Security News > 2023 > March

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid vs. Blue Marlin
2023-03-31 21:08

Air EV, based in Pardes Hana, Israel, expects to start delivering its two-seater, battery-operated electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft late next year, with hundreds of people already signed up to join the urban air mobility revolution. Leveraging major advances in electric propulsion, eVTOL aircraft offer the average person the ability to "Drive in the sky," while providing an environmentally sustainable solution to a growing urban transportation problem.

NYPD blues: Cops ignored 93 percent of surveillance law rules
2023-03-31 20:06

The NYPD has rejected 93 percent of the advice from an independent oversight body, the Department of Investigations' Office of the Inspector General for the force about how to comply with the law. These include recommendations like identifying the organizations with which NYPD shares surveillance data: "NYPD should identify in each IUP each external agency, by name, with which the Department can share surveillance data."

Twitter open-sources recommendation algorithm code
2023-03-31 20:02

Twitter announced on Friday that it's open-sourcing the code behind the recommendation algorithm the platform uses to select the contents of the users' For You timeline. "Today's release also does not include the code that powers our ad recommendations. We also took additional steps to ensure that user safety and privacy would be protected, including our decision not to release training data or model weights associated with the Twitter algorithm at this point."

15 million public-facing services vulnerable to CISA KEV flaws
2023-03-31 19:23

Over 15 million publicly facing services are susceptible to at least one of the 896 vulnerabilities listed in CISA's KEV catalog. Using these custom search queries, the researchers found 15 million instances vulnerable to 200 CVEs from the catalog.

World Backup Day is here again – 5 tips to keep your precious data safe
2023-03-31 18:14

I've still lost access to data for a whole truckload of other reasons, mostly down to simple but regrettable mistakes such as saving over the wrong file, wiping the wrong device, uploading last month's data over this month's data in the cloud, or even just realising I'd left my laptop at home when I really needed to look something up on it. Given that it's World Backup Day today, here are five short and simple tips for keeping your precious data safe.

Hackers exploit bug in Elementor Pro WordPress plugin with 11M installs
2023-03-31 15:52

Hackers are actively exploiting a high-severity vulnerability in the popular Elementor Pro WordPress plugin used by over eleven million websites. Elementor Pro is a WordPress page builder plugin allowing users to easily build professional-looking sites without knowing how to code, featuring drag and drop, theme building, a template collection, custom widget support, and a WooCommerce builder for online shops.

10-year-old Windows bug with 'opt-in' fix exploited in 3CX attack
2023-03-31 14:38

A 10-year-old Windows vulnerability is still being exploited in attacks to make it appear that executables are legitimately signed, with the fix from Microsoft still "Opt-in" after all these years. Even worse, the fix is removed after upgrading to Windows 11.

Consumer lender TMX discloses data breach impacting 4.8 million people
2023-03-31 14:18

TMX Finance and its subsidiaries TitleMax, TitleBucks, and InstaLoan have collectively disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal data of 4,822,580 customers.In a data breach notification letter sent yesterday to impacted individuals, the Canadian finance giant informs that hackers breached its systems in early December 2022 but did not detect the breach until February 13th, 2023.

Winter Vivern APT Targets European Government Entities with Zimbra Vulnerability
2023-03-31 14:07

The advanced persistent threat actor known as Winter Vivern is now targeting officials in Europe and the U.S. as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign. "TA473 since at least February 2023 has continuously leveraged an unpatched Zimbra vulnerability in publicly facing webmail portals that allows them to gain access to the email mailboxes of government entities in Europe," Proofpoint said in a new report.

Study: Women in cybersecurity feel excluded, disrespected
2023-03-31 12:30

Women who work in cybersecurity continue to face numerous workplace experiences that contribute to an overall feeling of exclusion and impact their satisfaction, productivity and retention, a new report finds. The State of Inclusion of Women in Cybersecurity report conducted by the organization Women in CyberSecurity addressed the barriers that prevent women from being hired and retained in the cybersecurity workforce.