APT28, the hacking arm of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency has been backdooring Cisco routers by exploiting a remote code execution vulnerability in the Cisco IOS implementation of the simple network management protocol (SNMP), according to a statement by Western security agencies. The malware deployed on compromised routers patches the router’s authentication mechanism to always…

After days of outages, NCR Corp. has confirmed that its Aloha point-of-sale (PoS) software platform, used by thousands of restaurants across the US, was taken down by a ransomware attack on one of its data centers. The BlackCat ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the Aloha POS cyberattack. “Please rest assured that we have a…

Cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike introduced new extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities within its Falcon platform to secure “extended” internet of things (XIoT). CrowdStrike Falcon Insight for IoT delivers tailored threat prevention, rapid patch management, and interoperability across XIoT assets. XIoT is a broader category of assets and encompasses the Internet of Things, Industrial IoT, Operations…

Managing identities and their access permissions is becoming more complicated. Digital sprawl has led to an explosion in permissions across multicloud environments, and consistent oversight is lacking. As many as 99% of cloud permissions are going unused, and this represents a significant risk for enterprise businesses. As more organizations transition to Zero Trust security models,…

The newest iOS 16.4.1 and iPadOS 16.4.1 updates cover code execution software flaws in IOSurfaceAccelerator and WebKit, suggesting a complex exploit chain was detected in the wild hitting the latest iPhone devices. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited,” Cupertino says in a barebones advisory that credits Google…

The release of thousands of pages of confidential documents has exposed Russian military and intelligence agencies’ grand plans for using their cyberwar capabilities in disinformation campaigns, hacking operations, critical infrastructure disruption, and control of the Internet. The papers were leaked from the Russian contractor NTC Vulkan and show how Russian intelligence agencies use private companies…

Microsoft today announced its AI Security Copilot, a GPT-4 implementation that brings generative AI capabilities to its in-house security suite, and features a host of new visualization and analysis functions. AI Security Copilot’s basic interface is similar to the chatbot functionality familiar to generative AI users. It can be used in the same way, to…

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced a new Pre-Ransomware Notification initiative that aims at alerting organizations of early-stage ransomware attacks. The principle behind the initiative is simple, ransomware actors initially gain access to the target organization, then they take some time before stealing or encrypting data. The time-lapse between initial access to a…

Not all ransomware groups wield crypto-locking malware. In their continuing quest for extortionate profits, some have moved away from encryption and pressure victims purely by threatening to leak stolen data unless they receive a ransom payment. This seems to have been the case for BianLian, a prolific ransomware group that emerged in the summer of…

As it moves into the final stretch of its regular season, the National Basketball Association said over the weekend that “an unauthorized third party” netted a database filled with the names and email addresses of fans. The data was housed by a newsletter service that it partners with, the NBA noted in a letter to…