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Security

Russia’s Sandworm Hackers Have Built a Botnet of Firewalls

posted onFebruary 28, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Wired

Any appearance of a new tool used by Russia's  notorious, disruptive Sandworm hackers will raise the eyebrows of cybersecurity professionals braced for high-impact cyberattacks. When US and UK agencies warn of one such tool spotted in the wild just as Russia prepares a potential mass-scale invasion of Ukraine, it's enough to raise alarms.

Ukraine’s Volunteer ‘IT Army’ Is Hacking in Uncharted Territory

posted onFebruary 28, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Wired

Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine has been met with fierce resistance throughout the country’s towns and cities. As Russian forces have moved closer to Kyiv, lawyers, students, and actors have taken up arms to defend their country from invasion. They are not the only ones: Volunteers have also flocked to join a Ukrainian volunteer “IT Army” that’s fighting back online.

Microsoft is making it harder to steal Windows passwords from memory

posted onFebruary 14, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Bleeping Computer

Microsoft is enabling a Microsoft Defender 'Attack Surface Reduction' security rule by default to block hackers' attempts to steal Windows credentials from the LSASS process.

When threat actors compromise a network, they attempt to spread laterally to other devices by stealing credentials or using exploits.

Russian researchers unlock Intel processors for reverse engineering

posted onFebruary 9, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Wikipedia

A proof-of-concept published by Russian security vendor Positive Technologies comes with detailed instructions on how to unlock processors to gain access.

Hardware hacker and director of Canberra-based security training company InfoSect, Dr Silvio Cesare, says the research allows people to reverse engineer Intel processors to a level that hasn't been possible before.

$4.4 Million Stolen From Crypto Firm: Multi-Bridge Exploited

posted onFebruary 7, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Data Breach Today

Meter, a blockchain infrastructure company that provides multi-chain bridging and allows users to trade multiple cryptocurrencies across Ethereum and other public chains, has been exploited for around $4.4 million, the company acknowledged via Twitter. The hack also affected the Moonriver network.

"Around 6am Pacific time we identified someone was able to leverage a vulnerability of the bridge to mint a large amount of BNB and WETH tokens and depleted the bridge reserve for BNB on WETH," the decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure provider tweeted on Saturday.

Booby-trapped sites delivered potent new backdoor trojan to macOS users

posted onJanuary 26, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Arstechnica

Researchers have uncovered advanced, never-before-seen macOS malware that was installed using exploits that were almost impossible for most users to detect or stop once the users landed on a malicious website.

The malware was a full-featured backdoor that was written from scratch, an indication that the developers behind it have significant resources and expertise. DazzleSpy, as researchers from security firm Eset have named it, provides an array of advanced capabilities that give the attackers the ability to fully monitor and control infected Macs. Features include:

UK govt releasing Nmap scripts to find unpatched vulnerabilities

posted onJanuary 26, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Bleeping Computer

The United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the government agency that leads UK's cyber security mission, is releasing NMAP Scripting Engine scripts to help defenders scan for and remediate vulnerable systems on their networks.

Major Linux PolicyKit security vulnerability uncovered: Pwnkit

posted onJanuary 26, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: Bleeping Computer

A vulnerability in Polkit's pkexec component identified as CVE-2021-4034 (PwnKit) is present in the default configuration of all major Linux distributions and can be exploited to gain full root privileges on the system, researchers warn today.

CVE-2021-4034 has been named PwnKit and its origin has been tracked to the initial commit of pkexec, more than 12 years ago, meaning that all Polkit versions are affected.

EU to fund bug bounty programs for LibreOffice, Mastodon, three others

posted onJanuary 25, 2022
by l33tdawg
Credit: The Record

The European Union will fund a bug bounty program for five open source projects that are heavily used by public services across the EU.

The five programs include LibreOffice, a document editing app and a free alternative to Microsoft Office; Mastodon, a web-based utility for hosting your private social network; Odoo, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application; Cryptopad, an app exchanging encrypted messages; and LEOS, a software designed to help with drafting legislation.