TikTok Banned From EU Commission Phones Over Cybersecurity
The European Union’s executive branch said Thursday that it has temporarily banned TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure, reflecting widening worries from Western officials over the Chinese-owned video sharing app. In a first for the European Commission, its Corporate Management Board suspended the use of TikTok on devices issued to staff or personal devices that staff use for work. TikTok faces intensifying scrutiny from Europe and the U.S. over security and data privacy amid worries that the hugely popular app could be used to promote pro-Beijing views or sweep up users’ information.
Public or Private Cloud: Choices to Consider
Organizations are progressively moving towards a predominantly cloud-based computing environment. What this means is that essentially all of their back-end infrastructure, systems, and client-facing applications can be accessed and distributed through the cloud. Modern cloud computing goes a step further than simply being present in a virtual environment. Companies now have more flexibility and customization potential when deciding whether their environments – or certain components of them – remain in a private or public space.
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/public-or-private-cloud-choices-consider
7 Tips for Mitigating Cyber-Risks to Your Corporate Social Media
Threats to corporate social media are evolving along with perpetrators’ social engineering skills at a blistering pace. Sometimes their techniques reach such a high level that even the tech-savvy administrator of a corporate network can’t tell the difference between a scam and the truth. Since so many businesses use social media, these threats are relevant to an extremely large number of companies. To help them stay safe, here are a few points of advice to mitigate the cyber-risks associated with today’s social media landscape.
NSA shares guidance on how to secure your home network
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has issued guidance to help remote workers secure their home networks and defend their devices from attacks. The guide published by the Defense Department’s intelligence agency on Wednesday includes a long list of recommendations, including a short list of highlights urging teleworkers to ensure their devices and software are up to date. Remote workers are also advised to back up their data regularly to prevent data loss and to disconnect equipment they’re not using if it doesn’t require an active Internet connection at all times.
INCIDENTS:
Activision confirms data breach exposing employee and game info
Activision has confirmed that it suffered a data breach in early December 2022 after hackers gained access to the company’s internal systems by tricking an employee with an SMS phishing text. The video game maker says that the incident has not compromised game source code or player details. “On December 4, 2022, our information security team swiftly addressed an SMS phishing attempt and quickly resolved it. Following a thorough investigation, we determined that no sensitive employee data, game code, or player data was accessed,” a company spokesperson told BleepingComputer.
Lockbit ransomware gang hit the Portuguese municipal water utility Aguas do Porto
The LockBit ransomware gang claims to have hacked Aguas do Porto, a Portuguese municipal water utility company. The LockBit ransomware gang claims to have hacked Aguas do Porto, a Portuguese municipal water utility company, and is threatening to leak the stolen data. Aguas do Porto is a municipal water utility company that manages the full water cycle including water supply, and wastewater drainage. The company also manages public lighting and photovoltaic parks. The group added the municipal water utility company to the list of victims on its Tor leak site, the deadline is March 07, 2023.
Microsoft Outlook flooded with spam due to broken email filters
According to reports from an increasing number of Microsoft customers, Outlook inboxes have been flooded with spam emails over the last nine hours because email spam filters are currently broken. This ongoing issue was confirmed by countless Outlook users who have reported (on social media platforms and the Microsoft Community’s website) that all messages were landing in their inboxes, even those that would have been previously tagged as spam and sent to the junk folder.
MALWARE:
Stealthy Mac Malware Delivered via Pirated Apps
Legitimate Mac software applications are being trojanized with malware and uploaded to Pirate Bay. From here, software pirates are downloading the apps and unknowingly infecting themselves. One example involves a stealthy implementation of XMRig cryptojacking malware; but the process could be used for other malware. XMRig on Macs is not new. Trend Micro analysed a sample in February 2022: “We suspected that the Mach-O sample arrived packaged in a DMG (an Apple image format used to compress installers) for Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 v20.0.6. However, the parent file was not successfully sourced.”
Royal Ransomware Expands Attacks by Targeting Linux ESXi Servers
Ransomware actors have been observed to expand their targets by increasingly developing Linux-based versions. We predicted in September 2022 that ransomware groups will would increasingly target Linux servers and embedded systems in the coming years after detecting a double-digit year-on-year (YoY) increase in attacks on these systems in the first half of 2022. In May 2021 we reported ransomware variants of DarkSide and in May 2022 we found Cheerscrypt, specifically targeting the ESXi servers, which are widely used for server virtualization by enterprises.
FBI is investigating a cybersecurity incident on its network
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reportedly investigating malicious cyber activity on the agency’s network. The federal law enforcement agency says it already contained the “isolated incident” and is working to uncover its scope and overall impact. “The FBI is aware of the incident and is working to gain additional information,” the U.S. domestic intelligence and security service told BleepingComputer.
VULNERABILITIES:
Microsoft urges Exchange admins to remove some antivirus exclusions
Microsoft says admins should remove some previously recommended antivirus exclusions for Exchange servers to boost the servers’ security. As the company explained, exclusions targeting the Temporary ASP.NET Files and Inetsrv folders and the PowerShell and w3wp processes are not required since they’re no longer affecting stability or performance. However, admins should make a point out of scanning these locations and processes because they’re often abused in attacks to deploy malware.
Fortinet FortiNAC CVE-2022-39952 flaw exploited in the wild hours after the release of PoC exploit
This week, researchers at Horizon3 cybersecurity firm have released a proof-of-concept exploit for a critical-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-39952, in Fortinet’s FortiNAC network access control solution. Last week, Fortinet has released security updates to address two critical vulnerabilities in FortiNAC and FortiWeb solutions.
Fortinet Issues Patches for 40 Flaws Affecting FortiWeb, FortiOS, FortiNAC, and FortiProxy
Fortinet has released security updates to address 40 vulnerabilities in its software lineup, including FortiWeb, FortiOS, FortiNAC, and FortiProxy, among others. Two of the 40 flaws are rated Critical, 15 are rated High, 22 are rated Medium, and one is rated Low in severity. Top of the list is a severe bug residing in the FortiNAC network access control solution (CVE-2022-39952, CVSS score: 9.8) that could lead to arbitrary code execution. “An external control of file name or path vulnerability [CWE-73] in FortiNAC web server may allow an unauthenticated attacker to perform arbitrary write on the system,” Fortinet said in an advisory earlier this week.
https://thehackernews.com/2023/02/fortinet-issues-patches-for-40-flaws.html
Cyber4Dev collates data from Open-Source websites, any opinions or attributions expressed in the articles are not those of Cyber4Dev and are not endorsed by the project or the EU.
