Security News
Four security researchers have identified five cryptographic vulnerabilities in code libraries that can be exploited to undermine Matrix encrypted chat clients. "Our perspective is that these attacks together show a rich attack surface in Matrix from both a protocol and implementation perspective," Benjamin Dowling, a lecturer in cybersecurity, told The Register this week.
Parents and teachers received a link to an "Inappropriate image" this week via Seesaw after miscreants hijacked accounts in a credential stuffing attack against the popular school messaging app. Late Tuesday, attackers used stolen credentials to take over some Seesaw accounts and send a private message to other users with a link to a dirty pic, he said.
A ruling handed down from the Delhi High Court this week declared that Telegram must hand over information such as IP addresses, mobile numbers, and devices used by channels on the platform involved in copyright infringement. On behalf of Telegram, the platform's senior counsel, Amit Sibal, said that the arrangement already in place directing Telegram to take down the infringing channels was "Sufficient to protect the interest of the plaintiffs."
A pair of reports from cybersecurity firms SEKOIA and Trend Micro sheds light on a new campaign undertaken by a Chinese threat actor named Lucky Mouse that involves leveraging a trojanized version of a cross-platform messaging app to backdoor systems. Infection chains leverage a chat application called MiMi, with its installer files compromised to download and install HyperBro samples for the Windows operating system and rshell artifacts for Linux and macOS. As many as 13 different entities located in Taiwan and the Philippines have been at the receiving end of the attacks, eight of whom have been hit with rshell.
Versions of a cross-platform instant messenger application focused on the Chinese market known as 'MiMi' have been trojanized to deliver a new backdoor that can be used to steal data from Linux and macOS systems. SEKOIA's Threat & Detection Research Team says that the app's macOS 2.3.0 version has been backdoored for almost four months, since May 26, 2022.
Tech companies could be fined $25 million - or ten percent of their global annual revenue - if they don't build suitable mechanisms to scan for child sex abuse material in end-to-end encrypted messages and an amended UK law is passed. The proposed update to the Online Safety bill [PDF], currently working its way through Parliament, states that British and foreign providers of a "Regulated user-to-user service" must report child sexual exploitation and abuse content to the country's National Crime Agency.
Chinese web giant Tencent has admitted to a significant account hijack attack on its QQ.com messaging and social media platform. In a post to rival social media platform Sina Weibo - a rough analog of Twitter - Tencent apologized for the incident.
Speek! is a new encrypted chat service that uses Tor to offer secure communication. Speek! isn't quite like the chat apps and services you are used to.
Zoom has fixed a security flaw in its video-conferencing software that a miscreant could exploit with chat messages to potentially execute malicious code on a victim's device. The upshot is that someone who can send you chat messages could cause your vulnerable Zoom client app to install malicious code, such as malware and spyware, from an arbitrary server.
An analysis of four months of chat logs spanning more than 40 conversations between the operators of Conti and Hive ransomware and their victims has offered an insight into the groups' inner workings and their negotiation techniques. Conti and Hive are among the most prevalent ransomware strains in the threat landscape, cumulatively accounting for 29.1% of attacks detected during the three-month-period between October and December 2021.