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Cloudflare Worker Employed as C&C Server by BlackWater Malware

Security researchers spotted BlackWater malware leveraging a Cloudflare Worker for command-and-control (C&C) functionality. MalwareHunterTeam observed that the threat activity began with an RAR file called "Important - COVID-19.rar." The file pretended to contain important information about the global COVID-19 outbreak, an event which other malware...
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Illinois Public Health Dept's Website Went Down After NetWalker Attack

The website for a public health department in Illinois went down after the agency suffered a NetWalker ransomware attack. According to local media reports, officials at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (C-UPHD) became aware of the ransomware attack on March 10 when the department's website went down. It took the agency, which serves 210...
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Phishing attacks exploit YouTube redirects to catch the unwary

Attackers are increasingly exploiting the fact that email gateways turn a blind eye to links to popular sites such as YouTube, in order to phish passwords from unsuspecting computer users. Researcher Ashley Trans of Cofense highlighted the threat in a blog post describing a recent phishing campaign. In the attack, an unsuspecting user receives an...
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MITRE Releases an Update to The Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

MITRE has been doing exceptional work in advancing cybersecurity as a public good, and it is an excellent resource for security professionals. Possibly best known for their ATT&CK Framework, a rich source of adversarial tactics and techniques and their mitigations, MITRE is also known for another resource: the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE). The...
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The Experts' Guide on Tackling the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

The skills gap is weighing heavily on the minds of digital security team members. In a survey of 342 security professionals, Tripwire found that 83% of infosec personnel felt more overworked in 2020 than they did a year earlier. An even greater percentage (85%) stated that it had become more difficult for their organizations to hire skilled security...
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Spam Campaign Leverages IQY Files to Distribute Paradise Ransomware

Security researchers detected a spam campaign leveraging Internet Query (IQY) files in an attempt to distribute Paradise ransomware. Lastline observed that the campaign began by trying to trick users into opening an IQY file, an Excel-readable text file which downloads data from the web. As such, this file retrieved a malicious Excel formula from...
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We Want You! Win the War on Ransomware Today

Arguably, the first malware extortion attack occurred in 1988 – the AIDS Trojan had the potential to be the first example of ransomware, but due to a design flaw, the victims didn’t end up actually having to pay up the 189 bucks. It’s safe to say that over the past 31 years, attackers have perfected the ransomware craft, with organizations shelling...
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VERT Threat Alert: March 2020 Patch Tuesday Analysis

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s March 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-874 on Wednesday, March 11th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs Microsoft has not identified any of the vulnerabilities released this month as having been identified in-the-wild or publicly...
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Chatbot Used by Phishing Scammers to Help Victims Provide Their Data

Digital fraudsters incorporated a chatbot into their phishing scam for the purpose of helping victims hand over their personal information. In a scam discovered by MalwareHunterTeam and shared with Bleeping Computer, digital attackers targeted Russian users with fake refunds of 159,700 rubles ($2,100) for unused web and phone services. The campaign...
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Four Important Steps to Secure the United States 2020 Election

It’s an unfortunate reality that cyber attacks on the U.S. 2020 election are likely to happen. However, while this is a potent threat to democracy, an even greater threat is to not take the necessary actions to prevent these attacks until it is too late. There are many different types of cyberattacks that the U.S. 2020 election could face. ...
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To Be or Not to Be: BCSI in the Cloud?

With regard to BCSI (BES (Bulk Electric System) Cyber System Information) in the cloud, responsible entity sentiments at the moment may be akin to Prince Hamlet as he contemplated death and suicide, “bemoaning the pain and unfairness of life but acknowledging that the alternative might be worse.” As currently written and subject to enforcement,...
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Expired Certificates Used as Disguise to Spread Buerak, Mokes Malware

Researchers observed digital attackers employing expired security certificates as a disguise to distribute the Buerak downloader and Mokes malware. Kaspersky Lab learned of a new attack method in which malicious actors leveraged infected websites to warn visitors of an expired security certificate. The Russian security firm traced the first...
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The War of Passwords: Compliance vs NIST

The most recent National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines have been updated for passwords in section 800-63B. The document no longer recommends combinations of capital letters, lower case letters, numbers and special characters. Yet most companies and systems still mandate these complexity requirements for passwords. What...
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What is ISO/IEC 27701?

If you have a familiarity with any information security frameworks and certifications, it’s more than likely you have heard of International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and possibly the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). From my experience, the most commonly referred to business-level security related certifications are ISO...
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Let's Encrypt Says It Will Revoke 3M Certificates Due to Software Bug

Non-profit certificate authority (CA) Let's Encrypt announced it will revoke more than three million digital certificates due to a software bug. On March 3, Let's Encrypt revealed its plan to revoke 3,048,289 currently-valid certificates. That figure represented approximately 2.6% of the CA's approximately 116 million active certificates at the time...