Microsoft is warning users to be on the lookout for a malspam campaign that's abusing an Office vulnerability in order to distribute a backdoor. On 7 June, Microsoft Security Intelligence took to Twitter to raise awareness of the operation. The campaign, which remains active as of this writing, begins when users receive a malspam email in one of...

A new wave of attacks involving PCASTLE malware are targeting systems located in China with the XMRig cryptocurrency miner. On 17 May, Trend Micro first observed a series of attacks that use PCASTLE, an obfuscated PowerShell script, to target mainly China-based systems with XMRig, cryptomining malware was involved in numerous attacks in 2018. The...

DevOps is revolutionizing the way enterprises deliver apps to the market by blending software development and information technology operations. This convergence creates an assembly line for the cloud, as Tim Erlin wrote for The State of Security, by increasing the rate at which companies can develop apps and deliver them to users. 11 Common Tools...

The move to the cloud—in many ways—is a return to the early days of computing. When I took my first computer class in 1978, we used an IBM system/360 system time share. We rented out time on a remote system, sent our jobs over a modem to a computer at a university and got back the results of the program run. Today, we’re using the cloud, which is just...

In May 2019, Verizon Enterprise released the 12th edition of its Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). Researchers analyzed a total of 41,686 security incidents, of which there were 2,013 data breaches, for the publication. More than half (52 percent) of those reported breaches involved some form of hacking. The report listed the most prominent...

Digital criminals have begun abusing a secure tunneling service to deliver samples of the Lokibot banking malware family. My Online Security came across an instance of this campaign when they received an email pretending to originate come from BBVA Banco Continental, a Spanish bank. The email leveraged the lure of a fake payment transfer to trick...

With data breaches regularly marking the headlines, it is no surprise that digital threats constitute an increasingly significant concern for the C-Suite and cyber security experts. What is surprising, however, is that these two groups don’t seem to share the same view of information security. They have different opinions when it comes to the digital...

The notorious Magecart malware, that blights online stores by stealing payment card details from unsuspecting shoppers at checkout, has claimed another high profile victim. Security researcher Troy Mursch raised the alarm on Twitter that the Forbes magazine subscription website had been compromised with malicious code that was siphoning off...

Lancaster University has revealed that a successful phishing attack resulted in a data breach involving the data of its students and applicants. On 22 July, the public research university announced on Twitter that it had suffered a "sophisticated and malicious phishing attack." This tweet linked to a security update published on the school's website...

Two years after the WannaCry ransomware outbreak shone a light on the computer security of the UK's National Health Service, and five years after Microsoft said it would no longer release patches for Windows XP, the NHS still has 2,300 PCs running the outdated operating system. The worrying statistic came to light in the response to a parliamentary...

Security professionals have many tools in their toolbox. Some are physical in nature. (WireShark, Mimikatz, endpoint detection and response systems and SIEMs come to mind.) Others not so much. (These assets include critical thinking faculties, the ability to analyze complex processes, a willingness—some call it a need—to dig in and find the root cause...

A malvertising campaign is redirecting users to the RIG exploit kit for the purpose of loading ERIS ransomware onto vulnerable machines. Over the 5-7 July weekend, security researcher nao_sec discovered a malvertising campaign that was abusing the popcash ad network to redirect users to a landing page for the RIG exploit kit. The researcher told...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s July 2019 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-839 on Wednesday, July 10th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2019-0865 This vulnerability describes a denial of service that occurs when SymCrypt processes specially crafted digital...

A national trade association has disclosed a data breach that allegedly took place following a successful phishing attack. On 3 July, the American Land Title Association (ALTA) said that the security incident affected title and settlement company usernames and passwords. It also noted that it first learned about the data breach on social media. As...

“It’s okay that you don’t understand.” This comment came after I was frustrated with myself for not being born a genius at math. Usually, when you don’t know a subject or you don’t understand it enough, subject matter experts (i.e. your teachers/professors/mentors/etc) put you down for it. But this time was different because I had a real subject...

Tripwire's June 2019 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, Oracle, and Adobe. First and most importantly this month are patches available to resolve 2 deserialization vulnerabilities in Oracle WebLogic. These vulnerabilities are identified as CVE-2019-2725 and CVE-2019-2729. Both of these...

Vulnerability management (VM) is an essential process through which organizations can reduce risk in their environments. But myths and misconceptions surrounding VM abound. For instance, organizations commonly approach vulnerability management in the same way as they do patch management. Others are guilty of believing that all attacks rely on...

Oregon State University (OSU) has disclosed a security incident that potentially affected the personally identifiable information of some students and their families. On 14 June, OSU announced that the security incident occurred back in May when external actors hacked a university employee's email...