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OpenAI on Wednesday said it has disrupted more than 20 operations and deceptive networks across the world that attempted to use its platform for malicious purposes since the start of the year. This activity encompassed debugging malware, writing articles for websites, generating biographies for social media accounts, and creating AI-generated profile pictures for fake accounts on X. "Threat actors continue to evolve and experiment with our models, but we have not seen evidence of this leading to meaningful breakthroughs in their ability to create substantially new malware or build viral audiences," the artificial intelligence (AI) company said . It also said it disrupted activity that generated social media content related to elections in the U.S., Rwanda, and to a lesser extent India and the European Union, and that none of these networks attracted viral engagement or sustained audiences. This included efforts undertaken by an Israeli commercial company named STOIC (als

Cybersecurity security researchers are warning about an unpatched vulnerability in Nice Linear eMerge E3 access controller systems that could allow for the execution of arbitrary operating system (OS) commands. The flaw, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2024-9441 , carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0, according to VulnCheck . "A vulnerability in the Nortek Linear eMerge E3 allows remote unauthenticated attackers to cause the device to execute arbitrary command," SSD Disclosure said in an advisory for the flaw released late last month, stating the vendor has yet to provide a fix or a workaround. The flaw impacts the following versions of Nortek Linear eMerge E3 Access Control: 0.32-03i, 0.32-04m, 0.32-05p, 0.32-05z, 0.32-07p, 0.32-07e, 0.32-08e, 0.32-08f, 0.32-09c, 1.00.05, and 1.00.07. Proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for the flaw have been released following public disclosure, raising concerns that it could be exploited by threat actors. It's wort

The current SOC model relies on a scarce resource: human analysts. These professionals are expensive, in high demand, and increasingly difficult to retain. Their work is not only highly technical and high-risk, but also soul-crushingly repetitive, dealing with a constant flood of alerts and incidents. As a result, SOC analysts often leave in search of better pay, the opportunity to move beyond the SOC into more rewarding roles, or simply to take much-needed breaks. This high churn rate puts the SOC in a vulnerable position, jeopardizing the overall effectiveness of cybersecurity operations. To keep your team resilient and maintain operational efficiency, it's essential to take proactive steps to reduce burnout and improve retention. Here are five strategies that can make a difference. Why Analyst Burnout Matters More Than Ever SOC analyst burnout is becoming a critical issue as the cybersecurity landscape evolves. Security Operations Centers (SOCs) face a growing number of daily al

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new digital skimmer campaign that leverages Unicode obfuscation techniques to conceal a skimmer dubbed Mongolian Skimmer. "At first glance, the thing that stood out was the script's obfuscation, which seemed a bit bizarre because of all the accented characters," Jscrambler researchers said in an analysis. "The heavy use of Unicode characters, many of them invisible, does make the code very hard to read for humans." The script, at its core, has been found to leverage JavaScript's capability to use any Unicode character in identifiers to hide the malicious functionality. The end goal of the malware is to steal sensitive data entered on e-commerce checkout or admin pages, including financial information, which are then exfiltrated to an attacker-controlled server. The skimmer, which typically manifests in the form of an inline script on compromised sites that fetches the actual payload from an external serv

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added a critical security flaw impacting Fortinet products to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-23113 (CVSS score: 9.8), relates to cases of remote code execution that affects FortiOS, FortiPAM, FortiProxy, and FortiWeb. "A use of externally-controlled format string vulnerability [CWE-134] in FortiOS fgfmd daemon may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code or commands via specially crafted requests," Fortinet noted in an advisory for the flaw back in February 2024. As is typically the case, the bulletin is sparse on details related to how the shortcoming is being exploited in the wild, or who is weaponizing it and against whom. In light of active exploitation, Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies are mandated to apply the vendor-provided mitigations by Oct

Mozilla has revealed that a critical security flaw impacting Firefox and Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-9680 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as a use-after-free bug in the Animation timeline component. "An attacker was able to achieve code execution in the content process by exploiting a use-after-free in Animation timelines," Mozilla said in a Wednesday advisory.  "We have had reports of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild." Security researcher Damien Schaeffer from Slovakian company ESET has been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability. The issue has been addressed in the following versions of the web browser -  Firefox 131.0.2 Firefox ESR 128.3.1, and Firefox ESR 115.16.1. There are currently no details on how the vulnerability is being exploited in real-world attacks and the identity of the threat actors behind them. T

For years, securing a company's systems was synonymous with securing its "perimeter." There was what was safe "inside" and the unsafe outside world. We built sturdy firewalls and deployed sophisticated detection systems, confident that keeping the barbarians outside the walls kept our data and systems safe. The problem is that we no longer operate within the confines of physical on-prem installations and controlled networks. Data and applications now reside in distributed cloud environments and data centers, accessed by users and devices connecting from anywhere on the planet. The walls have crumbled, and the perimeter has dissolved, opening the door to a new battlefield: identity . Identity is at the center of what the industry has praised as the new gold standard of enterprise security: "zero trust." In this paradigm, explicit trust becomes mandatory for any interactions between systems, and no implicit trust shall subsist. Every access request, regardless of its origin,

Google on Wednesday announced a new partnership with the Global Anti-Scam Alliance ( GASA ) and DNS Research Federation ( DNS RF ) to combat online scams . The initiative, which has been codenamed the Global Signal Exchange ( GSE ), is designed to create real-time insights into scams, fraud, and other forms of cybercrime pooling together threat signals from different data sources in order to create more visibility into the facilitators of cybercrime. "By joining forces and establishing a centralized platform, GSE aims to improve the exchange of abuse signals, enabling faster identification and disruption of fraudulent activities across various sectors, platforms and services," Google said in a blog post shared with The Hacker News. "The goal is to create a user-friendly, efficient solution that operates at an internet-scale, and is accessible to qualifying organizations, with GASA and the DNS Research Federation managing access." The tech giant said it has sh

Details have emerged about multiple security vulnerabilities in two implementations of the Manufacturing Message Specification ( MMS ) protocol that, if successfully exploited, could have severe impacts in industrial environments. "The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to crash an industrial device or in some cases, enable remote code execution," Claroty researchers Mashav Sapir and Vera Mens said in a new analysis. MMS is an OSI application layer messaging protocol that enables remote control and monitoring of industrial devices by exchanging supervisory control information in an application-agnostic manner. Specifically, it allows for communication between intelligent electronic devices ( IEDs ) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems or programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The five shortcomings identified by the operational technology security company impact MZ Automation's libIEC61850 library and Triangle MicroWorks' TMW IEC 61

Threat actors with ties to North Korea have been observed targeting job seekers in the tech industry to deliver updated versions of known malware families tracked as BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret. The activity cluster, tracked as CL-STA-0240, is part of a campaign dubbed Contagious Interview that Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 first disclosed in November 2023. "The threat actor behind CL-STA-0240 contacts software developers through job search platforms by posing as a prospective employer," Unit 42 said in a new report. "The attackers invite the victim to participate in an online interview, where the threat actor attempts to convince the victim to download and install malware." The first stage of infection involves the BeaverTail downloader and information stealer that's designed for targeting both Windows and Apple macOS platforms. The malware acts as a conduit for the Python-based InvisibleFerret backdoor. There is evidence to suggest that the activity