Lifeboat Foundation

“The likelihood of a cyber-attacks on Twitter feel very high right now and their ability to be able to counteract that feels very low,” Radcliffe said. “The amount of information that they have on users is considerable and I think that that’s a potential source of concern, particularly in countries in the Middle East and other places where once the information is on the open market and in the public domain it could potentially be harmful to users.”

Partnering with individuals or groups close to authoritarian regimes raises concerns over how Twitter might react should it be pressured by supply information on dissidents or to quell opposition speech. They also raise questions about Musk’s potential conflict of business interests concerning Tesla and Space X’s availability in certain markets.

Such questions have already been brought up by at least one member of the US Congress. But experts say they’re much more concerned about data security should Twitter go under.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Twitter Purchase Raises Concerns for MENA Region” »

Cybercrime marketplaces are increasingly selling stolen corporate email addresses for as low as $2 to fill a growing demand by hackers who use them for business email compromise and phishing attacks or initial access to networks.

Analysts at Israeli cyber-intelligence firm KELA have closely followed this trend, reporting at least 225,000 email accounts for sale on underground markets.

The largest webmail shops are Xleet and Lufix, claiming to offer access to over 100k breached corporate email accounts, with prices ranging between $2 and $30, if not more, for highly-desirable organizations.

Continue reading “Automated dark web markets sell corporate email accounts for $2” »

Data security — information security newspaper | hacking news.

Microsoft’s Windows Client and Server builds are not hit with a nasty bug, causing some apps to stop responding. The software giant has recently confirmed the issue and promised to bring a fix in an upcoming software update. Microsoft also has a hack to identify if users are currently using any affected apps.

It is common to hear news reports about large data breaches, but what happens once your personal data is stolen? Our research shows that, like most legal commodities, stolen data products flow through a supply chain consisting of producers, wholesalers and consumers. But this supply chain involves the interconnection of multiple criminal organizations operating in illicit underground marketplaces.

The stolen data supply chain begins with producers—hackers who exploit vulnerable systems and steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, bank account information and Social Security numbers. Next, the stolen data is advertised by wholesalers and distributors who sell the data. Finally, the data is purchased by consumers who use it to commit various forms of fraud, including fraudulent credit card transactions, identity theft and phishing attacks.

This trafficking of stolen data between producers, wholesalers and consumers is enabled by darknet markets, which are websites that resemble ordinary e-commerce websites but are accessible only using special browsers or authorization codes.

Google is shutting down Duplex on the Web, its AI-powered set of services that navigated sites to simplify the process of ordering food, purchasing movie tickets and more. According to a note on a Google support page, Google on the Web and any automation features enabled by it will no longer be supported as of this month.

“As we continue to improve the Duplex experience, we’re responding to the feedback we’ve heard from users and developers about how to make it even better,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch via email, adding that Duplex on the Web partners have been notified to help them prepare for the shutdown. “By the end of this year, we’ll turn down Duplex on the Web and fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day.”

Google introduced Duplex on the Web, an outgrowth of its call-automating Duplex technology, during its 2019 Google I/O developer conference. To start, it was focused on a couple of narrow use cases, including opening a movie theater chain’s website to fill out all of the necessary information on a user’s behalf — pausing to prompt for choices like seats. But Duplex on the Web later expanded to passwords, helping users automatically change passwords exposed in a data breach, as well as assist with checkout for e-commerce retailers, flight check-in for airline sites and automatic discount finding.

Continue reading “Google shuts down Duplex on the Web, its attempt to bring AI smarts to retail sites and more” »

The central government has started a drive to upgrade its IT equipment and infrastructure so that all electronic, data storage and communication devices used in government departments and agencies remain within the life span specified by the manufacturer and remain immune to cyber threats.

The move comes in the wake of a large number of cyber security incidents reported by Cert-In, a nodal agency for responding to such incidents and a recent ransomware attack at country’s top medical institute All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi on 23 November.

The ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) has directed all secretaries of central ministries to actively take actions with regards to cyber security. Use of out-of-date operating systems and IT equipment must be discontinued, Meity said in a communication reviewed by Mint.

Continue reading “Centre starts drive to prevent cyber threats to state entities” »

Acer has fixed a high-severity vulnerability affecting multiple laptop models that could enable local attackers to deactivate UEFI Secure Boot on targeted systems.

The Secure Boot security feature blocks untrusted operating systems bootloaders on computers with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware to prevent malicious code like rootkits and bootkits from loading during the startup process.

Reported by ESET malware researcher Martin Smolar, the security flaw (CVE-2022–4020) was discovered in the HQSwSmiDxe DXE driver on some consumer Acer Notebook devices.

Continue reading “Acer fixes UEFI bugs that can be used to disable Secure Boot” »

Boa, an open-source web server suitable for embedded applications that was discontinued since 2005 is now becoming a security threat because of the complex nature of how it was built into the internet of things (IoT) device supply chain. A recent report by tech major Microsoft said that hackers are exploiting vulnerabilities in the software to target organizations in the energy sector.

Microsoft researchers revealed in an analysis that a vulnerable open-source component in the Boa web server, is used widely in a range of routers and security cameras as well as popular software development kits (SDKs), a set of tools that allow developers to write or use an existing framework to develop applications for a given platform.

Despite the software being discontinued a nearly two decades ago, Microsoft reports that attackers are continuing their attempts to exploit the flaws of the Boa web servers which include a high-severity information disclosure bug (CVE-2021–33558) and another arbitrary file access flaw (CVE-2017–9833). An unauthenticated attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to obtain user credentials and leverage them for remote code execution.

Continue reading “Hackers attacking energy sector using decades-old software, says Microsoft” »