Security News
A fresh malware trojan has emerged, built from the same code base as the stealthy COMPFun remote access trojan. The malware is using spoofed visa applications to hit diplomatic targets in Europe and may be the work of the Turla APT. According to researchers at Kaspersky, the fake visa application harbors code that acts as a first-stage dropper.
According to Google's Threat Analysis Group, more than a dozen nation-state-backed APTs are using the COVID-19 pandemic as a cover for their various cyberespionage and malware activities. The email had an embedded tracking link, which Mandiant researchers said contained the victim's email address and a code to report back to the actors if the email was opened.
In a memorandum [PDF] first spotted by The Guardian, the British government is asking that five more public authorities be added to the list of bodies that can access data scooped up under the nation's mass-surveillance laws: the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the Environment Agency, the Insolvency Service, the UK National Authority for Counter Eavesdropping, and the Pensions Regulator. The Environment Agency investigates "Over 40,000 suspected offences each year," the memo stated.
A Chinese hacking group has been found leveraging a new exploit chain in iOS devices to install a spyware implant targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority in China's autonomous region of Xinjiang. Watering Holes Attacks Targeting Uyghur Websites The malware campaign previously exploited as many as 14 vulnerabilities spanning from iOS 10 all the way through iOS 12 over a period of at least two years via a small collection of malicious websites that were used as a watering hole to hack into the devices.
A Chinese hacking group has been found leveraging a new exploit chain in iOS devices to install a spyware implant targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority in China's autonomous region of Xinjiang. Watering Holes Attacks Targeting Uyghur Websites The malware campaign previously exploited as many as 14 vulnerabilities spanning from iOS 10 all the way through iOS 12 over a period of at least two years via a small collection of malicious websites that were used as a watering hole to hack into the devices.
The FBI has not followed internal rules when applying to spy on US citizens for at least five years, according to an extraordinary report [PDF] by the Department of Justice's inspector general. The failure to follow so-called Woods Procedures, designed to make sure the FBI's submissions for secret spying are correct, puts a question mark over more than 700 approved applications to intercept and log every phone call and email made by named individuals.
The official - whom Peng eventually figured out was working for the MSS - asked Peng to use his citizenship in the US to assist the official with "Matters of interest" to the PRC. After that, Peng admitted, he got paid at least $30,000 for running data over to China over the course of about 3.5 years. In Beijing, Peng meets with agents of the Ministry of State Security, including the People's Republic of China official with whom Peng had been communicating, and delivers the SD card to MSS. A PRC official uses coded language to tell Peng that another dead drop will occur on April 23, 2016.
The UK's spy agency auditor has given public sector snoopers a clean bill of health - except for domestic surveillance specialists MI5, whose cloud data storage blunder is still under investigation. In its annual report for 2018, published this week, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office concluded once again that all is broadly well in the murky world of British state surveillance, where everyone from eavesdropping agency GCHQ to council binmen is legally allowed to spy on you.
It looks like Switchzilla is moving swiftly to clear up the Krook bug discovered by ESET. Just hours after the researchers delivered their findings in a report, Cisco gave its own advisory on the Wi-Fi data snooping flaw. Missing C++ update opens security hole in Ubuntu 16.04.
Now an app developer called Mysk has discovered pasteboard's dark side - malicious apps could exploit it to work out a user's location even when that user has locked down app location sharing. In the simplest scenario, an iPhone user would take a photo, copy it between apps using the pasteboard, from which a malicious app could extract location metadata while comparing it with timestamps to determine whether it was current or taken in the past.