According to fresh data from Redmond’s threat intelligence team, a ransomware-as-a-service gang it tracks as DEV-0206 has been caught rigging online ads to trick targets into installing a loader for additional malware previously attributed to EvilCorp. Even more ominously, Microsoft said its research teams discovered EvilCorp malware distribution tactics and observed behavior all over the…

Red Canary’s 2022 Threat Detection Report (PDF) analyzed more than 30,000 confirmed threats across the firm’s customer base. The report notes that ransomware criminals have responded to improving target company backups by introducing sensitive data exfiltration and the threat of exposure (double extortion). “Backups will allow an organization to get back up and running more…

The issue has been a public embarrassment for Microsoft over the last two weeks as security researchers used social media to highlight major problems with Redmond’s mitigation guidance and the effectiveness of its out-of-band update. “We’re aware of claims and are investigating, but at this time we are not aware of any bypasses,” Microsoft said…

Microsoft’s confirmation of a new, unpatched Windows Print Spooler bug comes days after researchers noticed that published proof-of-concept code for a different vulnerability was reliably exploiting fully patched Windows machines. Microsoft’s own misdiagnosis of a Print Spooler flaw that was just patched in June this year also added to the confusion. In a pre-patch advisory…

The funding, which brings the total raised by the company to more than $400 million, was led by CVC Capital Partners VII. Acronis announced achieving “unicorn” status in 2019 after raising $147 million. The money raised in the latest funding round will be invested in sales, staff resources, R&D, and to expand its product portfolio…

Identified by Positive Technologies security researcher Alexander Popov, the high severity bugs resided in the virtual socket implementation of the Linux kernel. Tracked as CVE-2021-26708 and featuring a CVSS score of 7.0, the security holes were introduced in Linux kernel version 5.5 in November 2019. The vulnerabilities are the result of race conditions that were…

vSphere Replication, a VMware vSphere component, is a virtual machine replication engine designed for data protection and disaster recovery. VMware has told customers that several versions of the product are affected by a high-severity (important) command injection vulnerability that can be exploited by a hacker with admin privileges to execute shell commands on the underlying…

Florida City Pays $600,000 Ransom to Save Computer Records

The Riviera Beach City Council voted unanimously this week to pay the hackers’ demands, believing the Palm Beach suburb had no choice if it wanted to retrieve its records, which the hackers encrypted. The council already voted to spend almost $1 million on new computers and hardware after hackers captured the city’s system three weeks…

Hackers Target U.K. Shipping Giant Clarkson

Clarkson, one of the world’s largest providers of shipping services, informed the public on Tuesday that it has suffered a security breach and the hackers may release some data taken from its systems. Clarkson provided only few details citing the ongoing law enforcement investigation, but the information it made public suggests that it was targeted…