Cyber Defense Advisors

Month: September 2024

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  • September 19, 2024

Microsoft Warns of New INC Ransomware Targeting U.S. Healthcare Sector

Microsoft has revealed that a financially motivated threat actor has been observed using a ransomware strain called INC for the first time to target the healthcare sector in the U.S. The tech giant’s threat intelligence team is tracking the activity under the name Vanilla Tempest (formerly DEV-0832). “Vanilla Tempest receives hand-offs from GootLoader infections by […]

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  • September 19, 2024

GitLab Patches Critical SAML Authentication Bypass Flaw in CE and EE Editions

GitLab has released patches to address a critical flaw impacting Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) that could result in an authentication bypass. The vulnerability is rooted in the ruby-saml library (CVE-2024-45409, CVSS score: 10.0), which could allow an attacker to log in as an arbitrary user within the vulnerable system. It was addressed […]

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  • September 18, 2024

Smashing Security podcast #385: TFL security derailed, and is Trump the king of crypto?

Transport for London (TfL) suffers a cybersecurity incident and tells its 30,000 staff they will all have to their identities verified… in-person. Who might have been behind the attack and why? Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s curious relationship with cryptocurrency is explored. All this and Demi Moore is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security” […]

Cyber News
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  • September 18, 2024

New “Raptor Train” IoT Botnet Compromises Over 200,000 Devices Worldwide

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen botnet comprising an army of small office/home office (SOHO) and IoT devices that are likely operated by a Chinese nation-state threat actor called Flax Typhoon (aka Ethereal Panda or RedJuliett). The sophisticated botnet, dubbed Raptor Train by Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs, is believed to have been operational since at […]

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  • September 18, 2024

Chinese Engineer Charged in U.S. for Years-Long Cyber Espionage Targeting NASA and Military

A Chinese national has been indicted in the U.S. on charges of conducting a “multi-year” spear-phishing campaign to obtain unauthorized access to computer software and source code created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), research universities, and private companies. Song Wu, 39, has been charged with 14 counts of wire fraud and 14 […]

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  • September 18, 2024

Scam ‘Funeral Streaming’ Groups Thrive on Facebook

Scammers are flooding Facebook with groups that purport to offer video streaming of funeral services for the recently deceased. Friends and family who follow the links for the streaming services are then asked to cough up their credit card information. Recently, these scammers have branched out into offering fake streaming services for nearly any kind […]

Cyber News
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  • September 18, 2024

Why Pay A Pentester?

The evolution of software always catches us by surprise. I remember betting against the IBM computer Deep Blue during its chess match against the grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, only to be stunned when the machine claimed victory. Fast forward to today, would we have imagined just three years ago that a chatbot could write […]

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  • September 18, 2024

North Korean Hackers Target Energy and Aerospace Industries with New MISTPEN Malware

A North Korea-linked cyber-espionage group has been observed leveraging job-themed phishing lures to target prospective victims in energy and aerospace verticals and infect them with a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed MISTPEN. The activity cluster is being tracked by Google-owned Mandiant under the moniker UNC2970, which it said overlaps with a threat group known as TEMP.Hermit, […]

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  • September 18, 2024

Chrome Introduces One-Time Permissions and Enhanced Safety Check for Safer Browsing

Google has announced that it’s rolling out a new set of features to its Chrome browser that gives users more control over their data when surfing the internet and protects them against online threats. “With the newest version of Chrome, you can take advantage of our upgraded Safety Check, opt out of unwanted website notifications […]

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