Cyber Security

Jan 22, 2025Ravie LakshmananCybersecurity / National Security The new Trump administration has terminated all memberships of advisory committees that report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “In alignment with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security, I am directing

Jan 22, 2025Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Enterprise Security Oracle is urging customers to apply its January 2025 Critical Patch Update (CPU) to address 318 new security vulnerabilities spanning its products and services. The most severe of the flaws is a bug in the Oracle Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Framework (CVE-2025-21556, CVSS score: 9.9) that could

Jan 15, 2025Ravie LakshmananMalvertising / Malware Cybersecurity researchers have alerted to a new malvertising campaign that’s targeting individuals and businesses advertising via Google Ads by attempting to phish for their credentials via fraudulent ads on Google. “The scheme consists of stealing as many advertiser accounts as possible by impersonating Google Ads and redirecting victims to

Jan 15, 2025Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Software Update As many as six security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the popular Rsync file-synchronizing tool for Unix systems, some of which could be exploited to execute arbitrary code on a client. “Attackers can take control of a malicious server and read/write arbitrary files of any connected client,” the

Jan 14, 2025Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Data Privacy New research has pulled back the curtain on a “deficiency” in Google’s “Sign in with Google” authentication flow that exploits a quirk in domain ownership to gain access to sensitive data. “Google’s OAuth login doesn’t protect against someone purchasing a failed startup’s domain and using it to re-create

Jan 14, 2025Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Vulnerability Microsoft has shed light on a now-patched security flaw impacting Apple macOS that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed an attacker running as “root” to bypass the operating system’s System Integrity Protection (SIP) and install malicious kernel drivers by loading third-party kernel extensions. The vulnerability in question is

Jan 11, 2025Ravie LakshmananAI Security / Cybersecurity Microsoft has revealed that it’s pursuing legal action against a “foreign-based threat–actor group” for operating a hacking-as-a-service infrastructure to intentionally get around the safety controls of its generative artificial intelligence (AI) services and produce offensive and harmful content. The tech giant’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) said it has

Jan 10, 2025Ravie LakshmananCybersecurity / Android Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a now-patched security flaw impacting Monkey’s Audio (APE) decoder on Samsung smartphones that could lead to code execution. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-49415 (CVSS score: 8.1), affects Samsung devices running Android versions 12, 13, and 14. “Out-of-bounds write in libsaped.so prior to SMR Dec-2024

Dec 31, 2025Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Incident Response The United States Treasury Department said it suffered a “major cybersecurity incident” that allowed suspected Chinese threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents. “On December 8, 2024, Treasury was notified by a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, that a threat actor had gained access to

Dec 29, 2025Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Protection / Browser Security A new attack campaign has targeted known Chrome browser extensions, leading to at least 16 extensions being compromised and exposing over 600,000 users to data exposure and credential theft. The attack targeted publishers of browser extensions on the Chrome Web Store via a phishing campaign and used

Dec 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Data Theft The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting “several dozen users” in 2024. “Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula

Dec 25, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Malware The Iranian nation-state hacking group known as Charming Kitten has been observed deploying a C++ variant of a known malware called BellaCiao. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, which dubbed the new version BellaCPP, said it discovered the artifact as part of a “recent” investigation into a compromised machine in

Dec 23, 2024Ravie LakshmananGDPR / Data Privacy Italy’s data protection authority has fined ChatGPT maker OpenAI a fine of €15 million ($15.66 million) over how the generative artificial intelligence application handles personal data. The fine comes nearly a year after the Garante found that ChatGPT processed users’ information to train its service in violation of

Dec 17, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Mobile Security A little-known cyber espionage actor known as The Mask has been linked to a new set of attacks targeting an unnamed organization in Latin America twice in 2019 and 2022. “The Mask APT is a legendary threat actor that has been performing highly sophisticated attacks since at

With the evolution of modern software development, CI/CD pipeline governance has emerged as a critical factor in maintaining both agility and compliance. As we enter the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the importance of robust pipeline governance has only intensified. With that said, we’ll explore the concept of CI/CD pipeline governance and why it’s vital,

Dec 14, 2024Ravie LakshmananBotnet / Ad Fraud Germany’s Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) has announced that it has disrupted a malware operation called BADBOX that came preloaded on at least 30,000 internet-connected devices sold across the country. In a statement published earlier this week, authorities said they severed the communications between the devices and

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a novel surveillance program that’s suspected to be used by Chinese police departments as a lawful intercept tool to gather a wide range of information from mobile devices. The Android tool, codenamed EagleMsgSpy by Lookout, has been operational since at least 2017, with artifacts uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform

Dec 11, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Authentication Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a “critical” security vulnerability in Microsoft’s multi-factor authentication (MFA) implementation that allows an attacker to trivially sidestep the protection and gain unauthorized access to a victim’s account. “The bypass was simple: it took around an hour to execute, required no user interaction and did not

Microsoft closed out its Patch Tuesday updates for 2024 with fixes for a total of 72 security flaws spanning its software portfolio, including one that it said has been exploited in the wild. Of the 72 flaws, 17 are rated Critical, 54 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. Thirty-one of the

Dec 10, 2024Ravie LakshmananCybercrime / Vishing Belgian and Dutch authorities have arrested eight suspects in connection with a “phone phishing” gang that primarily operated out of the Netherlands with an aim to steal victims’ financial data and funds. As part of the international operation, law enforcement agencies carried out 17 searches in different locations in