Maine Officials Disclose Startling Data Breach That Affects Nearly Its Entire Population

The State of Maine is informing the public of the impact to the State’s computer systems due to a security vulnerability found in the MOVEit file transfer tool, a software suite developed by Progress Software. This incident took place between May 28, 2023 and May 29, 2023. During this time, cybercriminals were able to access and download files from several state agencies. According to the state officials, “the following types of information may have been involved: name, Social Security number (SSN), date of birth, driver’s license/state identification number, and taxpayer identification...

Oops! Amazon Sparks Hacking Panic After Mistakenly Emailing Gift Card Receipts

by Nathan Ord - Mon, Oct 02, 2023

Phishing emails traditionally come from threat actors looking to make a quick buck or steal some data for nefarious purposes. Things get confusing, however, when phishing-style emails come directly from an organization like Amazon. That is exactly what happened over the weekend, leaving many customers baffled. Thankfully, these emails were benign and just a note about the dangers of phishing and general scams, which is a good occasional warning anyhow. Over the weekend around September 30th, Amazon customers began to report that they had received an email about an Amazon order for a gift card purchase...

Researchers Discover A Startling Side-Channel Exploit On All GPUs, Even Integrated

by Nathan Ord - Wed, Sep 27, 2023

Side channel attacks are always fascinating to see how they are executed, such as the recent discovery that encryption keys could be stolen by recording power LEDs on various devices. Researchers have found that malicious websites might be able to see usernames and other sensitive information by leaking it from another embedded website in an iframe. On Tuesday, a team of security researchers from around the United States led by Yingchen Wang published research into the “Side-Channel Implications of Hardware-Based Graphical Data Compression.” This research outlines a side-channel attack...

Sinister InfoStealer Campaign Sneakily Targets Hotel Guests, How To Protect Yourself

by Nathan Ord - Fri, Sep 22, 2023

As it turns out, hotels, and by extension, the hospitality industry, are not the most secure organizations around despite handling personal information and credit card details. This is evident in the recent MGM Hotel breach or even further back with the 2022 social engineering of Marriott. Now, an infostealer campaign is hitting hotels, travel agencies, and customers through advanced social engineering techniques, per recent research. Earlier this month, researchers at Perception Point discovered an infostealer malware campaign specifically geared toward the hospitality industry. This attack begins...

Chinese Cellular IoT Radio Modules Pose An Alarming US National Security Risk

by Nathan Ord - Wed, Aug 30, 2023

Over the past year, as tensions have intensified with China over the South China Sea and Taiwan, the United States has begun to focus on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influenced businesses and organizations operating or providing services in the US. Perhaps the most prevalent example of this is TikTok, and the concern that the social media platform is not only a propaganda tool for the CCP, but also a backdoor into the lives and devices of US citizens. However, the TikTok app affects a somewhat narrow subset of people here in the US, whereas Chinese-made Internet-Of-Things (IoT) cellular modules...

New England Residents Affected By Third-Party Data Breach Of Power Companies

by Nathan Ord - Tue, Aug 29, 2023

Several energy providers are now asking New England customers to monitor their accounts for unusual activity or beware of potential scams following a third-party data breach earlier this month. Earlier this morning, HotHardware was made aware that an email had gone out from Eversource, a residential energy provider in New England, to its customers warning of a data breach. This email highlighted that, like National Grid and other organizations, Eversource had been the victim of a third-party breach through a vendor, CLEAResult. It is noted in this email that while no social security numbers or...

Google Researcher Discovers Data-Snooping Downfall Flaw Affecting These Intel CPUs

by Zak Killian - Wed, Aug 09, 2023

Drop everything—there's a new hardware security vulnerability in Intel's processors! Or don't, really, because this vulnerability is only rated at a "medium" severity by Intel itself, and it's even arguably a good thing for the company. That's because it only affects older processors based on the "Skylake" architecture, including Core processors from 6th thru 10th generation as well as their Xeon cousins. So the more recent Rocket Lake, Alder Lake, and Raptor Lake processors aren't affected, but there's still a whole bunch of Skylake cores out there in the wild. Those chips are vulnerable...

Over 200 Canon Inkjet Printers Can Expose Your Wi-Fi Security Details From The Landfill

by Paul Lilly - Tue, Aug 01, 2023

Canon has issued a security bulletin warning that hundreds of its inkjet printer models have a flaw that could potentially expose your Wi-Fi network details after you've disposed it or sent it to a third-party entity to be serviced. The issue at hand is that affected models, including both consumer and professional units, do not properly wipe your Wi-Fi settings like they're supposed to. "Sensitive information on the Wi-Fi connection settings stored in the memories of inkjet printers (home and office/large format) may not be deleted by the usual initialization process," Canon explains. The list...

Call Of Duty Players Caught In Crosshairs Of A Self-Replicating Malware Campaign

by Nathan Ord - Fri, Jul 28, 2023

In recent days and weeks, Call of Duty has seen an uptick in population since the online servers were fixed up, allowing players to return to their old haunts and have some fun. However, with this uptick in activity, cheaters and hackers are looking to ruin the fun and nostalgia for CoD players. As it turns out, they may be after even more with the ability to drop malware onto unsuspecting players who jump into hacked lobbies. Just a few days ago, a thread for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) popped up in the Steam community, alerting players about needing antivirus before playing. Purportedly,...

AMD Zenbleed Exploit Lets Hackers Pry Sensitive Data From All Zen 2 CPUs, Fix Incoming

by Paul Lilly - Tue, Jul 25, 2023

A wide range of processors based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture, including consumer Ryzen chips (desktop and mobile) and EPYC server silicon, are vulnerable to a newly discovered exploit that could allow an attacker to steal sensitive data. That includes user passwords, encryption keys, and other information that you don't want to fall into the wrong hands. Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher with Google's Project Zero team, discovered the vulnerability, which he has dubbed "Zenbleed," and reported it to AMD on May 15, 2023. We're only hearing about it now presumably so AMD could have time to analyze...

Self-Replicating P2PInfect Worm Is Leaving A Trail Of Malware In Windows And Linux PCs

by Nathan Ord - Fri, Jul 21, 2023

Earlier this month, researchers from Palo Alto’s Unit 42 discovered a peer-to-peer worm dubbed P2PInfect targeting Redis installations, an open-source database application used in cloud environments. While only 934 of the publicly communicating 307,000 unique Redis systems may be vulnerable, the worm may knock on the door of all of them in an attempt to compromise the systems. The P2PInfect worm works by attempting to exploit CVE-2022-0543, a CVSS 10.0 critical vulnerability that allows for a Lua sandbox escape which could lead to remote code execution. Though this vulnerability is a year...

Apple Threatens To Pull iMessage And FaceTime From UK If This Anti-Privacy Bill Passes

by Tim Sweezy - Fri, Jul 21, 2023

Apple is threatening to pull the ability to use iMessage and FaceTime from users in the UK over proposed new requirements on telecommunications operators. The new proposal is not a new law, but rather an update to the existing Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016. When it comes to allowing law enforcement and government entities access to devices like an iPhone or iPad, Apple has been a staunch opponent of the idea. The tech company has been steadfast in its stance that its user's privacy comes first, and it seems that viewpoint may cause people in the UK who own an Apple device to lose access to...

FBI Warns Of Disturbing Rise In Tech Support Scams With An Unusual Twist

by Nathan Ord - Wed, Jul 19, 2023

Tech support scammers have been around for quite some time, continually innovating and perfecting their game to rake in more money. The problem has become so big that even YouTubers like Kitboga are making a living trolling these people. However, that has not been enough to stop these problematic people, as the FBI has now warned about an uptick in these sorts of tech support scams. This week, the FBI published a notice about the increase in tech support scams that target older adults to get them to send cash through shipping companies. The notice explains that the scammers typically call, text,...

Microsoft Details Alarming Zero-Day Attacks Targeting Office, Serves Security Patches

by Nathan Ord - Wed, Jul 12, 2023

Microsoft’s traditional Patch Tuesday has arrived, bringing with it a slew of security fixes for 130 vulnerabilities and two published advisories. This update comes at the perfect time, as threat actors have been exploiting some of these vulnerabilities for espionage against defense and government organizations in Europe and North America. Among the numerous fixes that Microsoft has pushed for Patch Tuesday lies CVE-2023-36884, an “Office and Windows HTML Remote Code Execution Vulnerability.” On the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scale out of 10, this vulnerability...

Iranian Hacker Group Deploys New Attacks Targeting Nuclear Security Experts

by Nathan Ord - Fri, Jul 07, 2023

You can call a kitty with a “pspspsps,” but you might be able to call Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group 42, otherwise known as “Charming Kitten,” with a “pspspsps aux.” All jokes aside, this group, also known as TA453, now targets nuclear security and foreign policy experts to gather intelligence. Earlier this year, the Proofpoint Threat Research Team, alongside Senior Threat Researcher Joshua Miller and Senior Reverse Engineer Pim Trouerbach, unraveled the latest in TA453’s reconnaissance operations. It now appears that the group is targeting nuclear...

Did You Unexpectedly Receive A Smartwatch In The Mail? It's Probably Laced With Malware

by Nathan Ord - Tue, Jun 27, 2023

Attempts at or unintended incidents of tracking military members have been happening for years, such as when the Strava running app leaked the location of military bases thanks to a published heat map of running locations. Now, however, a threat actor is either being incredibly precise, or companies are just trying to bump their metrics on Amazon by sending potentially malware-ridden smartwatches to US Army personnel. Earlier in June, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) posted a lookout warning regarding smartwatches received by mail. Reportedly, service members across all military...

ASUS Issues Critical Firmware Update For 19 Router Models, Update ASAP

by Nathan Ord - Wed, Jun 21, 2023

Earlier this week, ASUS pushed a firmware update for 19 of the company’s routers which fixed nine different CVEs and enhanced security across the board. While updating your routers, ASUS also recommends that owners disable services accessible from the WAN side, such as port forwarding, DDNS, VPN, DMZ, and port triggering, to “avoid potential unwanted intrusions.” Of the vulnerabilities listed in ASUS report, at least two are rated at 9.8 out of 10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scale. The first and eldest is CVE-2018-1160, with a bug in Netatalk allowing an...

Cybersecurity Firm Uncovers Over 100K Stolen ChatGPT Credentials On The Dark Web

by Nathan Ord - Tue, Jun 20, 2023

With all the excitement around ChatGPT, it is no wonder that threat actors are taking advantage of the situation. Besides having those with malicious intentions steal your Facebook account, they might also be stealing your ChatGPT account credentials as well, following the discovery of over 100,000 compromised ChatGPT accounts on dark web marketplaces. Threat intelligence organization Group-IB announced today the identification of 101,134 devices infected with info stealer malware and saved ChatGPT credentials. Evidence of these infected devices has shown up online in dark web marketplaces where...

Security Researchers Discover BIOS Password Bypass On Lenovo Laptops

by Nathan Ord - Fri, Jun 16, 2023

We like to joke about percussive maintenance when we talk about tools and technology. A good swift hit with a hammer can fix a lot of issues, right? Well, one researcher out of New Zealand found it was possible to use a screwdriver to reset the BIOS password for a Lenovo laptop. If you’ve ever run into an issue with your BIOS, whether you dialed in a bad overclock or tweaked some settings you shouldn’t have, you might have had to reset it. Some motherboards are designed with this in mind, offering a physical button you can hit to reset or flashback the BIOS. If that is not the case,...

Google Authenticator's 2FA Upgrade Is Missing A Major Security Feature But Not For Long

by Ryan Whitwam - Fri, Apr 28, 2023

Conventional wisdom holds that adding two-factor authentication (2FA) is the best way to secure your online accounts. With this feature enabled, a threat actor would need your login credentials, as well as a one-time code to access your data. Google Authenticator is a popular way to store two-factor codes, and a recent update added a long-awaited option to back up those codes. However, security researchers are now warning users to hold off using that feature until Google fixes a glaring security omission. When you set up a 2FA account, the service in question probably warns you at least two or...

EvilExtractor Phishing Campaign Targets Windows Users With PDFs And Dropbox Links

by Ryan Whitwam - Mon, Apr 24, 2023

A new piece of Windows malware is making the rounds, but what else is new? You never want to fall victim to a malware campaign, but this one is particularly troublesome. EvilExtractor is billed as an "all-in-one" solution for your online criminal needs. With this one tool, a threat actor can monitor keystrokes, steal data, and lock down a Windows machine with ransomware. And it all starts with a seemingly innocuous PDF in a phishing email. Security firm FortiGuard Labs has detailed the attack chain and capabilities of EvilExtractor, starting with the aforementioned PDF, which isn't actually a PDF....

FBI Warns You Should Never Recharge Your USB Device At A Public Charging Station

by Aaron Leong - Tue, Apr 11, 2023

The FBI just issued a warning to the public against using free public USB charging ports, such as those found at airports or malls, because they've been found to be ports of entry for malware.  A recent tweet by the FBI Denver field office advised that bad actors (i.e. people with nefarious intentions, not Steven Seagal) have devised a way to hijack public chargers that can infect connected devices with malware or spyware. It's a relatively new technique called "juice jacking" and when infected, the device will expose account login information and other personal data. Avoid using free charging...