Cyber Defense Advisors

Month: November 2024

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  • November 21, 2024

5 Scattered Spider Gang Members Indicted in Multi-Million Dollar Cybercrime Scheme

Five alleged members of the infamous Scattered Spider cybercrime crew have been indicted in the U.S. for targeting employees of companies across the country using social engineering techniques to harvest credentials and using them to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and break into crypto accounts to steal digital assets worth millions of dollars. All […]

Cyber News
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  • November 21, 2024

Google’s AI-Powered OSS-Fuzz Tool Finds 26 Vulnerabilities in Open-Source Projects

Google has revealed that its AI-powered fuzzing tool, OSS-Fuzz, has been used to help identify 26 vulnerabilities in various open-source code repositories, including a medium-severity flaw in the OpenSSL cryptographic library. “These particular vulnerabilities represent a milestone for automated vulnerability finding: each was found with AI, using AI-generated and enhanced fuzz targets,” 

Cyber News
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  • November 21, 2024

NodeStealer Malware Targets Facebook Ad Accounts, Harvesting Credit Card Data

Threat hunters are warning about an updated version of the Python-based NodeStealer that’s now equipped to extract more information from victims’ Facebook Ads Manager accounts and harvest credit card data stored in web browsers. “They collect budget details of Facebook Ads Manager accounts of their victims, which might be a gateway for Facebook malvertisement,” Netskope […]

Cyber News
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  • November 21, 2024

Smashing Security podcast #394: Digital arrest scams and stream-jacking

In our latest episode we discuss how a woman hid under the bed after scammers told her she was under “digital arrest”, how hackers are hijacking YouTube channels through malicious sponsorship deals, and how one phone company is turning the tables on fraudsters through deepfake AI. All this and much more is discussed in the […]

Cyber News
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  • November 20, 2024

Steve Bellovin’s Retirement Talk

Steve Bellovin is retiring. Here’s his retirement talk, reflecting on his career and what the cybersecurity field needs next.  

Cyber News
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  • November 20, 2024

Ghost Tap: Hackers Exploiting NFCGate to Steal Funds via Mobile Payments

Threat actors are increasingly banking on a new technique that leverages near-field communication (NFC) to cash out victim’s funds at scale. The technique, codenamed Ghost Tap by ThreatFabric, enables cybercriminals to cash-out money from stolen credit cards linked to mobile payment services such as Google Pay or Apple Pay and relaying NFC traffic. “Criminals can […]

Cyber News
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  • November 20, 2024

NHIs Are the Future of Cybersecurity: Meet NHIDR

The frequency and sophistication of modern cyberattacks are surging, making it increasingly challenging for organizations to protect sensitive data and critical infrastructure. When attackers compromise a non-human identity (NHI), they can swiftly exploit it to move laterally across systems, identifying vulnerabilities and compromising additional NHIs in minutes. While organizations often take 

Cyber News
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  • November 20, 2024

Decades-Old Security Vulnerabilities Found in Ubuntu’s Needrestart Package

Multiple decade-old security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the needrestart package installed by default in Ubuntu Server (since version 21.04) that could allow a local attacker to gain root privileges without requiring user interaction. The Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU), which identified and reported the flaws early last month, said they are trivial to exploit, […]

Cyber News
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  • November 20, 2024

Microsoft Launches Windows Resiliency Initiative to Boost Security and System Integrity

Microsoft has announced a new Windows Resiliency Initiative as a way to improve security and reliability, as well as ensure that system integrity is not compromised. The idea, the tech giant said, is to avoid incidents like that of CrowdStrike’s earlier this July, enable more apps and users to be run without admin privileges, add […]

Cyber News