New Flaw in Acer Laptops Could Let Attackers Disable Secure Boot Protection

Acer has released a firmware update to address a security vulnerability that could be potentially weaponized to turn off UEFI Secure Boot on affected machines. Tracked as CVE-2022-4020, the high-severity vulnerability affects five different models that consist of Aspire A315-22, A115-21, and A315-22G, and Extensa EX215-21 and EX215-21G. <!--adsense--> The PC maker described the vulnerability as

Bahamut Cyber Espionage Hackers Targeting Android Users with Fake VPN Apps

The cyber espionage group known as Bahamut has been attributed as behind a highly targeted campaign that infects users of Android devices with malicious apps designed to extract sensitive information. The activity, which has been active since January 2022, entails distributing rogue VPN apps through a fake SecureVPN website set up for this purpose, Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET said in a new

Ducktail Malware Operation Evolves with New Malicious Capabilities

The operators of the Ducktail information stealer have demonstrated a "relentless willingness to persist" and continued to update their malware as part of an ongoing financially driven campaign. "The malware is designed to steal browser cookies and take advantage of authenticated Facebook sessions to steal information from the victim's Facebook account," WithSecure researcher Mohammad Kazem

New KmsdBot Malware Hijacking Systems for Mining Crypto and Launch DDoS Attacks

A newly discovered evasive malware leverages the Secure Shell (SSH) cryptographic protocol to gain entry into targeted systems with the goal of mining cryptocurrency and carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Dubbed KmsdBot by the Akamai Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT), the Golang-based malware has been found targeting a variety of companies ranging from gaming to

New UEFI Firmware Flaws Reported in Several Lenovo Notebook Models

PC maker Lenovo has addressed yet another set of three shortcomings in the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware affecting several Yoga, IdeaPad, and ThinkBook devices. "The vulnerabilities allow disabling UEFI Secure Boot or restoring factory default Secure Boot databases (incl. dbx): all simply from an OS," Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET explained in a series of tweets. UEFI

Want More Secure Software? Start Recognizing Security-Skilled Developers

Professional developers want to do the right thing, but in terms of security, they are rarely set up for success. Organizations must support their upskilling with precision training and incentives if they want secure software from the ground up. The cyber threat landscape grows more complex by the day, with our data widely considered highly desirable “digital gold”. Attackers are constantly

Chinese Hackers Target Government Officials in Europe, South America, and Middle East

A Chinese hacking group has been attributed to a new campaign aimed at infecting government officials in Europe, the Middle East, and South America with a modular malware known as PlugX. Cybersecurity firm Secureworks said it identified the intrusions in June and July 2022, once again demonstrating the adversary's continued focus on espionage against governments around the world. "PlugX is

The Ultimate Security Blind Spot You Don't Know You Have

How much time do developers spend actually writing code? According to recent studies, developers spend more time maintaining, testing and securing existing code than they do writing or improving code. Security vulnerabilities have a bad habit of popping up during the software development process, only to surface after an application has been deployed. The disappointing part is that many of these

Researchers Uncover UEFI Secure Boot Bypass in 3 Microsoft Signed Boot Loaders

A security feature bypass vulnerability has been uncovered in three signed third-party Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot loaders that allow bypass of the UEFI Secure Boot feature. "These vulnerabilities can be exploited by mounting the EFI System Partition and replacing the existing bootloader with the vulnerable one, or modifying a UEFI variable to load the vulnerable loader

Fast and Secure VPN on a Budget? Private Internet Access VPN Has You Covered

Back when the internet consisted of a handful of computers networked together across a few research institutions, nobody could have imagined that it would one day form the backbone of a new digital way of life. And that probably explains why none of the researchers who thought up its core technologies — things like packet switching and TCP/IP — gave much consideration to the need to secure the

Two Key Ways Development Teams Can Increase Their Security Maturity

Now more than ever, organizations need to enable their development teams to build and grow their security skills. Today organizations face a threat landscape where individuals, well-financed syndicates, and state actors are actively trying to exploit errors in software. Yet, according to recent global research, 67% of developers that were interviewed said they were still shipping code they knew

New Ducktail Infostealer Malware Targeting Facebook Business and Ad Accounts

Facebook business and advertising accounts are at the receiving end of an ongoing campaign dubbed Ducktail designed to seize control as part of a financially driven cybercriminal operation.  "The threat actor targets individuals and employees that may have access to a Facebook Business account with an information-stealer malware," Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure (formerly F-Secure

An Easier Way to Keep Old Python Code Healthy and Secure

Python has its pros and cons, but it's nonetheless used extensively. For example, Python is frequently used in data crunching tasks even when there are more appropriate languages to choose from. Why? Well, Python is relatively easy to learn. Someone with a science background can pick up Python much more quickly than, say, C. However, Python's inherent approachability also creates a couple of

Why Developers Hate Changing Language Versions

Progress powers technology forward. But progress also has a cost: by adding new capabilities and features, the developer community is constantly adjusting the building blocks. That includes the fundamental languages used to code technology solutions. When the building blocks change, the code behind the technology solution must change too. It's a challenging and time-consuming exercise that

State-Backed Hackers Using Ransomware as a Decoy for Cyber Espionage Attacks

A China-based advanced persistent threat (APT) group is possibly deploying short-lived ransomware families as a decoy to cover up the true operational and tactical objectives behind its campaigns. The activity cluster, attributed to a hacking group dubbed Bronze Starlight by Secureworks, involves the deployment of post-intrusion ransomware such as LockFile, Atom Silo, Rook, Night Sky, Pandora,

Critical Flaw in Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager Lets Attackers Bypass Authentication

Cisco on Wednesday rolled out fixes to address a critical security flaw affecting Email Security Appliance (ESA) and Secure Email and Web Manager that could be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to sidestep authentication. Assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2022-20798, the bypass vulnerability is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scoring system and stems from improper