Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • October 17, 2024

A glimmer of good news on the ransomware front, as encryption rates plummet

No-one would be bold enough to say that the ransomware problem is receding, but a newly-published report by Microsoft does deliver a slither of encouraging news amongst the gloom.  And boy do we need some good news – amid reports that 389 US-based healthcare institutions were hit by ransomware last year – more than one […]

Cyber News
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  • October 17, 2024

Russian RomCom Attacks Target Ukrainian Government with New SingleCamper RAT Variant

The Russian threat actor known as RomCom has been linked to a new wave of cyber attacks aimed at Ukrainian government agencies and unknown Polish entities since at least late 2023. The intrusions are characterized by the use of a variant of the RomCom RAT dubbed SingleCamper (aka SnipBot or RomCom 5.0), said Cisco Talos, […]

Cyber News
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  • October 17, 2024

Sudanese Brothers Arrested in ‘AnonSudan’ Takedown

The U.S. government on Wednesday announced the arrest and charging of two Sudanese brothers accused of running Anonymous Sudan (a.k.a. AnonSudan), a cybercrime business known for launching powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against a range of targets, including dozens of hospitals, news websites and cloud providers. The younger brother is facing charges that could land […]

Cyber News
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  • October 17, 2024

Researchers Uncover Cicada3301 Ransomware Operations and Its Affiliate Program

Cybersecurity researchers have gleaned additional insights into a nascent ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) called Cicada3301 after successfully gaining access to the group’s affiliate panel on the dark web. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB said it contacted the threat actor behind the Cicada3301 persona on the RAMP cybercrime forum via the Tox messaging service after the latter put out an advertisement, […]

Cyber News
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  • October 17, 2024

SideWinder APT Strikes Middle East and Africa With Stealthy Multi-Stage Attack

An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor with suspected ties to India has sprung forth with a flurry of attacks against high-profile entities and strategic infrastructures in the Middle East and Africa. The activity has been attributed to a group tracked as SideWinder, which is also known as APT-C-17, Baby Elephant, Hardcore Nationalist, Leafperforator, Rattlesnake, Razor […]

Cyber News
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  • October 17, 2024

U.S. Charges Two Sudanese Brothers for Record 35,000 DDoS Attacks

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged two Sudanese brothers with running a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet for hire that conducted a record 35,000 DDoS attacks in a single year, including those that targeted Microsoft’s services in June 2023. The attacks, which were facilitated by Anonymous Sudan’s “powerful DDoS tool,” singled out critical infrastructure, corporate […]

Cyber News
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  • October 17, 2024

Critical Kubernetes Image Builder Vulnerability Exposes Nodes to Root Access Risk

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the Kubernetes Image Builder that, if successfully exploited, could be abused to gain root access under certain circumstances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-9486 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been addressed in version 0.1.38. The project maintainers acknowledged Nicolai Rybnikar for discovering and reporting the vulnerability. “A security issue […]

Cyber News
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  • October 16, 2024

Smashing Security podcast #389: WordPress vs WP Engine, and the Internet Archive is down

WordPress’s emperor, Matt Mullenweg, demands a hefty tribute from WP Engine, and a battle erupts, leaving millions of websites hanging in the balance. Meanwhile, the Internet Archive, a digital library preserving our online history, is under siege from hackers. All this and more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security” podcast by […]

Cyber News

How CMMC 2.0 Changes Could Redefine Cybersecurity for Defense Contractors

How CMMC 2.0 Changes Could Redefine Cybersecurity for Defense Contractors Why It’s Not Just Jumping Through Hoops Anymore There’s more to CMMC than checking boxes—this latest update could actually reshape the way defense contractors think about cybersecurity.                                     […]

Cyber Thoughts