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Testing security controls is the only way to know if they are truly defending your organization. With many different testing frameworks and tools to choose from, you have lots of options. But what do you specifically want to know? And how are the findings relevant to the threat landscape you face at this moment? "Decide what you want to know and then choose the best tool for the job." Security teams typically use several different testing tools to evaluate infrastructure. According to SANS , 69.9% of security teams use vendor-provided testing tools, 60.2% use pen-testing tools, and 59.7% use homegrown tools and scripts. While vendor-provided tools test a specific security solution—whether it's a web application firewall (WAF), EDR solution, or something else—pen testing is frequently used to verify that controls meet compliance requirements, such as PCI DSS regulations, and by red teams as part of broader testing assessments and exercises. Automated pen test

Internet Explorer is dead, but not the mess it left behind. Microsoft earlier today issued an emergency security advisory warning millions of Windows users of a new zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) browser that attackers are actively exploiting in the wild — and there is no patch yet available for it. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-0674 and rated moderated, is a remote code execution issue that exists in the way the scripting engine handles objects in memory of Internet Explorer and triggers through JScript.dll library. A remote attacker can execute arbitrary code on targeted computers and take full control over them just by convincing victims into opening a maliciously crafted web page on the vulnerable Microsoft browser. "The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as

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

Penetration tests have long been known as a critical security tool that exposes security weaknesses through simulated attacks on an organization's IT environments. These test results can help prioritize weaknesses, providing a road-map towards remediation. However, the results are also capable of doing even more. They identify and quantify security risk, and can be used as a keystone in cybersecurity policies. The same can be said about broader penetration testing practices. Organizations gain real value from learning about others' penetration testing experiences, trends, and the role they play in today's threat landscape. The world of pen testing can be an interesting balance of open collaboration and closely guarded privacy. While pen testers may engage in teaming exercises, or happily talk technique when they attend Black Hat, most organizations are extremely reluctant when it comes to discussing their pen testing practices and results. Of course, confidentia

Great news for iOS users! You can now use your iPhone or iPad, running iOS 10 or later, as a physical security key for securely logging into your Google account as part of the Advanced Protection Program for two-factor authentication. Android users have had this feature on their smartphones since last year, but now Apple product owners can also use this advanced, phishing-resistant form of authentication as an alternative to a physical security key. Adding extra security later of two-step authentication is one of the more essential steps you can take to secure your online accounts, which makes it harder for attackers to log in to your account, especially when they steal your password. "According to a study we [Google] released last year, people who exclusively used security keys to sign into their accounts never fell victim to targeted phishing attacks," said Shuvo Chatterjee, Product Manager at Google's Advanced Protection Program. Google recently update

After Adobe today releases its first Patch Tuesday updates for 2020, Microsoft has now also published its January security advisories warning billions of users of 49 new vulnerabilities in its various products. What's so special about the latest Patch Tuesday is that one of the updates fixes a serious flaw in the core cryptographic component of widely used Windows 10, Server 2016 and 2019 editions that was discovered and reported to the company by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States. What's more interesting is that this is the first security flaw in Windows OS that the NSA reported responsibly to Microsoft, unlike the  Eternalblue SMB flaw that the agency kept secret for at least five years and then was leaked to the public by a mysterious group, which caused WannaCry menace in 2017. CVE-2020-0601: Windows CryptoAPI Spoofing Vulnerability According to an advisory released by Microsoft, the flaw, dubbed ' NSACrypt ' and tracked as CVE-20

Adobe today released software updates to patch a total of 9 new security vulnerabilities in two of its widely used applications, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Illustrator. It's the first Patch Tuesday for the year 2020 and one of the lightest patch releases in a long time for Adobe users. Moreover, none of the security vulnerabilities patched this month were either publicly disclosed or found being actively exploited in the wild. 5 of the 9 security vulnerabilities are 'critical' in severity, and all of them affect Adobe Illustrator CC versions 24.0 and earlier, which were reported to the company by Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs researcher Honggang Ren. According to an advisory published by Adobe, all five critical issues in Adobe Illustrator software are memory corruption bugs that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on targeted systems in the context of the current user. The rest 4 security vulnerabilities affect Adobe Experience Manager —

It's now or never to prevent your enterprise servers running vulnerable versions of Citrix application delivery, load balancing, and Gateway solutions from getting hacked by remote attackers. Why the urgency? Earlier today, multiple groups publicly released weaponized proof-of-concept exploit code [ 1 , 2 ] for a recently disclosed remote code execution vulnerability in Citrix's NetScaler ADC and Gateway products that could allow anyone to leverage them to take full control over potential enterprise targets. Just before the last Christmas and year-end holidays, Citrix announced that its Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Citrix Gateway are vulnerable to a critical path traversal flaw (CVE-2019-19781) that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to perform arbitrary code execution on vulnerable servers. Citrix confirmed that the flaw affects all supported version of the software, including: Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway version 13.0 all supported build

Attention! Are you using Firefox as your web browsing software on your Windows, Linux, or Mac systems? If yes, you should immediately update your free and open-source Firefox web browser to the latest version available on Mozilla's website. Why the urgency? Mozilla earlier today released Firefox 72.0.1 and Firefox ESR 68.4.1 versions to patch a critical zero-day vulnerability in its browsing software that an undisclosed group of hackers is actively exploiting in the wild. Tracked as ' CVE-2019-17026 ,' the bug is a critical 'type confusion vulnerability' that resides in the IonMonkey just-in-time (JIT) compiler of the Mozilla's JavaScript engine SpiderMonkey. In general, a type confusion vulnerability occurs when the code doesn't verify what objects it is passed to and blindly uses it without checking its type, allowing attackers to crash the application or achieve code execution. Without revealing details about the security flaw and any det

TikTok , the 3rd most downloaded app in 2019, is under intense scrutiny over users' privacy, censoring politically controversial content and on national-security grounds—but it's not over yet, as the security of billions of TikTok users would be now under question. The famous Chinese viral video-sharing app contained potentially dangerous vulnerabilities that could have allowed remote attackers to hijack any user account just by knowing the mobile number of targeted victims. In a report privately shared with The Hacker News, cybersecurity researchers at Check Point revealed that chaining multiple vulnerabilities allowed them to remotely execute malicious code and perform unwanted actions on behalf of the victims without their consent. The reported vulnerabilities include low severity issues like SMS link spoofing, open redirection, and cross-site scripting (XSS) that when combined could allow a remote attacker to perform high impact attacks, including: delete any videos

Watch out! If you have any of the below-mentioned file managers and photography apps installed on your Android phone—even if downloaded from the official Google Store store⁠—you have been hacked and being tracked. These newly detected malicious Android apps are Camero , FileCrypt , and callCam that are believed to be linked to Sidewinder APT, a sophisticated hacking group specialized in cyber espionage attacks. According to cybersecurity researchers at Trend Micro, these apps were exploiting a critical use-after-free vulnerability in Android at least since March last year⁠—that's 7 months before the same flaw was first discovered as zero-day when Google researcher analysed a separate attack developed by Israeli surveillance vendor NSO Group. "We speculate that these apps have been active since March 2019 based on the certificate information on one of the apps," the researchers said . Tracked as CVE-2019-2215 , the vulnerability is a local privilege escalation

January 14, 2020, is a day cybersecurity stakeholders should pay attention to, as it marks the end of Microsoft support in Windows 7. From a security perspective, both the routine monthly security patches as well as hotfixes for attacks in the wild will not be available, effectively making any newly discovered vulnerability a Windows 7 zero-day. Cynet 360 autonomous breach protection is a good example of a multilayered advanced protection solution that can enable organizations who run Windows 7 to remain secure despite the end of support ( to learn more click here ). Let's dig a bit deeper to understand the risk. The reality is that all software contains bugs. Ideally, these bugs are discovered during the development process. In practice, many of them surface only following the product release in the course of their interactions with real users. Bugs that can be exploited for malicious purposes are called vulnerabilities. Microsoft conducts rigorous and ongoing research

Internet-connected devices have been one of the most remarkable developments that have happened to humankind in the last decade. Although this development is a good thing, it also stipulates a high security and privacy risk to personal information. In one such recent privacy mishap, smart IP cameras manufactured by Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi found mistakenly sharing surveillance footage of Xiaomi users with other random users without any permission. The issue appears to affect Xiaomi IP cameras only when streamed through connected Google's Nest Hub, which came into light when a Reddit user claimed that his Google Nest Hub is apparently pulling random feeds from other users instead of his own Xiaomi Mijia cameras. The Reddit user also shared some photos showing other people's homes, an older adult sleeping on a chair, and a baby sleeping in its crib that appeared on his Nest Hub screen. It appears the issue doesn't reside in Google products; instead, it c

Landry's, a popular restaurant chain in the United States, has announced a malware attack on its point of sale (POS) systems that allowed cybercriminals to steal customers' payment card information. Landry's owns and operates more than 600 bars, restaurants, hotels, casinos, food and beverage outlets with over 60 different brands such as Landry's Seafood, Chart House, Saltgrass Steak House, Claim Jumper, Morton's The Steakhouse, Mastro's Restaurants, and Rainforest Cafe. According to the  breach notification published this week, the malware was designed to search for and likely steal sensitive customer credit card data, including credit card numbers, expiration dates, verification codes and, in some cases, cardholder names. The PoS malware infected point-of-sale terminals at all Landry's owned locations, but, fortunately, due to end-to-end encryption technology used by the company, attackers failed to steal payment card data from cards swiped at its

Advanced persistent threats (APTs) have emerged to be legitimate concerns for all organizations. APTs are threat actors that breach networks and infrastructures and stealthily lurk within them over extended spans of time. They typically perform complex hacks that allow them to steal or destroy data and resources. According to Accenture , APTs have been organizing themselves into groups that enable them to share tactics and tools to carry out attacks at scale. Russian group Silence APT, for instance, has been reported to be actively targeting financial institutions and have successfully stolen millions of dollars from various banks worldwide. Smaller organizations also need to be wary of such threats. APT groups also use automated tools and botnets to gain access to networks, and these tactics don't discriminate based on size, industry, or value. Any vulnerable infrastructure can be breached. It is now critical for all organizations to understand how APTs operate and impleme

The cybersecurity of a company is heavily reliant upon the skills and knowledge of the people who install, manage, and operate its security products. This means that recruiting and nurturing the best security team possible should be a CISO's top priority. Cynet's Ultimate Cybersecurity Job Posting Templates ( download here ) provide a list of the main responsibilities and skills for typical security positions, built upon research and providing IT and security managers with pre-set template job descriptions so that there is no need to create them from scratch. Because of the fact that there are many different cybersecurity job titles, with much overlap between job descriptions and responsibilities, the creation of the inclusion criteria for these positions required significant review and consideration. Six positions are included in the following job templates, including all integral aspects of the responsibility cycle in product deployment, integration, and operation, p

A 22-year-old man who claimed to have access to over 300 million iCloud accounts and threatened to factory reset all accounts unless Apple pays ransom has pleaded guilty in London for trying to blackmail Apple. In March 2017, Kerem Albayrak from North London claimed to be a spokesman for a hacking group called the " Turkish Crime Family " and in possession of 319 million iCloud accounts. Albayrak gave Apple a deadline until April 7, 2017, to pay up $75,000 in crypto-currency or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards in return for deleting the copy of stolen database, the U.K. National Crime Agency said in a statement , calling the blackmailer a "fame-hungry cyber-criminal." However, if the company failed to meet his demands, Albayrak threatened that he would start remotely wiping the victim's Apple devices, factory reset iCloud accounts, and dump the stolen database online. In late March 2017, the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit arrested Albayrak at

Three members of an international organized cybercrime group that was behind a multi-million dollar theft primarily against U.S. businesses and financial institutions have been sentenced to prison, the U.S. Justice Department announced. The criminals used the GozNym banking Trojan to break into more than 4,000 victim computers globally, primarily in the United States and Europe, between 2015 and 2016, and fraudulently steal nearly $100 million from their banking accounts. In May this year, Europol dismantled the cybercrime network behind GozNym, with the United States issuing charges against a total of ten members of the group, 5 of which were arrested at that time, while five others, including the developer of GozNym, remain at the run. In a federal court in Pittsburgh on Friday, Krasimir Nikolov , one of the group's members, was sentenced to a period of time served after having served over 39 months in prison for his role as an "account takeover specialist" i

As promised by Apple in August this year, the company today finally opened its bug bounty program to all security researchers, offering monetary rewards to anyone for reporting vulnerabilities in the iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, and iCloud to the company. Since its launch three years ago, Apple's bug bounty program was open only for selected security researchers based on invitation and was only rewarded for reporting vulnerabilities in the iOS mobile operating system. However, speaking at a hacking conference in August this year, Ivan Krstić, head of Apple Security Engineering and Architecture at Apple, announced the company's upcoming extended bug bounty program which included three main highlights: an enormous increase in the maximum reward from $200,000 to $1.5 million, accepting bug reports for all of its operating systems and latest hardware, opening the program for all researchers. Now starting from today, all security researchers and hackers are

Have you stopped at any Wawa convenience store and used your payment card to buy gas or snacks in the last nine months? If yes, your credit and debit card details may have been stolen by cybercriminals. Wawa, the Philadelphia-based gas and convenience store chain, disclosed a data breach incident that may have exposed payment card information of thousands of customers who used their cards at about any of its 850 stores since March 2019. What happened? According to a press release published on the company's website, on 4th March, attackers managed to install malware on its point-of-sale servers used to process customers' payments. By the time it was discovered by the Wawa information security team on 10th December, the malware had already infected in-store payment processing systems at "potentially all Wawa locations." That means attackers were potentially stealing Wawa customers' payment card information until the malware was entirely removed by its

If you haven't recently updated your Drupal-based blog or business website to the latest available versions, it's the time. Drupal development team yesterday released important security updates for its widely used open-source content management software that addresses a critical and three "moderately critical" vulnerabilities in its core system. Considering that Drupal-powered websites are among the all-time favorite targets for hackers, the website administrators are highly recommended to install the latest release Drupal 7.69, 8.7.11, or 8.8.1 to prevent remote hackers from compromising web servers. Critical Symlinks Vulnerability in Drupal The only advisory with critical severity includes patches for multiple vulnerabilities in a third-party library, called ' Archive_Tar ,' that Drupal Core uses for creating, listing, extracting, and adding files to tar archives. The vulnerability resides in the way the affected library untar archives with sym