A group of academics from Tel Aviv University have disclosed details of now-patched “severe” design flaws affecting about 100 million Android-based Samsung smartphones that could have resulted in the extraction of secret cryptographic keys. The shortcomings are the result of an analysis of the cryptographic design and implementation of Android’s hardware-backed Keystore in Samsung’s Galaxy
Month: February 2022
Looking to help people in Ukraine? Donate wisely – do your research first so you give without getting scammed Times of crisis may bring out the best in you, but they also have a way of bringing out the worst in scammers. They, too, follow the headlines and will go into overdrive in their attempts
Insurance companies often struggle to assess their customers’ cybersecurity risks. For traditional commercial policies, insurance firms use actuarial models based on historic data going back decades or, in some cases, even centuries. These models enable insurance firms to forecast risk and provide coverage based on highly calculated premiums. Cyber insurance is a challenge. The expanding
Authorities in the UK and United States have issued an alert regarding a group of Iranian government-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actors known as MuddyWater. The actors, who are also known as Earth Vetala, MERCURY, Static Kitten, Seedworm, and TEMP.Zagros, have been observed conducting cyber espionage and other malicious cyber operations in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America.
While our tweens and tweens seem to grow into adults right before our eyes, their mobile usage matures into adulthood as well—and in many ways, we don’t see. Girls and boys hit their mobile stride right about the same point in life, at age 15 where their mobile usage jumps significantly and reaches a level
Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) has warned of Belarusian state-sponsored hackers targeting its military personnel and related individuals as part of a phishing campaign mounted amidst Russia’s military invasion of the country. “Mass phishing emails have recently been observed targeting private ‘i.ua’ and ‘meta.ua’ accounts of Ukrainian military personnel and related individuals,” the CERT-UA
What is Internet Key Exchange (IKE)? Internet Key Exchange (IKE) is a standard protocol used to set up a secure and authenticated communication channel between two parties via a virtual private network (VPN). The protocol ensures security for VPN negotiation, remote host and network access. A critical role of IKE is negotiating security associations (SAs)
Cops in Florida have arrested 10 men in a sting operation to catch online child sexual predators. Operation Peek-a-Boo was conducted over a two-week period by 16 investigators with the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Unit at the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO). OCSO said the 10 suspects believed they were chatting with minors online when they were
Authored by Oliver Devane and Vallabh Chole Notifications on Chrome and Edge, both desktop browsers, are commonplace, and malicious actors are increasingly abusing this feature. McAfee previously blogged about how to change desktop browser settings to stop malicious notifications. This blog focuses on Chrome notifications on Android mobile devices such as phones and tablets, and
What can social movements of the past teach you about the future – and about protecting your digital self? Being African American and working at a cybersecurity company doesn’t seem at first glance to provide fertile ground for pondering about the historical past. So, when asked in August 2021 if I could write something for
A new malware capable of controlling social media accounts is being distributed through Microsoft’s official app store in the form of trojanized gaming apps, infecting more than 5,000 Windows machines in Sweden, Bulgaria, Russia, Bermuda, and Spain. Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point dubbed the malware “Electron Bot,” in reference to a command-and-control (C2) domain used
by Paul Ducklin If you use Mozilla Firefox or any Chromium-based browser, notably Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, you’ll know that the version numbers of these products are currently at 97 and 98 respectively. And if you’ve ever looked at your browser’s User-Agent string, you’ll know that these version numbers are, by default, transmitted to
The Ukrainian government is reportedly seeking volunteer hackers and security experts to help Ukraine defend its critical infrastructure against cyber-attacks. According to a report by Reuters, Ukraine’s pleas for assistance started appearing on Ukrainian hacking forums on Thursday morning, shortly after the county was invaded on three fronts by Russian armed forces in an attack condemned by US President
Quick mental math challenge: How many Apple Watches can you buy with $118 billion dollars? If you guessed around 296 million watches congrats, you’re smarter than the writer of this blog! We had to use a calculator. The point is that’s the predicted size of the US wearable market by 2028 according to a recent
Cybersecurity agencies from the U.K. and the U.S. have laid bare a new malware used by the Iranian government-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) group in attacks targeting government and commercial networks worldwide. “MuddyWater actors are positioned both to provide stolen data and accesses to the Iranian government and to share these with other malicious cyber
by Paul Ducklin LISTEN NOW Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can also listen directly on Soundcloud. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found.
A new data-wiping malware known as HermeticWiper has compromised hundreds of computers in Ukraine via a series of cyber attacks, according to research released Wednesday by antimalware vendor ESET. The malware was first seen at approximately 5 p.m. Eastern European Time (10 a.m. EST) Wednesday, hours after a wave of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were
The US could be gearing up for its biggest cyber offensive campaign since Stuxnet, after a report suggested President Biden is currently considering his options for action against Russia. An NBC News report cited two US intelligence officials, one Western intelligence official and another person briefed on the matter, claiming that a “menu” of options
We’re excited to bring you the latest edition of the McAfee 2022 Consumer Mobile Threat Report. After all, when you know the challenges you face, it’s easier to be confident online. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at some leading examples of techniques that cybercriminals are using to trick or defraud you via
Hundreds of computers in Ukraine compromised just hours after a wave of DDoS attacks brings down a number of Ukrainian websites A number of organizations in Ukraine have been hit by a cyberattack that involved new data-wiping malware dubbed HermeticWiper and impacted hundreds of computers on their networks, ESET Research has found. The attack came just
TrickBot, the infamous Windows crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS) solution that’s used by a variety of threat actors to deliver next-stage payloads like ransomware, appears to be undergoing a transition of sorts, with no new activity recorded since the start of the year. The lull in the malware campaigns is “partially due to a big shift from Trickbot’s
by Paul Ducklin When the Apple AirTag hit the market in 2021, it immediately attracted the attention of hackers and reverse engineers. Could AirTags be jailbroken? Could AirTags be simulated? Could the AirTag ecosystem be used for purposes beyond Apple’s own imagination (or at least beyond its intentions)? We soon found ourselves writing up the
The Oklahoma City Police Department (OKCPD) has announced that personal data belonging to victims of sexual assault may have been exposed during a security incident at a DNA analysis laboratory. In a statement released on Monday to Oklahoma news channel KFOR, the OKCPD said that a company the department previously used to perform forensic testing had
Cryptocurrency has boomed in the last several years, with beginners and experts alike jumping into the industry. It’s proven now to be more than a passing hobby or trend. Cryptocurrency is a way of conducting business and making money for people around the world. As the intrigue and interaction with crypto grows, cybercriminals are finding
The climate solutions we need to transform every sector are here. The question is: what role will you play in this transformation? You, your community, your business, your government? Technology is an expansive term. It’s not just apps and electronics. Human ingenuity has created everything from plows to fishing gear, bicycles to boomboxes, windmills to
Similarities have been unearthed between the Dridex general-purpose malware and a little-known ransomware strain called Entropy, suggesting that the operators are continuing to rebrand their extortion operations under a different name. “The similarities are in the software packer used to conceal the ransomware code, in the malware subroutines designed to find and obfuscate commands (API
Meeting compliance standards like HIPAA and SOC 2 can be a critical — and often mandatory — part of the matrix of boxes that need to be ticked when securing an organization, but it’s also one of the more thorny to see through, since it involves not only assessing systems as they currently appear, but
It’s never too late to prevent children from being dragged to the dark side and to ensure their skills are a force for good When we talk about cybercrime and children, it’s often in the context of protecting the young ones from online dangers. That could mean ensuring our kids’ devices have the right parental
by Paul Ducklin WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date just as keenly as WordPress itself… …especially if those plugins are designed to help you look after the entirety of your WordPress site data. That’s why we thought we’d write about a recent warning from the creators of Updraft and Updraft Plus, which are free
A Seattle-based healthcare provider is facing a class action lawsuit over a cyber-attack in which the protected health information of 688,000 people was exposed. The exfiltration of data from Sea Mar Community Health Centers became apparent when files stolen in the attack showed up on the dark data leak website of cyber-criminal gang Marketo. Marketo
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