Security News
Researchers at ReversingLabs have uncovered evidence of a widespread software supply chain attack through malicious JavaScript packages picked up via NPM. NPM was acquired by Microsoft-owned GitHub in 2020 and has suffered from the odd issue or two over the years. The latest problem stems from typo-squatting, where an attacker offers up malicious packages with names similar to real packages.
The maintainers of the OpenSSL project have released patches to address a high-severity bug in the cryptographic library that could potentially lead to remote code execution under certain scenarios. The issue, now assigned the identifier CVE-2022-2274, has been described as a case of heap memory corruption with RSA private key operation that was introduced in OpenSSL version 3.0.4 released on June 21, 2022.
51% of industrial organizations believe that the number of cyber attacks on smart factories is likely to increase over the next 12 months, according to the Capgemini Research Institute. "The benefits of digital transformation make manufacturers want to invest heavily in smart factories, but efforts could be undone in the blink of an eye if cybersecurity is not baked-in from the offset. The increased attack surface area and number of operational technology and Industrial Internet of Things devices make smart factories a prominent target for cyber criminals. Unless this is made a board-level priority, it will be difficult for organizations to overcome these challenges, educate their employees and vendors, and streamline communication between cybersecurity teams and the C-suite," said Geert van der Linden, Cybersecurity Business Lead at Capgemini.
An NPM supply-chain attack dating back to December 2021 used dozens of malicious NPM modules containing obfuscated Javascript code to compromise thousands of downstream desktop apps and websites. As researchers at supply chain security firm ReversingLabs discovered, the threat actors behind this campaign used typosquatting to infect developers looking for very popular packages, such as umbrellajs and ionic.io NPM modules.
"People have become the primary attack vector for cyber-attackers around the world," said Lance Spitzner, SANS Security Awareness Director. "Awareness programs enable security teams to effectively manage their human risk by changing how people think about cybersecurity and help them exhibit secure behaviors, from the Board of Directors on down," said Spitzner.
The choice of Tampa for his trial was because a known victim of one of his "NetWalker" ransomware attacks is based there. The NetWalker Ransomware was a specific type of malicious software that was used to compromise and restrict access to a victim's computer network in an effort to extort a ransom.
Google has released Chrome 103.0.5060.114 for Windows users to address a high-severity zero-day vulnerability exploited by attackers in the wild, the fourth Chrome zero-day patched in 2022. This update was available immediately when BleepingComputer checked for new updates by going into Chrome menu > Help > About Google Chrome.
Data breach of NFT marketplace OpenSea may expose customers to phishing attacks. The breach was caused by an employee at Customer.io, the email delivery vendor for OpenSea.
A former Canadian government employee this week agreed to plead guilty in the U.S. to charges related to his involvement with the NetWalker ransomware syndicate. The 34-year-old IT consultant from Gatineau, Quebec, was initially apprehended in January 2021 following a coordinated law enforcement operation to dismantle the dark web infrastructure used by the NetWalker ransomware cybercrime group to publish data siphoned from its victims.
Publishing giant Macmillan was forced to shut down their network and offices while recovering from a security incident that appears to be a ransomware attack. The attack reportedly occurred over the weekend, on Saturday, June 25th, with the company shutting down all of their IT systems to prevent the spread of the attack.