Latest Cybersecurity News and Articles

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Apple to Pay Siri Users $20 Per Device in Settlement Over Accidental Siri Privacy Violations

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit that accused the iPhone maker of invading users' privacy using its voice-activated Siri assistant. The development was first reported by Reuters. The settlement applies to U.S.-based individuals current or former owners or purchasers of a Siri-enabled device who had their confidential voice communications with the

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Severe Security Flaws Patched in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps Web API

Details have emerged about three now-patched security vulnerabilities in Dynamics 365 and Power Apps Web API that could result in data exposure. The flaws, discovered by Melbourne-based cybersecurity company Stratus Security, have been addressed as of May 2024. Two of the three shortcomings reside in Power Platform's OData Web API Filter, while the third vulnerability is rooted in the FetchXML

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Cross-Domain Attacks: A Growing Threat to Modern Security and How to Combat Them

In the past year, cross-domain attacks have gained prominence as an emerging tactic among adversaries. These operations exploit weak points across multiple domains – including endpoints, identity systems and cloud environments – so the adversary can infiltrate organizations, move laterally and evade detection. eCrime groups like SCATTERED SPIDER and North Korea-nexus adversaries such as FAMOUS

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Malicious Obfuscated NPM Package Disguised as an Ethereum Tool Deploys Quasar RAT

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the npm package registry that masquerades as a library for detecting vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts but, in reality, drops an open-source remote access trojan called Quasar RAT onto developer systems. The heavily obfuscated package, named ethereumvulncontracthandler, was published to npm on December 18, 2024, by a user

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Three Russian-German Nationals Charged with Espionage for Russian Secret Service

German prosecutors have charged three Russian-German nationals for acting as secret service agents for Russia. The individuals, named Dieter S., Alexander J., and Alex D., have been accused of working for a foreign secret service. Dieter S. is also alleged to have participated in sabotage operations as well as taking pictures of military installations with an aim to endanger national security.

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New "DoubleClickjacking" Exploit Bypasses Clickjacking Protections on Major Websites

Threat hunters have disclosed a new "widespread timing-based vulnerability class" that leverages a double-click sequence to facilitate clickjacking attacks and account takeovers in almost all major websites. The technique has been codenamed DoubleClickjacking by security researcher Paulos Yibelo. "Instead of relying on a single click, it takes advantage of a double-click sequence," Yibelo said.

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Iranian and Russian Entities Sanctioned for Election Interference Using AI and Cyber Tactics

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday leveled sanctions against two entities in Iran and Russia for their attempts to interfere with the November 2024 presidential election. The federal agency said the entities – a subordinate organization of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a Moscow-based affiliate of Russia's Main Intelligence

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New U.S. DoJ Rule Halts Bulk Data Transfers to Adversarial Nations to Protect Privacy

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a final rule carrying out Executive Order (EO) 14117, which prevents mass transfer of citizens' personal data to countries of concern such as China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. "This final rule is a crucial step forward in addressing the extraordinary national security threat posed of our

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Chinese APT Exploits BeyondTrust API Key to Access U.S. Treasury Systems and Documents

The United States Treasury Department said it suffered a "major cybersecurity incident" that allowed suspected Chinese threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents.  "On December 8, 2024, Treasury was notified by a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, that a threat actor had gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based

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Misconfigured Kubernetes RBAC in Azure Airflow Could Expose Entire Cluster to Exploitation

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three security weaknesses in Microsoft's Azure Data Factory Apache Airflow integration that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed an attacker to gain the ability to conduct various covert actions, including data exfiltration and malware deployment. "Exploiting these flaws could allow attackers to gain persistent access as shadow administrators

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U.S. Army Soldier Arrested in AT&T, Verizon Extortions

Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who has been selling and leaking sensitive customer call records stolen earlier this year from AT&T and Verizon. As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity last month, the accused is a communications specialist who was recently stationed in South Korea.

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New HIPAA Rules Mandate 72-Hour Data Restoration and Annual Compliance Audits

The United States Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has proposed new cybersecurity requirements for healthcare organizations with an aim to safeguard patients' data against potential cyber attacks. The proposal, which seeks to modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, is part of a broader initiative to bolster the

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⚡ THN Weekly Recap: Top Cybersecurity Threats, Tools and Tips

Every week, the digital world faces new challenges and changes. Hackers are always finding new ways to breach systems, while defenders work hard to keep our data safe. Whether it's a hidden flaw in popular software or a clever new attack method, staying informed is key to protecting yourself and your organization. In this week's update, we'll cover the most important developments in

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When Good Extensions Go Bad: Takeaways from the Campaign Targeting Browser Extensions

News has been making headlines over the weekend of the extensive attack campaign targeting browser extensions and injecting them with malicious code to steal user credentials. Currently, over 25 extensions, with an install base of over two million users, have been found to be compromised, and customers are now working to figure out their exposure (LayerX, one of the companies involved in

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Happy 15th Anniversary, KrebsOnSecurity!

KrebsOnSecurity.com turns 15 years old today! Maybe it's indelicate to celebrate the birthday of a cybercrime blog that mostly publishes bad news, but happily many of 2024's most engrossing security stories were about bad things happening to bad guys. It's also an occasion to note that despite my publishing fewer stories than ever this past year, we somehow managed to attract near record levels of readership (thank you!).

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16 Chrome Extensions Hacked, Exposing Over 600,000 Users to Data Theft

A new attack campaign has targeted known Chrome browser extensions, leading to at least 16 extensions being compromised and exposing over 600,000 users to data exposure and credential theft. The attack targeted publishers of browser extensions on the Chrome Web Store via a phishing campaign and used their access permissions to insert malicious code into legitimate extensions in order to steal

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15,000+ Four-Faith Routers Exposed to New Exploit Due to Default Credentials

A high-severity flaw impacting select Four-Faith routers has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to new findings from VulnCheck. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-12856 (CVSS score: 7.2), has been described as an operating system (OS) command injection bug affecting router models F3x24 and F3x36. The severity of the shortcoming is lower due to the fact that it only works

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North Korean Hackers Deploy OtterCookie Malware in Contagious Interview Campaign

North Korean threat actors behind the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign have been observed dropping a new JavaScript malware called OtterCookie. Contagious Interview (aka DeceptiveDevelopment) refers to a persistent attack campaign that employs social engineering lures, with the hacking crew often posing as recruiters to trick individuals looking for potential job opportunities into

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Cloud Atlas Deploys VBCloud Malware: Over 80% of Targets Found in Russia

The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting "several dozen users" in 2024. "Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula editor (CVE-2018-0802) to download and execute malware code," Kaspersky researcher Oleg

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Palo Alto Releases Patch for PAN-OS DoS Flaw — Update Immediately

Palo Alto Networks has disclosed a high-severity vulnerability impacting PAN-OS software that could cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on susceptible devices. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-3393 (CVSS score: 8.7), impacts PAN-OS versions 10.X and 11.X, as well as Prisma Access running PAN-OS versions 10.2.8 and later or prior to 11.2.3. It has been addressed in PAN-OS 10.1.14-h8, PAN-OS