Cyber Defense Advisors

News

  • by
  • February 15, 2024

North Korea successfully hacks email of South Korean President’s aide, gains access to sensitive information

The office of South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has confirmed that North Korea hacked into the personal emails of one of its staff members. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog. 

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 15, 2024

Chinese Hackers Using Deepfakes in Advanced Mobile Banking Malware Attacks

A Chinese-speaking threat actor codenamed GoldFactory has been attributed to the development of highly sophisticated banking trojans, including a previously undocumented iOS malware called GoldPickaxe that’s capable of harvesting identity documents, facial recognition data, and intercepting SMS. “The GoldPickaxe family is available for both iOS and Android platforms,” Singapore-headquartered Group-IB said in an extensive report […]

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 15, 2024

Critical Exchange Server Flaw (CVE-2024-21410) Under Active Exploitation

Microsoft on Wednesday acknowledged that a newly disclosed critical security flaw in Exchange Server has been actively exploited in the wild, a day after it released fixes for the vulnerability as part of its Patch Tuesday updates. Tracked as CVE-2024-21410 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a case of privilege escalation impacting […]

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 15, 2024

Smashing Security podcast #359: Declaring war on ransomware gangs, mobile muddles, and AI religion

Holy mackerel! AI is jumping on the religion bandwagon, ransomware gangs target hospitals, and what’s happened to your old mobile phone number? All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security” podcast by cybersecurity veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by “Ransomware Sommelier” Allan Liska. 

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 14, 2024

See me speak at webinar about data security for financial services

Join me and Metomic CEO Richard Vibert for a discussion about some of the cybersecurity challenges faced by the financial services industry, and how you can best protect your organisations. Sign up now for the free event on February 29 2024. 

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 14, 2024

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2024 in Munich, Germany, on Friday, February 16, 2024. I’m giving a keynote on “AI and Trust” at Generative AI, Free Speech, & Public Discourse. The symposium will be held at Columbia University […]

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 14, 2024

U.S. Internet Leaked Years of Internal, Customer Emails

The Minnesota-based Internet provider U.S. Internet Corp. has a business unit called Securence, which specializes in providing filtered, secure email services to businesses, educational institutions and government agencies worldwide. But until it was notified last week, U.S. Internet was publishing more than a decade’s worth of its internal email — and that of thousands of […]

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 14, 2024

Microsoft, OpenAI Warn of Nation-State Hackers Weaponizing AI for Cyber Attacks

Nation-state actors associated with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China are experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) to complement their ongoing cyber attack operations. The findings come from a report published by Microsoft in collaboration with OpenAI, both of which said they disrupted efforts made by five state-affiliated actors that used […]

Cyber News
  • by
  • February 14, 2024

Ubuntu ‘command-not-found’ Tool Could Trick Users into Installing Rogue Packages

Cybersecurity researchers have found that it’s possible for threat actors to exploit a well-known utility called command-not-found to recommend their own rogue packages and compromise systems running Ubuntu operating system. “While ‘command-not-found’ serves as a convenient tool for suggesting installations for uninstalled commands, it can be inadvertently manipulated by attackers through the snap repository, leading […]

Cyber News