2020

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Brexit Deal Mandates Old Insecure Crypto Algorithms

Schneier on Security

In what is surely an unthinking cut-and-paste issue, page 921 of the Brexit deal mandates the use of SHA-1 and 1024-bit RSA: The open standard s/MIME as extension to de facto e-mail standard SMTP will be deployed to encrypt messages containing DNA profile information. The protocol s/MIME (V3) allows signed receipts, security labels, and secure mailing lists… The underlying certificate used by s/MIME mechanism has to be in compliance with X.509 standard… The processing rules for s/MIM

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Inside the Cit0Day Breach Collection

Troy Hunt

It's increasingly hard to know what to do with data like that from Cit0Day. If that's an unfamiliar name to you, start with Catalin Cimpanu's story on the demise of the service followed by the subsequent leaking of the data. The hard bit for me is figuring out whether it's pwn-worthy enough to justify loading it into Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) or if it's just more noise that ultimately doesn't really help people make informed decisions about their security posture.

Passwords 363
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GoDaddy Employees Used in Attacks on Multiple Cryptocurrency Services

Krebs on Security

Fraudsters redirected email and web traffic destined for several cryptocurrency trading platforms over the past week. The attacks were facilitated by scams targeting employees at GoDaddy , the world’s largest domain name registrar, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The incident is the latest incursion at GoDaddy that relied on tricking employees into transferring ownership and/or control over targeted domains to fraudsters.

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Our Problem is Gullibility, Not Disinformation

Daniel Miessler

I think we’ve lost the plot on disinformation. It’s not the attacks that are the problem. It’s the fact that too many Americans are willing to believe almost anything. Ideally we’d reduce both the attacks and the vulnerability. Of course it would be nice to have fewer attacks. Of course it would be nice to keep attacks from being used against higher numbers of vulnerable people.

Education 346
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Prevent Data Breaches With Zero-Trust Enterprise Password Management

Keeper Security is transforming cybersecurity for people and organizations around the world. Keeper’s affordable and easy-to-use solutions are built on a foundation of zero-trust and zero-knowledge security to protect every user on every device. Our next-generation privileged access management solution deploys in minutes and seamlessly integrates with any tech stack to prevent breaches, reduce help desk costs and ensure compliance.

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MY TAKE: Iran’s cyber retaliation for Soleimani assassination continues to ramp up

The Last Watchdog

Less than 48 hours after the killing of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin calling out Iran’s “robust cyber program,” and cautioning everyone to be prepared for Iran to “conduct operations in the United States.” Related: Cyber warfare enters Golden Age In fact, strategic cyber operations essentially pitting Russia and Iran against the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been steadily escalating for at least the past decade, with notable spikes

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2020 Oscar Nominees Used to Spread Malware

Adam Levin

Online scammers are using the 2020 Oscars to spread malware. A recent study released by Kaspersky Labs uncovered several hacking and phishing campaigns promising their targets free and early access to Best Picture nominees for this year’s Academy Awards. The study found over twenty phishing websites hosting at least 925 malicious files using the movies as bait, requiring would-be victims to either provide personal information (including credit card numbers), or to install adware applications to

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How China Uses Stolen US Personnel Data

Schneier on Security

Interesting analysis of China’s efforts to identify US spies: By about 2010, two former CIA officials recalled, the Chinese security services had instituted a sophisticated travel intelligence program, developing databases that tracked flights and passenger lists for espionage purposes. “We looked at it very carefully,” said the former senior CIA official.

Hacking 363
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US Schools Are Buying Cell Phone Unlocking Systems

Schneier on Security

Gizmodo is reporting that schools in the US are buying equipment to unlock cell phones from companies like Cellebrite: Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas, showing that administrators paid as much $11,582 for the controversial surveillance technology. Known as mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs), this type of tech is able to siphon text messages, photos, and application data from student’s devices.

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On That Dusseldorf Hospital Ransomware Attack and the Resultant Death

Schneier on Security

Wired has a detailed story about the ransomware attack on a Dusseldorf hospital, the one that resulted in an ambulance being redirected to a more distant hospital and the patient dying. The police wanted to prosecute the ransomware attackers for negligent homicide, but the details were more complicated: After a detailed investigation involving consultations with medical professionals, an autopsy, and a minute-by-minute breakdown of events, Hartmann believes that the severity of the victim’s medi

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New Windows Zero-Day

Schneier on Security

Google’s Project Zero has discovered and published a buffer overflow vulnerability in the Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver. The exploit doesn’t affect the cryptography, but allows attackers to escalate system privileges: Attackers were combining an exploit for it with a separate one targeting a recently fixed flaw in Chrome. The former allowed the latter to escape a security sandbox so the latter could execute code on vulnerable machines.

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Optimizing The Modern Developer Experience with Coder

Many software teams have migrated their testing and production workloads to the cloud, yet development environments often remain tied to outdated local setups, limiting efficiency and growth. This is where Coder comes in. In our 101 Coder webinar, you’ll explore how cloud-based development environments can unlock new levels of productivity. Discover how to transition from local setups to a secure, cloud-powered ecosystem with ease.

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Determining What Video Conference Participants Are Typing from Watching Shoulder Movements

Schneier on Security

Accuracy isn’t great, but that it can be done at all is impressive. Murtuza Jadiwala, a computer science professor heading the research project, said his team was able to identify the contents of texts by examining body movement of the participants. Specifically, they focused on the movement of their shoulders and arms to extrapolate the actions of their fingers as they typed.

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Finnish Data Theft and Extortion

Schneier on Security

The Finnish psychotherapy clinic Vastaamo was the victim of a data breach and theft. The criminals tried extorting money from the clinic. When that failed, they started extorting money from the patients : Neither the company nor Finnish investigators have released many details about the nature of the breach, but reports say the attackers initially sought a payment of about 450,000 euros to protect about 40,000 patient records.

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New Privacy Features in iOS 14

Schneier on Security

A good rundown.

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Hacking a Coffee Maker

Schneier on Security

As expected, IoT devices are filled with vulnerabilities : As a thought experiment, Martin Hron, a researcher at security company Avast, reverse engineered one of the older coffee makers to see what kinds of hacks he could do with it. After just a week of effort, the unqualified answer was: quite a lot. Specifically, he could trigger the coffee maker to turn on the burner, dispense water, spin the bean grinder, and display a ransom message, all while beeping repeatedly.

Hacking 363
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The Tumultuous IT Landscape Is Making Hiring More Difficult

After a year of sporadic hiring and uncertain investment areas, tech leaders are scrambling to figure out what’s next. This whitepaper reveals how tech leaders are hiring and investing for the future. Download today to learn more!

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Documented Death from a Ransomware Attack

Schneier on Security

A Dusseldorf woman died when a ransomware attack against a hospital forced her to be taken to a different hospital in another city. I think this is the first documented case of a cyberattack causing a fatality. UK hospitals had to redirect patients during the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack , but there were no documented fatalities from that event. The police are treating this as a homicide.

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New Bluetooth Vulnerability

Schneier on Security

There’s a new unpatched Bluetooth vulnerability : The issue is with a protocol called Cross-Transport Key Derivation (or CTKD, for short). When, say, an iPhone is getting ready to pair up with Bluetooth-powered device, CTKD’s role is to set up two separate authentication keys for that phone: one for a “Bluetooth Low Energy” device, and one for a device using what’s known as the “Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate” standard.

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Hacking Grindr Accounts with Copy and Paste

Troy Hunt

Sexuality, relationships and online dating are all rather personal things. They're aspects of our lives that many people choose to keep private or at the very least, share only with people of our choosing. Grindr is "The World's Largest Social Networking App for Gay, Bi, Trans, and Queer People" which for many people, makes it particularly sensitive.

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VMware Flaw a Vector in SolarWinds Breach?

Krebs on Security

U.S. government cybersecurity agencies warned this week that the attackers behind the widespread hacking spree stemming from the compromise at network software firm SolarWinds used weaknesses in other, non-SolarWinds products to attack high-value targets. According to sources, among those was a flaw in software virtualization platform VMware , which the U.S.

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The Importance of User Roles and Permissions in Cybersecurity Software

How many people would you trust with your house keys? Chances are, you have a handful of trusted friends and family members who have an emergency copy, but you definitely wouldn’t hand those out too freely. You have stuff that’s worth protecting—and the more people that have access to your belongings, the higher the odds that something will go missing.

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We Didn't Encrypt Your Password, We Hashed It. Here's What That Means:

Troy Hunt

You've possibly just found out you're in a data breach. The organisation involved may have contacted you and advised your password was exposed but fortunately, they encrypted it. But you should change it anyway. Huh? Isn't the whole point of encryption that it protects data when exposed to unintended parties? Ah, yes, but it wasn't encrypted it was hashed and therein lies a key difference: Saying that passwords are “encrypted” over and over again doesn’t make it so.

Passwords 363
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2020 Was a Secure Election

Schneier on Security

Over at Lawfare: “ 2020 Is An Election Security Success Story (So Far).” What’s more, the voting itself was remarkably smooth. It was only a few months ago that professionals and analysts who monitor election administration were alarmed at how badly unprepared the country was for voting during a pandemic. Some of the primaries were disasters.

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Ransomware Victims That Pay Up Could Incur Steep Fines from Uncle Sam

Krebs on Security

Companies victimized by ransomware and firms that facilitate negotiations with ransomware extortionists could face steep fines from the U.S. federal government if the crooks who profit from the attack are already under economic sanctions, the Treasury Department warned today. Image: Shutterstock. In its advisory (PDF), the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said “companies that facilitate ransomware payments to cyber actors on behalf of victims, including financial in

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I'm Open Sourcing the Have I Been Pwned Code Base

Troy Hunt

Let me just cut straight to it: I'm going to open source the Have I Been Pwned code base. The decision has been a while coming and it took a failed M&A process to get here, but the code will be turned over to the public for the betterment of the project and frankly, for the betterment of everyone who uses it. Let me explain why and how. HIBP is a Community Project I've been giving a great deal of thought to how I want this project to evolve lately, especially in the wake of the M&A proce

Passwords 363
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IDC Analyst Report: The Open Source Blind Spot Putting Businesses at Risk

In a recent study, IDC found that 64% of organizations said they were already using open source in software development with a further 25% planning to in the next year. Most organizations are unaware of just how much open-source code is used and underestimate their dependency on it. As enterprises grow the use of open-source software, they face a new challenge: understanding the scope of open-source software that's being used throughout the organization and the corresponding exposure.

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On Risk-Based Authentication

Schneier on Security

Interesting usability study: “ More Than Just Good Passwords? A Study on Usability and Security Perceptions of Risk-based Authentication “: Abstract : Risk-based Authentication (RBA) is an adaptive security measure to strengthen password-based authentication. RBA monitors additional features during login, and when observed feature values differ significantly from previously seen ones, users have to provide additional authentication factors such as a verification code.

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Thinking of a Cybersecurity Career? Read This

Krebs on Security

Thousands of people graduate from colleges and universities each year with cybersecurity or computer science degrees only to find employers are less than thrilled about their hands-on, foundational skills. Here’s a look at a recent survey that identified some of the bigger skills gaps, and some thoughts about how those seeking a career in these fields can better stand out from the crowd.

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Nihilistic Password Security Questions

Schneier on Security

Posted three years ago, but definitely appropriate for the times.

Passwords 363
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How the SolarWinds Hackers Bypassed Duo’s Multi-Factor Authentication

Schneier on Security

This is interesting : Toward the end of the second incident that Volexity worked involving Dark Halo, the actor was observed accessing the e-mail account of a user via OWA. This was unexpected for a few reasons, not least of which was the targeted mailbox was protected by MFA. Logs from the Exchange server showed that the attacker provided username and password authentication like normal but were not challenged for a second factor through Duo.

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Beware of Pixels & Trackers on U.S. Healthcare Websites

The healthcare industry has massively adopted web tracking tools, including pixels and trackers. Tracking tools on user-authenticated and unauthenticated web pages can access personal health information (PHI) such as IP addresses, medical record numbers, home and email addresses, appointment dates, or other info provided by users on pages and thus can violate HIPAA Rules that govern the Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates.

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‘BlueLeaks’ Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments

Krebs on Security

Hundreds of thousands of potentially sensitive files from police departments across the United States were leaked online last week. The collection, dubbed “ BlueLeaks ” and made searchable online, stems from a security breach at a Texas web design and hosting company that maintains a number of state law enforcement data-sharing portals. The collection — nearly 270 gigabytes in total — is the latest release from Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), an alternative to

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Turn on MFA Before Crooks Do It For You

Krebs on Security

Hundreds of popular websites now offer some form of multi-factor authentication (MFA), which can help users safeguard access to accounts when their password is breached or stolen. But people who don’t take advantage of these added safeguards may find it far more difficult to regain access when their account gets hacked, because increasingly thieves will enable multi-factor options and tie the account to a device they control.

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Who’s Behind Monday’s 14-State 911 Outage?

Krebs on Security

Emergency 911 systems were down for more than an hour on Monday in towns and cities across 14 U.S. states. The outages led many news outlets to speculate the problem was related to Microsoft ‘s Azure web services platform, which also was struggling with a widespread outage at the time. However, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity the 911 issues stemmed from some kind of technical snafu involving Intrado and Lumen , two companies that together handle 911 calls for a broad swath of the Uni

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Medical Debt Collection Firm R1 RCM Hit in Ransomware Attack

Krebs on Security

R1 RCM Inc. [ NASDAQ:RCM ], one of the nation’s largest medical debt collection companies, has been hit in a ransomware attack. Formerly known as Accretive Health Inc. , Chicago-based R1 RCM brought in revenues of $1.18 billion in 2019. The company has more than 19,000 employees and contracts with at least 750 healthcare organizations nationwide.

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Software Composition Analysis: The New Armor for Your Cybersecurity

Speaker: Blackberry, OSS Consultants, & Revenera

Software is complex, which makes threats to the software supply chain more real every day. 64% of organizations have been impacted by a software supply chain attack and 60% of data breaches are due to unpatched software vulnerabilities. In the U.S. alone, cyber losses totaled $10.3 billion in 2022. All of these stats beg the question, “Do you know what’s in your software?