Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • July 18, 2024

TAG-100: New Threat Actor Uses Open-Source Tools for Widespread Attacks

Unknown threat actors have been observed leveraging open-source tools as part of a suspected cyber espionage campaign targeting global government and private sector organizations. Recorded Future’s Insikt Group is tracking the activity under the temporary moniker TAG-100, noting that the adversary likely compromised organizations in at least ten countries across Africa, Asia, North America, South […]

Cyber News
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  • July 18, 2024

Meta Halts AI Use in Brazil Following Data Protection Authority’s Ban

Meta has suspended the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in Brazil after the country’s data protection authority issued a preliminary ban objecting to its new privacy policy. The development was first reported by news agency Reuters. The company said it has decided to suspend the tools while it is in talks with Brazil’s National […]

Cyber News
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  • July 18, 2024

Cisco Warns of Critical Flaw Affecting On-Prem Smart Software Manager

Cisco has released patches to address a maximum-severity security flaw impacting Smart Software Manager On-Prem (Cisco SSM On-Prem) that could enable a remote, unauthenticated attacker to change the password of any users, including those belonging to administrative users. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-20419, carries a CVSS score of 10.0. “This vulnerability is due to improper […]

Cyber News

Security Alert: Weak Credentials Behind Nearly 50% of All Cloud Attacks, New Google Report Finds

Security Alert: Weak Credentials Behind Nearly 50% of All Cloud Attacks, New Google Report Finds Misconfigurations & Credential Mismanagement Plague Cloud Security in 2024 Hold onto your hats, folks, because Google’s latest report has dropped a bombshell about the state of cloud security, and it’s not pretty. If you thought your password “123456” was doing […]

Cyber Thoughts
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  • July 17, 2024

Smashing Security podcast #381: Trump shooting conspiracy, Squarespace account hijack, and the butt stops here

Social media fuels conspiracies galore after Donald Trump is shot at a rally, cryptocurrency websites are hijacked after a screw-up at Squarespace, and our guest takes a close look at bottoms on Instagram. All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security” podcast by cybersecurity veterans Graham Cluley […]

Cyber News
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  • July 17, 2024

North Korean Hackers Update BeaverTail Malware to Target MacOS Users

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an updated variant of a known stealer malware that attackers affiliated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have delivered as part of prior cyber espionage campaigns targeting job seekers. The artifact in question is an Apple macOS disk image (DMG) file named “MiroTalk.dmg” that mimics the legitimate video call […]

Cyber News
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  • July 17, 2024

Cloudflare Reports that Almost 7% of All Internet Traffic Is Malicious

6.8%, to be precise. From ZDNet: However, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to be cybercriminals’ weapon of choice, making up over 37% of all mitigated traffic. The scale of these attacks is staggering. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, Cloudflare blocked 4.5 million unique DDoS attacks. That total is nearly a third […]

Cyber News
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  • July 17, 2024

HardBit ransomware – what you need to know

What’s happened? A new strain of the HardBit ransomware has emerged in the wild. It contains a protection mechanism in an attempt to prevent analysis from security researchers. HardBit? I think I’ve heard of that before. Quite possibly. HardBit first emerged in late 2022, and quickly made a name for itself as it attempted to […]

Cyber News
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  • July 17, 2024

Navigating Insider Risks: Are your Employees Enabling External Threats?

Attacks on your network are often meticulously planned operations launched by sophisticated threats. Sometimes your technical fortifications provide a formidable challenge, and the attack requires assistance from the inside to succeed. For example, in 2022, the FBI issued a warning1 that SIM swap attacks are growing: gain control of the phone and earn a gateway […]

Cyber News