The Emotet botnet earned the title of "most wanted" malware family for the month of July 2020 following a period of inactivity. Check Point revealed that Emotet threat activity had affected 5% of organizations worldwide in July 2020, thereby earning the malware the top spot in the security firm's Global Threat Index for that month. Emotet launched...

Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach, used to start his training camp each season with a talk about doing the basics. He’d tell the players that they start with the basics, then he’d take a football and hold it up and tell them, “This is a football.” In football, as in life and IT Security, starting with the basics is the most important step...

A phishing campaign tricked users into visiting a website that masqueraded as an email scanner in an effort to steal their account credentials. Kaspersky Lab found that the campaign began with a scam email containing a fake virus alert. This email claimed to originate from an organization's "Email Security Team," but it actually originated from a...

In its Vision 2030 development plan, Saudi Arabia included a National Transformation Program whose purpose is to diversify the Kingdom’s income away from the oil industry. One of the core tenets of that program is to enable the growth of the private sector by developing the digital economy. Specifically, Saudi Arabia set out its intention to...

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) warned of the security risks that organizations face if they continue to use the Windows 7 operating system despite its end of life (EOL) status. In a private industry notification published on August 3, the FBI explained that it had witnessed computer criminals exploiting operating systems that had...

The mechanical lock is perhaps the most fundamental, tangible, and familiar layer of security in our daily lives. People lock their doors with the expectation that these locks will keep the bad people out, but there’s a common adage in the security industry that locks are only good at keeping honest people honest. This is perhaps truer than ever in...

COVID-19 forced organizations all over the world to transition their employees to a work-from-home policy. That change came at a time when organizations’ connected infrastructure is more complex than ever. Such complexity doesn’t just extend across IT environments, either. Indeed, machines and production processes are also becoming increasingly...

Jen Burns, lead cybersecurity engineer at MITRE, walks us through the MITRE ATT&CK© Framework and discusses some important changes brought by a July 2020 update. She then highlights what the security community can expect to see in a couple of upcoming updates before sharing how individuals can get involved with the MITRE ATT&CKFramework going...

Government officials in Belarus announced they had arrested an individual on charges of having helped to distribute GandCrab ransomware. On July 30, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of the Republic of Belarus revealed that it had arrested a 31-year-old resident of Gomel in cooperation with the...

Tripwire's July 2020 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, F5 Networks, Cisco, and Oracle. Up first on the patch priority list this month are patches for F5 Networks and Cisco for vulnerabilities that have been integrated into various Exploits. Metasploit has recently added exploits for F5 Networks' BIG...

Ships are increasingly using systems that rely on digitalization, integration, and automation, which call for cyber risk management on board. As technology continues to develop, the convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) onboard ships and their connection to the Internet creates an increased attack surface that...

Security researchers came across a phishing email that used a Google Ad redirect as a part of its efforts to steal victims' Microsoft credentials. Cofense found that the email originated from the legitimate email address “info@jtpsecurity[.]co[.]za.” The security firm reasoned that attackers had compromised that email account and abused their access...

The pervasive impact of Internet of Things (IoT) devices on our lives is greater than that of traditional IT devices. There are several unknowns in IoT security, and it raises concerns for customers who are looking to incorporate IoT devices in their existing infrastructure. Fortunately, security by design can resolve some of the major root causes...

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released a flash alert in which it warned organizations about the dangers of Netwalker ransomware. On July 28, the FBI revealed in Flash Alert MI-000130-MW that it had received notifications of attacks involving Netwalker against U.S. and foreign government organizations along with entities operating in the...

The audience in the room is weirdly quiet. The contestant is in a small plexiglass booth with nothing but a phone, a laptop computer and some notes. On a set of speakers outside, the booth broadcasts the sounds of a dial tone as a woman on the stage begins to dial a number. It is apparent she is not phoning a friend. The dial tone changes to a ring...

Vulnerabilities are weaknesses leveraged by adversaries to compromise the confidentiality, availability or integrity of a resource. The vulnerability ecosystem has matured considerably in the last few years. A significant amount of effort has been invested to capture, curate, taxonomize and communicate the vulnerabilities in terms of severity,...

A subsidiary of the Dussman Group suffered a ransomware infection in which malicious actors stole and publicly leaked its data. As reported by Bleeping Computer, the operators of Nefilim ransomware made good on a promise made back in March to begin publishing victims' stolen information by updating their data leaks website with a post entitled "The...

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed flaws in the American healthcare system that were always there. The only difference now is that those flaws have been brought to light. In the wake of the pandemic, a new host of cyberattacks occurred within the healthcare sector. Malicious hackers aimed to take advantage of the crisis with a combination of...

Phishers leveraged fake automated messages from collaborative platform Sharepoint as a means to target users' Office 365 credentials. Abnormal Security found that the phishing campaign began with an attack email that appeared to be an automated message from Sharepoint. To add legitimacy to this ruse, the attackers used spoofing techniques to...

Someone in my Twitter timeline wrote a post that resonated with me. Instead of advocating the idea of our firms mandating what we can and cannot do in our homes as working from home (WFH) standards, she said how gracious it was for us to let the firms into our home environments where we had already made investments in how and where we wanted to work...