Cyber Defense Advisors

Cyber Threat Trends

Cybercrime Syndicate ‘Five Families’ Targets Ortambo District in South Africa”

The South African municipal district of ORTambo was the target of a cyberattack by a hacker collective known as the Five Families. They claim that they have taken over sensitive data from the district’s primary domain, ortambodm.gov.za, endangering the privacy of both public and official government data. The syndicate has demanded a ransom on Telegram […]

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends
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  • October 1, 2023

A Closer Look at the Snatch Data Ransom Group

Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity revealed that the darknet website for the Snatch ransomware group was leaking data about its users and the crime gang’s internal operations. Today, we’ll take a closer look at the history of Snatch, its alleged founder, and their claims that everyone has confused them with a different, older ransomware group by […]

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends

Friday Squid Blogging: Protecting Cephalopods in Medical Research

From Nature: Cephalopods such as octopuses and squid could soon receive the same legal protection as mice and monkeys do when they are used in research. On 7 September, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked for feedback on proposed guidelines that, for the first time in the United States, would require research projects […]

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends
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  • September 30, 2023

Updated Startup Script for Disabling Unnecessary Services on a Mac

Hunting down more things to disable on a Mac Continue reading on Cloud Security »

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends
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  • September 30, 2023

Parsing and Validating Lambda Parameters and Environment Variables

ACM.266 Creating a Safe String Function and Validation File Continue reading on Cloud Security »

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends
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  • September 30, 2023

Iranian APT Group OilRig Using New Menorah Malware for Covert Operations

Sophisticated cyber actors backed by Iran known as OilRig have been linked to a spear-phishing campaign that infects victims with a new strain of malware called Menorah. “The malware was designed for cyberespionage, capable of identifying the machine, reading and uploading files from the machine, and downloading another file or malware,” Trend Micro researchers Mohamed Fahmy and […]

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends
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  • September 30, 2023

New Critical Security Flaws Expose Exim Mail Servers to Remote Attacks

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the Exim mail transfer agent that, if successfully exploited, could result in information disclosure and remote code execution. The list of flaws, which were reported anonymously way back in June 2022, is as follows – CVE-2023-42114 (CVSS score: 3.7) – Exim NTLM Challenge Out-Of-Bounds Read Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends
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  • September 30, 2023

FBI Warns of Rising Trend of Dual Ransomware Attacks Targeting U.S. Companies

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning of a new trend of dual ransomware attacks targeting the same victims, at least since July 2023. “During these attacks, cyber threat actors deployed two different ransomware variants against victim companies from the following variants: AvosLocker, Diamond, Hive, Karakurt, LockBit, Quantum, and Royal,” the FBI said in an […]

Cyber News, Cyber Threat Trends

The Need for Robust Cybersecurity: Reflecting on the Biggest Breaches of 2023

The Need for Robust Cybersecurity: Reflecting on the Biggest Breaches of 2023 In today’s digital age, the importance of cybersecurity cannot be overstated. As businesses increasingly rely on technology to store and manage sensitive data, the risk of cyberattacks has grown exponentially. The year 2023 has been no exception, with several high-profile data breaches making […]

Cyber News, Cyber Thoughts, Cyber Threat Trends