Security News > 2020
Exploiting VPN Flaws to Compromise Enterprise Networks The primary attack vector employed by the Iranian groups has been the exploitation of unpatched VPN vulnerabilities to penetrate and steal information from target companies. Once the attackers gained lateral movement capabilities, the attackers move to the final stage: execute the backdoor to scan the compromised system for relevant information and exfiltrate the files back to the attacker by establishing a remote desktop connection or opening a socket-based connection to a hardcoded IP address.
Cyberattacks on Mac endpoints nearly doubled over those on Windows for the first time, according to the 2020 State of Malware Report. "We saw a significant rise in the overall prevalence of Mac threats in 2019, with an increase of over 400% from 2018,'' the report by Malwarebytes Labs stated."
Several serious vulnerabilities have been found by a researcher in Secure Mobile Access and Secure Remote Access appliances made by SonicWall. After these vulnerabilities were disclosed, Alain Mowat of Swiss cybersecurity company SCRT decided to analyze other enterprise VPN products to see if they contain similar vulnerabilities.
If you're a regular Naked Security reader, you'll know that we've been fans of HTTPS for years. Search engines now rate unencrypted sites lower than encrypted equivalents, and browsers do their best to warn you away from sites that won't talk HTTP. Even the modest costs associated with acquiring the cryptographic certificates needed to convert your webserver from HTTP to HTTPS have dwindled to nothing.
A new e-mail based extortion attack threatens users of Google's AdSense banner-ad program with creating online behavior that will warrant them an account suspension-perhaps a permanent one-from Google if they don't pay the attackers in bitcoin. The scam-revealed in a post by security writer and researcher Brian Krebs on his blog KrebsOnSecurity-demands $5,000 worth of the cryptocurrency in return "For a promise not to flood the publisher's ads with so much bot and junk traffic that Google's automated anti-fraud systems suspend the user's AdSense account," Krebs wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft representatives are in Fulton, Wisconsin, on Tuesday to conduct the first real-world trials for ElectionGuard, the company's open source election security solution. Made available last year to election officials and technology suppliers to incorporate into voting systems, ElectionGuard was also included in Microsoft's bug bounty program in October 2019, with the company willing to pay up to $15,000 for security bugs.
Tech education firm O'Reilly has released its annual study of how students used its platform in the past year, and its findings deserve attention from tech decision makers. The report, which combines both usage and search data from O'Reilly's online learning platform, paints an excellent picture of what's trending in the tech world.
Peripheral devices with unsigned firmware can expose Windows and Linux machines to attacks, allowing hackers to install stealthy and persistent malware, steal valuable information, or take control of a computer. Researchers at firmware security company Eclypsium have discovered that many peripheral device manufacturers have not implemented checks to ensure that the firmware running on their products comes from a trusted source.
McDonald's receipts in Germany end with a link to a survey page. Once you take the survey, you receive a coupon code for a free small beverage, redeemable within a month.
The Council later confirmed that it had been hit with a cyberattack affecting its internal and external-facing IT systems, with the notable exception of property tax payments. The Council is back to working from pen and paper and able to field only urgent emails and telephone enquiries.