Security News
A former council staff member in the district where William Shakespeare was born ransacked databases filled with residents' information to help drum up new business for their outside venture. The UK's Stratford-on-Avon District Council concluded its investigation into a November data breach last week, finding tens of thousands of email addresses stolen from a garden and waste collection database.
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.
According to a report from Abnormal Security, generative AI is likely behind the significant uptick in the volume and sophistication of email attacks on organizations, with 80% of security leaders stating that their organizations have already fallen victims to AI-generated email attacks. Even though humans are still better at crafting effective phishing emails, AI is still immensely helpful to cyber crooks: even less-skilled hackers can use it to easily craft credible and customized emails, with no grammar and spelling mistakes, nonsensical requests, etc.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a medium-severity security flaw impacting Roundcube email software to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV)...
CISA warns that a Roundcube email server vulnerability patched in September is now actively exploited in cross-site scripting attacks. The security flaw is a persistent cross-site scripting bug that lets attackers access restricted information via plain/text messages maliciously crafted links in low-complexity attacks requiring user interaction.
Singapore-based infosec firm Group-IB has detected a group that spent the last two months of 2023 stealing personal info from websites operated by jobs boards and retailers websites across Asia. The actors, dubbed "ResumeLooters" by Group-IB, used SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting attacks to steal databases from the sites.
Microsoft has fixed a known issue causing desktop and mobile email clients to fail to connect when using Outlook.com accounts. "For Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016, if you are still seeing authentication prompts, please ensure you've enabled two step verification and create an app password. Use the app password in place of your normal password when Outlook prompts for authentication."
Microsoft, a week after disclosing that Kremlin-backed spies broke into its network and stole internal emails and files from its executives and staff, has now confirmed the compromised corporate account used in the genesis of the heist didn't even have multi-factor authentication enabled. On Thursday, Redmond admitted Midnight Blizzard - a Moscow-supported espionage team also known as APT29 or Cozy Bear - "Utilized password spray attacks that successfully compromised a legacy, non-production test tenant account that did not have multifactor authentication enabled."
Microsoft disclosed on Jan. 19 that a nation-state backed attack occurred beginning in November 2023 in which the Russian state-sponsored threat actor group Midnight Blizzard accessed some Microsoft corporate emails and documents through compromised email accounts. The attackers gained access in November 2023 using a legacy test tenant account.
HPE has become the latest tech giant to admit it has been compromised by Russian operatives. HPE "Immediately activated our response process to investigate, contain, and remediate the incident, eradicating the activity."