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The U.S. government and its key allies, including the European Union, the U.K., and NATO, formally attributed the massive cyberattack against Microsoft Exchange email servers to state-sponsored hacking crews working affiliated with the People's Republic of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). In a  statement  issued by the White House on Monday, the administration said, "with a high degree of confidence that malicious cyber actors affiliated with PRC's MSS conducted cyber-espionage operations utilizing the zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server disclosed in early March 2021. The U.K. government  accused  Beijing of a "pervasive pattern of hacking" and "systemic cyber sabotage." The  sweeping espionage campaign  exploited four previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange software and is believed to have hit at least 30,000 organizations in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands more worldwide. Microsoft identified

A threat group likely based in Romania and active since at least 2020 has been behind an active cryptojacking campaign targeting Linux-based machines with a previously undocumented SSH brute-forcer written in Golang. Dubbed " Diicot brute ," the password cracking tool is alleged to be distributed via a software-as-a-service model, with each threat actor furnishing their own unique API keys to facilitate the intrusions, Bitdefender researchers said in a report published last week. While the goal of the campaign is to deploy Monero mining malware by remotely compromising the devices via brute-force attacks, the researchers connected the gang to at least two  DDoS  botnets, including a  Demonbot  variant called chernobyl and a Perl  IRC bot , with the XMRig mining payload hosted on a domain named mexalz[.]us since February 2021. The Romanian cybersecurity technology company said it began its investigation into the group's hostile online activities in May 2021, leading

The Wi-Fi network name bug that was found to completely disable an iPhone's networking functionality had remote code execution capabilities and was silently fixed by Apple earlier this year, according to new research. The denial-of-service vulnerability,  which came to light last month , stemmed from the way iOS handled string formats associated with the SSID input, triggering a crash on any up-to-date iPhone that connected to wireless access points with percent symbols in their names such as "%p%s%s%s%s%n." While the issue is remediable by resetting the network settings (Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings), Apple is  expected to push a patch  for the bug in its iOS 14.7 update, which is currently available to developers and public beta testers. But in what could have had far-reaching consequences, researchers from mobile security automation firm ZecOps found that the same bug could be exploited to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on targ

Permissions in SaaS platforms like Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft 365 are remarkably precise. They spell out exactly which users have access to which data sets. The terminology differs between apps, but each user's base permission is determined by their role, while additional permissions may be granted based on tasks or projects they are involved with. Layered on top of that are custom permissions required by an individual user.  For example, look at a sales rep who is involved in a tiger team investigating churn while also training two new employees. The sales rep's role would grant her one set of permissions to access prospect data, while the tiger team project would grant access to existing customer data. Meanwhile, special permissions are set up, providing the sales rep with visibility into the accounts of the two new employees. While these permissions are precise, however, they are also very complex. Application admins don't have a single screen within these applications th

According to Keeper Security's Workplace Password Malpractice Report, many remote workers aren't following best practices for password security. Password security was a problem even before the advent of widespread remote work. So, what happened post-pandemic?  Keeper Security's Workplace Password Malpractice Report  sought to find out. In February 2021, Keeper surveyed 1,000 employees in the U.S. about their work-related password habits -- and discovered that a lot of remote workers are letting password security go by the wayside. Here are 5 critical password security rules they're ignoring. 1 — Always use strong passwords Strong passwords are at least eight characters long (preferably more) and consist of random strings of letters, numerals, and special characters. Passwords should never include dictionary words, which are easy to guess, or personal details, which cybercriminals can scrape off social media channels. 37% of respondents to Keeper's survey sai

Merely days after Microsoft sounded the alarm on an unpatched security vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, possibly yet another zero-day flaw in the same component has come to light, making it the fourth printer-related shortcoming to be discovered in recent weeks. "Microsoft Windows allows for non-admin users to be able to install printer drivers via Point and Print," CERT Coordination Center's Will Dormann  said  in an advisory published Sunday. "Printers installed via this technique also install queue-specific files, which can be arbitrary libraries to be loaded by the privileged Windows Print Spooler process." An exploit for the vulnerability was disclosed by security researcher and  Mimikatz creator   Benjamin Delpy . #printnightmare - Episode 4 You know what is better than a Legit Kiwi Printer ? 🥝Another Legit Kiwi Printer...👍 No prerequiste at all, you even don't need to sign drivers/package🤪 pic.twitter.com/oInb5jm3tE — 🥝 B

A sweeping probe into a data leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers has revealed an extensive misuse of Israeli company NSO Group's Pegasus "military-grade spyware" to facilitate human rights violations by surveilling heads of state, activists, journalists, and lawyers around the world. Dubbed the " Pegasus Project ," the  investigation  is a collaboration by more than 80 journalists from a consortium of 17 media organizations in 10 countries coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based media non-profit, along with the technical support of Amnesty International. "The Pegasus Project lays bare how NSO's spyware is a weapon of choice for repressive governments seeking to silence journalists, attack activists and crush dissent, placing countless lives in peril," Amnesty International's Secretary-General, Agnès Callamard,  said . "These revelations blow apart any claims by NSO that such attacks are rare and down to rogue use of their te

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has issued new stricter vulnerability disclosure regulations that mandate software and networking vendors affected with critical flaws to mandatorily disclose them first-hand to the government authorities within two days of filing a report. The " Regulations on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerability " are expected to go into effect starting September 1, 2021, and aim to standardize the discovery, reporting, repair, and release of security vulnerabilities and prevent security risks. "No organization or individual may take advantage of network product security vulnerabilities to engage in activities that endanger network security, and shall not illegally collect, sell or publish information on network product security vulnerabilities," Article 4 of the regulation states. In addition to banning sales of previously unknown security weaknesses, the new rules also forbid vulnerabilities from being disclos

Instagram earlier this week introduced a new " Security Checkup " feature that aims to keep accounts safe and help users—whose accounts may have been compromised—to recover them. In order to gain access to accounts, users will be prompted to perform a series of steps, which include checking recent login activity, reviewing profile information, and updating contact details such as phone numbers or email. Additionally, the Facebook-owned company is also "strongly" recommending users to turn on two-factor authentication for extra security and preventing unauthorized logins. On that front, Instagram also said it would allow users in select countries to use their WhatsApp numbers to authenticate their accounts. Stressing that "Instagram will never send you a [direct message]," the social media platform cautioned users to be on the lookout for scams, wherein malicious accounts reach out via DMs to try and access sensitive information like account passwo

Web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare last month fixed a critical vulnerability in its CDNJS library that's  used by 12.7% of all websites  on the internet. CDNJS is a free and open-source content delivery network (CDN) that serves about  4,041 JavaScript and CSS libraries , making it the  second most popular  CDN for JavaScript after Google Hosted Libraries. The weakness concerned an issue in the CDNJS library update server that could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands, leading to a complete compromise. The vulnerability was discovered and reported by security researcher RyotaK on April 6, 2021. There is no evidence of in-the-wild attacks abusing this flaw. Specifically, the vulnerability works by publishing packages to Cloudflare's CDNJS using GitHub and npm, using it to trigger a  path traversal vulnerability , and ultimately trick the server into executing arbitrary code, thus achieving remote code execution. It's wor

Two of the zero-day Windows flaws rectified by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update earlier this week were weaponized by an Israel-based company called Candiru in a series of "precision attacks" to hack more than 100 journalists, academics, activists, and political dissidents globally. The spyware vendor was also formally identified as the commercial surveillance company that Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) revealed as exploiting multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome browser to target victims located in Armenia, according to a report published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. " Candiru 's apparent widespread presence, and the use of its surveillance technology against global civil society, is a potent reminder that the mercenary spyware industry contains many players and is prone to widespread abuse," Citizen Lab researchers  said . "This case demonstrates, yet again, that in the absence of any international safegua

Advanced Persistent Threats groups were once considered a problem that concerns Fortune 100 companies only. However, the threat landscape of the recent years tells otherwise—in fact, every organization, regardless of vertical and size is at risk, whether as a direct target, supply chain or collateral damage. The vast majority of security decision-makers acknowledge they need to address the APT risk with additional security solutions but struggle with mapping APT attack vectors to a clear-cut set of security product capabilities, which impairs their ability to choose the products that would best protect them. Cynet is now addressing this need with the definitive RFP templates for EDR/EPP and APT Protection , an expert-made security requirement list, that enables stakeholders to accelerate and optimize the evaluation process of the products they evaluate. These RFP templates aim to capture the widest common denominator in terms of security needs and deliver the essential that are

Facebook on Thursday disclosed it dismantled a "sophisticated" online cyber espionage campaign conducted by Iranian hackers targeting about 200 military personnel and companies in the defense and aerospace sectors in the U.S., U.K., and Europe using fake online personas on its platform. The social media giant pinned the attacks to a threat actor known as  Tortoiseshell  (aka Imperial Kitten) based on the fact that the adversary used similar techniques in past campaigns attributed to the threat group, which was  previously   known  to focus on the information technology industry in Saudi Arabia, suggesting an apparent expansion of malicious activity. "This group used various malicious tactics to identify its targets and infect their devices with malware to enable espionage,"  said  Mike Dvilyanski, Head of Cyber Espionage Investigations, and David Agranovich, Director, Threat Disruption, at Facebook. "This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and

Google has pushed out a new security update to Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux with multiple fixes, including a zero-day that it says is being exploited in the wild. The latest patch resolves a total of eight issues, one of which concerns a type confusion issue in its V8 open-source and JavaScript engine ( CVE-2021-30563 ). The search giant credited an anonymous researcher for reporting the flaw on July 12. As is usually the case with actively exploited flaws, the company issued a terse statement acknowledging that "an exploit for CVE-2021-30563 exists in the wild" while refraining from sharing full details about the underlying vulnerability used in the attacks due to its serious nature and the possibility that doing so could lead to further abuse. CVE-2021-30563 also marks the ninth zero-day addressed by Google to combat real-world attacks against Chrome users since the start of the year — CVE-2021-21148  - Heap buffer overflow in V8 CVE-2021-21166  - Obje

Microsoft on Thursday shared fresh guidance on yet another vulnerability affecting the Windows Print Spooler service, stating that it's working to address it in an upcoming security update. Tracked as  CVE-2021-34481  (CVSS score: 7.8), the issue concerns a local privilege escalation flaw that could be abused to perform unauthorized actions on the system. The company credited security researcher Jacob Baines for discovering and reporting the bug. "An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Windows Print Spooler service improperly performs privileged file operations. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges," the Windows maker said in its advisory. "An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights." However, it's worth pointing out that successful exploitation of the vulnerability requires the attacker to have t

A sweeping and "highly active campaign" that originally set its sights on Myanmar has broadened its focus to strike a number of targets located in the Philippines, according to new research. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which first spotted the infections in October 2020, attributed them to a threat actor it tracks as " LuminousMoth ," which it connected with medium to high confidence to a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group called HoneyMyte or  Mustang Panda , given its observed victimology, tactics, and procedures. About 100 affected victims have been identified in Myanmar, while the number of victims jumped to nearly 1,400 in the Philippines, although the researchers noted that the actual targets were only a fraction of the initial numbers, including government entities located both within the two countries and abroad. The goal of the attacks is to affect a wide perimeter of targets with the aim of hitting a select few that are of strategic interes

Zero Trust is increasingly being adopted as the best strategy to maintain application security and prevent data breaches. To help achieve progress on Zero Trust, there is now a new, easy way to implement continuous user verification by connecting directly to the authentication systems used by mobile operators – without the overhead of processing or storing user data.  Before we show you how it works and how to integrate it, let's start with the fundamental challenge. Zero Trust and Authentication The Zero Trust model of identity verification essentially means never trusting that a returning user is whom they claim to be, regardless of their location or previous successful attempts. Zero Trust is a strategic approach to access management that is vital for keeping out bad actors.  As the world moves to the cloud, with an increasingly distributed network of employees, partners, and clients, tighter auth journeys become even more important.  But with greater security comes greate

Networking equipment maker SonicWall is alerting customers of an "imminent" ransomware campaign targeting its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) products running unpatched and end-of-life 8.x firmware. The warning comes more than a month after reports emerged that remote access vulnerabilities in SonicWall SRA 4600 VPN appliances ( CVE-2019-7481 ) are being exploited as an initial access vector for ransomware attacks to breach corporate networks worldwide. "SonicWall has been made aware of threat actors actively targeting Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) products running unpatched and end-of-life (EOL) 8.x firmware in an imminent ransomware campaign using stolen credentials," the company  said . "The exploitation targets a known vulnerability that has been patched in newer versions of firmware." SMA 1000 series products are not affected by the flaw, SonicWall noted, urging businesse

Threat intelligence researchers from Google on Wednesday  shed more light  on four in-the-wild zero-days in Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer browsers that were exploited by malicious actors in different campaigns since the start of the year. What's more, three of the four zero-days were engineered by commercial providers and sold to and used by government-backed actors, contributing to an uptick in real-world attacks. The list of now-patched vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2021-1879 : Use-After-Free in QuickTimePluginReplacement (Apple WebKit) CVE-2021-21166 : Chrome Object Lifecycle Issue in Audio CVE-2021-30551 : Chrome Type Confusion in V8 CVE-2021-33742 : Internet Explorer out-of-bounds write in MSHTML Both Chrome zero-days — CVE-2021-21166 and CVE-2021-30551 — are believed to have been used by the same actor, and were delivered as one-time links sent via email to targets located in Armenia, with the links redirecting unsuspecting users to attacker-controlled