Cybersecurity Weekly: Active phishing attacks, breach blamed on password reuse, insecure smart lights
New phishing attacks target U.N. and enterprise executives. Bed Bath & Beyond blames their breach on password reuse. A new study finds smart light bulbs contain serious security gaps. All this, and more, in this week’s edition of Cybersecurity Weekly.
Should you pay the ransom?
1. Pwn2Own expands into industrial control systems hacking
Pwn2Own's annual hacking competition will focus on industrial control systems in 2020. Hosted in Miami on January 21–23, the contest is offering more than $250,000 in collective prizes for sniffing out flaws in ICS and associated protocols. Remote code execution flaws will have the highest payouts, with prizes up to $20,000.
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2. Active duty U.S. Military now gets free credit monitoring
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced that starting October 31, active duty U.S. Army service members and National Guard members receive free electronic credit monitoring from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. This new legislature was introduced in response to the frequent targeting of U.S. Army service members in identity theft schemes.
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3. New Chrome zero-day bug under active attacks
Google has advised users to immediately install an urgent software update to patch two high-severity vulnerabilities, one of which is being actively exploited in the wild to hijack computers. Both flaws could enable remote attackers to gain privileges on the Chrome web browser just by convincing users to visit a malicious website.
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4. Fake Office 365 phishing attack targets enterprise executives
A phishing campaign that uses fake voicemail messages to lure victims into disclosing their Office 365 credentials is making the rounds. A wide range of employees are being targeted, from middle management to executive-level staff, but researchers believe this is mainly a “whaling” campaign going after high-value targets.
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5. Sophisticated spearphishing campaign targets U.N. and NGOs
The United Nations and nongovernment organizations are being targeted by a sophisticated spearphishing campaign that’s attempting to steal account credentials for Okta, Office 365 and Outlook. The use of a keylogger on the site negates the need for a victim to complete the login process, capturing the password regardless of that final process.
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6. Bed Bath & Beyond blames password reuse for hacked accounts
Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. discovered that a third party acquired login credentials from a source outside of the company’s systems. These were then used to access less than 1% of customer accounts. An investigation determined that the abused usernames and passwords were “likely acquired as a result of a breach at a different company.”
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7. Breaches at several popular domain name registrars
Top domain name registrars NetworkSolutions.com, Register.com and Web.com asked customers to reset their passwords after discovering an intrusion that happened in August 2019. Press releases stated that contact information and usernames were compromised, but it is still unknown if account passwords were also leaked.
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8. Unsecured Adobe server exposes data for 7.5 million Creative Cloud users
In early October, security researcher Bob Diachenko collaborated with the cybersecurity firm Comparitech to uncover an unsecured Adobe database that was publicly accessible without any password or authentication.The database, which has now been secured, contained personal information of nearly 7.5 million Creative Cloud accounts.
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9. Study warns of security gaps in smart light bulbs
Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio conducted a review of the security holes in popular smart-light brands. If these bulbs are infrared-enabled, hackers can send commands via the infrared invisible light from the bulbs to either steal data or spoof other connected IoT devices on the network.
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See Infosec IQ in action
10. The Pirate Bay down for over a week from DDoS attack
The Pirate Bay was down for more than a week with most visitors seeing a Cloudflare error mentioning that a "bad gateway" was causing problems. The prolonged downtime over the past several weeks was due to a series of distributed denial of service attacks. These attacks also disabled logging and bug reporting, further extending recovery time.
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In this Series
- Cybersecurity Weekly: Active phishing attacks, breach blamed on password reuse, insecure smart lights
- Canada Flipper Zero ban and new RustDoor macOS malware
- AnyDesk hack and iPhone patched kernel flaw
- Tesla Pwn2Own hacks and iOS push alerts abuse
- TeamViewer breach and Atlassian Jira outage
- Moscow ISP revenge hack and Microsoft Sharepoint bug warning
- X verified accounts hack and SpectralBlur macOS malware
- CISA default password alert and SOHO KV-botnet campaign
- New 5G modem flaws and Apple’s data breach report
- Staples cyberattack, Agent Racoon backdoor and other news
- British Library ransomware attack, Windows fingerprint authentication bypass
- Samsung UK data breach and ransomware actor’s SEC complaint
- ICBC ransomware attack and ChatGPT outage
- Boeing Lockbit ransomware attack, Apple’s vulnerability and WhatsApp mods spyware
- Octo Tempest hacking group and new iLeakage attack
- Okta support system breach and Google Ads fake KeePass campaign
- Skype DarkGate malware, Shadow PC breach and AvosLocker ransomware warning
- 23andMe data theft, MGM’s $100M ransomware loss and the Azure VM breach
- Malicious Bing Chat ads and FBI’s dual ransomware warning
- T-Mobile app glitch and fake Booking.com pages
- Airbus data leak, Cisco Webex ad malware and €345 million TikTok fine
- New Apple iMessage exploit and CISA’s Apache RocketMQ warning
- Forever 21 data breach and Android BadBazaar espionage
- Duolingo data leak and the Met Police IT hack
- Discord.io data breach and Ivanti Avalanche vulnerabilities
- UK Electoral Commission hack and Microsoft’s role in China email breach
- Salesforce email zero-day exploit and Microsoft Power Platform criticism
- Airlines disclose pilot data breach and the Microsoft Teams bug
- GravityRAT Android Trojan and new MOVEit Transfer flaw
- University of Manchester hack and Honda API flaws
- MOVEit zero-day exploit and the U.S. iPhone hack accusation
- Daam Android virus and Barracuda zero-day flaw
- TP-Link router exploit and 18-year-old charged with hacking DraftKings accounts
- Discord support hack and Toyota location data leak
- Twitter private tweets bug and Cisco phone router vulnerabilities
- Cisco XSS zero-day flaw and PaperCut vulnerabilities
- 3CX hackers hit critical infrastructure and secondhand routers cause security concerns
- Hyundai data breach and Microsoft’s warning to accountants
- Western Digital cloud breach and the MSI ransomware hack
- TMX loan data breach, Italy bans ChatGPT and WordPress Elementor Pro exploit
- ChatGPT data leak and Gmail message theft by North Korean hackers
- U.S. federal agency hack and the return of FakeCalls Android malware
- Massive AT&T data breach and fake jobs targeting security researchers
- U.S. Marshals service breach and TPM 2.0 security flaws
- Dangerous ChatGPT apps and food giant Dole ransomware attack
- GoDaddy malware installations, record-breaking DDoS attack and the new WhiskerSpy malware
- Reddit’s employees phished, healthcare firms targeted and the new Screenshotter malware
- JD Sports data breached, VMware ESXi servers attacked and the HeadCrab malware
- Yandex source code leaked, 4500+ WordPress sites hacked and the new SwiftSlicer malware
- PayPal accounts breached, Fortinet VPN flaw exploited, and the new Hook malware
- Twitter users’ emails leaked, ChatGPT used to write malware and Slack’s repository breach
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