Security News > 2020 > April

Cisco is warning of a critical flaw in the web server of its IP phones. Cisco issued patches in a Wednesday advisory for the flaw, which affects various versions of its Cisco IP phones for small- to medium-sized businesses.

Jack Wallen addresses the social networking behaviors you should avoid at all costs. With so many people working from home or not working, social networking usage has skyrocketed.

New research from Atlas VPN has shown that the United States experienced more than 175,000 DDoS attacks in the month of March, more than double the number faced by the next highest country and four times as many as China. According to data gathered and analyzed by Atlas VPN researchers, South Korea and Brazil both suffered from more than 50,000 DDoS attacks while China came in just ahead of the United Kingdom with about 45,000 attacks.

India has banned the use of video-conferencing app Zoom for government remote meetings, the government said Thursday, in the latest warning about the platform's security. "Zoom is not a safe platform," the statement said.

More-popular-than-ever "Youngster" app TikTok has just announced a feature called Family Pairing. ICYMI, TikTok - which bills itself as TikTok, Make Your Day - is a video sharing service that lets you post and share fun videos up to 60 seconds long.

The first published example of a double extortion attack, according to Check Point Research, came with the attack against Allied Universal in November 2019. In a later post on a Russian underground forum, they posted a link to "10% of data we have exfiltrated." They added, "We give them 2 weeks until we send other 90% of data to wikileaks. Other 90% is a quite interesting part... Time is ticking."

Security experts are poring over thousands of new Coronavirus-themed domain names registered each day, but this often manual effort struggles to keep pace with the flood of domains invoking the virus to promote malware and phishing sites, as well as non-existent healthcare products and charities. Milwaukee-based Hold Security has been publishing daily and weekly lists of all COVID-19 related domain registrations.

In a report released Thursday, Terbium Labs looks at how fraud guides and other information are bought and sold on the dark web and how this activity impacts organizations and individuals. Based on the analysis, fraud guides were the hottest product on dark web marketplaces, compromising 49% of the listings.

On March 17, 2020, the federal government relaxed a number of telehealth-related regulatory requirements due to COVID-19. On April 3, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-43-20, which relaxes various telehealth reporting requirements, penalties, and enforcements otherwise imposed under state laws, including those associated with unauthorized access and disclosure of personal information through telehealth mediums.

Why cell phones can hold the key to tracking future cases of COVID-19 with artificial intelligence. TechRepublic's Karen Roby talked with Ari Trachtenberg, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University, about the work researchers are doing to help in the fight against COVID-19.