2020

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Brexit Deal Mandates Old Insecure Crypto Algorithms

Schneier on Security

In what is surely an unthinking cut-and-paste issue, page 921 of the Brexit deal mandates the use of SHA-1 and 1024-bit RSA: The open standard s/MIME as extension to de facto e-mail standard SMTP will be deployed to encrypt messages containing DNA profile information. The protocol s/MIME (V3) allows signed receipts, security labels, and secure mailing lists… The underlying certificate used by s/MIME mechanism has to be in compliance with X.509 standard… The processing rules for s/MIM

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VMware Flaw a Vector in SolarWinds Breach?

Krebs on Security

U.S. government cybersecurity agencies warned this week that the attackers behind the widespread hacking spree stemming from the compromise at network software firm SolarWinds used weaknesses in other, non-SolarWinds products to attack high-value targets. According to sources, among those was a flaw in software virtualization platform VMware , which the U.S.

Software 363
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Inside the Cit0Day Breach Collection

Troy Hunt

It's increasingly hard to know what to do with data like that from Cit0Day. If that's an unfamiliar name to you, start with Catalin Cimpanu's story on the demise of the service followed by the subsequent leaking of the data. The hard bit for me is figuring out whether it's pwn-worthy enough to justify loading it into Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) or if it's just more noise that ultimately doesn't really help people make informed decisions about their security posture.

Passwords 363
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Our Problem is Gullibility, Not Disinformation

Daniel Miessler

I think we’ve lost the plot on disinformation. It’s not the attacks that are the problem. It’s the fact that too many Americans are willing to believe almost anything. Ideally we’d reduce both the attacks and the vulnerability. Of course it would be nice to have fewer attacks. Of course it would be nice to keep attacks from being used against higher numbers of vulnerable people.

Education 346
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Why Giant Content Libraries Do Nothing for Your Employees’ Cyber Resilience

Many cybersecurity awareness platforms offer massive content libraries, yet they fail to enhance employees’ cyber resilience. Without structured, engaging, and personalized training, employees struggle to retain and apply key cybersecurity principles. Phished.io explains why organizations should focus on interactive, scenario-based learning rather than overwhelming employees with excessive content.

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MY TAKE: Iran’s cyber retaliation for Soleimani assassination continues to ramp up

The Last Watchdog

Less than 48 hours after the killing of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin calling out Iran’s “robust cyber program,” and cautioning everyone to be prepared for Iran to “conduct operations in the United States.” Related: Cyber warfare enters Golden Age In fact, strategic cyber operations essentially pitting Russia and Iran against the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been steadily escalating for at least the past decade, with notable spikes

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2020 Oscar Nominees Used to Spread Malware

Adam Levin

Online scammers are using the 2020 Oscars to spread malware. A recent study released by Kaspersky Labs uncovered several hacking and phishing campaigns promising their targets free and early access to Best Picture nominees for this year’s Academy Awards. The study found over twenty phishing websites hosting at least 925 malicious files using the movies as bait, requiring would-be victims to either provide personal information (including credit card numbers), or to install adware applications to

Malware 309

LifeWorks

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NSA on Authentication Hacks (Related to SolarWinds Breach)

Schneier on Security

The NSA has published an advisory outlining how “malicious cyber actors” are “are manipulating trust in federated authentication environments to access protected data in the cloud.” This is related to the SolarWinds hack I have previously written about , and represents one of the techniques the SVR is using once it has gained access to target networks.

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US Schools Are Buying Cell Phone Unlocking Systems

Schneier on Security

Gizmodo is reporting that schools in the US are buying equipment to unlock cell phones from companies like Cellebrite: Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas, showing that administrators paid as much $11,582 for the controversial surveillance technology. Known as mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs), this type of tech is able to siphon text messages, photos, and application data from student’s devices.

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On That Dusseldorf Hospital Ransomware Attack and the Resultant Death

Schneier on Security

Wired has a detailed story about the ransomware attack on a Dusseldorf hospital, the one that resulted in an ambulance being redirected to a more distant hospital and the patient dying. The police wanted to prosecute the ransomware attackers for negligent homicide, but the details were more complicated: After a detailed investigation involving consultations with medical professionals, an autopsy, and a minute-by-minute breakdown of events, Hartmann believes that the severity of the victim’s medi

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GoDaddy Employees Used in Attacks on Multiple Cryptocurrency Services

Krebs on Security

Fraudsters redirected email and web traffic destined for several cryptocurrency trading platforms over the past week. The attacks were facilitated by scams targeting employees at GoDaddy , the world’s largest domain name registrar, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The incident is the latest incursion at GoDaddy that relied on tricking employees into transferring ownership and/or control over targeted domains to fraudsters.

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Zero Trust Mandate: The Realities, Requirements and Roadmap

The DHS compliance audit clock is ticking on Zero Trust. Government agencies can no longer ignore or delay their Zero Trust initiatives. During this virtual panel discussion—featuring Kelly Fuller Gordon, Founder and CEO of RisX, Chris Wild, Zero Trust subject matter expert at Zermount, Inc., and Principal of Cybersecurity Practice at Eliassen Group, Trey Gannon—you’ll gain a detailed understanding of the Federal Zero Trust mandate, its requirements, milestones, and deadlines.

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Finnish Data Theft and Extortion

Schneier on Security

The Finnish psychotherapy clinic Vastaamo was the victim of a data breach and theft. The criminals tried extorting money from the clinic. When that failed, they started extorting money from the patients : Neither the company nor Finnish investigators have released many details about the nature of the breach, but reports say the attackers initially sought a payment of about 450,000 euros to protect about 40,000 patient records.

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How the SolarWinds Hackers Bypassed Duo’s Multi-Factor Authentication

Schneier on Security

This is interesting : Toward the end of the second incident that Volexity worked involving Dark Halo, the actor was observed accessing the e-mail account of a user via OWA. This was unexpected for a few reasons, not least of which was the targeted mailbox was protected by MFA. Logs from the Exchange server showed that the attacker provided username and password authentication like normal but were not challenged for a second factor through Duo.

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Determining What Video Conference Participants Are Typing from Watching Shoulder Movements

Schneier on Security

Accuracy isn’t great, but that it can be done at all is impressive. Murtuza Jadiwala, a computer science professor heading the research project, said his team was able to identify the contents of texts by examining body movement of the participants. Specifically, they focused on the movement of their shoulders and arms to extrapolate the actions of their fingers as they typed.

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New Windows Zero-Day

Schneier on Security

Google’s Project Zero has discovered and published a buffer overflow vulnerability in the Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver. The exploit doesn’t affect the cryptography, but allows attackers to escalate system privileges: Attackers were combining an exploit for it with a separate one targeting a recently fixed flaw in Chrome. The former allowed the latter to escape a security sandbox so the latter could execute code on vulnerable machines.

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Prevent Data Breaches With Zero-Trust Enterprise Password Management

Keeper Security is transforming cybersecurity for people and organizations around the world. Keeper’s affordable and easy-to-use solutions are built on a foundation of zero-trust and zero-knowledge security to protect every user on every device. Our next-generation privileged access management solution deploys in minutes and seamlessly integrates with any tech stack to prevent breaches, reduce help desk costs and ensure compliance.

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Eavesdropping on Phone Taps from Voice Assistants

Schneier on Security

The microphones on voice assistants are very sensitive, and can snoop on all sorts of data : In Hey Alexa what did I just type? we show that when sitting up to half a meter away, a voice assistant can still hear the taps you make on your phone, even in presence of noise. Modern voice assistants have two to seven microphones, so they can do directional localisation, just as human ears do, but with greater sensitivity.

Risk 363
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2020 Was a Secure Election

Schneier on Security

Over at Lawfare: “ 2020 Is An Election Security Success Story (So Far).” What’s more, the voting itself was remarkably smooth. It was only a few months ago that professionals and analysts who monitor election administration were alarmed at how badly unprepared the country was for voting during a pandemic. Some of the primaries were disasters.

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IoT Unravelled Part 1: It's a Mess. But Then There's Home Assistant

Troy Hunt

With the benefit of hindsight, this was a naïve question: Alright clever IoT folks, I've got two of these garage door openers, what do you reckon the best way of connecting them with Apple HomeKit is? [link] — Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) April 25, 2020 In my mind, the answer would be simple: "Just buy X, plug it in and you're good to go". Instead, I found myself heading down the rabbit hole into a world of soldering, custom firmware and community-driven home automation kits.

IoT 363
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New Privacy Features in iOS 14

Schneier on Security

A good rundown.

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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, you’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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Body Found in Canada Identified as Neo-Nazi Spam King

Krebs on Security

The body of a man found shot inside a burned out vehicle in Canada three years ago has been identified as that of Davis Wolfgang Hawke , a prolific spammer and neo-Nazi who led a failed anti-government march on Washington, D.C. in 1999, according to news reports. Homicide detectives said they originally thought the man found June 14, 2017 in a torched SUV on a logging road in Squamish, British Columbia was a local rock climber known to others in the area as a politically progressive vegan named

Banking 363
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Hacking Grindr Accounts with Copy and Paste

Troy Hunt

Sexuality, relationships and online dating are all rather personal things. They're aspects of our lives that many people choose to keep private or at the very least, share only with people of our choosing. Grindr is "The World's Largest Social Networking App for Gay, Bi, Trans, and Queer People" which for many people, makes it particularly sensitive.

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Hacking a Coffee Maker

Schneier on Security

As expected, IoT devices are filled with vulnerabilities : As a thought experiment, Martin Hron, a researcher at security company Avast, reverse engineered one of the older coffee makers to see what kinds of hacks he could do with it. After just a week of effort, the unqualified answer was: quite a lot. Specifically, he could trigger the coffee maker to turn on the burner, dispense water, spin the bean grinder, and display a ransom message, all while beeping repeatedly.

Hacking 363
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Ransomware Victims That Pay Up Could Incur Steep Fines from Uncle Sam

Krebs on Security

Companies victimized by ransomware and firms that facilitate negotiations with ransomware extortionists could face steep fines from the U.S. federal government if the crooks who profit from the attack are already under economic sanctions, the Treasury Department warned today. Image: Shutterstock. In its advisory (PDF), the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said “companies that facilitate ransomware payments to cyber actors on behalf of victims, including financial in

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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 wouldn’t hand those out too freely. You have stuff that’s worth protecting—and the more people that have access to your belongings, the higher the odds that something will go missing.

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On Risk-Based Authentication

Schneier on Security

Interesting usability study: “ More Than Just Good Passwords? A Study on Usability and Security Perceptions of Risk-based Authentication “: Abstract : Risk-based Authentication (RBA) is an adaptive security measure to strengthen password-based authentication. RBA monitors additional features during login, and when observed feature values differ significantly from previously seen ones, users have to provide additional authentication factors such as a verification code.

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Documented Death from a Ransomware Attack

Schneier on Security

A Dusseldorf woman died when a ransomware attack against a hospital forced her to be taken to a different hospital in another city. I think this is the first documented case of a cyberattack causing a fatality. UK hospitals had to redirect patients during the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack , but there were no documented fatalities from that event. The police are treating this as a homicide.

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Ransomware Group Turns to Facebook Ads

Krebs on Security

It’s bad enough that many ransomware gangs now have blogs where they publish data stolen from companies that refuse to make an extortion payment. Now, one crime group has started using hacked Facebook accounts to run ads publicly pressuring their ransomware victims into paying up. On the evening of Monday, Nov. 9, an ad campaign apparently taken out by the Ragnar Locker Team began appearing on Facebook.

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Google Responds to Warrants for “About” Searches

Schneier on Security

One of the things we learned from the Snowden documents is that the NSA conducts “about” searches. That is, searches based on activities and not identifiers. A normal search would be on a name, or IP address, or phone number. An about search would something like “show me anyone that has used this particular name in a communications,” or “show me anyone who was at this particular location within this time frame.” These searches are legal when conducted for the

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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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New Bluetooth Vulnerability

Schneier on Security

There’s a new unpatched Bluetooth vulnerability : The issue is with a protocol called Cross-Transport Key Derivation (or CTKD, for short). When, say, an iPhone is getting ready to pair up with Bluetooth-powered device, CTKD’s role is to set up two separate authentication keys for that phone: one for a “Bluetooth Low Energy” device, and one for a device using what’s known as the “Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate” standard.

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Swiss-Swedish Diplomatic Row Over Crypto AG

Schneier on Security

Previously I have written about the Swedish-owned Swiss-based cryptographic hardware company: Crypto AG. It was a CIA-owned Cold War operation for decades. Today it is called Crypto International , still based in Switzerland but owned by a Swedish company. It’s back in the news : Late last week, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said she had canceled a meeting with her Swiss counterpart Ignazio Cassis slated for this month after Switzerland placed an export ban on Crypto International , a

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Nihilistic Password Security Questions

Schneier on Security

Posted three years ago, but definitely appropriate for the times.

Passwords 363
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Humans are Bad at URLs and Fonts Don’t Matter

Troy Hunt

Been a lot of "victim blaming" going on these last few days. The victim, through no fault of their own, has been the target of numerous angry tweets designed to ridicule their role in internet security and suggest they are incapable of performing their duty. Here's where it all started: This is a great example of how bad people are at reading and understanding even the domain part of the URL then making decisions based on that which affect their security and privacy (see the answer under the pol

Phishing 363
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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.