46.2 million mobile numbers have appeared online following a data breach that affected several Malaysian telecommunication companies. The incident involves 15 Malaysian telcos and mobile virtual network operators (MVNO). Included in the leak are customers' mobile numbers along with their personal and device information. Of note, those exposed...

By now, we’re all aware of the Equifax breach that affected 143 million customer records. Equifax reports that Apache Struts vulnerability CVE-2017-5638 was used by the attackers. Equifax was not running its vulnerable struts application in a container, but what if it had been? Containers are more secure, so this whole situation could have been...

An investigation into the 2017 WannaCry outbreak found that the ransomware affected 34% of National Health Service (NHS) trusts in England. Following the May 2017 attack that struck more than 200,000 organizations in at least 100 countries, the UK government's National Audit Office (NAO) launched an inquiry into the matter. Its purpose was to...

In our previous article, we laid the groundwork for what we believe to be a serious threat to ICS/SCADA devices: social engineering. We continue here with some definitions, some of which you may already know. Phishing Phishing is a relatively broad term for any attempt to trick victims into sharing sensitive information, such as passwords,...

On October 2-4, 2017, the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center (R-CISC) hosted Securing Retail 002, the second iteration of its annual summit first held in April 2016. Speakers from Microsoft, Target and other Fortune 500 companies shared their thoughts on the retail digital security landscape with attendees over the course of the two-day event....

Industrial control system (ICS) cybersecurity has come a long way over the last decade. Today, we have well-established guidance for securing industrial plants and SCADA systems, including IEC-62443, NERC CIP and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. Industry and governmental efforts to build awareness of cyber risks have also been successful. Most...

American restaurant chain Pizza Hut has notified customers of a data breach that might have exposed some of their personal and financial information. On October 14, the Italian-American cuisine franchise wrote to a portion of its customer base about an "unauthorized third party intrusion" involving its website. Pizza Hut thinks that the incident...

The TrickBot trojan evolved in the third quarter of 2017 by adding new variations to its code and to its delivery vectors. According to IBM X-Force Research, TrickBot was the busiest financial trojan during the summer of 2017. That activity, which included an expansion into Argentina, Chile, Columbia, and Peru, partly resulted from the banking...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses the Microsoft October 2017 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-746 on Wednesday, October 11th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2017-8703 This CVE describes a publicly disclosed denial of service vulnerability which impacts the Windows Subsystem for...

The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the biggest shake-up in privacy legislation and data management approach for many years. It will impact any organisation throughout the world that processes personal data relating to EU citizens. Organisations that breach the regulation can be fined up to four percent of their annual global...

Anti-malware providers see a lot of spam and phishing attempts through their users' experiences. For its part, Kaspersky Lab understands how these encounters reveal the ever-evolving toolset of bad actors and their efforts to prey upon unsuspecting users. But it also knows users and security professionals alike can leverage information of these...

Although the ransomware industry has resumed growth after July’s decline, nothing game-changing happened in the online extortion ecosystem last month. There was an influx of new GlobeImposter ransomware variants and real-life spinoffs of the Hidden Tear proof-of-concept. The Locky strain geared up for another rise with its Lukitus persona. And a...

In 2015, The State of Security published a list of 11 essential bug bounty frameworks. Numerous organizations and even some government entities have launched their own vulnerability reward programs (VRPs) since then. With that in mind, I think it's time for an updated list. Here are 10 essential bug bounty programs for 2017. 1. Apple Website:...

A trojan is leveraging infected USB flash disks to help spread fileless malware that abuses legitimate functions on a compromised system. The baddy, which Trend Micro detects as "TROJ_ANDROM.SVN," conceals itself within two malicious files on an infected USB. These files are called "addddddadadaaddaaddaaaadadddddaddadaaaaadaddaa...

The damage wrought by the WannaCry and NotPetya malware outbreaks highlights the importance of organizations taking steps to strengthen their digital security defenses. But in the shadow of such high-profile attacks, the state of organizations' security postures remains unclear. Do most companies understand the importance of their information and...

Your cyber security department has some big hurdles when it comes to hiring. In IT, 10 percent of all job postings are in cyber, and the growth rate is 2x faster than other IT jobs. There will be 1.5-2 million unfilled cyber jobs by 2019. Currently, cyber job postings take 24 percent longer to fill than other IT jobs and 35 percent longer to fill...

Malware is spreading via Facebook Messenger as part of an attack campaign designed to infect users with multi-platform digital threats. In early August, Kaspersky Lab senior security researcher David Jacoby received a curious message via Facebook's messenger service. The message originated from one of his friends with whom he rarely speaks on the...

All CISOs know at least one story of a penetration test that went wrong. And many of them can share stories of penetration tests that went deeply wrong. For this reason, it is a worthwhile exercise to take account of best practices in managing such engagements. This is important for modern enterprise security teams given the prominent role...

Locky ransomware is now appending the ".lukitus" extension to victims' files after it's completed its encryption routine. On 16 August, Fortinet junior anti-virus analyst Rommel Joven came across one of Locky's newest variants. https://twitter.com/rommeljoven17/status/897766198674300928 The ransomware is making its way onto users' machines via a...

There is much consternation and many dismal proclamations from think tanks all the way to Twitter eggs decrying the shortage of skilled information security workers. The skills gap does exist, but it isn’t a singular chasm. It’s a series of rifts and valleys, each with different characteristics. Beyond acknowledging the gap, we need to survey its...