Cyber Security

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

Dec 07, 2024Ravie LakshmananCybersecurity / Election Fraud In a historic decision, Romania’s constitutional court has annulled the result of the first round of voting in the presidential election amid allegations of Russian interference. As a result, the second round vote, which was scheduled for December 8, 2024, will no longer take place. Călin Georgescu, who

Dec 02, 2024Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Financial Fraud Over a dozen malicious Android apps identified on the Google Play Store that have been collectively downloaded over 8 million times contain malware known as SpyLoan, according to new findings from McAfee Labs. “These PUP (potentially unwanted programs) applications use social engineering tactics to trick users into

Nov 29, 2024Ravie LakshmananAI Security / Cloud Security Microsoft has addressed four security flaws impacting its artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, enterprise resource planning, and Partner Center offerings, including one that it said has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability that has been tagged with an “Exploitation Detected” assessment is CVE-2024-49035 (CVSS score: 8.7), a

The China-linked threat actor known as Earth Estries has been observed using a previously undocumented backdoor called GHOSTSPIDER as part of its attacks targeting Southeast Asian telecommunications companies. Trend Micro, which described the hacking group as an aggressive advanced persistent threat (APT), said the intrusions also involved the use of another cross-platform backdoor dubbed MASOL

Nov 25, 2024Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Privacy Google has introduced a new feature called Restore Credentials to help users restore their account access to third-party apps securely after migrating to a new Android device. Part of Android’s Credential Manager API, the feature aims to reduce the hassle of re-entering the login credentials for every app

Nov 23, 2024Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Threat Intelligence Government agencies and non-governmental organizations in the United States have become the target of a nascent China state threat actor known as Storm-2077. The adversary, believed to be active since at least January 2024, has also conducted cyber attacks against the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), aviation, telecommunications,

Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) have announced independent actions to tackle cybercrime and disrupt services that enable scams, fraud, and phishing attacks. To that end, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) said it seized 240 fraudulent websites associated with an Egypt-based cybercrime facilitator named Abanoub Nady (aka MRxC0DER and mrxc0derii), who

Nov 21, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Malware The China-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as Gelsemium has been observed using a new Linux backdoor dubbed WolfsBane as part of cyber attacks likely targeting East and Southeast Asia. That’s according to findings from cybersecurity firm ESET based on multiple Linux samples uploaded to the VirusTotal

Nov 21, 2024Ravie LakshmananArtificial Intelligence / Software Security Google has revealed that its AI-powered fuzzing tool, OSS-Fuzz, has been used to help identify 26 vulnerabilities in various open-source code repositories, including a medium-severity flaw in the OpenSSL cryptographic library. “These particular vulnerabilities represent a milestone for automated vulnerability finding: each was found with AI, using

Nov 20, 2024Ravie LakshmananSoftware Security / Vulnerability Oracle is warning that a high-severity security flaw impacting the Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Framework has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-21287 (CVSS score: 7.5), could be exploited sans authentication to leak sensitive information. “This vulnerability is remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., it

Nov 20, 2024Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / AI Research Microsoft has announced a new Windows Resiliency Initiative as a way to improve security and reliability, as well as ensure that system integrity is not compromised. The idea, the tech giant said, is to avoid incidents like that of CrowdStrike’s earlier this July, enable more apps and

Nov 20, 2024Ravie LakshmananZero Day / Vulnerability Apple has released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, and its Safari web browser to address two zero-day flaws that have come under active exploitation in the wild. The flaws are listed below – CVE-2024-44308 – A vulnerability in JavaScriptCore that could lead to arbitrary code execution