Week in review: Mitsubishi Outlander hack, Mozilla funds open source code audits
Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news and articles:
Researchers hack the Mitsubishi Outlander SUV, shut off alarm remotely
Mitsubishi Outlander, a popular hybrid SUV sold around the world, can be easily broken into by attackers exploiting security weaknesses in the setup that allows the car to be remotely controlled via an app.
University pays $20,000 in ransomware attack
The ransomware plague has hit the University of Calgary, and the academic institution did what many victims do: they paid the ransom to get the encrypted files back.
0patch: Microscopic cures for big security holes
Acros Security, a digital security research lab, made available a free public beta of 0patch. This solution aims to fix 0days, unpatched vulnerabilities, end-of-life and unsupported products, provide patches for legacy operating systems, as well as vulnerable third party components and customized software.
Vulnerabilities in Facebook Chat and Messenger exploitable with basic HTML knowledge
The vulnerabilities, if exploited, would allow anyone to essentially take control of any message sent by Chat or Messenger, modify its contents, distribute malware and even insert automation techniques to outsmart security defences.
Angler exploit kit bypasses EMET’s defenses
EMET is a utility created to stop certain classes of exploits that take advantage of vulnerabilities in various software.
Fake gaming torrents download unwanted apps instead of popular games
An active distribution campaign delivers potentially unwanted apps (PUAs) posing as torrents for games like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, The Witcher 3, World of Warcraft: Legion, The Walking Dead: Michonne, and several others.
The security concerns of free email service provider use
Board members, who often sit outside the firewall, and top level executives in the organization, who often are working with the highest level of confidential materials (e.g., mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, quarterly results), are not safeguarding their operations and are often opting for a free email service provider — putting the entire business and their partners at risk.
Mozilla will fund code audits for open source software
The Mozilla Foundation has set up the Secure Open Source (SOS) Fund, whose aim is to help open source software projects get rid their code of vulnerabilities.
Hypervisor wiretap feature can leak data from the cloud
Bitdefender has discovered that encrypted communications can be decrypted in real-time using a technique that has virtually zero footprint and is invisible to anyone except extremely careful security auditors.
Crysis ransomware fills vacuum left by TeslaCrypt
TeslaCrypt has reached the end of the road, and other ransomware is ready to fill the vacuum left behind it. A relative newcomer to the market, Crysis ransomware is already laying claim to parts of TeslaCrypt’s territory.
Bug in Chrome’s PDF reader allows arbitrary code execution
Vulnerabilities in software often arise from faulty implementations of elements developed by other code writers.
32m Twitter login credentials stolen from users
Leaked Source has added 32,888,300 records of Twitter users to its repository of leaked data. The source of the batch is a user who goes by the alias “Tessa88@exploit.im,” who’s been selling the data on a dark web marketplace for 10 bitcoins (around $5,800).
Looking for trouble: How predictive analytics is transforming cybersecurity
As some private and public sector organizations are discovering, the combination of advanced analytics and a red team approach – thinking like the enemy – can yield powerful insights.
Malware exploits BITS to retain foothold on Windows systems
If you’re sure that you have cleaned your system of malware, but you keep seeing malware-related network alerts, it’s possible that at some point you’ve been hit with malware that uses Windows’ BITS to schedule malicious downloads.
Will the next major data breach start on mobile?
Mobile devices have many attractive entry points that are easier to exploit than their PC counterparts.
A third of organizations experienced a data breach in the past 12 months
Despite the increasing number of data breaches and more than 3.9 billion data records worldwide being lost or stolen since 2013, organizations continue to believe perimeter security technologies are effective against data breaches, according to Gemalto’s Data Security Confidence Index.
Photos: Infosecurity Europe 2016
Here’s a look at the Infosecurity Europe 2016 show floor.
789% year-over-year spike in malware and phishing
An analysis of phishing email campaigns from the first three months of 2016 has seen a 6.3 million increase in raw numbers, due primarily to a ransomware upsurge against the last quarter of 2015.
100 milion VK accounts put up for sale
This data set contains 100,544,934 records. Each record may contain an email address, a first and last name, a location (usually city), a phone number, a visible password, and sometimes a second email address
It takes 248 days for IT businesses to fix their software vulnerabilities
Compiled using data collected from tens of thousands of websites, a new WhiteHat Security report reveals that the majority of web applications exhibit, on average, two or more serious vulnerabilities per application for every industry at any given point in time.
FastPOS malware exfiltrates data immediately after harvesting it
Trend Micro researchers have recently analyzed a new POS malware family sporting some interesting functionalities.
The future of intrusion detection
Over the next several years, intrusion detection will evolve in two directions.
Will your cyber insurance pay for email attacks?
If you’re relying on cyber insurance, check if your policies are up-to-date in covering new social engineering email attacks that are leaving firms at risk for taking the full financial brunt of these attacks.
Do companies take customers’ security seriously?
75 percent of adults in the UK would stop doing business with, or would cancel membership to, an organisation if it was hacked. This suggests, however, that a quarter would carry on using that company despite the security risk to both personal and financial information.