Security News
The Qbot botnet is now spewing U.S. election-themed phishing emails used to infect victims with malicious payloads designed to harvest user data and emails for use in future campaigns. "In addition to stealing and exfiltrating data from its victims, QBot will also start grabbing emails that will later be used as part of the next malspam campaigns," Malwarebytes' Jérôme Segura and Hossein Jazi explain.
SaltStack has officially revealed three bugs in its code - two of them seemingly critical - and told users: "We strongly recommend that you prioritize this update." But the biz appears to have known about the bugs for months and quietly patched them over the summer. SaltStack offers open-source, Python-based automation tools.
Social media firms remained on high alert Tuesday against Election Day misinformation and manipulation efforts as polling places began closing in the US and focus turned to tallying ballots. "Our Election Operations Center will continue monitoring a range of issues in real time - including reports of voter suppression content," said a Facebook statement posted on Twitter.
Russian interference has been minimal so far in the most tempestuous U.S. presidential election in decades. Election officials fear a "Blend" of overlapping attacks intended to undermine voter confidence and incite political violence: taking over state or local government websites to spread misinformation, crippling election results-reporting websites with denial-of-service attacks, hijacking officials' social media accounts and making false claims about rigged voting.
"Authorities and election officials know this is the case and have taken precautions to try to ensure a safe election. These include election infrastructure assessment and securing voting registration systems. However, given the recent hack involving Hall County, Ga., where election data was released to public for failure to pay a ransom, it really brings into question how effective the measures will be in the final stretch of the election." "If ransomware hits a county, the mail-in count will be thrown into question. Because Republicans are known to vote in person on election day and Democrats favor mail-in ballots, this is a danger."
DHS CISA and the FBI today shared more info on how an Iranian state-sponsored hacking group was able to harvest voter registration info from U.S. state websites, including election sites. The attempts to download voter info from election websites took place between September 29 and October 17, 2020, according to the advisory.
Threatpost breaks down the scariest stories of the week ended Oct. 30 haunting the security industry -- including bugs that just won't die.
The US government, in full pre-presidential election high alert, has issued a warning about an evolved strain of backdoor malware from a Russian offensive cyber unit. The Zebrocy backdoor, warned the CISA infosec agency, has evolved - and while the agency didn't explicitly link it to Russia, previous research from the private sector made it abundantly clear who the malware's operators are.
As America counts down to the November 3 elections, things are tense for political campaigns. The Republican Party of Wisconsin, a key battleground state which President Trump won in 2016 by less than 1 per cent, has admitted that it lost $2.3m earlier this month to business email deception - where phishing emails harvest credentials and use these to submit fake or altered invoices for services rendered.
While 2020 has brought many challenges, perhaps the most critical from a social perspective is how we have intertwined mobile devices into our daily lives. We've seen a similar tactic used in an ongoing mobile phishing campaign that sends a message purporting to be a missed package delivery with a link to a fake claim page that is a mobile phishing attack.