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A malicious Android SMS application discovered on the Google Play Store has been found to stealthily harvest text messages with the goal of creating accounts on a wide range of platforms like Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp. The app, named  Symoo  (com.vanjan.sms), had over 100,000 downloads and functioned as a relay for transmitting messages to a server, which advertises an account creation service. This is achieved by using the phone numbers associated with the infected devices as a means to gather the one-time password that's typically sent to verify the user when setting up new accounts. "The malware asks the phone number of the user in the first screen," security researcher Maxime Ingrao, who discovered the malware,  said , while also requesting for SMS permissions. "Then it pretends to load the application but remains all the time on this page, it is to hide the interface of the received SMS and that the user does not see the SMS of subscriptions to the va

The French data protection watchdog on Tuesday fined electricity provider Électricité de France (EDF)  €600,000 for violating the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL)  said  the electric utility breached European regulation by storing the passwords for over 25,800 accounts by hashing them using the  MD5 algorithm  as recently as July 2022. It's worth noting that MD5, a message digest algorithm, is considered cryptographically broken as of December 2008 owing to the risk of  collision attacks . Furthermore, the authority noted that the passwords associated with 2,414,254 customer accounts had only been hashed and not  salted , exposing the account holders to potential cyber threats. The probe also pointed fingers at EDF for failing to comply with GDPR data retention policies and for providing "inaccurate information on the origin of the data collected." "Th

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

The Australian government has passed a bill that markedly increases the penalty for companies suffering from serious or repeated data breaches. To that end, the maximum fines have been bumped up from the current AU$2.22 million to AU$50 million, 30% of an entity's adjusted turnover in the relevant period, or three times the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of information, whichever is greater. The turnover period is the time duration from when the contravention occurred to the end of the month when the incident is officially addressed. "Significant privacy breaches in recent months have shown existing safeguards are outdated and inadequate," Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus  said  in a statement. "These reforms make clear to companies that the penalty for a major data breach can no longer be regarded as the cost of doing business." The legislation, called the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022, also bestow

Researchers have disclosed details of three new security vulnerabilities affecting operational technology (OT) products from CODESYS and Festo that could lead to source code tampering and denial-of-service (DoS). The vulnerabilities, reported by Forescout Vedere Labs, are the latest in a long list of flaws collectively tracked under the name  OT:ICEFALL . "These issues exemplify either an insecure-by-design approach — which was usual at the time the products were launched – where manufacturers include dangerous functions that can be accessed with no authentication or a subpar implementation of security controls, such as cryptography," the researchers  said . The most critical of the flaws is  CVE-2022-3270  (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical vulnerability that affects Festo automation controllers using the Festo Generic Multicast (FGMC) protocol to reboot the devices without requiring any authentication and cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. Another DoS shortcoming i

A threat actor with a suspected China nexus has been linked to a set of espionage attacks in the Philippines that primarily relies on USB devices as an initial infection vector. Mandiant, which is part of Google Cloud, is tracking the cluster under its uncategorized moniker  UNC4191 . An analysis of the artifacts used in the intrusions indicates that the campaign dates as far back as September 2021. "UNC4191 operations have affected a range of public and private sector entities primarily in Southeast Asia and extending to the U.S., Europe, and APJ," researchers Ryan Tomcik, John Wolfram, Tommy Dacanay, and Geoff Ackerman  said . "However, even when targeted organizations were based in other locations, the specific systems targeted by UNC4191 were also found to be physically located in the Philippines." The reliance on infected USB drives to propagate the malware is unusual if  not new . The  Raspberry Robin  worm, which has  evolved  into an initial access ser

Acer has released a firmware update to address a security vulnerability that could be potentially weaponized to turn off UEFI Secure Boot on affected machines. Tracked as  CVE-2022-4020 , the high-severity vulnerability affects five different models that consist of Aspire A315-22, A115-21, and A315-22G, and Extensa EX215-21 and EX215-21G. The PC maker described the vulnerability as an issue that "may allow changes to Secure Boot settings by creating NVRAM variables." Credited with  discovering  the flaw is ESET researcher Martin Smolár, who previously disclosed  similar bugs  in Lenovo computers. Disabling Secure Boot, an integrity mechanism that guarantees that only trusted software is loaded during system startup, enables a malicious actor to tamper with  boot loaders , leading to severe consequences. This includes  granting  the attacker complete control over the operating system loading process as well as "disable or bypass protections to silently deploy their

Threat actors are capitalizing on a popular TikTok challenge to trick users into downloading information-stealing malware, according to new research from Checkmarx. The trend, called  Invisible Challenge , involves applying a filter known as  Invisible Body  that just leaves behind a silhouette of the person's body. But the fact that individuals filming such videos could be undressed has led to a nefarious scheme wherein the attackers post TikTok videos with links to rogue software dubbed "unfilter" that purport to remove the applied filters. "Instructions to get the 'unfilter' software deploy  WASP stealer malware  hiding inside malicious Python packages," Checkmarx researcher Guy Nachshon  said  in a Monday analysis. The WASP stealer (aka W4SP Stealer) is a malware that's designed to steal users' passwords, Discord accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive information. The TikTok videos posted by the attackers, @learncyber an

When the headlines focus on breaches of large enterprises like the Optus breach, it's easy for smaller businesses to think they're not a target for hackers. Surely, they're not worth the time or effort?  Unfortunately, when it comes to cyber security, size doesn't matter.  Assuming you're not a target leads to lax security practices in many SMBs who lack the knowledge or expertise to put simple security steps in place. Few small businesses prioritise cybersecurity, and hackers know it. According to Verizon, the number of smaller businesses being hit has climbed steadily in the last few years – 46% of cyber breaches in 2021 impacted businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees.  Cyber security doesn't need to be difficult Securing any business doesn't need to be complex or come with a hefty price tag. Here are seven simple tips to help the smaller business secure their systems, people and data. 1 — Install anti-virus software everywhere Every organisation has anti-virus on the

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has  levied fines  of €265 million ($277 million) against Meta Platforms for failing to safeguard the personal data of more than half a billion users of its Facebook service, ramping up privacy enforcement against U.S. tech firms. The fines follow an inquiry initiated by the European regulator on April 14, 2021, close on the heels of a leak of a "collated dataset of Facebook personal data that had been made available on the internet." This included the  personal information  associated with 533 million users of the social media platform, such as their phone numbers, dates of birth, locations, email addresses, gender, marital status, account creation date, and other profile details. Meta acknowledged that the information was "old data" that was obtained by malicious actors by taking advantage of a technique called "phone number enumeration" to  scrape users' public profiles . This entailed misusing a t