Security

by Sean Gallagher Internet scammers are always looking for a better way to separate unwitting device users from their money. And as with all other endeavors, they’ve learned that it pays to advertise. At SophosLabs we recently researched a collection of scams that exploit web advertising networks to pop up fake system alerts on both computers and

Small-business owners are worried that their employees’ use of social media is a potential security risk, according to new research by the Cyber Readiness Institute. A survey of 400 SMB owners and 1,059 US workers found that 56% of owners believe that their employees’ social media use poses a cybersecurity threat to their business.  Despite their

Unscrupulous criminals are impersonating employees of the United States Department of Justice to scam elderly victims of crime.  The DOJ issued a fraud alert on Friday in which it strongly encouraged the public to remain vigilant and urged them not to provide personal information over the phone to anyone claiming to be from the department. An alert

Ransomware could pose a significant threat to the US election infrastructure, as aging software and potentially vulnerable voting machines could be targeted by criminal elements or by foreign-based cyber-attacks. According to NTT Ltd.’s global threat report for September, ransomware could be deployed and lay in wait to be activated on election day, or once voting machines

Warner Music Group has issued a data breach notification following a prolonged skimming attack on an undisclosed number of its e-commerce websites. The cyber-attack was discovered by the multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate on August 5, 2020.  E-commerce websites that are hosted and supported by an external service provider in the US but operated

Marginalized Americans interested in pursuing a career in technology received a boost yesterday with the launch of a free online training program. The Agile Testing Bootcamp is a six-week program geared specifically toward upskilling individuals with non-technical backgrounds to obtain high-paying, high-demand technical jobs in software testing. The program was created by Los Angeles software firm QualityWorks and is

by Paul Ducklin Sophos Phish Threat, in its own words, is a phishing attack simulator – it lets your IT department send realistic-looking fake phishes to your own staff so that if they do slip up, and click through… …it’s not the crooks on the other end. The crooks are testing you all the time,

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against online educational resources are over three times more prevalent in 2020 than they were last year, according to new research by Kaspersky. In a report published today, researchers found that between January and June 2020, the number of DDoS attacks affecting educational resources increased by at least 350%, compared to the

by Paul Ducklin Well-known US cybercrime journalist Brian Krebs recently published a warning about vishing attacks against business users. The FBI promptly followed up on Krebs’s article with a warning of its own, dramatically entitled Cyber criminals take advantage of increased telework through vishing campaign. So, what is vishing? And how does it differ from

America’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a binding operational directive (BOD) requiring the development and publication of vulnerability disclosure policies (VDPs).  A BOD is a compulsory direction to federal executive branch departments and agencies for purposes of safeguarding federal information and information systems. BOD 20-01, officially finalized yesterday, requires most executive branch agencies to create a

by Paul Ducklin Here’s a phishing email we received recently that ticks all the cybercriminal trick-to-click boxes. From BEC, through cloud storage, via an innocent-sounding One Note document, and right into harm’s way. Instead of simply spamming out a clickable link to as many people as possible, the crooks used more labyrinthine techniques, presumably in

An American who was employed to moderate disputes on an illegal darknet marketplace has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. Bryan Connor Herrell, of Aurora, Colorado, was hired by AlphaBay to settle arguments between vendors and purchasers.  The site operated by his employers facilitated hundreds of thousands of illicit transactions in which guns, drugs, credit cards

A white supremacist from Florida has been sentenced to 41 months in prison for threatening an African American who announced his candidacy for city council; he was also convicted of cyber-stalking another victim. In April 2020, Daniel McMahon pleaded guilty to using social media platform Gab to threaten a man identified in court as D.G. after learning in January 2019

The final game in yesterday’s online Chess Olympiad was declared a draw after a widespread internet outage interrupted play.  An issue at internet service provider CenturyLink has been blamed for global connectivity problems that disrupted the tournament and caused issues for Cloudflare, Hulu, Reddit, EA, Steam, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Feedly, Discord, and dozens

The Democratic National Committee sent out a nationwide alert on Wednesday warning romance-seeking campaign staffers to be wary of what information they reveal to people they match with on dating apps. Staffers were instructed to “swipe carefully” and to “trust but verify” any facts they were supplied with by prospective partners. They were also told to use

The United States is trying to forfeit 280 cryptocurrency accounts tied to cyber-attacks on two virtual currency exchanges, which were allegedly perpetrated by North Korean threat actors. According to a civil forfeiture complaint filed by the Justice Department yesterday, malicious actors stole millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency and ultimately laundered the funds through Chinese over-the-counter (OTC)

by Paul Ducklin Thanks to Craig Jones, Director of Information Security at Sophos, and the Sophos Security Teamfor their behind-the-scenes work on this article. If you’re a Google Android user, you may have been pestered over the past week by popup notifications that you didn’t expect and certainly didn’t want. The first mainstream victim seems

A government ministry in Jakarta has suggested that a recent spate of cyber-attacks against its critics could be an attempt by a third party to turn public opinion against the government.  This month, the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SafeNet) recorded six cyber-attacks against high-risk groups such as journalists, academics, and activists.  One attack was on

by Paul Ducklin Here’s a cybercrime conspiracy story with a difference. When we write about network-wide ransomware attacks where a whole company is blackmailed in one go, two burning questions immediately come up: How much money did the crooks demand? Did the victim pay up? The answers vary, but as you have probably read here

A joint effort by agencies in the United States and Europe has brought down an online piracy group that cost film production studios tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Indictments unsealed yesterday in Manhattan federal court charge Umar Ahmad and Jonatan Correa with copyright infringement conspiracy. A third man, George Bridi, was charged with wire

by Paul Ducklin A recent article on the APNIC blog, entitled Chromium’s impact on root DNS traffic, has set the Chromium browser project thinking about a feature in the browser code that’s known as the Intranet Redirect Detector. To explain. APNIC is the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, one of five

Cybersecurity professionals want stricter measures to tackle the rising amount of online misinformation and fake domains, according to new research by the Neustar International Security Council (NISC). A new report by NISC found that almost half (48%) of cybersecurity professionals regard these problems as a threat to their enterprise, while the other half (49%) rank

A cyber-attack has shut down virtual classes in a Los Angeles school district two weeks after the FBI issued a cybersecurity warning to schools offering online learning. In a grim foreshadowing of what was to come, FBI supervisory special agent Corey Harris said on August 11: “We want all school districts to be prepared and understand

The first day of online classes at a North Carolina school was memorable for all the wrong reasons after a hacker disrupted a lesson with offensive content.  Virtual classes, taught via Google Meet, began at Lee County High School, Sanford, on Monday, August 17, as part of an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. 

Cross-site scripting has topped the 2020 list of the 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses compiled by the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE).  The vulnerability, described by the CWE as “improper neutralization of input during web page generation,” was given a threat score of 46.82.  Describing the dangers posed by cross-site scripting (XSS), CWE wrote: “The attacker could transfer private information,

by Younghoo Lee Younghoo Lee is a Senior Data Scientist at Sophos. Together with Joshua Saxe, Sophos Chief Scientist, he recently presented these findings at DEFCON 28 AI Village. Business Email Compromise (BEC), is a form of targeted phishing where attackers disguise themselves as senior executives to dupe employees into doing something they absolutely shouldn’t,

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said yesterday that the number of tips received regarding cybercrimes against children has increased sharply since the outbreak of COVID-19. Speaking to media, TBI Director David Rausch said investigators had received more than twice the usual number of tips concerning this type of cybercrime since the pandemic began.  In 2020, the

by Paul Ducklin Thanks to Michelle Farenci of the Sophos Security Team for her behind-the-scenes work on this article. Here’s a phish that our own security team received themselves. Apart from some slightly clumsy wording (but when was the last time you received an email about a technical matter that was plainly written in perfect

A new report by Ensono has found that tech conferences are geared specifically toward men and are bad at providing an inclusive experience for women of color. The “2020 Speak Up” report audited 18 major tech conferences from around the world and, in December 2019, surveyed 500 women from the US and the UK who attended a tech conference in

Researchers have discovered a sophisticated new peer-to-peer botnet that has been actively breaching Secure Shell servers since January.  FritzFrog, which executes a worm malware written in Golang, was unearthed by a team at Guardicore. The malware deployed by the botnet is multi-threaded and fileless and disconcertingly leaves no trace on the disks of the machines it