This new world is putting a strain on organizations’ digital security defenses. First, malicious actors are increasingly leveraging coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as a theme to target organizations and to prey upon the fears of their employees. Our weekly COVID-19 scam roundups have made this reality clear. Second, organizations are working to mitigate...

The Cyber Security Body of Knowledge project or CyBOK is a collaborative initiative mobilised in 2017 with an aspiration to “codify the foundational and generally recognized knowledge on Cyber Security.” Version 1.0 of the published output of this consultative exercise was quietly released last year and then more publicly launched in January 2020....

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s May 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-884 on Wednesday, May 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs None of the vulnerabilities resolved this month have been publicly disclosed or exploited according to Microsoft. CVE Breakdown by Tag ...

For most practical uses today, a combination of hardening and vulnerability detection is required to secure even the most basic digital environment. In each area it is important to see the progress you’re making in these competencies so that you can improve and build on the work you and your team have done over time. But with so many assets in your...

The United States Marshals Service announced a data breach involving the personal information of its former and current prisoners. In a data breach notification letter obtained by ZDNet, the U.S. Marshals Service revealed that it had first learned of the security incident in late 2019. A redacted...

Digital attacks continue to exploit coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as part of their malicious operations. On May 5, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) along with the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) published a joint alert in which they revealed that they had...

Samsung has released a security update for its popular Android smartphones which includes a critical fix for a vulnerability that affects all devices sold by the manufacturer since 2014. On its Android security update page Samsung thanks researcher Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Project Zero for the discovery of the vulnerability that could - he claims -...

Security researchers attributed a spike in Snake ransomware activity to a new campaign that's targeted organizations worldwide. Snake ransomware first attracted the attention of malware analysts in January 2020 when they observed the crypto-malware family targeting entire corporate networks. Shortly after this discovery, the threat quieted down. It...

Tripwire's April 2020 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware. Up first on the patch priority list this month is a patch for VMware vCenter Server. This patch resolves an information disclosure vulnerability. This patch has highest priority as proof-of-concept code to exploit the...

The Discovery tactic is one which is difficult to defend against. It has a lot of similarities to the Reconnaissance stage of the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain. There are certain aspects of an organization which need to be exposed in order to operate a business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDT2qnpvKTk In fact, all of the techniques at this...

If you’ve read a newspaper or watched the news in the past few weeks, you’ll notice one common topic that all the major news outlets are discussing… COVID-19. Right now, many companies are trying to provide employee guidance during this worldwide pandemic, as governments ask those who can to work from home in an effort to slow the spread. Zoom, a...

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” These wise words have been recently attributed to former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, though Freakonomics actually dates it back to 1976 and a completely different context. Regardless of who first uttered the phrase or some permutation of it, modern-day cybercriminals have taken the candid advice...

Listen and subscribe to our new podcast! Tripwire’s cybersecurity podcast features 20-minute conversations with the people who protect people from cyber threats. Hosted by Tripwire’s VP of Product Management and Strategy, Tim Erlin, each episode brings on a new guest to explore the evolving threat landscape, technology trends, and cybersecurity best...

The Ryuk and Sodinokibi ransomware families both contributed to an increase in the ransom amounts demanded by attackers over the past quarter. Coveware found that the average ransom amount demanded by ransomware attacks in Q1 2020 was $111,605. This amount was a third higher than what it had been in the final quarter of the previous year. It was...

Malicious actors continue to abuse coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as a lure to profit off of innocent people. Indeed, Arkose Labs found that 26.5% of all transactions recorded in Q1 2020 were fraud and abuse attempts—a 20% increase over the previous quarter and the highest attack rate ever observed by the security firm's researchers. It's therefore...

Whilst there are many definitions out there, to me cyberbullying is any form of communication that is aimed at hurting or embarrassing a specific target. From my personal experience, it has been often used in an attempt by the bully to raise themselves above their target and/or discredit the target. Working within the cybersecurity field, I often...

Security researchers observed that digital attackers are increasingly incorporating the reCaptcha API into their phishing campaigns. Barracuda Networks explained that malicious actors are starting to outfit their phishing attempts with reCaptcha walls so that they can shield their landing pages from automated URL analysis tools as well as add a...

Security researchers at Cybereason are warning of a new mobile banking trojan that steals details from financial apps and intercepts SMS messages to bypass two-factor authentication mechanisms. According to experts who have examined the code of the malware, known as EventBot, it differs substantially from previously known Android malware -...

American education technology company Chegg confirmed a data breach in which malicious actors stole some of its employee records. As reported by TechCrunch, digital attackers succeeded in stealing 700 records associated with current and former Chegg employees. Those records contained individuals'...

April is National Poetry Month, a time when we can celebrate poets and their craft. To join in the celebrations, we at the State of Security asked employees at Tripwire and in the wider infosec community to create and share some of their favorite cybersecurity-related poems with us. Here are some of our favorites from Twitter: https://twitter.com...