Security researchers have determined that over 12,000 variants of the WannaCry ransomware family are preying upon users in the wild. Sophos attributed this rise of variants to threat actors taking the original 2017 WannaCry binary and modifying it to suit their needs. These versions have subsequently produced numerous infection attempts. In August...

After an extended delay, we’ve finally reviewed our next book for #TripwireBookClub. This time around, we looked at Practical Binary Analysis written by Dennis Andriesse and published by No Starch Press. This book is a deep dive into binary analysis, and I think that it’s best just to quote the opening paragraph of the book’s preface: “Binary analysis...

Security researchers at Palo Alto Networks have discovered a new malware threat that targets Macs in what appears to be a sophisticated attempt to raid cryptocurrency wallets. The malware, which researchers have dubbed CookieMiner, has a variety of weapons in its armory that could make it particularly worrisome for cryptocurrency investors. According...

A new crypto-ransomware threat called "TFlower" is targeting corporate environments via exposed Remote Desktop Services (RDS). First discovered in August, the ransomware makes its way onto a corporate network after attackers hack into a machine's exposed Remote Desktop Services. This attack vector enables bad actors to infect the local machine with...

In July 2019, Capital One made news headlines not for achieving another milestone but because it had been breached. Capital One was using AWS cloud services, as many businesses are doing nowadays. The problem stemmed (in part) because Capital One had a misconfigured open-source Web Application Firewall (WAF) hosted in the cloud with Amazon Web...

Part 1: Laying the Groundwork for Achieving CertificationIn June of this year, my colleague Tom Taylor wrote about the DoD’s announcement to instate the Cyber Security Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and elaborated on the fact that, with the CMMC, the DoD appears to be addressing our customers’ core compliance pain points:Varying standards – It’s...

A new spam campaign is attempting to infect German-speaking users with samples of the destructive Ordinypt malware family. According to Bleeping Computer, the campaign sent spam emails masquerading as a job application from someone named Eva Richter. These messages supported this claim by using the subject line "Bewerbung via Arbeitsagentur - Eva...

GDPR is a landmark in privacy jurisdiction. Through its 99 articles, it sets a framework for both businesses and individuals on their rights and responsibilities when it comes to protecting privacy. The most important element in my opinion is that privacy functions a fundamental human right and needs to be protected. The Authorities View Although...

The COBALT DICKENS threat group stayed busy over the summer by launching a new global phishing operation targeting universities. In July and August 2019, Secureworks' Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers observed COBALT DICKENS using compromised university resources to send out library-themed phishing emails. These emails differed from those used...

The cost of a breach is on the rise. A recent report from IBM revealed that the average cost of a data breach had risen 12 percent over the past five years to $3.92 million per incident on average. Additionally, this publication uncovered that data breaches originating from malicious digital attacks were both the most common and the most expensive...

Sadly, it’s all too common for consumers to receive notices of “unusual account activity” these days. Yes, service providers might send out these letters after learning of a data breach that affected a large portion of their customer base. But sprawling security incidents aren’t the only motivation here for issuing these types of notifications....

Toyota Boshoku, a seating and interiors supplier for Toyota cars, has revealed that it was tricked into moving a large amount of money into a bank account controlled by scammers. In a statement published on its global website, Toyota Boshoku Corporation said that its European subsidiary was duped into transferring approximately four billion yen ...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found that business email compromise (BEC) scams cost victims a combined total of $26 billion in losses over a three-year period. On 10 September, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) published a public service announcement in which it revealed...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s September 2019 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-849 on Wednesday, September 11th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2019-1214 An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) driver can allow an...

A district within the Rockford Public Schools (RPS) system has confirmed it suffered a ransomware attack that affected parts of its network. On 6 September, District 205 of RPS posted a statement on Facebook in which it noted that its Internet, phones and information systems used to track attendance...

Changing consumer demands posed a serious challenge to the IT industry; it pushed firms to brainstorm about quick product delivery. This demand eventually gave rise to the demand for collaboration between Development (Dev) and Operations (Ops) teams, welcoming the DevOps trend. As a result, everything started progressing with increased development,...

For years, ransomware actors have developed new families and attack campaigns in increasing frequency and numbers. Such activity peaked in 2017 but then fell in tandem with cryptocurrency miners’ rise. This development was short-lived, however. Between Q4 2018 and Q1 2019, Malwarebytes observed a 195 percent increase in ransomware detections...

Digital attackers created a fake PayPal website to distribute samples of a new variant of the Nemty crypto-ransomware family. Security researcher nao_sec uncovered the ransomware variant after they came across a fake PayPal website. This site promised users a return of 3-5 percent for making purchases through its payment system. But its primary...

Working as a cybersecurity analyst is incredibly challenging. It’s one of the only roles in IT that requires 24/7/365 availability. The constant stressors of the job can overload security analysts, which ultimately leads to burnout—affecting every factor of the job from performance to talent retention. Recently recognized by the World Health...