According to a hypothetical cyber risk scenario prepared by the Cyber Risk Management (CyRiM) project for risk management purposes, a ransomware strain that can disrupt more than 600,000 businesses worldwide within 24 hours would potentially lead to damages in the amount of billions of dollars. Cyber Risk Management (CyRiM) project is a collaborative...

The Separ infostealer is using what's known as "Living off the Land" tactics to target businesses as part of an ongoing attack campaign. Digital security company Deep Instinct detected the campaign and observed that an infection begins when an employee at a business organization receives a phishing email. The email comes with an attached PDF...

On 25 January 2019, the longest U.S. government shutdown in history came to an end. It’s unclear exactly what impact this closure had on the government’s digital security. A SecurityScorecard report found that the shutdown coincided with a rise of expired SSL certificates protecting .gov domains, thereby producing a slight dip in overall network...

FBI agents have arrested a 20-year-old man alleged to have been part of a hacking gang that not only launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks but also launched a wave of bomb and shooting threats against thousands of schools in the United States and United Kingdom. Timothy Dalton Vaughn of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is alleged to be...

With all the Russian election hacking scandals in the news during and after the 2016 Presidential election, curiosity consumed me to architect and run an experiment to see if I could monitor changes in the threat landscape in either Moscow, Russia or Washington D.C. during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. I have worked in four Security Operations...

Phishers are leveraging Google Translate in their attempts to steal the login credentials for users' Google and Facebook accounts. Larry Cashdollar, a member of Akamai's Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT), received an email in early 2019 informing him that someone had accessed his Google account from a new Windows device. On his phone, the...

Scammers are now using the threat of channel suspension to coerce YouTube content creators into meeting their demands and sending over money. These digital attackers are specifically targeting YouTube's policy infringement system through which users can report a video that they feel violates the video-sharing website's policies for acceptable...

I’m excited to announce that I will be presenting at this year’s Black Hat Asia about my research into detecting and exploiting CBC padding oracles! Zombie POODLE and GOLDENDOODLE are the names I’ve given to the vulnerabilities I’ll be discussing. Similar to ROBOT, DROWN and many other vulnerabilities affecting HTTPS, these issues stem from continued...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued an emergency directive that requires federal agencies to mitigate the threat of Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure tampering. In "Emergency Directive 19-01," DHS explains that it's been working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure...

A new strain of ransomware known as "Phobos" is using the same ransom note employed by Dharma to demand payment from its victims. Ransomware incident response provider Coveware found that Phobos' ransom message differs from Dharma's only in the branding used for its header and footer. Otherwise, the notes are exactly the same. ...

Amazon GovCloud is an isolated Amazon Web Service (AWS) designed to allow customers and the U.S government agencies to move their confidential data into the cloud to address their compliance and specific regulatory requirements. It runs under ITAR, the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations. With this cloud service, US citizens can run...

With the majority of people using smartphones these days, texting is all but a given when trying to communicate with your friends or family. But what about your doctor? A recent study determined that 96 percent of physicians use text messaging for coordinating patient care. This can raise eyebrows and red flags. Anyone with a cheap scanner, which...

A large number of Reddit users are being told that they will have to reset their passwords in order to regain access to their accounts following what the site is calling a "security concern." The lockout occurred as Reddit's security team investigates what appears to have been an attempt to log into many users' accounts through a credential-stuffing...

The elephant in the room is the viability and sustainability of blockchain technology. Cryptocurrency mining, for instance, requires specialized rigs that consume electricity. In certain estimates, at the time of writing, the bitcoin network's energy consumption came in at 41 globally if it was a country. This means the bitcoin blockchain consumes...

As discussed before, the blockchain-based solution is built to provide strong integrity and independent verifiability. An exception to the independent verifiability is private blockchain solutions. In this part, we discuss both of these technological dimensions and detail their applicability and limitations. Public distributed blockchain provides...

Doxxing means publishing private information about someone online to harass or intimidate them. It has ruined reputations and caused untold distress to hundreds of people. On occasion, doxxing has resulted in injury or even death. Being doxxed can have serious consequences for your safety and privacy. How can you prevent it? Doxxing and...