As hackers lock up networks that power police forces and utilities, municipalities must operate with hobbled computer systems, and decide whether to pay ransoms.
In a recent Security Response Center update from Microsoft, the company detailed the discovery of two “critical” Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerabilities.
The vulnerabilities are “wormable”, meaning that any future malware that exploits these could jump from computer to computer without any need for users sending it across.
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A group of security researchers has found that some cameras are vulnerable to ransomware attacks via Wi-Fi or hijacked computers (using the USB connection) that can render a camera and its photos entirely usage until a sum of money is paid to the hackers.
Check Point Software Technologies has shown (as seen in the video above) that Canon DSLRs (it’s not clear if other cameras are also affected) are susceptible to ransomware attacks, an increasingly common exploitation in which a hacker disables a device until the owner pays a ransom to regain control. As more and more electronics gain internet connectivity, these attacks are becoming more common, particularly since manufacturers typically don’t put the same sort of effort into fortifying the network security of small electronics as they do into computers. Canon released a statement in which they offered some barebones tips to avoid being susceptible to these attacks and noted that there have been no known instances of such an attack occurring. They did not indicate whether they plan to fix the vulnerabilities through firmware updates, so it probably doesn’t hurt to be a bit more careful to protect your photos.
PITTSBURGH, Aug. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Carnegie Mellon University’s competitive hacking team, the Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP), just won its fifth hacking world championship in seven years at this year’s DefCon security conference, widely considered the “World Cup” of hacking. The championship, played in the form of a virtual game of “capture the flag,” was held August 8–11 in Las Vegas.
PPP now holds two more DefCon titles than any other team in the 23-year history of DefCon hosting the competition.
“If you’re wondering who the best and brightest security experts in the world are, look no further than the capture the flag room at DefCon,” says David Brumley, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and the faculty advisor to the team.
The F.B.I. should follow the example of European law enforcement and help victims of ransomware decrypt their data.
A software engineer has built an impressive real-time counter-surveillance tool for Tesla vehicles on top of Sentry Mode.
It looks like something the CIA or James Bond would have in their car.
Security researchers from Google’s Project Zero team recently uncovered pre-installed apps in Android devices that either allowed remote attackers to carry out remote code execution, could disable Google Play Protect in devices, or could collect information on users’ web activities.
At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Maddie Stone, a security researcher on Project Zero and who previously served as Senior Reverse Engineer & Tech Lead on Android Security team, revealed that her team discovered three instances of Android malware being pre-installed in budget Android phones in the recent past.
One such pre-installed app was capable of turning off Google Play Protect, the default mobile security app in Android devices, thereby leaving devices vulnerable to all forms of cyber attacks or remote surveillance. The Project Zero team also found an app pre-installed on Android phones that gathered logs of users’ web activities.
Cyber-espionage group Cloud Atlas has added polymorphic malware to its arsenal to avoid having its operations detected and monitored with the help of previously collected indicators of compromise (IOCs).
The hacking group also known as Inception [1, 2] was initially identified in 2014 by Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team researchers, and it has a history of targeting government agencies and entities from a wide range of industries via spear-phishing campaigns.
While the malware and Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) Cloud Atlas uses during its operations has remained unchanged since at least 2018, the APT group has now added new polymorphic HTML Application malware dropper in the form of a malicious HTA and a backdoor dubbed VBShower.
The last-resort option for getting rid of malware is reinstalling Windows. Also, the tricky thing about Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage. And how to get a certain antivirus program off your computer. Patrick Marshall answers your personal technology questions each week.
Just five months ago at the RSA conference, the NSA released Ghidra, a piece of open source software for reverse-engineering malware. It was an unusual move for the spy agency, and it’s sticking to its plan for regular updates — including some based on requests from the public.
In the coming months, Ghidra will get support for Android binaries, according to Brian Knighton, a senior researcher for the NSA, and Chris Delikat, a cyber team lead in its Research Directorate, who previewed details of the upcoming release with CyberScoop. Knighton and Delikat are discussing their plans at a session of the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas Thursday.
Before the Android support arrives, a version 9.1 will include new features intended to save time for users and boost accuracy in reverse-engineering malware — enhancements that will come from features such as processor modules, new support for system calls and the ability to conduct additional editing, known as sleigh editing, in the Eclipse development environment.
