Google removed 500 malicious Chrome extensions from its Web Store after they found to inject malicious ads and siphon off user browsing data to servers under the control of attackers. These extensions were part of a malvertising and ad-fraud campaign that’s been operating at least since January 2019, although evidence points out the possibility that
Philip Choo
A Chattanooga, Tennessee, information technology infrastructure and cybersecurity consulting firm has unveiled an $8m expansion plan that will see its workforce double by 2023. Currently, the Conversant Group operates with 46 employees from its headquarters on Cowart Street. On Monday, the company’s president and chief listening officer, John Anthony Smith, revealed plans to relocate the firm to a new site
By Published: 14 Feb 2020 Few technologies have been as important in IT and enterprise security as encryption, using a mathematical algorithm to scramble the contents of a file — or even an entire disk. Without the unique key used to encrypt the data, nobody else can — at least, easily — decrypt and discover
by Paul Ducklin A trio of researchers from Singapore just published a paper detailing a number of security holes they discovered in Bluetooth chips from several different vendors. The good news is that they disclosed the holes responsibly back in 2019 and waited 90 days – a sort-of industry standard period popularised by Google’s Project
On May 31, 2019, the developers of the highly profitable GandCrab ‘ransomware-as-a-service’ announced that they were retiring after earning over $2 billion USD since January 2018. The news was met with interest and skepticism within the security community, as multiple affiliate groups regularly conducted extremely successful GandCrab campaigns since its inception. After analyzing the threat
WhatsApp also emerges as a favorite target for brand impersonation amid a general spike in social media phishing PayPal, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, and WhatsApp were the most commonly impersonated brands in phishing campaigns in the fourth quarter of 2019, a report by email security company Vade Secure has found. The payment services provider retained its
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) charged Huawei with racketeering and conspiring to steal trade secrets from six US firms, in a significant escalation of a lawsuit against the Chinese telecom giant that began last year. Accusing Huawei and its affiliates of “using fraud and deception to misappropriate
Threat actors exploiting public interest in the ongoing coronavirus outbreak have baited their phishing traps with a new lure—conspiracy theories about unreleased cures. The new tactic was noted by researchers at Proofpoint, who have been monitoring global malicious activity related to the life-threatening virus in the form of hundreds of thousands of messages. Alongside a flurry
by Alice Violet This week we welcome back Peter who discusses RobbinHood – the ransomware that brings its own bug. Greg explains how a student’s Twitter account was handed over to their college and Duck talks SMS 2FA. Host Anna Brading is joined by Sophos experts Peter Mackenzie, Paul Ducklin and Greg Iddon. Listen now!
As we say, the information security field is small – scary small. Every time you go to a trade show, conference, or a similar event, you’re likely to run into someone in your network that you know. It’s one of the things that we information security professionals love – reuniting with friends, colleagues, mentors, notable
On the upside, the Bureau recovered more than US$300 million in funds lost to online scams last year In 2019, the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) received more than 467,000 cybercrime complaints that caused an estimated US$3.5 billion in losses, according to the Bureau’s annual 2019 Internet Crime Report (IC3). Last year saw
Emotet, the notorious trojan behind a number of botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks, has found a new attack vector: using already infected devices to identify new victims that are connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks. According to researchers at Binary Defense, the newly discovered Emotet sample leverages a “Wi-Fi spreader” module to scan Wi-Fi networks,
American bank Fifth Third has come under fire for sending customers a cryptic breach disclosure letter judged to be “vague and deceptive” by a consumer group. Fifth Third wrote to customers after discovering that at least two of its employees had stolen customer information and provided it to a third party. Data exposed included names, Social Security
by John E Dunn Sometime this March, the Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Edge browsers will start throwing up warnings when users visit websites that only support Transport Layer Security (TLS) versions 1.0 or 1.1. Announced in October 2018 as part of a joint plan to phase out support, the implications for any holdout sites are
February may be the shortest month of the year, but it brings a bumper crop of patches This month’s Patch Tuesday is here and with it come fixes for no fewer than 99 security vulnerabilities in Windows and other Microsoft software. Twelve flaws have received the highest severity ranking of “critical”, while 5 security holes
The realistic approach to security is that incidents occur. While ideally, the CISO would want to prevent all of them, in practice, some will succeed to a certain degree—making the ability to efficiently manage an incident response process a mandatory skill for any CISO. Moreover, apart from the management of the actual response process, the
A subsidiary of American insurance giant Aflac is to open a global IT and cybersecurity center in the Northern Irish capital city of Belfast. Aflac Northern Ireland signed a 10-year lease with Belfast Harbor on 11,000 sq ft of office space within the ongoing multi-million-dollar waterfront development City Quays. With the opening of the new center on regenerated dockland, Aflac Northern Ireland will
SCVX is on a mission to consolidate the vast cybersecurity vendor ecosystem overwhelming today’s CISOs. Last month, Strategic Cyber Ventures, a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm, launched the initial public offering (IPO) of SCVX, raising $230 million. SCVX is a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that was formed with the goal of acquiring cybersecurity vendors to
by Paul Ducklin No matter how safe and secure you feel when you use your computer, there’s always room for improvement. Why not make Safer Internet Day the excuse you need to do all those cybersecurity tweaks you’ve been putting off… …such as picking proper passwords, turning on two-factor authentication, downloading the latest security updates,
If you’re looking to become a pro gamer, there are risks you shouldn’t play down Gaming has been a popular pastime for decades. Over the past few years, it has also become a career path, with esports becoming a steadily growing phenomenon. Tournaments are taking place around the globe with huge prize pools and name
A few hours after Adobe today released security updates for five of its widely-distributed software, Microsoft also issued its February 2020 Patch Tuesday edition with patches for a total of 99 new vulnerabilities. According to the advisories, 12 of the total issues patched by the tech giant this month are critical in severity, and the
The US has indicted Chinese military personnel today on charges of hacking into Equifax’s computer systems and stealing valuable trade secrets and the personal data of nearly 150 million Americans. A federal grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia, returned the indictment last week against four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Wu Zhiyong (吴志勇), Wang Qian (王乾), Xu
by John E Dunn Google has announced a timetable for phasing out insecure file downloads in the Chrome browser, starting with desktop version 81 due out next month. Known in jargon as ‘mixed content downloads’, these are files such as software executables, documents and media files offered from secure HTTPS websites over insecure HTTP connections.
The United States Department of Justice today announced charges against 4 Chinese military hackers who were allegedly behind the Equifax data breach that exposed the personal and financial data of nearly 150 million Americans. In a joint press conference held today with the Attorney General William Barr and FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, the DoJ
New research has revealed that the threat group behind the cryptocurrency-stealing MasterMana botnet has grown increasingly sophisticated and is now trapping victims through spoofed login portals. Gorgon Group has been observed targeting the European Union as well as Dubai’s main electrical/water utility DEWA with fake login pages that are highly convincing. The illicit activity was
by Lisa Vaas Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that’s scraped the web for three billion faceprints and sold them all (or given them away) to 600 police departments so they could identify people within seconds, has received yet more cease-and-desist letters from social media giants. The first came from Twitter. A few weeks ago,
Exams are pretty important in professional IT. You can have all the practical knowledge in the world, but technical recruiters want to see certificates. If you want to improve your resume, the Complete 2020 IT Certification Exam Prep Mega Bundle will help you ace nine of the most important exams. You can pick up the
Lawyers who secured a $117.5m deal to resolve litigation tied to multiple data breaches at Yahoo could get paid $30m for their efforts. Class counsel who secured the breach settlement are currently waiting for US District Judge Lucy Koh to give her final stamp of approval and to award them the fees, according to new documents filed in California federal court.
By Published: 07 Feb 2020 Controlling a network with software-defined networking, or SDN, gives IT a way to define a logical network subnet to limit network data traffic to desired hosts. While this benefits network organization and performance, the data that moves across a software-defined network is still vulnerable to snooping, forgery and theft. To
by Danny Bradbury The normal way to steal data from a compromised computer is to retrieve it over a network. If that computer isn’t connected to one, it gets a little trickier. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have made a name for themselves figuring out how to get data out of air-gapped computers.