Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • March 26, 2024

Recent ‘MFA Bombing’ Attacks Targeting Apple Users

Several Apple customers recently reported being targeted in elaborate phishing attacks that involve what appears to be a bug in Apple’s password reset feature. In this scenario, a target’s Apple devices are forced to display dozens of system-level prompts that prevent the devices from being used until the recipient responds “Allow” or “Don’t Allow” to […]

Cyber News
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  • March 26, 2024

U.S. Charges 7 Chinese Nationals in Major 14-Year Cyber Espionage Operation

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday unsealed indictments against seven Chinese nationals for their involvement in a hacking group that targeted U.S. and foreign critics, journalists, businesses, and political officials for about 14 years. The defendants include Ni Gaobin (倪高彬), Weng Ming (翁明), Cheng Feng (程锋), Peng Yaowen (彭耀文), Sun Xiaohui (孙小辉), Xiong […]

Cyber News
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  • March 26, 2024

Crafting Shields: Defending Minecraft Servers Against DDoS Attacks

Minecraft, with over 500 million registered users and 166 million monthly players, faces significant risks from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, threatening server functionality, player experience, and the game’s reputation. Despite the prevalence of DDoS attacks on the game, the majority of incidents go unreported, leaving a gap in awareness and protection. This article explains what […]

Cyber News
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  • March 26, 2024

On Secure Voting Systems

Andrew Appel shepherded a public comment—signed by twenty election cybersecurity experts, including myself—on best practices for ballot marking devices and vote tabulation. It was written for the Pennsylvania legislature, but it’s general in nature. From the executive summary: We believe that no system is perfect, with each having trade-offs. Hand-marked and hand-counted ballots remove the […]

Cyber News
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  • March 26, 2024

AI and Trust

Watch the Video on YouTube.com A 15-minute talk by Bruce Schneier.  

Cyber News
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  • March 26, 2024

U.S. Sanctions 3 Cryptocurrency Exchanges for Helping Russia Evade Sanctions

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned three cryptocurrency exchanges for offering services used to evade economic restrictions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. This includes Bitpapa IC FZC LLC, Crypto Explorer DMCC (AWEX), and Obshchestvo S Ogranichennoy Otvetstvennostyu Tsentr Obrabotki Elektronnykh Platezhey (TOEP). […]

Cyber News
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  • March 26, 2024

CISA Alerts on Active Exploitation of Flaws in Fortinet, Ivanti, and Nice Products

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday placed three security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities added are as follows – CVE-2023-48788 (CVSS score: 9.3) – Fortinet FortiClient EMS SQL Injection Vulnerability CVE-2021-44529 (CVSS score: 9.8) – Ivanti Endpoint Manager Cloud Service Appliance […]

Cyber News
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  • March 25, 2024

Notorious Nemesis Market zapped by video game-loving German police

Nemesis Market, a notorious corner of the darknet beloved by cybercriminals and drug dealers, has been suddenly shut down after German police seized control of its systems. Germany’s Federal Criminal Police (known as the BKA) has announced that it has seized the infrastructure of Nemesis and taken down its website. At the same time, cryptocurrency […]

Cyber News
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  • March 25, 2024

Hackers Hijack GitHub Accounts in Supply Chain Attack Affecting Top-gg and Others

Unidentified adversaries orchestrated a sophisticated attack campaign that has impacted several individual developers as well as the GitHub organization account associated with Top.gg, a Discord bot discovery site. “The threat actors used multiple TTPs in this attack, including account takeover via stolen browser cookies, contributing malicious code with verified commits, setting up a custom Python […]

Cyber News