Security News
Since June 2023, Sophos X-Ops has discovered 19 junk gun ransomware variants - cheap, independently produced, and crudely constructed - on the dark web. "Over the past two months some of the biggest players in the ransomware ecosystem have disappeared or shut down, and, in the past, we've also seen ransomware affiliates vent their anger over the profit-sharing scheme of RaaS. Nothing within the cybercrime world stays static forever, and these cheap versions of off-the-shelf ransomware may be the next evolution in the ransomware ecosystem-especially for lower-skilled cyber attackers simply looking to make a profit rather than a name for themselves," Budd concluded.
In many cases, practitioners have struggled to find value in monitoring the dark web, particularly where a vendor sells them on a comprehensive package but doesn't align the value with the organization's security needs. In other cases organizations may believe they are too small for dark web monitoring to be valuable, but in many cases startups and other small organizations are targeted because they are small.
Despite this, there are still things that you can do to make your web apps more resistant to social engineering. With this in mind, consider implementing these strategies at your organization to protect your web applications and reduce the chance of falling victim to social engineering.
Microsoft is now using a Windows driver to prevent users from changing the Windows 10 and Windows 11 default browser manually or through software. SetDefaultBrowser works similarly but is only for changing the default browser in Windows.
Newly discovered HTTP/2 protocol vulnerabilities called "CONTINUATION Flood" can lead to denial of service attacks, crashing web servers with a single TCP connection in some implementations. HTTP/2 is an update to the HTTP protocol standardized in 2015, designed to improve web performance by introducing binary framing for efficient data transmission, multiplexing to allow multiple requests and responses over a single connection, and header compression to reduce overhead. The new CONTINUATION Flood vulnerabilities were discovered by researcher Barket Nowotarski, who says that it relates to the use of HTTP/2 CONTINUATION frames, which are not properly limited or checked in many implementations of the protocol.
New research has unveiled a vulnerability within the HTTP/2 protocol, known as HTTP/2 CONTINUATION Flood, that allows for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. This issue, discovered by security researcher Bartek Nowotarski and reported to CERT/CC on January 25, 2024, arises from improper handling of CONTINUATION frames—a component used to transmit extended header lists within a single stream. CERT/CC's advisory highlights that attackers exploiting this vulnerability could send continuous CONTINUATION frames without concluding them with an END_HEADERS flag, leading to potential server crashes or significant performance drops due to out-of-memory conditions or CPU exhaustion.
The past three months have seen dramatic developments among the ransomware ecosystem to include the takedown of LockBit's ransomware blog, BlackCat exiting the ecosystem, and the emergence of several smaller ransomware groups. Ransomware as a Service has emerged as the dominant business model among large ransomware groups.
The London Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime is being rapped by regulators for untidy tech practices that made public the personal data of hundreds of people who filed complaints against the Metropolitan Police Service. Between November 11-14 2022, an unnamed employee of the GLA had meant to permit four colleagues access to data shared via the web forms but instead made both forms open to anyone on the internet.
As the shift of IT infrastructure to cloud-based solutions celebrates its 10-year anniversary, it becomes clear that traditional on-premises approaches to data security are becoming obsolete....
"Our Web-Based PLC malware resides in PLC memory, but ultimately gets executed client-side by various browser-equipped devices throughout the ICS environment. From there, the malware uses ambient browser-based credentials to interact with the PLC's legitimate web APIs to attack the underlying real-world machinery," the researchers explained. "While previous attacks on PLCs infect either the control logic or firmware portions of PLC computation, our proposed malware exclusively infects the web application hosted by the emerging embedded webservers within the PLCs," the researchers noted.