March, 2021

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I Now Own the Coinhive Domain. Here's How I'm Fighting Cryptojacking and Doing Good Things with Content Security Policies.

Troy Hunt

If you've landed on this page because you saw a strange message on a completely different website then followed a link to here, drop a note to the site owner and let them know what happened. If, on the other hand, you're on this page because you're interested in reading about the illicit use of cryptomining on compromised websites and how through fortuitous circumstances, I now own coinhive.com and am doing something useful with it, read on.

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Cyber Attacks: Is the ‘Big One’ Coming Soon?

Lohrman on Security

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National Security Risks of Late-Stage Capitalism

Schneier on Security

Early in 2020, cyberspace attackers apparently working for the Russian government compromised a piece of widely used network management software made by a company called SolarWinds. The hack gave the attackers access to the computer networks of some 18,000 of SolarWinds’s customers, including US government agencies such as the Homeland Security Department and State Department, American nuclear research labs, government contractors, IT companies and nongovernmental agencies around the world.

Risk 363
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Deconstructing that $69million NFT

Errata Security

"NFTs" have hit the mainstream news with the sale of an NFT based digital artwork for $69 million. I thought I'd write up an explainer. Specifically, I deconstruct that huge purchase and show what actually was exchanged, down to the raw code. (The answer: almost nothing). The reason for this post is that every other description of NFTs describe what they pretend to be.

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How to Avoid Pitfalls In Automation: Keep Humans In the Loop

Speaker: Erroll Amacker

Automation is transforming finance but without strong financial oversight it can introduce more risk than reward. From missed discrepancies to strained vendor relationships, accounts payable automation needs a human touch to deliver lasting value. This session is your playbook to get automation right. We’ll explore how to balance speed with control, boost decision-making through human-machine collaboration, and unlock ROI with fewer errors, stronger fraud prevention, and smoother operations.

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GUEST ESSAY: How and why ‘pen testing’ will continue to play a key role in cybersecurity

The Last Watchdog

When we look at society today, we can see that we are moving further and further ahead with technology. Numerous advancements are being made at an extremely fast pace with no sign of slowing down. In fact, there is evidence that technology grows exponentially fast. Since we are quickly putting out large technologies, security risks always come with this.

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A Basic Timeline of the Exchange Mass-Hack

Krebs on Security

Sometimes when a complex story takes us by surprise or knocks us back on our heels, it pays to revisit the events in a somewhat linear fashion. Here’s a brief timeline of what we know leading up to last week’s mass-hack, when hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Exchange Server systems got compromised and seeded with a powerful backdoor Trojan horse program.

Hacking 363

LifeWorks

More Trending

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Welcoming the Portuguese Government to Have I Been Pwned

Troy Hunt

I'm pleased to welcome the first new government onto Have I Been Pwned for 2021, Portugal. The Portuguese CSIRT, CERT.PT , now has full and free access to query their government domains across the entire scope of data in HIBP. This is now the 12th government onboarded to HIBP and I'm very happy to see the Portuguese join their counterparts in other corners of the world.

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Hacking Weapons Systems

Schneier on Security

Lukasz Olejnik has a good essay on hacking weapons systems. Basically, there is no reason to believe that software in weapons systems is any more vulnerability free than any other software. So now the question is whether the software can be accessed over the Internet. Increasingly, it is. This is likely to become a bigger problem in the near future.

Hacking 363
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Should Technology Product Training Be Free?

Lohrman on Security

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Don’t Bother Using The “Device Filter” Security Feature Offered By Your Home Network Router

Joseph Steinberg

The MAC address “device filtering” feature of your LAN’s router is unlikely to provide you with any significant security benefits – and, if you enable the feature, it may cause you heartaches. Recently, I participated in a (virtual) discussion about the security of home networks – an important topic as hundreds of millions of people around the world continue to work remotely due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Wireless 360
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Why Giant Content Libraries Do Nothing for Your Employees’ Cyber Resilience

Many cybersecurity awareness platforms offer massive content libraries, yet they fail to enhance employees’ cyber resilience. Without structured, engaging, and personalized training, employees struggle to retain and apply key cybersecurity principles. Phished.io explains why organizations should focus on interactive, scenario-based learning rather than overwhelming employees with excessive content.

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No, I Did Not Hack Your MS Exchange Server

Krebs on Security

New data suggests someone has compromised more than 21,000 Microsoft Exchange Server email systems worldwide and infected them with malware that invokes both KrebsOnSecurity and Yours Truly by name. Let’s just get this out of the way right now: It wasn’t me. The Shadowserver Foundation , a nonprofit that helps network owners identify and fix security threats , says it has found 21,248 different Exchange servers which appear to be compromised by a backdoor and communicating with brian

Hacking 363
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CASMM (The Consumer Authentication Strength Maturity Model)

Daniel Miessler

This post is an attempt to create an easy-to-use security model for the average internet user. People like moving up rankings, so let’s use that! Basically, how secure is someone’s current behavior with respect to passwords and authentication, and what can they do to improve? How to use this model. The idea here is for someone in the security community—or really any security-savvy user—to use this visual to help someone with poor password hygiene.

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Weekly Update 235

Troy Hunt

A slow start this week as the camera refused to be recognised by any browser. The problem, of course, was that I'd plugged in a new DAC for the replacement speakers ????? Despite the slow start, there's a heap in this week's update on all sorts of different things as I find myself continually drawn in different directions. But that's also what I love about this industry, that there's so much variety and always something to scratch every itch ??

Media 60
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Illegal Content and the Blockchain

Schneier on Security

Security researchers have recently discovered a botnet with a novel defense against takedowns. Normally, authorities can disable a botnet by taking over its command-and-control server. With nowhere to go for instructions, the botnet is rendered useless. But over the years, botnet designers have come up with ways to make this counterattack harder. Now the content-delivery network Akamai has reported on a new method: a botnet that uses the Bitcoin blockchain ledger.

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Zero Trust Mandate: The Realities, Requirements and Roadmap

The DHS compliance audit clock is ticking on Zero Trust. Government agencies can no longer ignore or delay their Zero Trust initiatives. During this virtual panel discussion—featuring Kelly Fuller Gordon, Founder and CEO of RisX, Chris Wild, Zero Trust subject matter expert at Zermount, Inc., and Principal of Cybersecurity Practice at Eliassen Group, Trey Gannon—you’ll gain a detailed understanding of the Federal Zero Trust mandate, its requirements, milestones, and deadlines.

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Reducing Cybersecurity Risk With Minimal Resources

Lohrman on Security

Risk 345
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Joseph Steinberg On The World Of CyberSecurity: An Interview

Joseph Steinberg

This past week, Canada’s National Post newspaper ran a special supplement focusing on cybersecurity; the cover story featured an interview of Joseph Steinberg about t he ever-evolving world of cybersecurity. Interviewer: With an expansive resume and your significant role educating a global audience on cybersecurity, what accomplishment are you most proud of?

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At Least 30,000 U.S. Organizations Newly Hacked Via Holes in Microsoft’s Email Software

Krebs on Security

At least 30,000 organizations across the United States — including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments — have over the past few days been hacked by an unusually aggressive Chinese cyber espionage unit that’s focused on stealing email from victim organizations, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity.

Hacking 364
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GUEST ESSAY: ‘Cybersecurity specialist’ tops list of work-from-home IT jobs that need filling

The Last Watchdog

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic turned many office workers into work-from-home (WFH) experts, the trend toward working without having to commute was clear. Related: Mock attacks help SMBs harden defenses. As internet bandwidth has become more available, with homes having access to gigabit download speeds, a whole new world of career paths has opened for those who want to control their work hours and conditions.

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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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Weekly Update 234

Troy Hunt

A big, big week with a heap of different things on the boil. Cyber stuff, audio stuff, IoT stuff - it's all there! Sorry about the camera being a little blue at the start, if anyone knows why it's prone to do this I'd love to hear from you. But hey, at least the audio is spot on, hope you enjoy this week's video. References Complying with NIST Password Guidelines in 2021 (a piece from this week's sponsor, intro'd by yours truly) We're rapidly going cashless, but not everybody is happy (there are

Passwords 291
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Security Analysis of Apple’s “Find My…” Protocol

Schneier on Security

Interesting research: “ Who Can Find My Devices? Security and Privacy of Apple’s Crowd-Sourced Bluetooth Location Tracking System “: Abstract: Overnight, Apple has turned its hundreds-of-million-device ecosystem into the world’s largest crowd-sourced location tracking network called offline finding (OF). OF leverages online finder devices to detect the presence of missing offline devices using Bluetooth and report an approximate location back to the owner via the Internet

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Vaccine Passports: Who, What, When, Where and How?

Lohrman on Security

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2021 Threat Intelligence Use Cases

Anton on Security

For a reason that shall remain nameless, I’ve run this quick poll focused on the use cases for threat intelligence in 2021. The question and the results are below. Antons Threat Intel Poll 2021 Here are some thoughts and learnings based on the poll and the discussion , as well as other things. While running this poll my fear was that the detection use case will win.

Firewall 238
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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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Can We Stop Pretending SMS Is Secure Now?

Krebs on Security

SMS text messages were already the weakest link securing just about anything online, mainly because there are tens of thousands of employees at mobile stores who can be tricked or bribed into swapping control over a mobile phone number to someone else. Now we’re learning about an entire ecosystem of companies that anyone could use to silently intercept text messages intended for other mobile users.

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Don’t run that code

Javvad Malik

The dangers of downloading untrusted code from the internet is well documented. You never know what is contained within someone else’s code, be it sloppy coding, or malicious intent. If it is a snippet of code that you can easily read, it can be relatively risk free. Because, why put in the effort to reinvent the wheel when there are so many wheels already available?

Banking 225
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Weekly Update 236

Troy Hunt

This ?????? DAC! I mean it's a lovely device, but it's just impossible to use it as an audio source in the browser without it killing the camera. I'm very close to being out of ideas right now, only remaining thing I can think of is to set everything up on the laptop and see if it suffers a similar fate to what's happening on my desktop. The last thing I feel like doing now is burning more precious hours, but it's getting to that point.

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Metadata Left in Security Agency PDFs

Schneier on Security

Really interesting research : “Exploitation and Sanitization of Hidden Data in PDF Files” Abstract: Organizations publish and share more and more electronic documents like PDF files. Unfortunately, most organizations are unaware that these documents can compromise sensitive information like authors names, details on the information system and architecture.

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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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MY TAKE: Why ‘basic research’ is so vital to bringing digital transformation to full fruition

The Last Watchdog

Basic research, also called pure research, is aimed at advancing scientific theories unfettered by commercial interests. Related: The case for infusing ethics into Artifical Intelligence. Basic research is the foundational theorizing and testing scientists pursue in order to advance their understanding of a phenomenon in the natural world, and, increasingly, in the digital realm.

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Coding for robots: Need-to-know languages and skills

Tech Republic Security

KODA advising CTO John Suit discusses the skills and languages that are important for developers who want to build software and systems for modern robots.

Software 218
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Three Top Russian Cybercrime Forums Hacked

Krebs on Security

Over the past few weeks, three of the longest running and most venerated Russian-language online forums serving thousands of experienced cybercriminals have been hacked. In two of the intrusions, the attackers made off with the forums’ user databases, including email and Internet addresses and hashed passwords. Members of all three forums are worried the incidents could serve as a virtual Rosetta Stone for connecting the real-life identities of the same users across multiple crime forums.

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Microsoft Autoupdate hangs Excel 16.47.21032301

Adam Shostack

Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac has gotten exceptionally aggressive about running. Even if you use launchctl to disable it, you get a pop up roughly every 15 minutes of using an Office program. That’s probably a good thing, overall. There’s plenty of evidence that update failures leave folks vulnerable. Note that I’m saying “update failures,” rather than “failure to update”, because updates fail.

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Next-Level Fraud Prevention: Strategies for Today’s Threat Landscape

Speaker: Sierre Lindgren

Fraud is a battle that every organization must face – it’s no longer a question of “if” but “when.” Every organization is a potential target for fraud, and the finance department is often the bullseye. From cleverly disguised emails to fraudulent payment requests, the tactics of cybercriminals are advancing rapidly. Drawing insights from real-world cases and industry expertise, we’ll explore the vulnerabilities in your processes and how to fortify them effectively.