Security News

Tech support scams work because they try to trick people into believing there's a serious security crisis with their computers, says Norton Labs. The tech support ruse was the number one scam described by Norton Labs in its new October Consumer Cyber Safety Pulse Report.

The U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency on Thursday warned of continued ransomware attacks aimed at disrupting water and wastewater facilities, highlighting five incidents that occurred between March 2019 and August 2021. "This activity-which includes attempts to compromise system integrity via unauthorized access-threatens the ability of WWS facilities to provide clean, potable water to, and effectively manage the wastewater of, their communities," CISA, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Security Agency, said in a joint bulletin.

The new ransomware family, called Yanluowang, appears to still be under development and lacks some sophisticated features found in similar code. The Symantec Threat Hunter Team at Broadcom Software has discovered what appears to be a brand new family of ransomware named after the Chinese deity that judges the souls of the dead. Yanluowang is the perfect ransomware for the Halloween season, though this particular malevolent digital spirit lacks the subtlety and sophistication of some of its more established brethren.

Here's why: the OMB directs government organizations to focus on standalone systems that are connected to critical infrastructure or sensitive information but neglects a key area - the web applications that the private sector has depended on to conduct business for years. Web applications are often deeply integrated and widely accessed within companies, defying the neatly defined security borders of the standalone systems targeted by the OMB. Neglecting web application security therefore neglects a significant area of cyber risk for companies.

In a survey by BlueVoyant, 97% of people said they've been impacted by a security breach that occurred in their supply chain. How do you combat something over which you seemingly have little or no control? A report by cybersecurity provider BlueVoyant looks at supply chain security breaches and offers tips on how to prevent them.

Over the second quarter of the year, 73% of ransomware detections were related to the REvil/Sodinokibi family, while Darkside attacks expanded to more industries, McAfee says. In its latest Advanced Threat Research Report, McAfee looks at the most prominent ransomware strains for the second quarter of 2021 and offers advice on how to combat them.

Iran, Turkey and both North and South Korea are bases for nation-state cyber attacks, Microsoft has claimed - as well as old favourite Russia. "After Russia, the largest volume of attacks we observed came from North Korea, Iran and China; South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam were also active but represent much less volume," said MS in a post announcing its findings.

The addition of Reveal(x) Advisor services to the Reveal(x) 360 network detection and response tools helps organizations proactively manage cybersecurity hygiene and accelerate incident response. ExtraHop announced Tuesday expanded Reveal(x) Advisor services to include threat detection and threat hunting services as well as network assurance analysis.

Attivo Networks announced the availability of a research report conducted by Enterprise Management Associates which focuses on Active Directory, exploring the obstacles and threats organizations face when protecting AD and how they adapt to address these growing concerns. As evidence of the value that attackers place in exploiting Active Directory and the privileges it contains, the report revealed that 50% of organizations experienced an attack on Active Directory in the last 1-2 years, with over 40% indicating the attack was successful.

While there is a time and place for onboarding additional cloud security solutions, it can also be easy to fall prey to the shiny object syndrome surrounding emerging solutions that are created in response to new security threats. Before rushing to invest in a new solution remember that matching additional solutions to emerging threats in a one-to-one game of whack-a-mole is not a sustainable strategy.