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Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed "distinctive" tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by operators of Hades ransomware that set it apart from the rest of the pack, attributing it to a financially motivated threat group called  GOLD WINTER . "In many ways, the GOLD WINTER threat group is a typical post-intrusion ransomware threat group that pursues high-value targets to maximize how much money it can extort from its victims," researchers from SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) said in an analysis shared with The Hacker News. "However, GOLD WINTER's operations have quirks that distinguish it from other groups." The findings come from a study of incident response efforts the Atlanta-based cybersecurity firm engaged in the first quarter of 2021. Since first emerging in the threat landscape in December 2020, Hades has been classified as INDRIK SPIDER's successor to  WastedLocker  ransomware with "additional code o

Instagram has patched a new flaw that allowed anyone to view archived posts and stories posted by private accounts without having to follow them. "This bug could have allowed a malicious user to view targeted media on Instagram," security researcher Mayur Fartade  said  in a Medium post today. "An attacker could have been able to see details of private/archived posts, stories, reels, IGTV without following the user using Media ID." Fartade disclosed the issue to Facebook's security team on April 16, 2021, following which the shortcoming was patched on June 15. He was also awarded $30,000 as part of the company's bug bounty program. Although the attack requires knowing the media ID associated with an image, video, or album, by brute-forcing the identifiers, Fartade demonstrated that it was possible to craft a POST request to a GraphQL endpoint and retrieve sensitive data. As a consequence of the flaw, details such as like/comment/save count, display_

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

Apple on Monday shipped out-of-band security patches to address two zero-day vulnerabilities in iOS 12.5.3 that it says are being actively exploited in the wild. The latest update, iOS 12.5.4 , comes with fixes for three security bugs, including a memory corruption issue in ASN.1 decoder (CVE-2021-30737) and two flaws concerning its WebKit browser engine that could be abused to achieve remote code execution — CVE-2021-30761  - A memory corruption issue that could be exploited to gain arbitrary code execution when processing maliciously crafted web content. The flaw was addressed with improved state management. CVE-2021-30762  - A use-after-free issue that could be exploited to gain arbitrary code execution when processing maliciously crafted web content. The flaw was resolved with improved memory management. Both CVE-2021-30761 and CVE-2021-30762 were reported to Apple anonymously, with the Cupertino-based company stating in its advisory that it's aware of reports that th

Google on Monday announced that it's rolling out client-side encryption to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), thereby giving its enterprise customers direct control of encryption keys and the identity service they choose to access those keys. "With client-side encryption, customer data is indecipherable to Google, while users can continue to take advantage of Google's native web-based collaboration, access content on mobile devices, and share encrypted files externally," the search giant  said .  "When combined with our other encryption capabilities, customers can add new levels of data protection for their Google Workspace data." The development coincides with the Google Workspace and Google Chat's  broader availability to all users  with a Google account. Workspace is the company's enterprise offering consisting of Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and other tools. Businesses using Google Workspace have the choice o

A new cyber espionage group named Gelsemium has been linked to a  supply chain attack targeting the NoxPlayer  Android emulator that was disclosed earlier this year. The findings come from a systematic analysis of multiple campaigns undertaken by the APT crew, with evidence of the earliest attack dating back all the way to 2014 under the codename  Operation TooHash  based on malware payloads deployed in those intrusions. "Victims of these campaigns are located in East Asia as well as the Middle East and include governments, religious organizations, electronics manufacturers and universities," cybersecurity firm ESET  said  in an analysis published last week. "Gelsemium's whole chain might appear simple at first sight, but the exhaustive configurations, implanted at each stage, modify on-the-fly settings for the final payload, making it harder to understand." Targeted countries include China, Mongolia, North and South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Saudi

In response to malicious actors targeting US federal IT systems and their supply chain, the President released the " Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity  (Executive Order)." Although directed at Federal departments and agencies, the Executive Order will likely have a ripple effect through the Federal technology supply stream. Private companies and enterprises will look to the Executive Order to build their best practices. At a high level, the Executive Order includes information-sharing requirements, a push toward cloud and Zero Trust architectures, and enhancing transparency throughout the software supply chain. Understanding the fundamentals of the White House Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity The bulk of the Executive Order focuses on administrative tasks associated with it, including redefining contract language, setting timelines, and defining agency roles and responsibilities. For enterprises that don't supply technolog

Even as a massive data breach affecting Air India came to light the previous month, India's flag carrier airline appears to have suffered a separate cyber assault that lasted for a period of at least two months and 26 days, new research has revealed, which attributed the incident with moderate confidence to a Chinese nation-state threat actor called APT41. Group-IB dubbed the campaign "ColunmTK" based on the names of command-and-control (C2) server domains that were used for facilitating communications with the compromised systems.  "The potential ramifications of this incident for the entire airline industry and carriers that might yet discover traces of ColunmTK in their networks are significant," the Singapore-headquartered threat hunting company  said . While Group-IB alluded that this may have been a supply chain attack targeting SITA, the Swiss aviation information technology company told The Hacker News that they are two different security incidents.