X-Industry

The cost of zero-day exploits has always been high, especially if they allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a host machine.  But why pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 0-day when a relatively simple drive-by attack doesn’t need one and can achieve much the same result?  That’s what interested an Imperva security researcher who has published a report on new drive-by attack using something called the Evil Code Editor.  Here’s what you need to know.

“A remote code execution chain i

Ukraine is accusing Google of exposing the locations of its military sites in recent updates to its online mapping service.  Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the counter-disinformation department at Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said the images were spotted last week and have already been “actively distributed” by Russians.  He did not provide further details about what was specifically revealed or how Moscow could use the obtained data.

Kovalenko said Google hasn’t yet fixed the

Researchers at Google said last week that they have discovered the first vulnerability using a large language model.  In a blog post, Google said it believes the bug is the first public example of an AI tool finding a previously unknown exploitable memory-safety issue in widely used real-world software.  The vulnerability was found in SQLite, an open-source database engine popular among developers.

Google researchers reported the vulnerability to SQLite developers in early October, who fixed it

Earlier this week, a US federal judge ordered Google to tear down the digital walls shielding its Android app store from competition as punishment for maintaining an illegal monopoly that helped expand the company's internet empire.  The injunction was issued by US District Judge James Donato and will require Google to make several changes that the California company had been resisting.  Those include a provision that will require its Play Store for Android apps to distribute rival third-party a

In a feat that seemed unachievable just a few short years ago, an international research consortium has recently unveiled the first complete wiring diagram of an entire fruit fly brain.  The map itself is accompanied by a cache of papers, demonstrating how this breakthrough is already leading to new scientific findings and there’s much more to come.

Why do we need brain maps anyway?  Maps that show every neuron in a brain and all the myriad connections between them are called connectomes. The fi

The underground market for large illicit language models is lucrative, said academic researchers who called for better safeguards against artificial intelligence misuse.  Academics at the Indiana University Bloomington[1] identified 212 malicious LLMs on underground marketplaces from April through September 2024.  The financial benefit for the threat actor behind one of them, WormGPT, is calculated at US$28,000 over two months, underscoring the allure for harmful agents to break artificial intel

A new malware called "Voldemort" has been making waves in recent weeks, sending over 20,000 emails worldwide as it spreads through phishing attacks.  Discovered by IT security researchers at Proofpoint on 5 August, this malware has proven to be very deceptive.  "Voldemort" employs a sophisticated tactic to evade detection: it disguises its network traffic as legitimate by using Google Sheets as an interface.  This method allows the malware’s data transmissions to appear harmless, slipping past s

A US federal judge ruled on 05 August 2024 that Google violated antitrust laws as it built its Internet search business. The decision might have major implications for the way people use the Internet. The court ruled that payments to make Google the default search engine on other browsers broke US antitrust rules, enabling Google to become a monopoly. The court further ruled that Google had acted illegally to suppress its competition and maintain a monopoly on online search and related highly lu

Google is betting Microsoft Corp.’s very public cybersecurity failures, along with deep discounts will persuade corporate and government customers to use the search giant’s productivity software rather than Office.  Some are insinuating Google is trying to steal customers. 

Government agencies that switch 500 or more users to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus for three years will get one year free and be eligible for a “significant discount” for the rest of the contract, said Andy Wen, the senior

Adobe is recruiting help from its network of photographers and videographers to train its new AI text-to-video generator, but is the company paying enough?   To catch up with other AI video generators like Google's Lumiere and OpenAI's Sora, Adobe is purchasing videos that show people engaging in everyday activities like walking, running, using a cell phone, and working out, and other videos showing emotions like sadness, excitement, or rage.  Adobe also requests simple videos of human anatomy l

Google continues to struggle with cybercriminals running malicious ads on its search platform to trick people into downloading booby-trapped copies of popular free software applications.  The malicious ads, which appear above organic search results and often precede links to legitimate sources of the same software, can make searching for software on Google a dicey affair.

Google says keeping users safe is a top priority, and that the company has a team of thousands working around the clock to cr

A new malvertising campaign has been found to employ fake sites that masquerade as legitimate Windows news portal to propagate a malicious installer for a popular system profiling tool called CPU-Z.  This incident is a part of a larger malvertising campaign that targets other utilities like Notepad++, Citrix, and VNC Viewer as seen in its infrastructure (domain names) and cloaking templates used to avoid detection.

While malvertising campaigns are known to set up replica sites advertising widely

Google’s threat hunting unit has again intercepted an active North Korean APT actor sliding into the DMs of security researchers and using zero-days and rigged software tools to take control of their computers.  Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) recently reported the government-backed hacking team’s social media accounts and warned that at least one actively exploited zero-day is being used and is currently unpatched.[1]

See:  https://redskyalliance.org/xindustry/no-good-deed-goes-unpunished

Cybersecurity investigators are warning of a new type of phishing attacks that abuse Google Looker Studio to bypass protections.  Google Looker Studio[1] is a legitimate online tool for creating customizable reports, including charts and graphs that can be easily shared with others.  Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio, is an online tool for converting data into customizable informative reports and dashboards introduced by Google on 15 March 2016 as part of the enterprise Google Analytics

The Internet runs on open-source software (OSS).  It is probably fair to say that open source is everywhere.  The Linux kernel, one of the building blocks of open source, is embedded in everything from most supercomputers, cloud computing, billions of phones, and most operating systems.  “Open Source” software, as its name suggests, is available to anyone, and it poses a particular challenge in tracking what is happening at all times.  This, in turn, leads to the potential for unique and serious

Chrome Woes

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Google Chrome, the most severe of which could allow for arbitrary code execution.  Google Chrome is a web browser used to access the internet.  Successful exploitation of the most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow for arbitrary code execution in the context of the logged-on user.  Depending on the privileges associated with the user an attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Google Android OS, the most severe of which could allow for remote code execution. Android is an operating system developed by Google for mobile devices, including, but not limited to, smartphones, tablets, and watches.  Successful exploitation of the most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow for privilege escalation.  Depending on the privileges associated with the exploited component, an attacker could then install programs; view, change,

Cyber security researchers identified a new information-stealing malware that targets browsers and cryptocurrency wallets.  Although the malware, called Bandit Stealer, has only targeted Windows systems so far, it has the potential to expand to other platforms such as Linux.  What makes Bandit Stealer particularly dangerous is that it’s difficult for victims to detect, researchers at Trend Micro wrote in a report published last week.

For example, Bandit Stealer can bypass Windows Defender, a sec

Millions of consumers are now being urged to check their devices quickly after security experts found a new threat targeting Android phones.  The team at McAfee Mobile Security discovered the most recent attack, which can infect well-known applications with a malicious software library and start carrying out tasks without the smartphone owners' authorization.[1]

Cyber criminals can use a contaminated app to view Wi-Fi history, Bluetooth devices connected to a phone, apps used, and even nearby GP

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Google Chrome, the most severe of which could allow for arbitrary code execution.  Google Chrome is a web browser used to access the internet.  Successful exploitation of the most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow for arbitrary code execution in the context of the logged on user.  Depending on the privileges associated with the user an attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full us