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Security

Hackers got past Windows Hello by tricking a webcam

posted onJuly 20, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: Arstechnica

Biometric authentication is a key piece of the tech industry's plans to make the world password-less. But a new method for duping Microsoft's Windows Hello facial-recognition system shows that a little hardware fiddling can trick the system into unlocking when it shouldn't.

Microsoft discovers critical SolarWinds zero-day under active attack

posted onJuly 13, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: Arstechnica

SolarWinds, the company at the center of a supply chain attack that compromised nine US agencies and 100 private companies, is scrambling to contain a new security threat: a critical zero-day vulnerability in its Serv-U product line.

Microsoft discovered the exploits and privately reported them to SolarWinds, the latter company said in an advisory published on Friday. SolarWinds said the attacks are entirely unrelated to the supply chain attack discovered in December.

Swedish Coop supermarkets shut due to US ransomware cyber-attack

posted onJuly 5, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: BBC

Some 500 Coop supermarket stores in Sweden have been forced to close due to an ongoing "colossal" cyber-attack affecting organisations around the world.

Coop Sweden says it closed more than half of its 800 stores on Friday after point-of-sale tills and self-service checkouts stopped working. The supermarket was not itself targeted by hackers - but is one of a growing number of organisations affected by an attack on a large software supplier the company uses indirectly.

Researchers Share Another Zero-Day in Some Western Digital NAS Products

posted onJuly 5, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: PC Mag

Shortly after hackers remotely wiped internet-connected My Book Live devices, researchers shared a new zero-day vulnerability affecting Western Digital products running MyCloud OS 3.

KrebsOnSecurity reported that the researchers discovered this vulnerability in 2020 and planned to present it at the Pwn2Own hacking competition last November. Western Digital addressed the vulnerability with the release of MyCloud OS 5, however, so the research wasn't presented.

It's 2021, you should be using a password manager

posted onJuly 5, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: Android Authority

The internet in 2021 is a very different place than it used to be only a decade ago. Gone are the days when you’d visit just a handful of sites all neatly organized in your browser’s trusty bookmark manager.

Nowadays, you’re much more likely to visit dozens of unique websites within hours and, in many instances, also sign up for a new account. According to multiple surveys, the average internet user has anywhere between 50 and 200 online accounts. The downside? Most of us have had at least one of these unknowingly compromised or breached in recent years.

Russian hackers are trying to brute-force hundreds of networks

posted onJuly 5, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: Arstechnica

The discovery of Russia's devastating SolarWinds spy campaign put the spotlight on the sophisticated supply chain hijacking techniques of Moscow's foreign intelligence hackers. But it's now apparent that, throughout that SolarWinds spying and its fallout, another group of Kremlin hackers has kept up up their usual daily grind, using basic but often effective techniques to pry open practically any vulnerable network they could find across the US and the global Internet.

A New Kind of Ransomware Tsunami Hits Hundreds of Companies

posted onJuly 5, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: Wired

It was probably inevitable that the two dominant cybersecurity threats of the day— supply chain attacks and ransomware—would combine to wreak havoc. That’s precisely what happened Friday afternoon, as the notorious REvil criminal group successfully encrypted the files of hundreds of businesses in one swoop, apparently thanks to compromised IT management software. And that’s only the very beginning.

Cisco flaw under attack after researchers publish exploit PoC

posted onJune 29, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: IT Pro

Hackers are targeting a vulnerability in Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) after security researchers published a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a successful exploit.

Positive Technologies SWARM, the security company’s offensive research team, published an exploit PoC for the flaw tracked as CVE-2020-3580 last week. This was originally patched in October 2020 alongside CVE-2020-3581 through to CVE-2020-3583.

A well-meaning feature leaves millions of Dell PCs vulnerable

posted onJune 27, 2021
by l33tdawg
Credit: Arstechnica

Researchers have known for years about security issues with the foundational computer code known as firmware. It's often riddled with vulnerabilities, it's difficult to update with patches, and it's increasingly the target of real-world attacks. Now a well-intentioned mechanism to easily update the firmware of Dell computers is itself vulnerable as the result of four rudimentary bugs. And these vulnerabilities could be exploited to gain full access to target devices.