Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • November 5, 2024

FBI Seeks Public Help to Identify Chinese Hackers Behind Global Cyber Intrusions

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has sought assistance from the public in connection with an investigation involving the breach of edge devices and computer networks belonging to companies and government entities. “An Advanced Persistent Threat group allegedly created and deployed malware (CVE-2020-12271) as part of a widespread series of indiscriminate computer intrusions designed […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

Canadian Man Arrested in Snowflake Data Extortions

A 25-year-old man in Ontario, Canada has been arrested for allegedly stealing data from and extorting more than 160 companies that used the cloud data service Snowflake. Image: https://www.pomerium.com/blog/the-real-lessons-from-the-snowflake-breach On October 30, Canadian authorities arrested Alexander Moucka, a.k.a. Connor Riley Moucka of Kitchener, Ontario, on a provisional arrest warrant from the United States. Bloomberg first […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

The AI Fix #23: Murder most weird, and why 9.11 is bigger than 9.9

In episode 23 of The AI Fix, an AI finds a new way to make life difficult for women in STEM, Graham reveals his brilliant idea for treating any medical emergency, a beloved chat show host returns from the grave, and our hosts learn that computer viruses were almost called computer weeds. Graham tells Mark […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

New Android Banking Malware ‘ToxicPanda’ Targets Users with Fraudulent Money Transfers

Over 1,500 Android devices have been infected by a new strain of Android banking malware called ToxicPanda that allows threat actors to conduct fraudulent banking transactions. “ToxicPanda’s main goal is to initiate money transfers from compromised devices via account takeover (ATO) using a well-known technique called on-device fraud (ODF),” Cleafy researchers Michele Roviello, Alessandro Strino, […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

AIs Discovering Vulnerabilities

I’ve been writing about the possibility of AIs automatically discovering code vulnerabilities since at least 2018. This is an ongoing area of research: AIs doing source code scanning, AIs finding zero-days in the wild, and everything in between. The AIs aren’t very good at it yet, but they’re getting better. Here’s some anecdotal data from […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

Leveraging Wazuh for Zero Trust security

Zero Trust security changes how organizations handle security by doing away with implicit trust while continuously analyzing and validating access requests. Contrary to perimeter-based security, users within an environment are not automatically trusted upon gaining access. Zero Trust security encourages continuous monitoring of every device and user, which ensures sustained protection after successful user authentication. […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

Synology Urges Patch for Critical Zero-Click RCE Flaw Affecting Millions of NAS Devices

Taiwanese network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker Synology has addressed a critical security flaw impacting DiskStation and BeePhotos that could lead to remote code execution. Tracked as CVE-2024-10443 and dubbed RISK:STATION by Midnight Blue, the zero-day flaw was demonstrated at the Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 hacking contest by security researcher Rick de Jager. RISK:STATION is an “unauthenticated […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

Malware Campaign Uses Ethereum Smart Contracts to Control npm Typosquat Packages

An ongoing campaign is targeting npm developers with hundreds of typosquat versions of their legitimate counterparts in an attempt to trick them into running cross-platform malware. The attack is notable for utilizing Ethereum smart contracts for command-and-control (C2) server address distribution, according to independent findings from Checkmarx, Phylum, and Socket published over the past few […]

Cyber News
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  • November 5, 2024

Canadian Suspect Arrested Over Snowflake Customer Breach and Extortion Attacks

Canadian law enforcement authorities have arrested an individual who is suspected to have conducted a series of hacks stemming from the breach of cloud data warehousing platform Snowflake earlier this year. The individual in question, Alexander “Connor” Moucka (aka Judische and Waifu), was apprehended on October 30, 2024, on the basis of a provisional arrest […]

Cyber News