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Federal Jury Convicts Operator of "Scan4You" Counter Antivirus Service

A federal jury convicted one of the digital criminals responsible for operating the notorious "Scan4You" counter antivirus (CAV) service. On 16 May, the Department of Justice released a press release announcing a Virginia federal jury's conviction of Ruslans Bondars, 37, on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to...
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Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS): How It Works

Ransomware isn’t a new threat to the cyber world. Its origins go back many years now. Over time, this threat has become only more vicious and harmful. While people were trying to deal with this cyber threat, cybercriminals moved one step further by offering ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). Under this service, cybercriminals provide a compact...
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Tripwire Patch Priority Index for April 2018

BULLETIN CVE Scripting Engine CVE-2018-1019, CVE-2018-0980, CVE-2018-0995, CVE-2018-0994, CVE-2018-0993, CVE-2018-0990, CVE-2018-0979, CVE-2018-1000, CVE-2018-0989, CVE-2018-0987, CVE-2018-0981, CVE-2018-1001, CVE-2018-0988, CVE-2018-0996 Browser CVE-2018-0870, CVE-2018-1018, CVE-2018-1020, CVE-2018-0997, CVE...
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Signal Patches Code Injection Bug that Enabled Remote Code Execution

Signal patched a code injection vulnerability that by some means of exploitation enabled attackers to achieve remote code execution. The security team for the encrypted communications app, a program which has been available for both Android and iOS since November 2015, published a fix for the bug just hours after first being contacted by a group of...
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The FBI’s 10 Most-Wanted Black-Hat Hackers – #5, #4 and #3

This week in Tripwire’s countdown of the FBI’s 10 most-wanted black-hat hackers, we name three hackers bound together in digital crime: Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu and Sun Kailiang. The suspects made headlines in May 2014 when the United States Department of Justice indicted five suspected Chinese nationals for allegedly committing economic and cyber...
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6 Best Practices to Avoid Leaks in 2018

One of the most dangerous threats to your business in 2018 is a data leak. Hackers can sell your information on the black market or simply destroy it. This could ruin your business overnight if you are not careful. So, you should use the best practices below to ensure you avoid leaks in 2018. Phishing If you haven't trained your people on phishing...
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Women in Information Security: Leila Powell

Last time, I spoke with Valerie Thomas. She specializes in SCADAs and industrial control systems; she enlightened me on their cybersecurity aspects. This time, I got to speak with Leila Powell. Her background in astrophysics taught her how to manage data to better understand the effectiveness of security controls. Kim Crawley: Hi, Leila! Please tell...
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Chili's Restaurants Suffered Payment Card Data Security Incident

Some Chili's restaurant locations suffered a data security incident that might have compromised customers' payment card details. Brinker International, a Dallas-based multinational hospitality industry company which operates 1,600 Chili's restaurants, said it learned of the incident on 11 May. It provided additional details about the event in a...
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Five Essential Steps for Moving to DevOps

Last week, I introduced the DevOps model for software development and discussed the advantages this type of approach has over more traditional methods. Its benefits, which include collaboration between operations and development teams as well as a better overall project creation for customers, explain why so many organizations are transitioning to...
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Phishing Site Encrypted With AES Designed to Steal Users' Apple IDs

Scammers designed a phishing website and encrypted it with the Advanced Encrypted Standard (AES) in their attempts to steal unsuspecting users' Apple IDs. Researchers at Trend Micro came across the phishing campaign on 30 April. It all began when they received an email designed to look like it came from Apple. The email warned recipients that Apple...
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Encryption Is Only as Strong as Your Password

In recent months, the encryption debate has heated up once again. Most recently, some shock waves were sent across the industry when ThreatWire reported a new tool, known as GrayKey, which could decrypt the latest versions of the iPhone. Fortunately, that tool is only available to law enforcement agencies... for now. The point to be noted is that if...
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Zero-day flaw exploited in targeted attacks is fixed by Microsoft

This month's Patch Tuesday bundle of updates from Microsoft included a fix for a critical vulnerability that has been actively exploited by at least one hacking gang in targeted attacks. The vulnerability, dubbed CVE-2018-8174, is a remote code execution flaw in the Windows VBScript Engine. It affects the latest version of Internet Explorer and any...
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Devs Find Fake Version of Bitcoin Wallet Stealing Users' Seeds

Developers have found that a fake version of a popular Bitcoin Wallet comes equipped with the ability to steal users' seeds. On 9 May, the Electrum team published a document on GitHub calling out "Electrum Pro" as "stealware" and "bitcoin-stealing malware." According to the developers, the individuals behind Electrum Pro took control of "electrum...
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The Behavioral Intelligence Officer

With the advent of increased cyber security related threats, the majority of attacks point to one target, and that is the human element. Examine any survey relating to cyber security threats faced by organizations from ransomware to phishing, and these attacks all have one target in common: the human element is necessary to trigger the attack....
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Why Organizations Need to Secure Their Containers

Containers are revolutionizing the way that organizations deploy applications. These technologies are packages, notes Amazon Web Services (AWS), that enable teams to run applications and their code, configurations and dependencies in resource-isolated processes. As such, they allow for reduced environmental dependencies, support for micro-services...