MysterySnail attacks IT companies, defence contractors and diplomatic entities with Windows zero-day

In late August and early September 2021, Kaspersky technologies detected attacks with the use of an elevation of privilege exploit on multiple Microsoft Windows servers. The exploit had numerous debug strings from an older, publicly known exploit for vulnerability CVE-2016-3309, Read More …

Microsoft: Russian state hackers behind 53% of attacks on US govt agencies

Microsoft says that Russian-sponsored hacking groups are increasingly targeting US government agencies, with roughly 58% of all nation-state attacks observed by Microsoft between July 2020 and June 2021 coming from Russia. “Russian nation-state actors are increasingly targeting government agencies for Read More …

Ransom Disclosure Act would give victims 48 hours to report payments

Victims of ransomware attacks in the United States may soon have to report any payments to hackers within 48 hours, according to a new legislation proposal titled the ‘Ransom Disclosure Act’. The bill was drafted by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren Read More …

GhostEmperor: From ProxyLogon to kernel mode

While investigating a recent rise of attacks against Exchange servers, we noticed a recurring cluster of activity that appeared in several distinct compromised networks. This cluster stood out for its usage of a formerly unknown Windows kernel mode rootkit that Read More …

NSA-CISA Guidance: Selecting and Hardening Remote Access VPN Solutions

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) allow users to remotely connect to a corporate network via a secure tunnel. Through this tunnel, users can take advantage of the internal services and protections normally offered to on-site users, such as email/collaboration tools, sensitive Read More …

New advanced hacking group targets governments, engineers worldwide

A new hacking group targeting entities worldwide to spy on them has been unmasked by researchers. Dubbed FamousSparrow by ESET, on Thursday, the team said that the advanced persistent threat (APT) group — many of whom are state-sponsored — is Read More …

Ransomware encrypts South Africa’s entire Dept of Justice network

The justice ministry of the South African government is working on restoring its operations after a recent ransomware attack encrypted all its systems, making all electronic services unavailable both internally and to the public. As a consequence of the attack, Read More …

Biden to host summit with tech moguls on combating cyberattacks

United States President Joe Biden is set to host leaders from the country’s largest technology and finance firms at the White House on Wednesday to discuss how to shore up their cybersecurity defences in the face of increasingly complex attacks. Read More …

Pakistan: Neglect caused Federal Board of Revenue cyber-attack

Despite knowing that its information technology equipment is obsolete and some of its software is outdated, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) did not make any serious effort to upgrade them, which resulted into hacking of the data centres. The Read More …