Security News
Trustwave's security researchers have discovered another malware family delivered through tax software that Chinese banks require companies doing business in the country to use. The discovery comes only weeks after the security firm published information on GoldenSpy, a backdoor delivered via the Intelligent Tax application produced by the Golden Tax Department of Aisino Corporation.
Video conference users should not post screen images of Zoom and other video conference sessions on social media, according to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers, who easily identified people from public screenshots of video meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. While there have been many privacy issues associated with video conferencing, the BGU researchers looked at what types of information they could extract from video collage images that were posted online or via social media.
Following a January report on malware found pre-installed on smartphones sold in the United States to budget-conscious users, Malwarebytes has discovered another mobile device riddled with malware from the get-go. Now, Malwarebytes's Nathan Collier says that another phone model provided through the Lifeline Assistance program was found to include pre-installed malware: the ANS UL40 running Android 7.1.1.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have determined how to pinpoint the location of a drone operator who may be operating maliciously or harmfully near airports or protected airspace by analyzing the flight path of the drone. "Currently, drone operators are located using RF techniques and require sensors around the flight area which can then be triangulated," says lead researcher Eliyahu Mashhadi, a BGU computer science student.
The Apache Project's popular Guacamole open-source remote desktop software contained vulns allowing remote attackers to steal login creds and hijack targeted machines, researchers have said. The Apache Foundation has issued patches for Guacamole following Check Point's research, which resulted in two CVEs.
Industrial control systems can be hacked through barcode scanners, researchers at cybersecurity services company IOActive said on Tuesday. Hackers previously demonstrated that keystrokes can be remotely injected via an industrial barcode scanner into the computer the scanner is connected to, which could result in the computer getting compromised.
A University of Texas at Dallas study of 100 mobile apps for kids found that 72 violated a federal law aimed at protecting children's online privacy. Dr. Kanad Basu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and lead author of the study, along with colleagues elsewhere, developed a tool that can determine whether an Android game or other mobile app complies with the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Researchers at Awake Security have published a report on malicious extensions in the Chrome web store, making both specific claims of over 32 million downloads of one malware family, and general claims of weak security in both domain registration and Google's store. This led them to a bunch of malicious browser extensions, 111 in total, which "Were found to upload sensitive data or not perform the task they're advertised to perform. A common technique, they said, is that the developer gets a clean version of an extension approved, and later updates it with the malicious payload. Some of the suspicious extensions have a reassuring number of reviews and downloads, in one case more than 22,000 reviews and 10 million downloads, presumably achieved by bot activity. Another popular approach is to clone a genuine extension and bundle it with malware."Awake has since worked with Google to take down these extensions from the Chrome Web Store," said the report, but no doubt more are on the way.
As multiple companies inch closer to a potentially life-saving vaccine for the coronavirus, cybercriminals with varying motives have increased attacks. During a webinar with CISO MAG earlier this month, Bryan Ware, assistant director for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the attacks being led by the Chinese government were "Hindering vaccine development in the US," and the government body released its own memo to vaccine researchers urging them to beef up defenses.
A security researcher was able to compromise an Android application by invoking each of its exposed Activity components. Activities, one of the three primary components of Android apps, are called using Intents, which are messaging objects that applications use to communicate with their different components.