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Archive for the ‘cybercrime/malcode’ category: Page 114

Aug 11, 2021

Norton and Avast are merging into an $8 billion antivirus empire

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

The deal combines decades of cyber security experience.


Norton and Avast are merging in a big anti-virus deal. The combined companies will focus on consumer offerings for cyber security, just as ransomware is becoming a big issue.

Aug 11, 2021

Hackers reportedly threaten to leak data from Gigabyte ransomware attack

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

The hackers claim to have confidential documents.


Gigabyte has been the victim of a cyberattack, which was reportedly the work of a ransomware outfit called RansomEXX. According to The Record, the attack didn’t have an impact on any of the company’s production systems, but it did affect some internal servers. Currently, some parts of Gigabyte’s website, including its support section, are down, giving customers issues when trying to access warranty repair information and updates. The hackers who claim to have carried out the attack are reportedly threatening to release data from the company, including confidential documents from Intel, AMD, and American Megatrends.

Gigabyte is mainly known for its PC components such as motherboards and graphics cards, but it also has a line of laptops and peripherals like gaming monitors, which are often branded with the Aorus name.

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Aug 8, 2021

Gigabyte reportedly hit with ransomware attack

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Hacking group RansomExx claims to have stolen company files from Gigabyte’s servers.

Aug 7, 2021

AI Wrote Better Phishing Emails Than Humans in a Recent Test

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, government, information science, robotics/AI

Natural language processing continues to find its way into unexpected corners. This time, it’s phishing emails. In a small study, researchers found that they could use the deep learning language model GPT-3, along with other AI-as-a-service platforms, to significantly lower the barrier to entry for crafting spearphishing campaigns at a massive scale.

Researchers have long debated whether it would be worth the effort for scammers to train machine learning algorithms that could then generate compelling phishing messages. Mass phishing messages are simple and formulaic, after all, and are already highly effective. Highly targeted and tailored “spearphishing” messages are more labor intensive to compose, though. That’s where NLP may come in surprisingly handy.

At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas this week, a team from Singapore’s Government Technology Agency presented a recent experiment in which they sent targeted phishing emails they crafted themselves and others generated by an AI-as-a-service platform to 200 of their colleagues. Both messages contained links that were not actually malicious but simply reported back clickthrough rates to the researchers. They were surprised to find that more people clicked the links in the AI-generated messages than the human-written ones—by a significant margin.

Aug 7, 2021

Israeli cyber company detects severe Amazon security breach

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Check Point, an Israeli cybersecurity provider, found that by clicking an e-book infected by malware, users could lose control of both their Kindle tablet and their Amazon accounts.

Aug 6, 2021

Ransomware Attack Forces Indiana Hospital to Turn Ambulances Away

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode

Hackers are targeting U.S. hospitals just as COVID-19 cases surge again.

Aug 5, 2021

Facebook users struggling to reactivate hacked accounts are buying $300 Oculus VR headsets just so they can talk to a customer service rep

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Hacked Facebook users buy a VR headset from Facebook-owned Oculus, contact customer service to unlock their account, and then returning the device.

Aug 5, 2021

WSJ News Exclusive

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

The creation of a joint initiative under an agency of the Department of Homeland Security follows cyberattacks on critical U.S. infrastructure.

Aug 2, 2021

Credit card-stealing malware found in official Python repository

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Security researchers blame the repository’s lack of moderation.


Packages tainted with malicious code once again find their way into PyPI.

Aug 2, 2021

New APT Hacking Group Targets Microsoft IIS Servers with ASP.NET Exploits

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

A new APT hacker group, known as “Praying Mantis” is targeting high-profile public and private organizations in the United States.