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Networking equipment major Cisco on Wednesday confirmed it was the victim of a cyberattack on May 24, 2022 after the attackers got hold of an employee's personal Google account that contained passwords synced from their web browser. "Initial access to the Cisco VPN was achieved via the successful compromise of a Cisco employee's personal Google account," Cisco Talos  said  in a detailed write-up. "The user had enabled password syncing via Google Chrome and had stored their Cisco credentials in their browser, enabling that information to synchronize to their Google account." The disclosure comes as cybercriminal actors associated with the Yanluowang ransomware gang  published a list of files  from the breach to their data leak site on August 10. The exfiltrated information, according to Talos, included the contents of a Box cloud storage folder that was associated with the compromised employee's account and is not believed to have included any valuabl

Threat actors associated with the Cuba ransomware have been linked to previously undocumented tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), including a new remote access trojan called ROMCOM RAT on compromised systems. The  new findings  come from Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat intelligence team, which is tracking the double extortion ransomware group under the  constellation-themed moniker   Tropical Scorpius . Cuba ransomware (aka  COLDDRAW ), which was first detected in December 2019, reemerged on the threat landscape in November 2021 and has been attributed to attacks against 60 entities in five critical infrastructure sectors, amassing at least $43.9 million in ransom payments. Of the 60 victims listed on its data leak site, 40 are located in the U.S., indicating a not as global distribution of targeted organizations as other ransomware gangs. "Cuba ransomware is distributed through Hancitor malware, a loader known for dropping or executing stealers, such as Remote

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Password security is only as strong as the password itself. Unfortunately, we are often reminded of the danger of weak, reused, and compromised passwords with major cybersecurity breaches that start with stolen credentials. For example, in May 2022, the popular wedding planning site, Zola, was the victim of a significant cybersecurity breach where hackers used an attack known as  credential stuffing . It resulted in fraudulent activity tied to customer accounts. Let's look at the Zola breach and why it emphasizes the need for organizations to bolster their password security and protect against various types of password attacks. What happened with the Zola attack? Instead of going after Zola's core business-critical infrastructure, hackers went after customer accounts with the May attack. Attackers used an age-old technique called  credential stuffing  to compromise several Zola customer accounts. With access to the compromised accounts, they attempted to purchase gift vouche

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple severe security vulnerabilities asset management platform  Device42  that, if successfully exploited, could enable a malicious actor to seize control of affected systems. "By exploiting these issues, an attacker could impersonate other users, obtain admin-level access in the application (by leaking session with an  LFI ) or obtain full access to the appliance files and database (through remote code execution)," Bitdefender  said  in a Wednesday report. Even more concerningly, an adversary with any level of access within the host network could daisy-chain three of the flaws to bypass authentication protections and achieve remote code execution with the highest privileges. The issues in question are listed below - CVE-2022-1399  - Remote Code Execution in scheduled tasks component CVE-2022-1400  - Hard-coded encryption key IV in Exago WebReportsApi.dll CVE 2022-1401  - Insufficient validation of provided paths in Exago

Cloud-based code hosting platform GitHub has announced that it will now start sending Dependabot alerts for vulnerable GitHub Actions to help developers fix security issues in CI/CD workflows. "When a security vulnerability is reported in an action, our team of security researchers will create an advisory to document the vulnerability, which will trigger an alert to impacted repositories," GitHub's Brittany O'Shea and Kate Catlin  said . GitHub Actions  is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) solution that enables users to automate the software build, test, and deployment pipeline. Dependabot  is part of the Microsoft-owned subsidiary's continued efforts to secure the  software supply chain  by  notifying  users that their source code depends on a package with a security vulnerability and helping keep all the dependencies up-to-date. The latest move entails receiving alerts on GitHub Actions and vulnerabilities impacting developer code,

A former Twitter employee has been pronounced guilty for his role in digging up private information pertaining to certain Twitter users and turning over that data to Saudi Arabia. Ahmad Abouammo, 44, was convicted by a jury after a two-week trial in San Francisco federal court, Bloomberg  reported  Tuesday. He faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced. The  verdict  comes nearly three years after Abouammo, along with Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Almutairi (Ahmed Aljbreen) were  indicted in 2019  for acting as "illegal agents" of Saudi Arabia, with the former also charged with destroying, altering, and falsifying records in a federal investigation. Prosecutors accused Abouammo and Alzabarah, both of whom joined Twitter in 2013, of being enlisted by officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for  unmasking its critics  on the social media platform. According to court documents, both individuals leveraged their access to internal systems to unauthorizedly get hold of nonpubli

The first ever incident possibly involving the ransomware family known as Maui occurred on April 15, 2021, aimed at an unnamed Japanese housing company. The disclosure from Kaspersky arrives a month after U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies issued an  advisory  about the use of the ransomware strain by North Korean government-backed hackers to target the healthcare sector since at least May 2021. Much of the data about its modus operandi came from incident response activities and industry analysis of a Maui sample that revealed a lack of "several key features" typically associated with ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations. Not only is Maui designed to be manually executed by a remote actor via a command-line interface, it's also notable for not including a ransom note to provide recovery instructions. Subsequently, the Justice Department  announced  the seizure of $500,000 worth of Bitcoin that were extorted from several organizations, including two he