are not always monitored. Security researchers at Cisco's Talos threat research group have discovered one such attack campaign spreading malware-equipped Microsoft Word documents that perform code execution on the targeted device without requiring Macros enabled or memory corruption. This Macro-less code execution in MSWord technique, described in detail on Monday by a pair of security researchers from Sensepost, Etienne Stalmans and Saif El-Sherei, which leverages a built-in feature of MS Office, called Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), to perform code execution. Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) protocol is one of the several methods that Microsoft allows two running applications to share the same data. The protocol can be used by applications for one-time data transfers and for continuous exc

Beware, If you are using S/MIME protocol over Microsoft Outlook to encrypt your email communication, you need to watch out. From at least last 6 months, your messages were being sent in both encrypted and unencrypted forms, exposing all your secret and sensitive communications to potential eavesdroppers. S/MIME, or Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is an end-to-end encryption protocol—based on public-key cryptography and works just like SSL connections—that enables users to send digitally signed and encrypted messages. According to a security advisory published by SEC Consult earlier this week, a severe bug (CVE-2017-11776) in Microsoft Outlook email client causes S/MIME encrypted emails to be sent with their unencrypted versions attached. When Outlook users make use of S/MIME to encrypt their messages and format their emails as plain text, the vulnerability allows the seemingly encrypted emails to be sent in both encrypted as well as human-readable clear text f

The cold cyber war has just turned hot. According to a story published  today by the New York Times, Israeli government hackers hacked into Kaspersky's network in 2015 and caught Russian government hackers red-handed hacking US government hackers with the help of Kaspersky. In other words — Russia spying on America, Israel spying on Russia and America spying on everyone. What the F^#% is going around? It is like one is blaming another for doing exactly the same thing it is doing against someone else. Wow! Well, the fact that everyone is spying on everyone is neither new nor any secret. However, somehow now Kaspersky Labs is at the centre of this international espionage tale for its alleged devil role. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal, an American media agency, published a story against the Kaspersky, a Russian antivirus provider, claiming that the Russian government hackers stole highly classified NSA documents and hacking tools in 2015 from a staffer's home