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In today's digital age, ransomware has emerged as a formidable threat to businesses of all sizes.  This malicious attack can paralyze operations, damage reputations, and inflict severe financial losses.  Mid-market organizations are particularly vulnerable, with over half (57%) admitting they don't regularly review and replace legacy systems, and a similar number (57%) failing to patch their systems regularly.

This creates an expanded attack surface for cybercriminals to exploit them.  The conse

Just this past week, a good friend of mine came back from a 2-week vacation in Scotland.  He and his wife had a great time walking an old ancient trail along many lakes and mountains.  He stayed at various BnB’s and hotels.  One thing that bothered my friend is that almost all places of business in Scotland, including the airport in Glasgow, demanded payment with a credit card – another words, e-commerce transitions only.  My friend took over 1,000 in British Pounds (cash) to pay for whatever he

Online identities continue to be at risk of vulnerabilities, a colossal password compilation named "RockYou2024" has emerged, containing nearly 10 billion unique passwords. This unprecedented leak has put the cybersecurity community and beyond on high alert as if it was not already there, highlighting the ongoing need for improved digital security practices.

The name "RockYou2024" pays homage to the infamous RockYou data breach of 2009, which exposed 32 million passwords due to insecure storage

The HardBit ransomware first appeared in October 2022, with a 2.0 version coming shortly thereafter in November of 2022.   As one expects of a ransomware attack, HardBit targets organizations and demands cryptocurrency payments in exchange for decrypting data. 

Earlier variants of HardBit aren’t noted as being especially unique, though one standout attribute of HardBit is that the operators have enhanced their extortion tactics by demanding to know about the victim’s potential cyber insurance co

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo questions the topic of cybersecurity regulation. The Court's decision effectively overturned the Chevron Doctrine, a longstanding principle that gave deference to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous laws. Cybersecurity leaders are now scrambling to understand the implications for regulating the threat landscape already a moving target.  Business leaders have questioned the validity of unelected bureaucrats

The Justice Department announced on 09 July 2024, the seizure of two domain names and the search of 968 social media accounts used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the United States and abroad. The social media bot farm used elements of AI to create fictitious social media profiles often purporting to belong to individuals in the United States which the operators then used to promote messages in support of Russian government objective

Executive Summary from Fortinet - Not long ago, the operational technology (OT) networks used in environments such as factories and critical infrastructure were air-gapped, meaning they were not connected to the internet.  But today, the once-siloed worlds of OT and information technology (IT) are seeing greater interconnectivity due to digital transformation and support for scarce or remote workers.  This connectivity can enhance production via data sharing and new cloud-based tools that allow

Global cyber insurance premiums are declining despite an increase in ransomware attacks, according to a recent report by insurance broker Howden  www.howdengroup.com.  This trend reflects improved business security practices, evolving insurance industry dynamics, and changing attitudes toward cyber risk management.

The Howden report indicates that the cyber insurance market experienced double-digit price reductions in 2023/24, starkly contrasting the skyrocketing premiums seen in 2021 and 2022 d

A Microsoft outage starting during the evening of 18 July which crippled airlines, financial services, health-care and many energy companies across the world, resulting for many in a "blue screen of death" on their work computers.  In response, Microsoft on Saturday released a recovery tool to help repair Windows machines affected by the bug, a day after CrowdStrike provided instructions for how to fix a crashed PC.

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software protects small businesses and l

Behind a massive IT failure that grounded flights, upended markets and disrupted corporations around the world is one cybersecurity company: CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.  Known as a dominant supplier of software that protects businesses from ransomware attacks, CrowdStrike was thrust into the spotlight on 19 July as it struggled to fix a faulty patch that led to cascading, system-wide failures, paralyzing the operations of clients ranging from banks to global retail giants to health-care systems.

W

Recorded Future’s Insikt Group identified a suspected cyber-espionage campaign by TAG-100, targeting global government and private sector organizations.  TAG-100 exploited internet-facing devices and used open-source tools like the Go backdoor Pantegana. The campaign compromised two Asia-Pacific intergovernmental organizations and targeted multiple diplomatic and trade entities.

• TAG-100 Uses Open-Source Tools in Suspected Global Espionage Campaign, Compromising Two Asia-Pacific Intergovernmenta

At least a dozen organizations with domain names at domain registrar Squarespace saw their websites hijacked last week.  Squarespace bought all assets of Google Domains a year ago, but many customers still haven’t set up their new accounts.  Experts say malicious hackers learned they could commandeer any migrated Squarespace accounts that hadn’t yet been registered, merely by supplying an email address tied to an existing domain.  Until this past weekend, Squarespace’s website had an option to l

Between April and June 2024, the NullBulge group emerged, targeting users in AI-centric applications and gaming communities.  The NullBulge persona has showcased creative methods of distributing malware targeting said tools and platforms.  Though the group projects an image of activism claiming to be “protecting artists around the world” and claims to be motivated by a pro-art, anti-AI cause rather than profit, other activities tied to this threat actor may indicate otherwise.

NullBulge’s servic

Cyber threat researchers recently uncovered a Chinese cyber espionage campaign targeting a newly discovered command injection vulnerability in Cisco’s Cisco NX-OS software.  They found the vulnerability and its exploitation as part of an ongoing forensic investigation of a Velvet Ant threat group.   The vulnerability tracked as CVE-2024-20399 concerns a case of command injection that allows an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root on the underlying operating system

The sophisticated malware known as ViperSoftX has been observed being distributed as eBooks over torrents.  BitTorrent, also referred to as simply torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner.  The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

A notable aspect of the current variant of ViperSoftX is that it uses the Common

Destructive cyber-attacks such as ransomware and wiper attacks are forcing a culture change within organizations as teams need to come together to build resilience.  In many organizations, the CIO and CISO and their teams pursue their own, sometimes conflicting, goals and maintain their own cultures and methods.  But to build resilience to attacks, security and IT operations must work much better together.

Historically CISOs primarily had to deal with incidents of data theft, or more accurately

In 2019, the Space Force became the nation’s first new military branch in nearly 80 years.   Now, the US Congress is already thinking about starting another one, a cyber force.  For years, there's been talk of creating a military branch that concentrates on the cyber domain, driven by the increasing threat posed by geopolitical rivals like China and by organizational and staffing problems with the existing US military cyber operations.  Now, members of the House of Representatives and Senate hav

Select versions of the OpenSSH secure networking suite are susceptible to a new vulnerability that can trigger remote code execution (RCE).  The vulnerability tracked as CVE-2024-6409 (CVSS score: 7.0) is distinct from CVE-2024-6387 (aka RegreSSHion) and relates to a case of code execution in the privsep child process due to a race condition in signal handling.  It only impacts versions 8.7p1 and 8.8p1 shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.  This vulnerability, if exploited, could lead to full

A Russian was charged with conspiring to hack and destroy computer systems and data in Ukraine and allied countries, including the United States, the US Justice Department (DoJ) announced in June 2024, offering a $10 million reward for information.   Amin Timovich Stigal, a 22-year-old Russian national, has been indicted in Maryland, US, for his alleged role in staging destructive cyber-attacks against Ukraine and its allies in the days leading to Russia's full-blown military invasion of Ukraine

Political strife and natural disasters have stripped millions of people of internet access over the last two weeks, with experts raising particular concern over actions taken by Turkey's government.  This article explores the intentional and unintentiaional sequestering of social media communication.  Last week, the Turkish government shut down access to social media sites in the Kayseri region of the country due to local anti-Syrian immigrant riots. While hundreds of governments have proven the