Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • April 25, 2024

State-Sponsored Hackers Exploit Two Cisco Zero-Day Vulnerabilities for Espionage

A new malware campaign leveraged two zero-day flaws in Cisco networking gear to deliver custom malware and facilitate covert data collection on target environments. Cisco Talos, which dubbed the activity ArcaneDoor, attributed it as the handiwork of a previously undocumented sophisticated state-sponsored actor it tracks under the name UAT4356 (aka Storm-1849 by Microsoft). “UAT4356 deployed […]

Cyber News
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  • April 24, 2024

Smashing Security podcast #369: Keeping the lights on after a ransomware attack

Leicester City Council suffers a crippling ransomware attack, and a massive data breach, but is it out of the dark yet? And as election fever hits India we take a close eye at deepfakery. All this and more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security” podcast by cybersecurity veterans Graham Cluley and […]

Cyber News

Find the Smart Balance in Your Digital Defense Investments

Striking the Right Balance in Your Cybersecurity Budget Optimizing digital defense investments can be crucial for small to mid-sized companies. Here are ten best practices to help you and your company find the right balance in your cybersecurity efforts: Risk Assessment First: Start by conducting a thorough risk assessment to identify the most critical vulnerabilities […]

Cyber Thoughts
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  • April 24, 2024

U.S. Treasury Sanctions Iranian Firms and Individuals Tied to Cyber Attacks

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Monday sanctioned two firms and four individuals for their involvement in malicious cyber activities on behalf of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC) from at least 2016 to April 2021. This includes the front companies Mehrsam Andisheh Saz Nik (MASN) […]

Cyber News
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  • April 24, 2024

Researchers Detail Multistage Attack Hijacking Systems with SSLoad, Cobalt Strike

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an ongoing attack campaign that’s leveraging phishing emails to deliver a malware called SSLoad. The campaign, codenamed FROZEN#SHADOW by Securonix, also involves the deployment of Cobalt Strike and the ConnectWise ScreenConnect remote desktop software. “SSLoad is designed to stealthily infiltrate systems, gather sensitive information and transmit its findings back to its […]

Cyber News
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  • April 24, 2024

City street lights “misbehave” after ransomware attack

Graham CLULEY April 24, 2024 Promo Protect all your devices, without slowing them down. Free 30-day trial The UK’s Leicester City Council was thrown into chaos last month when a crippling cyber attack forced it to shut down its IT systems and phone lines. The INC Ransom group perpetrated the ransomware attack, which reportedly impacted […]

Cyber News
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  • April 24, 2024

Dan Solove on Privacy Regulation

Law professor Dan Solove has a new article on privacy regulation. In his email to me, he writes: “I’ve been pondering privacy consent for more than a decade, and I think I finally made a breakthrough with this article.” His mini-abstract: In this Article I argue that most of the time, privacy consent is fictitious. […]

Cyber News
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  • April 24, 2024

Major Security Flaws Expose Keystrokes of Over 1 Billion Chinese Keyboard App Users

Security vulnerabilities uncovered in cloud-based pinyin keyboard apps could be exploited to reveal users’ keystrokes to nefarious actors. The findings come from the Citizen Lab, which discovered weaknesses in eight of nine apps from vendors like Baidu, Honor, iFlytek, OPPO, Samsung, Tencent, Vivo, and Xiaomi. The only vendor whose keyboard app did not have any […]

Cyber News
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  • April 24, 2024

eScan Antivirus Update Mechanism Exploited to Spread Backdoors and Miners

A new malware campaign has been exploiting the updating mechanism of the eScan antivirus software to distribute backdoors and cryptocurrency miners like XMRig through a long-standing threat codenamed GuptiMiner targeting large corporate networks. Cybersecurity firm Avast said the activity is the work of a threat actor with possible connections to a North Korean hacking group […]

Cyber News