Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s May 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-943 on Wednesday, May 12th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-31204 Up first in the list this month, we have a vulnerability that impacts .NET and Visual Studio and could allow a...

Over the weekend, the Alpharetta-based Colonial Pipeline was hit by an extensive ransomware attack that shut down its information technology (IT) and industrial operational technology (OT) systems. Simply put, an all-too-common ransomware event targeting IT systems encouraged a voluntary shutdown on the production side (OT) of the business to...

I am very excited to share that I will be offering my Ghidra training course at Black Hat USA 2021. As an online event, this is the perfect opportunity for Black Hat caliber training without hotel and airfare costs. Registration for "A Beginner’s Guide to Reversing with Ghidra "on July 31 and August 1 2021 is now available via the Black Hat web site...

For most internet users, there's not much of a perceivable difference between the domain name they want to visit and the server that the domain queries. That's because the Domain Name System (DNS) protocol does a good job of seamlessly routing users to different IP addresses that are all associated with a single domain name. The bad news is that...

Amidst the pandemic overwhelming the capacity of many hospital systems, malicious hackers have been quick to target healthcare providers and medical agencies. These cyber-attacks have hit both the United States and Europe in recent months, serving as a reminder for organizations to closely review their information security posture during these times...

Tripwire's April 2021 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Google Chrome and Microsoft. First on the patch priority list this month are patches for insufficient input validation vulnerabilities in Google Chrome (Chromium). Exploits for these vulnerabilities have been recently added to the Metasploit Exploit...

The US Defense Department and third-party military contractors are being advised to strengthen the security of their operational technology (OT) in the wake of security breaches, such as the SolarWinds supply chain attack. The guidance comes from the NSA, which this week has issued a cybersecurity advisory entitled "Stop Malicious Cyber Activity...

Human nature has shown that people re-use passwords, at least for non-work accounts that aren’t requiring quarterly changes. How can it affect your current security that you've reused an old password or passphrase from 2012? Surprisingly, quite a lot. Hashed passwords and the plain text equivalent from a breached site can be paired with your then...

It’s often said that cybersecurity is hard. Anyone who has ever worked their way through the SANS Critical Controls, PCI-DSS or even something deceptively minimalist as the OWASP Top 10 knows that success in achieving these security initiatives requires time-consuming, diligent and often a multi-team effort. Now imagine amplifying that...

It was 1977, and soon-to-be-fans were greeted with a masterful score and scrolling text. Darth Vader and Princess Leia share the screen in those opening moments, and the Star Wars universe was created. Nearly 30 years later, a new film would introduce us to the events immediately preceding the “scene that launched a franchise,” but how did things...

The Biden administration said it’s drafting an executive order to help the United States government better defend itself against digital supply chain attacks. A Step Up for Federal Procurement According to NPR, the executive order that’s being drafted will include several initiatives designed to strengthen the security of the United States’...

Most large-scale entities need to prove compliance with multiple regulatory standards. In their efforts to meet their compliance mandates, organizations could suffer a major drain on their time and resources. This possibility holds true regardless of whether they’re finance companies, retailers, manufacturers or hospitality firms. Organizations...

Data privacy has been a hot topic in the tech world for years now. With every new technology come new regulations that require companies to completely re-examine the way they handle private data. Most companies already have a basic data privacy policy they constructed alongside lawyers and tech experts to avoid facing serious fines and penalties....

If I were to ask you why you scanned for compliance at your company, I’d bet you’d tell me it was to help you pass requirements easier, to ensure that your audits are good on the first pass and so that you could troubleshoot technical issues with another process. You didn’t know about that last one? Wait, are you telling me you don’t know about the...

Now that the ongoing worldwide trend toward “going digital” has been accelerated by COVID-19, taking extra precautions to protect your organization’s data, communications and information assets is more important than ever. Of course, there are many traditional and emerging ways to protect and secure your business: Employing cybersecurity...

Getting teams to improve security can be hard work, but it’s an important job that organisations must take seriously to protect an increasingly risky world. For this post, I wanted to explore some ways that an organisation or individual might start building a new security “habit” so that, in time, acting securely becomes automatic. Define it The...

Lane Thames, PhD and principal security researcher at Tripwire explains the challenges you might not have considered in IT/OT convergence. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2w3lsuN3V1ZOiLVGqxw58v?si=5lVBp46tTiK7tfzmCnpeuA Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5UDKiGLlzxhiGnd6FtvEnm Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-tripwire...

In December 2020, the world discovered that the SolarWinds' Orion Platform had been compromised by cybercriminals, potentially affecting thousands of businesses the world over. Security groups such as the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) provided advice and guidance to security teams and IT companies on what actions they should take to minimize...

What is REvil? REvil is an ambitious criminal ransomware-as-a-service (RAAS) enterprise that first came to prominence in April 2019, following the demise of another ransomware gang GandCrab. The REvil group is also known sometimes by other names such as Sodin and Sodinokibi. There’s been plenty of ransomware before. What makes REvil so special? ...

The last time you were in a library, or a bookstore, you probably noticed how quiet it was. This doesn’t mean that people weren’t excited, or downright celebrating, they were engaged in a different method of celebration; the kind that takes place between the covers of a good book. April 23rd marks the celebration of World Book and Copyright Day....