May, 2019

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Legal Threats Make Powerful Phishing Lures

Krebs on Security

Some of the most convincing email phishing and malware attacks come disguised as nastygrams from a law firm. Such scams typically notify the recipient that he/she is being sued, and instruct them to review the attached file and respond within a few days — or else. Here’s a look at a recent spam campaign that peppered more than 100,000 business email addresses with fake legal threats harboring malware.

Phishing 279
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Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft

Schneier on Security

I don't have a lot of good news for you. The truth is there's nothing we can do to protect our data from being stolen by cybercriminals and others. Ten years ago, I could have given you all sorts of advice about using encryption, not sending information over email, securing your web connections, and a host of other thingsĀ­ -- but most of that doesn't matter anymore.

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PayPal's Beautiful Demonstration of Extended Validation FUD

Troy Hunt

Sometimes the discussion around extended validation certificates (EV) feels a little like flogging a dead horse. In fact, it was only September that I proposed EV certificates are already dead for all sorts of good reasons that have only been reinforced since that time. Yet somehow, the discussion does seem to come up time and again as it did following this recent tweet of mine: Always find comments like this amusing: ā€œThe main concern about SSL certificates is that all of them are losing their

Phishing 254
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Google Glitch Left Passwords Unprotected for 14 Years

Adam Levin

Google announced a glitch that stored unencrypted passwords belonging to several business customers, a situation that had been exploitable since 2005. In a blog post released this week, the company admitted the passwords of ā€œsomeā€ of its G Suite customers had been stored on internal servers without cryptographic protection, also known as a hash. ā€œThis issue has been fixed and, again, we have seen no evidence of improper access to or misuse of the affected passwords.

Passwords 247
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Optimizing The Modern Developer Experience with Coder

Many software teams have migrated their testing and production workloads to the cloud, yet development environments often remain tied to outdated local setups, limiting efficiency and growth. This is where Coder comes in. In our 101 Coder webinar, youā€™ll explore how cloud-based development environments can unlock new levels of productivity. Discover how to transition from local setups to a secure, cloud-powered ecosystem with ease.

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How Encryption Became the Boardā€™s New Best Friend

Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing

Originally published in TEISS on May 1, 2019. For many years, encryption has been viewed as a burden on businesses ā€“ expensive, complex and of questionable value. How things have changed. In just the past few years (and hundreds of high-profile breaches and Ā£Trillions of economic damage later), cyber threats became impossible for the boardroom to ignore.

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Google white hat hacker found code execution flaw in Notepad

Security Affairs

The popular white hat hacker Tavis Ormandy has announced the discovery of a code execution vulnerability in Microsoftā€™s Notepad text editor. The Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy announced the discovery of a code execution flaw in Microsoftā€™s Notepad text editor. Am I the first person to pop a shell in notepad? … believe it or not, It's a real bug!

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Why Are Cryptographers Being Denied Entry into the US?

Schneier on Security

In March, Adi Shamir -- that's the "S" in RSA -- was denied a US visa to attend the RSA Conference. He's Israeli. This month, British citizen Ross Anderson couldn't attend an awards ceremony in DC because of visa issues. (You can listen to his recorded acceptance speech.) I've heard of at least one other prominent cryptographer who is in the same boat.

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The Law Being Used to Prosecute Julian Assange Is Broken

WIRED Threat Level

Opinion: Julian Assange is being prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a minimally defined statute that can have maximally destructive consequences.

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Password Reuse, Misconfiguration Blamed for Repository Compromises

Dark Reading

Armed with stolen credentials from another breach or from a misconfigured file, attackers delete developers' repositories on GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab, leaving behind ransom notes.

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Securing Sensitive Data in Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing

The Cloud Security Challenge. Itā€™s no secret that cloud technology usage is pervasive among enterprises. According to the 2019 Thales Data Threat Report -Global Edition, some 90 percent of 1,200 responding data security professionals worldwide report their organizations are using the cloud. While the agility and cost-saving benefits of cloud technologies are compelling, the need to protect sensitive application data remains.

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The Tumultuous IT Landscape Is Making Hiring More Difficult

After a year of sporadic hiring and uncertain investment areas, tech leaders are scrambling to figure out whatā€™s next. This whitepaper reveals how tech leaders are hiring and investing for the future. Download today to learn more!

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Russian military plans to replace Windows with Astra Linux

Security Affairs

The Russian army seems to be in the process of replacing the Windows system with the Debian-based Linux distribution Astra Linux. Cyber security seems to subvert the globalization concept, governments are working to develop their own technology fearing possible espionage and sabotage activities of foreign states. The Russian military is in the process of replacing the Windows system with the Linux distribution Astra Linux.

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Microsoft Patches ā€˜Wormableā€™ Flaw in Windows XP, 7 and Windows 2003

Krebs on Security

Microsoft today is taking the unusual step of releasing security updates for unsupported but still widely-used Windows operating systems like XP and Windows 2003 , citing the discovery of a “wormable” flaw that the company says could be used to fuel a fast-moving malware threat like the WannaCry ransomware attacks of 2017. The May 2017 global malware epidemic WannaCry affected some 200,000 Windows systems in 150 countries.

Malware 263
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Germany Talking about Banning End-to-End Encryption

Schneier on Security

Der Spiegel is reporting that the German Ministry for Internal Affairs is planning to require all Internet message services to provide plaintext messages on demand, basically outlawing strong end-to-end encryption. Anyone not complying will be blocked, although the article doesn't say how. (Cory Doctorow has previously explained why this would be impossible.).

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Inside Chinaā€™s Surveillance Crackdown on Uyghurs

WIRED Threat Level

In Xinjiang, northwest China, the government is cracking down on the minority Muslim Uyghur population, keeping them under constant surveillance and throwing more than a million people into concentration camps. But in Istanbul, 3,000 miles away, a community of women who have escaped a life of repression are fighting a digital resistance.

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The Importance of User Roles and Permissions in Cybersecurity Software

How many people would you trust with your house keys? Chances are, you have a handful of trusted friends and family members who have an emergency copy, but you definitely wouldnā€™t hand those out too freely. You have stuff thatā€™s worth protectingā€”and the more people that have access to your belongings, the higher the odds that something will go missing.

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Why AI Will Create Far More Jobs Than It Replaces

Dark Reading

Just as spreadsheets and personal computers created a job boom in the '70s, so too will artificial intelligence spur security analysts' ability to defend against advanced threats.

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BYOE offers Data Security and Compliance in the Cloud

Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing

We are seeing more organizations use a ā€˜lift and shiftā€™ policy, where data is moved to the cloud to satisfy project requirements. But safe migration to the cloud requires that the process be secure, compliant and easy to implement. The 1,200 data security professionals worldwide who were surveyed for the 2019 Thales Data Threat Report-Global Edition tell us that protecting sensitive data in the cloud is becoming increasingly complex.

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Japan will develop its first-ever malware as a defense measure against cyber attacks

Security Affairs

The news was reported by the Kyodo News and has caught my attention, Japan will develop its first-ever computer virus as defense against cyber attacks. The Kyodo News revealed that Japan will develop its first-ever computer virus as a defense measure against cyber attacks and that the development will be completed by next March. The Defense Ministry plans to use the malware as a vaccine that could neutralize the other malicious codes.

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Should Failing Phish Tests Be a Fireable Offense?

Krebs on Security

Would your average Internet user be any more vigilant against phishing scams if he or she faced the real possibility of losing their job after falling for one too many of these emails? Recently, I met someone at a conference who said his employer had in fact terminated employees for such repeated infractions. As this was the first time I’d ever heard of an organization actually doing this, I asked some phishing experts what they thought (spoiler alert: they’re not fans of this partic

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IDC Analyst Report: The Open Source Blind Spot Putting Businesses at Risk

In a recent study, IDC found that 64% of organizations said they were already using open source in software development with a further 25% planning to in the next year. Most organizations are unaware of just how much open-source code is used and underestimate their dependency on it. As enterprises grow the use of open-source software, they face a new challenge: understanding the scope of open-source software that's being used throughout the organization and the corresponding exposure.

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Fingerprinting iPhones

Schneier on Security

This clever attack allows someone to uniquely identify a phone when you visit a website, based on data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer sensors. We have developed a new type of fingerprinting attack, the calibration fingerprinting attack. Our attack uses data gathered from the accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer sensors found in smartphones to construct a globally unique fingerprint.

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A Cisco Router Bug Has Massive Global Implications

WIRED Threat Level

Researchers have discovered a way to break one of Cisco's most critical security features, which puts countless networks at potential risk.

Risk 111
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Baltimore Ransomware Attack Takes Strange Twist

Dark Reading

Tweet suggests possible screenshot of stolen city documents and credentials in the wake of attack that took down city servers last week.

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Federal cybersecurity: breaking down the barriers to adoption

Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing

Over the last two election cycles, weā€™ve seen an increased focus on election security, hacking and fraud. While many state and government officials are under no illusion that they are safe from a digital attack, concern should run deeper than election integrity. Most federal security issues are a result of well-known long-standing vulnerabilities that agencies have not addressed.

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Beware of Pixels & Trackers on U.S. Healthcare Websites

The healthcare industry has massively adopted web tracking tools, including pixels and trackers. Tracking tools on user-authenticated and unauthenticated web pages can access personal health information (PHI) such as IP addresses, medical record numbers, home and email addresses, appointment dates, or other info provided by users on pages and thus can violate HIPAA Rules that govern the Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates.

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LulZSec and Anonymous Ita hackers published sensitive data from 30,000 Roman lawyers

Security Affairs

A group of hackers has stolen and published online sensitive data of 30,000 Roman lawyers, including the Mayor of Rome. The announcement was made on Twitter by Lulzsec and Anonymous Ita. The story is very simple, LulZSec, the collective of hackers recently hit the Italian Ministry of the Environment, has collected a huge amount of data belonging to 30,000 Roman lawyers.

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Account Hijacking Forum OGusers Hacked

Krebs on Security

Ogusers[.]com — a forum popular among people involved in hijacking online accounts and conducting SIM swapping attacks to seize control over victims’ phone numbers — has itself been hacked, exposing the email addresses, hashed passwords, IP addresses and private messages for nearly 113,000 forum users. On May 12, the administrator of OGusers explained an outage to forum members by saying a hard drive failure had erased several months’ worth of private messages, forum post

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Reverse Engineering a Chinese Surveillance App

Schneier on Security

Human Rights Watch has reverse engineered an app used by the Chinese police to conduct mass surveillance on Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. The details are fascinating, and chilling. Boing Boing post.

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Google Has Stored Some Passwords in Plaintext Since 2005

WIRED Threat Level

On the heels of embarrassing disclosures from Facebook and Twitter, Google reveals its own password bugsā€”one of which lasted 14 years.

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Software Composition Analysis: The New Armor for Your Cybersecurity

Speaker: Blackberry, OSS Consultants, & Revenera

Software is complex, which makes threats to the software supply chain more real every day. 64% of organizations have been impacted by a software supply chain attack and 60% of data breaches are due to unpatched software vulnerabilities. In the U.S. alone, cyber losses totaled $10.3 billion in 2022. All of these stats beg the question, ā€œDo you know whatā€™s in your software?

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Website Attack Attempts Rose by 69% in 2018

Dark Reading

Millions of websites have been compromised, but the most likely malware isn't cyptomining: it's quietly stealing files and redirecting traffic, a new Sitelock report shows.

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Gen Z Interns and Social Media: A Perfect Security Storm

Threatpost

A lack of security training for interns, and their obsession with sharing content on social media, could lead to a perfect storm for hackers looking to collect social engineering data.

Media 87
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Using Public Wi-Fi? Your data can be hacked easily! Hereā€™s Howā€¦

Security Affairs

Public Wi-Fi is easily accessible by everyone, as much as free surfing sounds cool, it is risky as well. Let’s see how your data can be hacked easily. In the contemporary world of networking, Wi-Fi has become a vital commodity. Wi-Fi are now installed in each and every place regardless of the size of the place; from international airports to small kiosks, you can find an internet connection everywhere.

Hacking 111
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Whatā€™s Behind the Wolters Kluwer Tax Outage?

Krebs on Security

Early in the afternoon on Friday, May, 3, I asked a friend to relay a message to his security contact at CCH , the cloud-based tax division of the global information services firm Wolters Kluwer in the Netherlands. The message was that the same file directories containing new versions of CCH’s software were open and writable by any anonymous user, and that there were suspicious files in those directories indicating some user(s) abused that access.

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The Cloud Development Environment Adoption Report

Cloud Development Environments (CDEs) are changing how software teams work by moving development to the cloud. Our Cloud Development Environment Adoption Report gathers insights from 223 developers and business leaders, uncovering key trends in CDE adoption. With 66% of large organizations already using CDEs, these platforms are quickly becoming essential to modern development practices.