In what’s yet another act of sabotage, the developer behind the popular “node-ipc” NPM package shipped a new version to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, raising concerns about security in the open-source and the software supply chain. Affecting versions 10.1.1 and 10.1.2 of the library, the changes introduced undesirable behavior by its maintainer RIAEvangelist, targeting
Cyber Security
As a CSIRT consultant, I cannot overemphasize the importance of effectively managing the first hour in a critical incident. Finding out what to do is often a daunting task in a critical incident. In addition, the feeling of uneasiness often prevents an incident response analyst from making effective decisions. However, keeping a cool head and
The maintainers of OpenSSL have shipped patches to resolve a high-severity security flaw in its software library that could lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition when parsing certificates. Tracked as CVE-2022-0778 (CVSS score: 7.5), the issue stems from parsing a malformed certificate with invalid explicit elliptic-curve parameters, resulting in what’s called an “infinite loop.” The
A previously undocumented backdoor has been observed targeting Linux systems with the goal of corralling the machines into a botnet and acting as a conduit for downloading and installing rootkits. Qihoo 360’s Netlab security team called it B1txor20 “based on its propagation using the file name ‘b1t,’ the XOR encryption algorithm, and the RC4 algorithm
Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky on Tuesday responded to an advisory released by Germany’s Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) against using the company’s security solutions in the country over “doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer.” Calling that the decision was made on “political grounds,” the company said it will “continue to assure our partners
A number of websites belonging to the Israeli government were felled in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Monday, rendering the portals inaccessible for a short period of time. “In the past few hours, a DDoS attack against a communications provider was identified,” the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) said in a tweet. “As a
As many as 722 ransomware attacks were observed during the fourth quarter of 2021, with LockBit 2.0, Conti, PYSA, Hive, and Grief emerging as the most prevalent strains, according to new research published by Intel 471. The attacks mark an increase of 110 and 129 attacks from the third and second quarters of 2021, respectively.
Two weeks after details emerged about a second data wiper strain delivered in attacks against Ukraine, yet another destructive malware has been detected amid Russia’s continuing military invasion of the country. Slovak cybersecurity company ESET dubbed the third wiper “CaddyWiper,” which it said it first observed on March 14 around 9:38 a.m. UTC. Metadata associated
Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker QNAP on Monday warned of a recently disclosed Linux vulnerability affecting its devices that could be abused to elevate privileges and gain control of affected systems. “A local privilege escalation vulnerability, also known as ‘Dirty Pipe,’ has been reported to affect the Linux kernel on QNAP NAS running QTS 5.0.x
French video game company Ubisoft on Friday confirmed it was a victim of a “cyber security incident,” causing temporary disruptions to its games, systems, and services. The Montreuil-headquartered firm said that an investigation into the breach was underway and that it has initiated a company-wide password reset as a precautionary measure. “Also, we can confirm
A newly disclosed security flaw in the Linux kernel could be leveraged by a local adversary to gain elevated privileges on vulnerable systems to execute arbitrary code, escape containers, or induce a kernel panic. Tracked as CVE-2022-25636 (CVSS score: 7.8), the vulnerability impacts Linux kernel versions 5.4 through 5.6.10 and is a result of a
The insidious Emotet botnet, which staged a return in November 2021 after a 10-month-long hiatus, is once again exhibiting signs of steady growth, amassing a swarm of over 100,000 infected hosts for perpetrating its malicious activities. “While Emotet has not yet attained the same scale it once had, the botnet is showing a strong resurgence
Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp and Cloudflare have banded together for a new initiative called Code Verify to validate the authenticity of the messaging service’s web app on desktop computers. Available in the form of a Chrome and Edge browser extension, the open-source add-on is designed to “automatically verif[y] the authenticity of the WhatsApp Web code being
Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in popular package managers that, if potentially exploited, could be abused to run arbitrary code and access sensitive information, including source code and access tokens, from compromised machines. It’s, however, worth noting that the flaws require the targeted developers to handle a malicious package in conjunction with one of
The Russian government has established its own TLS certificate authority (CA) to address issues with accessing websites that have arisen in the wake of sanctions imposed by the west following the country’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. According to a message posted on the Gosuslugi public services portal, the Ministry of Digital Development is expected
Researchers have disclosed a new technique that could be used to circumvent existing hardware mitigations in modern processors from Intel, AMD, and Arm and stage speculative execution attacks such as Spectre to leak sensitive information from host memory. Attacks like Spectre are designed to break the isolation between different applications by taking advantage of an
The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor known as MuddyWater has been attributed to a new swarm of attacks targeting Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula with the goal of deploying remote access trojans (RATs) on compromised systems. “The MuddyWater supergroup is highly motivated and can use unauthorized access to conduct espionage, intellectual property theft, and deploy ransomware
Yaroslav Vasinskyi, a Ukrainian national, linked to the Russia-based REvil ransomware group has been extradited to the U.S. to face charges for his role in carrying out the file-encrypting malware attacks against several companies, including Kaseya last July. The 22-year-old had been previously arrested in Poland in October 2021, prompting the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ)