Security News
Last year, Kaspersky Password Manager users got an alert telling them to update their weaker passwords. Three months later, a team from security consultancy Donjon found that KPM didn't manage either task particularly well - the software used a pseudo-random number generator that was insufficiently random to create strong passwords.
The password generator included in Kaspersky Password Manager had several problems. All the passwords it created could be bruteforced in seconds.
Threat hunters at Kaspersky are sounding a warning for an Iranian APT actor that has been silently conducting domestic cyber-surveillance operations for the last six years. The newly discovered APT, which Kaspersky calls Ferocious Kitten, has been active since at least 2015 and has used clever computer infection tricks to hijack Telegram and Chrome installations to deploy a malicious payload. The Russian cybersecurity vendor said it also observed signs that Android implants have been used to target mobile users in Iran.
Exploits for vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Office suite were the most popular among cyber-attackers during the first quarter of this year, according to a new Kaspersky report. Microsoft Office exploits accounted for more than half of the observed exploits, with CVE-2017-11882 remaining the most commonly targeted vulnerability.
The first report, detailing desktop attacks, found that cryptomining malware has exploded in popularity, while the second report covering mobile devices, revealed that a popular Trojan targeting gamers has made the leap from PC to Android. Between February and March 2021, during which time the price of a single bitcoin increased by more than $10,000, the number of modified cryptomining malware found by Kaspersky experienced a similar jump with a fourfold increase over the course of the same time period.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky observed a drop in ransomware attacks on industrial control system computers in the second half of 2020, but it saw an increase in these types of attacks in developed countries. According to the company's Industrial Control System Threat Landscape report for H2 2020, globally, the percentage of ICS computers targeted with ransomware dropped from 0.63% in the first half of the year to 0.49% in the second half of 2020.
Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky has suggested that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic will bring a slowdown in cyber-crime. This theory was swiftly shot down by Australian infosec boffin, Dr. Greg Austin, a professor of Cyber Security, Strategy and Diplomacy at the University of New South Wales.
The security company found that 85% of workers spend up to five hours a week watching YouTube, listening to podcasts, or exercising during work hours. Mixing work and play might be a good thing if it breaks up the monotony of security monitoring, according to Kaspersky.
Kaspersky has released the results of research into fraud detected by its Fraud Prevention platform in 2020, and the results further reinforce what we already knew: 2020 was a banner year for online fraudsters, with account takeovers dominating as the method of choice. Occurring whenever a bad actor is able to steal login credentials and seize control of an online account, takeover attacks rose from 34% of fraud detected by Kaspersky in 2019 to 54% by the end of December 2020.
Kaspersky Lab reckons the SolarWinds hackers may have hailed from the Turla malware group, itself linked to Russia's FSB security service. Referring to the hidden backdoor secretly implanted in SolarWinds' Orion product, Kaspersky's Georgy Kucherin wrote in a blog post on Monday: "While looking at the Sunburst backdoor, we discovered several features that overlap with a previously identified backdoor known as Kazuar."