Security News > 2024 > February
Prime minister Pham Minh Chinh instructed the nation's Ministry of Public Security to collect the data in the form of iris scans, voice samples and actual DNA, in accordance with amendments to Vietnam's Law on Citizen Identification. Ammendments to the Law on Citizen Identification that allow collection of biometrics passed on November 27 of last year.
There is good news, however: high-severity security flaws in applications have decreased by half since 2016, indicating progress in software security practices and that speed of remediation has a material impact on critical security debt. The report reveals development teams that fix flaws the fastest reduce critical security debt by 75%-from 22.4% of applications to just over 5%. Moreover, these fast-acting teams are four times less likely to let critical security debt materialize in their applications in the first place.
Analysis of 7 billion emails shows clean links are duping users, malicious EML attachments increased 10-fold in Q4, and social engineering attacks are at all-time highs, according to VIPRE Security. Often protected by nothing more than human nature and an antivirus, cybercriminals continue to use email to launch their most basic and persistent attacks.
Notorious ransomware gang LockBit's website has been taken over by law enforcement authorities, who claim they have disrupted the group's operations and will soon reveal the extent of an operation against the group. "We can confirm that LockBit's services have been disrupted as a result of International Law Enforcement action - this is an ongoing and developing operation," the page states, promising that more information will be revealed at 11:30 GMT on Tuesday February 20.
"Law enforcement agencies from 11 countries have disrupted the notorious LockBit ransomware operation in a joint operation known as ''Operation Cronos.""We can confirm that Lockbit's services have been disrupted as a result of International Law Enforcement action - this is an ongoing and developing operation."
In an advisory today Germany's federal intelligence agency and South Korea's National Intelligence Service warn of an ongoing cyber-espionage operation targeting the global defense sector on behalf of the North Korean government. Today's joint cybersecurity advisory highlights two cases attributed to North Korean actors, one of them the Lazarus group, to provide the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by the attackers.
The Cactus ransomware gang claims they stole 1.5TB of data from Schneider Electric after breaching the company's network last month. As BleepingComputer first reported, the ransomware group gained access to the energy management and automation giant's Sustainability Business division on January 17th. The gang is now extorting the company, threatening to leak all the allegedly stolen data if a ransom demand is not paid.
Up to 97,000 Microsoft Exchange servers may be vulnerable to a critical severity privilege escalation flaw tracked as CVE-2024-21410 that hackers are actively exploiting. Currently, 28,500 servers have been identified as being vulnerable.
Hackers are actively exploiting a critical remote code execution flaw impacting the Brick Builder Theme to run malicious PHP code on vulnerable sites. The Bricks Builder Theme is a premium WordPress theme described as an innovative, community-driven visual site builder.
Wyze shared more details on a security incident that impacted thousands of users on Friday and said that at least 13,000 customers could get a peek into other users' homes."The outage originated from our partner AWS and took down Wyze devices for several hours early Friday morning. If you tried to view live cameras or events during that time you likely weren't able to. We're very sorry for the frustration and confusion this caused," the company says in emails sent to affected users.