Security News

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky on Tuesday responded to an advisory released by Germany's Federal Office of Information Security against using the company's security solutions in the country over "Doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer." The statement from Kaspersky follows a warning from Germany's cybersecurity authority, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik aka BSI, which recommended "Replacing applications from Kaspersky's portfolio of antivirus software with alternative products" due to risks that they could be exploited by Russia for a cyber attack.

Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, BSI, is warning companies against using Kaspersky antivirus products due to threats made by Russia against the EU, NATO, and Germany. Kaspersky is a Moscow-based cybersecurity and antivirus provider founded in 1997, that has a long history of success, but also controversy over the company's possible relationship with the Russian government.

In 2021, securing your network is more challenging than ever - you need to secure users, devices, apps, and data at the point of access, working at the cloud edge to deliver protection and performance. Your choice of cloud security platform and partner is key, as it will serve as a foundation for the way you grow and evolve to meet new challenges - for example, meeting the new standards defined by Gartner as part of their forward-thinking secure access service edge architecture.

Two companies owned by Hamburg-based company fuel group Marquard & Bahls are battling cyberattackers, with loading and unloading systems at the German arm of petrol tank terminal provider Oiltanking affected. The company this afternoon confirmed to The Register that Oiltanking GmbH's terminals - which provide Shell service stations, among others - are "Operating with limited capacity" and that Mabanaft GmbH had "Declared force majeure for the majority of its inland supply activities in Germany."

Oiltanking GmbH, a German petrol distributor who supplies Shell gas stations in the country, has fallen victim to a cyberattack that severely impacted its operations. On Saturday, January 29th 2022, Oiltanking GmbH Group and Mabanaft GmbH & Co. KG Group discovered we have been the victim of a cyber incident affecting our IT systems.

A regional court in the German city of Munich has ordered a website operator to pay €100 in damages for transferring a user's personal data - i.e., IP address - to Google via the search giant's Fonts library without the individual's consent. The unauthorized disclosure of the plaintiff's IP address by the unnamed website to Google constitutes a contravention of the user's privacy rights, the court said, adding the website operator could theoretically combine the gathered information with other third-party data to identify the "Persons behind the IP address."

A German activist is trying to track down a secret government intelligence agency. Wittmann says that everyone she spoke to denied being part of this intelligence agency.

The BfV German domestic intelligence services warn of ongoing attacks coordinated by the APT27 Chinese-backed hacking group. This active campaign is targeting German commercial organizations, with the attackers using the HyperBro remote access trojans to backdoor their networks.

The Austrian data protection authority has ruled that use of Google Analytics by a German company is in breach of European law in light of the Schrems II EU-US data sharing ruling. Datenschutzbehörde, or DSB, has found that a German publisher, not named in the case, was in breach of Article 44 of the General Data Protection Regulation in the use and operation of Google Analytics - commonly used throughout web publishing and ecommerce - because of its movement of personal data to the United States.

Multiple backdoors have been discovered during a penetration test in the firmware of a widely used voice over Internet Protocol appliance from Auerswald, a German telecommunications hardware manufacturer, that could be abused to gain full administrative access to the devices. "Two backdoor passwords were found in the firmware of the COMpact 5500R PBX," researchers from RedTeam Pentesting said in a technical analysis published Monday.