SecurityWeek

Foreign hackers are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to undermine institutions and threaten critical infrastructure, a top U.S. military cyber official said Thursday.

The cybercriminals behind the ransomware known as Maze claim to have breached the systems of LG Electronics and obtained highly sensitive information.The operators of the Maze ransomware are known for targeting major organizations and not only encrypting their files, but also stealing files and threatening to make them public unless a ransom is paid.

A newly identified piece of malware is being distributed embedded in tax payment software that some businesses operating in China are required to install.

Zoom announced on Wednesday that it has appointed Jason Lee as its chief information security officer (CISO).

Morocco said Wednesday it is investigating a journalist for receiving "foreign funding" for "intelligence services" days after rights group Amnesty alleged the government had used Israeli spyware to bug his phone.

Apple has acquired Fleetsmith, a San Francisco-based company that specializes in solutions designed to help organizations manage the Apple devices used by their employees.Fleetsmith’s enterprise device management solution automates setup, patching, intelligence and security for Macs, iPhones, iPads and Apple TV devices.

Akamai on Thursday revealed that it mitigated a second record-setting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack since the beginning of June, one that peaked at 809 MPPS (million packets per second).

Sony this week announced the launch of a public PlayStation bug bounty program in partnership with hacker-sourced vulnerability hunting platform HackerOne.

Microsoft this week announced the public preview availability of the Android version of its Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) software and the general availability of the Linux variant.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought to recruit hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia who could provide his anti-secrecy website with classified information, and conspired with members of hacking organizations, according to a new Justice Department indictment announced Wednesday.

Google is tweaking its privacy settings to keep less data on new users by default.The search giant said that starting Wednesday, it will automatically and continuously delete web and app activity and location history for new users after 18 months.

The threat actor behind the Sodinokibi ransomware was observed scanning the victim networks for credit card or point of sale (POS) software.Sodinokibi, Symantec’s security researchers reveal, was found on the networks of three organizations that had been previously infected with the Cobalt Strike commodity malware.

Over a period of two years, a threat actor sold access to the compromised networks of 135 organizations in 44 countries and likely made over $1.5 million, Group-IB says.

VMware informed customers on Tuesday that it addressed a total of 10 vulnerabilities affecting its ESXi, Workstation and Fusion products, including critical and high-severity flaws that can be exploited for code execution on the hypervisor.

The threat actor behind the Dridex Trojan has released a new ransomware following months of development, Fox-IT researchers (part of NCC Group) reveal.

Cyber security is described as a form of asymmetric warfare. One side, the defenders, have limited numbers -- just the security team. The other side includes every blackhat hacker in the world -- that is, many, many thousands. The blackhats only need to succeed once; the defenders need to succeed many times every day. Bugcrowd seeks to reverse this impossible mathematics.

Republican senators have introduced what they have described as a “balanced” bill that would require technology companies to give law enforcement agencies access to encrypted user data.

The need for improved access control is proven by empirical observation -- it keeps failing. But improving access control beyond passwords suffers from a fundamental contradiction: while 98% of companies believe strong authentication is necessary for secure cloud adoption, 41% believe the username/password combination is one of the most effective access management tools, and 58% allow their employees to log on to corporate resources via social media credentials.

Twitter has permanently banned the account of Distributed Denial of Secrets (@DDoSecrets) after it posted links to stolen information belonging to hundreds of law enforcement organizations in the United States.