Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • April 11, 2024

Python’s PyPI Reveals Its Secrets

GitGuardian is famous for its annual State of Secrets Sprawl report. In their 2023 report, they found over 10 million exposed passwords, API keys, and other credentials exposed in public GitHub commits. The takeaways in their 2024 report did not just highlight 12.8 million new exposed secrets in GitHub, but a number in the popular […]

Cyber News
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  • April 11, 2024

Backdoor in XZ Utils That Almost Happened

Last week, the Internet dodged a major nation-state attack that would have had catastrophic cybersecurity repercussions worldwide. It’s a catastrophe that didn’t happen, so it won’t get much attention—but it should. There’s an important moral to the story of the attack and its discovery: The security of the global Internet depends on countless obscure pieces […]

Cyber News
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  • April 11, 2024

Apple Updates Spyware Alert System to Warn Victims of Mercenary Attacks

Apple on Wednesday revised its documentation pertaining to its mercenary spyware threat notification system to mention that it alerts users when they may have been individually targeted by such attacks. It also specifically called out companies like NSO Group for developing commercial surveillance tools such as Pegasus that are used by state actors to pull […]

Cyber News
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  • April 11, 2024

Fortinet Rolls Out Critical Security Patches for FortiClientLinux Vulnerability

Fortinet has released patches to address a critical security flaw impacting FortiClientLinux that could be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution. Tracked as CVE-2023-45590, the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 9.4 out of a maximum of 10. “An Improper Control of Generation of Code (‘Code Injection’) vulnerability [CWE-94] in FortiClientLinux may allow an unauthenticated […]

Cyber News
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  • April 10, 2024

Smashing Security podcast #367: WhatsApp at Westminster, unhealthy AI, and Drew Barrymore

MPs aren’t just getting excited about an upcoming election, but also the fruity WhatsApp messages they’re receiving, can we trust AI with our health, and who on earth is pretending to be a producer for the Drew Barrymore TV show? All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing […]

Cyber News

AI: The New Sword & Shield in the Cyber Wars

AI: The New Ally & Adversary in the Cyber War Are You Fully Leveraging Its Power? Just like in “The Terminator,” AI has risen as a powerhouse in cybersecurity—both a guardian and a looming threat. Is Judgment Day closer than we think? Technology is changing fast. Traditional defenses (like firewalls, MDR/XDR, and antivirus software) are […]

Cyber Thoughts
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  • April 10, 2024

Twitter’s Clumsy Pivot to X.com Is a Gift to Phishers

On April 9, Twitter/X began automatically modifying links that mention “twitter.com” to read “x.com” instead. But over the past 48 hours, dozens of new domain names have been registered that demonstrate how this change could be used to craft convincing phishing links — such as fedetwitter[.]com, which until very recently rendered as fedex.com in tweets. […]

Cyber News
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  • April 10, 2024

‘eXotic Visit’ Spyware Campaign Targets Android Users in India and Pakistan

An active Android malware campaign dubbed eXotic Visit has been primarily targeting users in South Asia, particularly those in India and Pakistan, with malware distributed via dedicated websites and Google Play Store. Slovak cybersecurity firm said the activity, ongoing since November 2021, is not linked to any known threat actor or group. It’s tracking the […]

Cyber News
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  • April 10, 2024

Raspberry Robin Returns: New Malware Campaign Spreading Through WSF Files

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Raspberry Robin campaign wave that has been propagating the malware through malicious Windows Script Files (WSFs) since March 2024. “Historically, Raspberry Robin was known to spread through removable media like USB drives, but over time its distributors have experimented with other initial infection vectors,” HP Wolf Security researcher Patrick […]

Cyber News