Security News > 2023 > July

In yet another sign of a lucrative crimeware-as-a-service ecosystem, cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Windows-based information stealer called Meduza Stealer that's actively being developed by its author to evade detection by software solutions. "The Meduza Stealer has a singular objective: comprehensive data theft," Uptycs said in a new report.

On June 30 it issued a new one [PDF] titled "US Business Risk: People's Republic of China Laws Expand Beijing's Oversight of Foreign and Domestic Companies." The first item discussed is China's recently revised Counter-Espionage Law, on grounds it "Expands the definition of espionage from covering state secrets and intelligence to any documents, data, materials, or items related to national security interests, without defining terms." In May, China Law Translate - a crowdsourced translation and analysis service for Chinese laws - in May rated the updated law "Probably less consequential than some imagine."

Threat actors associated with the BlackCat ransomware have been observed employing malvertising tricks to distribute rogue installers of the WinSCP file transfer application. "Malicious actors used malvertising to distribute a piece of malware via cloned webpages of legitimate organizations," Trend Micro researchers said in an analysis published last week.

Since cloud security implies a shared responsibility between the customers and the cloud provider, IT teams and decision-leaders must have a clear understanding of the types of cloud services more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Another security consideration that emerges when businesses are moving their information system to the cloud is identifying the cases where the risks outweigh the rewards.

In this Help Net Security video, Charl van der Walt, Head of Security Research at Orange Cyberdefense, discusses cyber extortion attacks and their expansion to new regions. A recent report revealed that cyber extortion activity reached the highest volume ever recorded in Q1 2023 after a decline of 8% in 2022.

While surface-level confidence around hybrid cloud security is high, with 94% of global respondents stating their security tools and processes provide them with complete visibility and insights into their IT infrastructure, the reality is nearly one third of security breaches aren't spotted by IT and security professionals, according to Gigamon. Only 19% claim effective security education for staff is a crucial factor for gaining confidence on IT infrastructure security.

As more businesses experience resource and cost constraints, 86% of MSPs and MSSPs customers are outsourcing their security needs to consolidate security tools, according to OpenText. "Staffing issues that have plagued the security industry for years are getting worse due to today's complex economic environment. As a result, already short-staffed teams must find creative ways to do more with less," says Geoff Bibby, SVP of Marketing and Strategy, OpenText Cybersecurity.

Zilla Security introduces new suite of identity security SaaS solutions. Zilla Security announced Zilla Secure and Segregation of Duties, two SaaS solutions that enable enterprise-wide identity security for cloud-based applications and infrastructure, SaaS, and legacy applications.

Asia In Brief Japan's government last Friday rebuked Fujitsu for shabby cloud security. Fujitsu operates a cloud called "FENICS" and in February 2023 admitted that in December 2022 it had detected network misconfigurations that allowed unauthorized remote access to the service.

PHYSICAL SECURITY GUIDELINES AND REQUIREMENTS. The following guidelines should be followed in designing and enforcing access to IT assets. Access to server rooms and IT equipment rooms should be restricted to only those whose job responsibilities require that they maintain the equipment or infrastructure of the room.