News

Senate, House can try but won't make it past the Prez, says White House

The Biden administration has expressed to congressional representatives its strong opposition to undoing the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) strict data breach reporting rule.…

It even had the gall to set the ransom demand at $800K … for a nonprofit

Ransomware gang LockBit is claiming responsibility for an attack on a Chicago children's hospital in an apparent deviation from its previous policy of not targeting nonprofits.…

American public is way ahead of them

Chinese attackers are preparing to "wreak havoc" on American infrastructure and "cause societal chaos" in the US, infosec, and law enforcement bosses told a US House committee on Wednesday.…

Remotely disinfects Cisco and Netgear routers to block Chinese critters

China's Volt Typhoon attackers used "hundreds" of outdated Cisco and NetGear routers infected with malware in an attempt to break into US critical infrastructure facilities, according to the Justice Department.…

It's almost like years of false assurances have made people realize payments are pointless

Trusting a ransomware crew to honor a deal isn't the greatest idea, and the world seems to be waking up to that. The number of victims who chose to pay dropped to a new low of 29 percent in the last quarter of 2023.…

Evidence mounts of an exploit gatekept within Russia's borders

Security researchers believe the Akira ransomware group could be exploiting a nearly four-year-old Cisco vulnerability and using it as an entry point into organizations' systems.…

This isn't going to end well

Volt Typhoon, the Chinese government-backed cyberspies whose infrastructure was at least partially disrupted by Uncle Sam, has been homing in on other US energy, satellite and telecommunications systems, according to Robert Lee, CEO of security shop Dragos.…

Many versions still without fixes while sophisticated attackers bypass mitigations

Ivanti has finally released the first round of patches for vulnerability-stricken Connect Secure and Policy Secure gateways, but in doing so has also found two additional zero-days, one of which is under active exploitation.…

Invaders inveigle infrastructure

The US Justice Department and FBI may have scored a win over Chinese state-sponsored snoops trying to break into American critical infrastructure.…

Multiple publicly available exploits have since been published for the critical flaw

The number of public-facing installs of Jenkins servers vulnerable to a recently disclosed critical vulnerability is in the tens of thousands.…

Vendor gets tangled in its own web of undisclosed vulnerabilities

Juniper Networks has disclosed separate vulnerabilities it was previously accused of concealing, and apologized to customers for the error in communication.…

Questionable institutional change and myriad IT issues pervade the governance landscape

The farewell report written by the UK's biometrics and surveillance commissioner highlights a litany of failings in the Home Office's approach to governing the technology.…

18,000 customers, including the Pentagon and Microsoft, may have other thoughts

SolarWinds – whose network monitoring software was backdoored by Russian spies so that the biz's customers could be spied upon – has accused America's financial watchdog of seeking to "revictimise the victim" after the agency sued it over the 2020 attack.…

ALSO: SEC admits to X account negligence; New macOS malware family appears; and some critical vulns

Infosec in brief  Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) held its first-ever automotive-focused Pwn2Own event in Tokyo last week, and awarded over $1.3 million to the discoverers of 49 vehicle-related zero day vulnerabilities.…

ALSO: Samsung turns to Baidu for Galaxy AI in China; Terraform Labs files for bankruptcy; India's supercomputing ambitions

Asia In Brief  Indian infosec firm CloudSEK last week claimed it found records describing 750 million Indian mobile network subscribers on the dark web, with two crime gangs offering the trove of data for just $3,000.…

Step one, actually turn on MFA

Microsoft, a week after disclosing that Kremlin-backed spies broke into its network and stole internal emails and files from its executives and staff, has now confirmed the compromised corporate account used in the genesis of the heist didn't even have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled. …

And software makers seem to be OK with this, apparently

Comment  There's a line in the latest plea from CISA – the US government's cybersecurity agency – to software developers to do a better job of writing secure code that may make you spit out your coffee.…

Breach filings show Reddit post led to the discovery rather than any sophisticated cyber defenses

Biotech and DNA-collection biz 23andMe, the one that blamed its own customers for the October mega-breach, just admitted it failed to detect any malicious activity for the entire five months attackers were breaking into user accounts.…

Cosmetics brand goes from Jackson Pollocking your bathwater to cleaning up serious a digital mess

The Akira ransomware gang is claiming responsiblity for the "cybersecurity incident" at British bath bomb merchant.…

Most of the crew still at large

A former Trickbot developer has been sent down for five years and four months for his role in infecting American hospitals and businesses with ransomware and other malware, costing victims tens of millions of dollars in losses.…