Security News > 2021

SonicWall's Email Security product is affected by three vulnerabilities that have been exploited in attacks. FireEye, whose incident response unit Mandiant spotted the vulnerabilities and their active exploitation in March, warned on Tuesday that a threat actor had been observed exploiting the SonicWall Email Security flaws to install backdoors, access emails and files, and move laterally in the victim's network.

An entity claiming to represent ransomware gang REvil says it has accessed "Large quantities of confidential drawings and gigabytes of personal data" from Quanta Computer Incorporated, a Taiwanese manufacturer that builds laptops and other gadgets for the likes of Apple, HPE, Lenovo, Cisco, and plenty of other top-tier tech companies. REvil said it is "Negotiating the sale" of the trove "With several major brands" and is sitting on data describing Apple's Watch, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, plus the Lenovo ThinkPad Z60m. The post announcing the alleged crack includes technical drawings of a laptop that bear Apple's logo.

A security strategy - and accompanying toolset - that makes a daily check for configuration risks is woefully inadequate for the cloud. The bad guys have bots continually searching for openings in your cloud services, and you need to continually monitor for risky configurations and unexpected changes.

Open source is not a security risk per se; it's more secure than proprietary software in many ways! With the code being publicly available, it's a lot easier for the surrounding community to identify vulnerabilities, and fixes can be done quickly. The most common aspect of open-source security is, like explained above, vulnerabilities.

To select a suitable identity management solution for your business, you need to think about a variety of factors. An identity management solution should be easy to deploy, easy to use, and should scale, but what key characteristics should you evaluate when selecting an IAM solution?

Organizations in the automotive industry are no stranger to demands and mandates regarding car and passenger safety, so addressing the issue of cybersecurity of computerized, connected vehicles should, in theory, not be a huge problem. "Today's sophisticated connected vehicle architecture is inherently more vulnerable to cyber attacks. Connected vehicles can host up to 150 electronic control units and run on 100 million lines of code; tomorrow's vehicles may contain up to 300 million lines of software code. Cyber attacks that exploit the increasing digitization of vehicles present a significant risk to manufacturers, vehicle owners, other drivers and pedestrians," Meron noted.

More concerning is that 44% of companies report not actively tracking supply chain risks, which were the primary pandemic-related third-party risk management impact. Because IT and security teams own third-party risk management in 50% of companies, and likely due to increasing numbers of damaging third-party data breaches, the study illustrates that cybersecurity risks are getting the most attention.

57% of respondents to a new Ivanti study claim to have noticed an increase in the usage of QR codes since mid-March 2020. Early in the pandemic, restaurants were using QR codes as menus or payment options, but as the pandemic continued throughout 2020, consumers used QR codes more frequently for practical things like visiting a doctor's office or picking up a prescription - with an increase from 9% in 2020 to 14% in 2021.

While spending on cloud services is high, with more than half of respondents having spent more than $10 million and 11% having spent more than $100 million in the last three years, security preparedness is low, with 32% saying they are doing less than they need to, or nothing at all, to ensure security of their cloud resources, an Osterman Research survey reveals. "Despite being aware of serious shortcomings in public cloud security tools and the rise of cloud-focused vulnerability exploits, 32% of those surveyed are not actively working to solve these challenges," said Mike Osterman, President and Principal Analyst, Osterman Research.

Japan has accused a member of the Chinese Communist Party of conducting cyber-attacks on its space agency and 200 other local entities. Tokyo's Metropolitan Police yesterday said they've filed a case against a Chinese national who they said works for a state-owned telco and, while living in Japan, rented servers to attack the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2016.