News – December 2023


  • The rising threat of phishing attacks with Crypto Drainers

    December 22, 2023

    A recent investigation by Check Point Research exposes a troubling trend in the cryptocurrency landscape. The cryptocurrency community has been witnessing an alarming increase in sophisticated phishing attacks. These threats are unique in their approach, targeting a wide range of blockchain networks, from Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain to Polygon, Avalanche, and almost 20 other networks ...

  • Rhode Island: Data breach at Wyatt steals info of detainees, staff and vendors

    December 22, 2023

    At least 1,454 detainees of the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, 438 current and former staff members and 92 vendors have been affected by a virus in the facility’s computer system, Wyatt announced Friday. The FBI is now investigating the matter, which Wyatt discovered on November 2. “At this time, we believe that various types of ...

  • Cyberattack forces First American to take some IT systems offline

    December 22, 2023

    First American, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States, suffered a malware attack that forced the company to shut some of its systems down, including its website. At press time, the official website firstam.com was still offline, while a dedicated notification site – firstamupdate.com – was set up. There is a short notification ...

  • Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

    December 22, 2023

    An 18-year-old hacker who leaked clips of a forthcoming Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order. Arion Kurtaj from Oxford, who is autistic, was a key member of international gang Lapsus$. The gang’s attacks on tech giants including Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games cost the firms nearly $10m. The judge ...

  • Indian IT services giant HCL Technologies hit by ransomware

    December 22, 2023

    Indian IT giant HCL Technologies apparently suffered a significant ransomware attack. Multiple media sources are claiming that the company filed a new report with the National Stock Exchange of India, in which it describes falling prey to a limited ransomware attack, stating that it “has become aware of a ransomware incident in an isolated cloud environment ...

  • How Outlook notification sounds can lead to zero-click exploits

    December 21, 2023

    An Akamai researcher has found two vulnerabilities in Windows that can be combined to achieve a full, zero-click remote code execution (RCE) in Outlook. Both vulnerabilities were responsibly disclosed to Microsoft and addressed in the August 2023 and October 2023 patch Tuesdays, so the researcher felt it was no problem to disclose their findings. The first ...

  • Bandook – A Persistent Threat That Keeps Evolving

    December 21, 2023

    Bandook malware is a remote access trojan that has been continuously developed since it was first detected in 2007. It has been used in various campaigns by different threat actors over the years. FortiGuard Labs identified a new Bandook variant being distributed via a PDF file this past October. This PDF file contains a shortened URL ...

  • Ryanair links Booking.com to cyber-attack on its payment system

    December 21, 2023

    Ryanair has claimed that internet travel giant Booking.com is partly responsible for a recent “malicious attack” on the airline’s payment processing platform. Lawyers for Booking.com had described the allegation of a cyber-attack as “baseless” and “far-fetched”. “The allegations are baseless and refuted by Booking Holdings and Booking.com,” added a spokesperson for the group. Read more… Source: MSN News  

  • Why Is an Australian Footballer Collecting My Passwords?

    December 20, 2023

    Unit 42 researchers have observed threat actors using malicious JavaScript samples to steal sensitive information by abusing popular survey sites, low-quality hosting and web chat APIs. In some campaigns, attackers created chatbots that they registered to someone noteworthy such as an Australian footballer. Other malware campaigns they saw included both web skimmers injected into compromised sites ...

  • Here’s Why You’ll Hear About a Lot More Data Breaches in 2024

    December 20, 2023

    Cybersecurity incidents are constantly in the news these days, but you’ll soon be hearing about a lot more of them. That’s because a new rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission went into effect on Monday, requiring all public companies to report data breaches in just four days. The new SEC rule requires public companies to ...