Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:00:32 +0000
Denis Emelyantsev, a 36-year-old Russian man accused of running a massive botnet called RSOCKS that stitched malware into millions of devices worldwide, pleaded guilty to two counts of computer crime violations in a California courtroom this week. The plea comes just months after Emelyantsev was extradited from Bulgaria, where he told investigators, “America is looking for me because I have enormous information and they need it.”
Apple this year is marking Data Privacy Week by working to educate iPhone users about the privacy protection tools they already have in hand, a move that has implications across any business that wants to maintain privacy.
Data protection is the bedrock of business
Data Privacy Week grew out of the Jan. 28, 2007 first convention on data protection. Today, it’s a global event that aims to raise awareness around privacy and data protection.
One of the big surprises in Russia’s war against Ukraine has been how well Ukraine has fended off Russian cyberattacks. Ad hoc groups of white-hat hackers have helped, as have a number of nations and the US government.
Less well known is that tech companies, including Microsoft, are part of the effort. That aid ranges from giving advice to identifying attacks, offering fixes for them, and providing Ukraine with free tech and security services.
Microsoft isn’t just trying to help defend a country under siege from an aggressive, more-powerful neighbor. Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine can also get loose in the wild and do damage to enterprises and organizations that rely on Microsoft technology. (Russia could also deliberately target private companies with those attacks.)
Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2023 04:09:22 +0000
T-Mobile today disclosed a data breach affecting tens of millions of customer accounts, its second major data exposure in as many years. In a filing with federal regulators, T-Mobile said an investigation determined that someone abused its systems to harvest subscriber data tied to approximately 37 million current customer accounts.
Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2023 02:30:15 +0000
Most people who operate DDoS-for-hire services attempt to hide their true identities and location. Proprietors of these so-called “booter” or “stresser” services — designed to knock websites and users offline — have long operated in a legally murky area of cybercrime law. But until recently, their biggest concern wasn’t avoiding capture or shutdown by the feds: It was minimizing harassment from unhappy customers or victims, and insulating themselves against incessant attacks from competing DDoS-for-hire services. And then there are booter store operators like John Dobbs, a 32-year-old computer science graduate student living in Honolulu, Hawaii. For at least a decade until late last year, Dobbs openly operated IPStresser[.]com, a popular and powerful attack-for-hire service that he registered with the state of Hawaii using his real name and address. Likewise, the domain was registered in Dobbs’s name and hometown in Pennsylvania. The only work experience Dobbs listed on his resume was as a freelance developer from 2013 to the present day. Dobbs’s resume doesn’t name his booter service, but in it he brags about maintaining websites with half a million page views daily, and “designing server deployments for performance, high-availability and security.” In December 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice seized Dobbs’s IPStresser website and charged him with one count of aiding and abetting computer intrusions. Prosecutors say his service attracted more than two million registered users, and was responsible for launching a staggering 30 million distinct DDoS attacks.
The first Patch Tuesday of the year from Microsoft addresses 98 security vulnerabilities, with 10 classified as critical for Windows. One vulnerability (CVE-2023-21674) in a core section of Windows code is a zero-day that requires immediate attention. And Adobe has returned with a critical update, paired with a few low-profile patches for the Microsoft Edge browser.
We have added the Windows and Adobe updates to our “Patch Now” list, recognizing that this month’s patch deployments will require significant testing and engineering effort. The team at Application Readiness has provided a helpful infographic that outlines the risks associated with each of the updates for this January update cycle.
As enterprise adoption of the Apple platform accelerates, it’s important to note that Macs can and sometimes do get hit by ransomware. So it’s good to stay tuned to security concerns on a platform and application level — and take precautions.
Knowledge is power
With this in mind, extensive insights into Mac ransomware recently published only to be subsequently removed by Microsoft, can help explain these threats. The impact of such attack can be huge – ransomware already costs victims hundreds of billions each year, and no one is immune.
Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2023 22:28:55 +0000
Microsoft today released updates to fix nearly 100 security flaws in its Windows operating systems and other software. Highlights from the first Patch Tuesday of 2023 include a zero-day vulnerability in Windows, printer software flaws reported by the U.S. National Security Agency, and a critical Microsoft SharePoint Server bug that allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to make an anonymous connection.
