Cyber Security

Sep 19, 2024Ravie LakshmananHealthcare / Malware Microsoft has revealed that a financially motivated threat actor has been observed using a ransomware strain called INC for the first time to target the healthcare sector in the U.S. The tech giant’s threat intelligence team is tracking the activity under the name Vanilla Tempest (formerly DEV-0832). “Vanilla Tempest

A Chinese national has been indicted in the U.S. on charges of conducting a “multi-year” spear-phishing campaign to obtain unauthorized access to computer software and source code created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), research universities, and private companies. Song Wu, 39, has been charged with 14 counts of wire fraud and 14

Sep 18, 2024Ravie LakshmananBrowser Security / Privacy Google has announced that it’s rolling out a new set of features to its Chrome browser that gives users more control over their data when surfing the internet and protects against online threats. “With the newest version of Chrome, you can take advantage of our upgraded Safety Check,

Sep 17, 2024Ravie LakshmananBrowser Security / Quantum Computing Google has announced that it will be switching from KYBER to ML-KEM in its Chrome web browser as part of its ongoing efforts to defend against the risk posed by cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs). “Chrome will offer a key share prediction for hybrid ML-KEM (codepoint 0x11EC),”

Sep 17, 2024Ravie LakshmananCryptocurrency / Malware Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is warning of an “ongoing” global threat that’s targeting cryptocurrency users with clipper malware with the goal of facilitating financial fraud. Clipper malware, also called ClipBankers, is a type of malware that Microsoft calls cryware, which comes with capabilities to monitor a victim’s clipboard activity and

Sep 16, 2024Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Vulnerability A now-patched critical security flaw impacting Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Composer could have been exploited to achieve remote code execution on cloud servers by means of a supply chain attack technique called dependency confusion. The vulnerability has been codenamed CloudImposer by Tenable Research. “The vulnerability could have allowed

Sep 16, 2024Ravie LakshmananSpyware / Threat Intelligence Apple has filed a motion to “voluntarily” dismiss its lawsuit against commercial spyware vendor NSO Group, citing a shifting risk landscape that could lead to exposure of critical “threat intelligence” information. The development was first reported by The Washington Post on Friday. The iPhone maker said its efforts,

Sep 13, 2024Ravie LakshmananVirtual Reality / Vulnerability Details have emerged about a now-patched security flaw impacting Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset that, if successfully exploited, could allow malicious attackers to infer data entered on the device’s virtual keyboard. The attack, dubbed GAZEploit, has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2024-40865. “A novel attack that can

Sep 12, 2024Ravie LakshmananRegulatory Compliance / Data Protection The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced that it has commenced a “Cross-Border statutory inquiry” into Google’s foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model to determine whether the tech giant has adhered to data protection regulations in the region when processing the personal data of European users. “The

Sep 11, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Crime / Hacking The Singapore Police Force (SPF) has announced the arrest of five Chinese nationals and one Singaporean man for their alleged involvement in illicit cyber activities in the country. The development comes after a group of about 160 law enforcement officials conducted a series of raids on September 9,

Sep 11, 2024Ravie LakshmananWindows Security / Vulnerability Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed that three new security flaws impacting the Windows platform have come under active exploitation as part of its Patch Tuesday update for September 2024. The monthly security release addresses a total of 79 vulnerabilities, of which seven are rated Critical, 71 are rated Important,

Sep 09, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Malware The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Mustang Panda has been observed weaponizing Visual Studio Code software as part of espionage operations targeting government entities in Southeast Asia. “This threat actor used Visual Studio Code’s embedded reverse shell feature to gain a foothold in target networks,”

Sep 05, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat / Malware Threat actors are likely employing a tool designated for red teaming exercises to serve malware, according to new findings from Cisco Talos. The program in question is a payload generation framework called MacroPack, which is used to generate Office documents, Visual Basic scripts, Windows shortcuts, and other formats

Sep 04, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Mobile Security Google has released its monthly security updates for the Android operating system to address a known security flaw that it said has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-32896 (CVSS score: 7.8), relates to a case of privilege escalation in the Android

Aug 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Browser Security Google has revealed that a security flaw that was patched as part of a software update rolled out last week to its Chrome browser has come under active exploitation in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2024-7965, the vulnerability has been described as an inappropriate implementation bug in the V8

The China-nexus cyber espionage group tracked as Volt Typhoon has been attributed with moderate confidence to the zero-day exploitation of a recently disclosed high-severity security flaw impacting Versa Director. The attacks targeted four U.S. victims and one non-U.S. victim in the Internet service provider (ISP), managed service provider (MSP) and information technology (IT) sectors as

Aug 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananAI Security / Vulnerability Details have emerged about a now-patched vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot that could enable the theft of sensitive user information using a technique called ASCII smuggling. “ASCII Smuggling is a novel technique that uses special Unicode characters that mirror ASCII but are actually not visible in the user

Aug 22, 2024Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Zero-Day Details have emerged about a China-nexus threat group’s exploitation of a recently disclosed, now-patched security flaw in Cisco switches as a zero-day to seize control of the appliance and evade detection. The activity, attributed to Velvet Ant, was observed early this year and involved the weaponization of CVE-2024-20399

Aug 22, 2024Ravie LakshmananBrowser Security / Vulnerability Google has rolled out security fixes to address a high-severity security flaw in its Chrome browser that it said has come under active exploitation in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2024-7971, the vulnerability has been described as a type confusion bug in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. “Type

Aug 21, 2024Ravie LakshmananSoftware Security / Vulnerability Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a critical security flaw impacting Microsoft’s Copilot Studio that could be exploited to access sensitive information. Tracked as CVE-2024-38206 (CVSS score: 8.5), the vulnerability has been described as an information disclosure bug stemming from a server-side request forgery (SSRF) attack. “An authenticated attacker can