Weekend Update

A quick Saturday digest of cybersecurity news articles from other sources.

Today is Veterans Day – Thanks for Your Service

Veteran’s day is a remembrance of all U.S. military veterans – past and present. It is celebrated every November 11th, and has been a federal holiday since 1926.

Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Cyber Threats

10/31/2017 08:14 AM EDT  Original release date: October 31, 2017

Building resilience in critical infrastructure ...

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11
NOV
0

Computers and Internet, cybersecurity, News and politics, Security, smartphones, social engineering, Software vulnerability, Spyware, surveillance, Trojan, Weekend Update

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Details on New Email Exploit – No Attachment Required

People often ask me if it is dangerous to simply open an email, if it is possible to get a malware inflection just by reading an email.  My answer has been a qualified “not at this time.”  Unfortunately, this is no longer true.  It is possible to get a malware installation from the new DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) exploits reveal by Sophos Labs on October 13 2017.  This can be accomplished without an attachment or link if the email is ...

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6
NOV
0

Computers and Internet, cybersecurity, malware, Phishing, Security, social engineering, Software vulnerability, training, Trojan

Security Issue With CCleaner

Piriform’s CCleaner is a popular computer cleaning and optimizing product that many people use.  I have my doubts about the real effectiveness of these utilities, but many of my clients swear by it.  I have used CCleaner myself several times as one of the tools I used to clean up a malware infection.

Recently, the CCleaner software code was modified  to include a malicious backdoor.  This warning was published earlier in ...

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4
OCT
0

Computers and Internet, crapware, cybersecurity, malware, Security, Software vulnerability, Trojan

SANS: Phishing Exploits Are The Top Threat

The SANS institute released the results of  a new survey recently, and found that cybersecurity professionals ranked phishing as the number one exploit this year.  Phishing awareness training programs were seen by many as the best defense against phishing, spearphishing and whaling exploits.  Something that was new this year was the reporting of so-called “malware-less” exploits that use “the built-in features of the operating system to turn it against itself without ...

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23
AUG
0

Computers and Internet, cybersecurity, Phishing, ransomware, Security, Spyware, Trojan

Email Account Hijacking – Part 3 Extending the Exploit

On Monday and Wednesday we looked at email account hijacking, how it happens, and what can happen after the account is controlled by an attacker.  Today we will see how an attacker could use the beachhead they established in your email account to extend their intrusion.

They have already proven that you are susceptible to phishing and other social engineering exploits.  So sending the victim other phishing emails that allow more ...

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28
JUL
0

authentication, Computers and Internet, cybersecurity, Identity Theft, malware, passwords, Phishing, ransomware, Security, social engineering, Spyware, surveillance, Trojan, Web Design, WordPress

What Can I Do With A Hijacked Email Account? Part 2

On Monday we opened this discussion about hijacked email accounts, and showed some examples of the phishing tricks that attackers use to get you to reveal your email password.  Today we will explore the many useful and profitable exploits that a compromised email account offers a cyber-criminal or other attacker.

I consider email account compromise to be one of the most personally harmful cyber-exploits.  When another person has access to your ...

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26
JUL
0

authentication, Computers and Internet, cybersecurity, Dark Web, Identity Theft, passwords, Phishing, ransomware, Security, social engineering, surveillance, Trojan

New PowerPoint Exploit Launches on Hover

A new exploit that uses a PowerPoint feature that enables “mouse-over actions.”  This feature allows a PowerPoint slide show to initiate activity without having to actually click on a link.  Just hovering on a link is enough to advance to the next step.  Since we have been teaching people for years to reveal a link destination by hovering over a link to show the top tip box, this exploit would ...

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19
JUN
0

cybersecurity, malware, Phishing, Security, Trojan

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US-CERT Warns About Airline Phishing Scams

What if there was a new phishing scam that had an open rate of 90%.  That’s right, this phishing email is so believable, 90 out of 100 recipients open the the attachment or click on the link without a second thought.

These attacks begin with the scammer researching the target victim.  These targets usually work at companies where there is a lot of air ...

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26
APR
0

Computers and Internet, cybersecurity, malware, passwords, Phishing, Spyware, surveillance, Trojan

EyePyramid – Data Stealing Trojan Horse

I read a story in Naked Security recently that reported the arrest of a couple of Italian cyber-criminals who have been stealing personal information from Italian mayors, prime ministers, cardinals, and other notables since 2010.   They used a phishing exploit to install a Trojan Horse/keylogger called EyePyramid.  There were a couple of things that caught my eye.

The first is the sheer volume of data stolen – 87 gigabytes!  This information ...

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8
FEB
0

Computers and Internet, cybersecurity, Identity Theft, Trojan

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