Security experts have uncovered a series of close links between ransomware groups Mount Locker and Astro Locker Team, in a new report that will be of interest to incident responders. Sophos’ Managed Threat Response (MTR) team said it recently dealt with an attack that had all the TTPs of a Mount Locker operation. However, when it

American multinational technology company Microsoft has been hit by its second outage in two weeks. Striking the company on April Fool’s Day, the substantial cloud outage knocked Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, Teams, Office 365, and OneDrive offline. Skype, Xbox Live, and Bing were also impacted. News of the outage began emanating from Twitter users at around 5pm ET yesterday.

A cyber-bully has been fined for sending hateful messages to a professional wrestler before she took her own life. Japanese wrestler and Netflix reality show star Hana Kimura was just 22 years old when she killed herself on May 23 last year by inhaling toxic gas in her Tokyo home. Kimura became a target for internet trolls

A former intelligence analyst who was once a United States military service member has pleaded guilty to obtaining classified information and passing it to a reporter. Daniel Everette Hale served as an enlisted airman in the US Air Force from July 2009 to July 2013. After language and intelligence training, the 31-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee,

by Paul Ducklin Why Apple had to rush out a security update for iDevices. Two cryptographic security holes patched in OpenSSL. How PHP nearly got backdoored by crooks. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. LISTEN NOW Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point in the

Cybersecurity platform provider ReliaQuest has announced two new senior appointments. Kara Wilson has been appointed to the ReliaQuest board of directors, whilst Alex Bender joins the company as its new chief marketing officer. Wilson brings more than 25 years of experience in driving go-to-market strategies for both large and medium companies along with startups, having

by Paul Ducklin Like many countries, the UK runs a census every ten years. The census asks each household in the country to provide answers to a series of questions about the individuals living at that address, such as name, age, nationality, languages spoken, education, employment and health. (More precisely, the census requires answers, rather

The burgeoning commercial space industry needs support from the cybersecurity sector to ensure it can be trusted and resilient, according to Rob Meyerson, founder and CEO at Delalune Space, speaking during the LORCA Live online event. Meyerson is formerly of NASA in a highly technical role and Blue Origin, where he worked alongside Jeff Bezos to

The NHS appears to have narrowed the cybersecurity skills gap slightly over the past two years, although breaches remain a serious challenge, according to the latest data from Redscan. The managed security service provider published an analysis of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to the health service last year and compared it to information

by Paul Ducklin Open source web programming language PHP narrowly avoided a potentially dangerous supply chain attack over the weekend. Technically, in fact, you could say that the “attack” was successful, given that imposters were apparently able to make to make the same source code change on two separate occasions: Code change in Trojanised ext/zlib/zlib.c

A Plano resident has been sent to prison for his part in a multimillion-dollar fraud and money-laundering scheme that victimized school districts, charities, and senior citizens.  In October last year, Babatope Joseph Aderinoye was found guilty of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering; wire fraud; aggravated identity theft; and mail fraud.  According to

by Paul Ducklin Cybercrime isn’t about just one sort of attack, one type of crook, or one method of protection! Learn more: Watch directly on YouTube if the video won’t play here.Click the on-screen Settings cog to speed up playback or show subtitles. Why not join us live next time? Don’t forget that these talks

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a flash alert to Americans highlighting the dangers of Mamba ransomware. According to the Bureau, Mamba has been deployed against local governments, public transportation agencies, legal services, technology services, and industrial, commercial, manufacturing, and construction businesses. The ransomware works by weaponizing an open source full-disk encryption software called DiskCryptor. By encrypting an entire

by Paul Ducklin We’re sure you’ve heard of OpenSSL, and even if you aren’t a coder yourself, you’ve almost certainly used it. OpenSSL is one of the most popular open-source cryptography libraries out there, and lots of well-known products rely on it, especially on Linux, which doesn’t have a standard, built-in encryption toolkit of its

Four states have been chosen by the National Governors Association (NGA) for its 2021 Policy Academy to Advance Whole-of-State Cybersecurity.  Kansas, Missouri, Montana, and Washington have all been selected by the NGA Center for Best Practices to work directly with the NGA on cybersecurity governance, workforce development, and government partnership policies.  “Representatives of the four states will

by Paul Ducklin Apple has just pushed out an emergency “one-bug” security update for its mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches. Even users of older iPhones and iPads who are still on the officially-supported iOS 12 version need to patch, so the versions you should be updating to are as follows: iOS 14

An American healthcare provider whose data was allegedly exfiltrated to an Amazon storage account by a cyber-attacker has taken legal action against Amazon.  As many as 85,688 patient and employee records were compromised last week when a threat actor seemingly based in Ukraine struck SalusCare, the largest provider of behavioral healthcare services in Southwest Florida. The attacker is

by Paul Ducklin Regular Naked Security readers will know we’re huge fans of Alan Turing OBE FRS. He was chosen in 2019 to be the scientist featured on the next issue of the Bank of England’s biggest publicly available banknote, the bullseye, more properly Fifty Pounds Sterling. (It’s called a bullseye because that’s the tiny,

A political activist from Ohio has denied impersonating a leader of the political group Black Lives Matter on social media for his own personal profit. Toledo resident Sir Maejor Page, a.k.a. Tyree Conyers-Page, was arrested in September on one count of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering. An investigation was launched into the 32-year-old after

by Paul Ducklin How a social engineer ripped off a victim lured in by one of those “small outstanding fee to pay” home delivery scams. The ransomware crooks targeting networks that still haven’t done their Hafnium patches. And the Linux kernel security holes that lay there undiscovered for 15 years. With Kimberly Truong, Doug Aamoth

Relay Medical Corporation has completed the acquisition of an Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity firm based in Toronto, Canada. The completion of the deal to acquire Cybeats Technologies Inc was announced yesterday, just 20 days after news of the transaction was published. Cybeats was founded in 2016 by Peter Pinsker, Dmitry Raidman, and Vladislav Kharbash. The company

by Harriet Stone Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has seen more than 1 billion accounts opened, and users on the service share close to 100 million photos every day. Instagram’s popularity may be down to the fact that it is a social media network like no other, offering a unique visual twist. Unlike Twitter

The approach organizations should take to develop and maintain an effective DevSecOps culture were highlighted by Patrick Debois, director of market strategy at Snyk during a session at the Infosecurity Magazine Online Summit EMEA 2021. Debois firstly emphasized the importance of an organization’s culture in determining the DevSecOps strategy that should be employed. “The CEO and culture of your company will

by Paul Ducklin It’s three weeks since the word HAFNIUM hit the news. The word Hafnium refers to a cybergang who are said to focus on stealing data from pretty much anyone and everyone they can infiltrate, across an eclectic range of industry sectors, and this time they hit a sort-of cybercrime jackpot. The Hafnium

Police in India have arrested 34 people for allegedly impersonating Apple and McAfee employees to con foreign nationals out of their money. The defendants were detained during a March 20 raid on two fake call centers located in the same building in Uttam Nagar, a mostly residential area in southwestern New Delhi. Delhi Police’s Cyber

by Paul Ducklin Just one tiny line of script in your Xcode project – and you’ve been pwned! Learn all about it, and what you can do to avoid supply chain problems if you’re a coder yourself: Watch directly on YouTube if the video won’t play here.Click the on-screen Settings cog to speed up playback

The Ontic Center for Protective Intelligence has launched a new monthly honor program to recognize the pioneers and thought leaders driving the physical security and protection industry.  Each month, the program will recognize groundbreaking professionals who have developed either new models or new areas of knowledge, and veteran practitioners who are actively contributing to advancing their industry.  Among

An advanced persistent threat group (APT) with links to the Chinese government has been blamed for a cyber-espionage attack on Finland’s parliament.  The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) announced on Thursday that APT31 was behind a cyber-espionage campaign that targeted the Finnish parliament last fall.  Security companies including Checkpoint and FireEye have linked APT31’s activities with the state cyber-operations of

by Paul Ducklin Remember when a whole bunch of celebs and top brands apparently went crazy tweeting about Bitcoin? It happened in July 2020, when many prominent blue-badged Twitter accounts suddenly starting sending out scammy cryptocoin messages. Fake tweets were blasted out from compromised accounts belonging to an eclectic range of high-profile people and companies,

A Swiss software developer has been indicted by the US government for allegedly stealing source code and proprietary data and publishing it online. On March 18, a grand jury indicted 21-year-old Till Kottman for identity and data theft and computer-intrusion crimes spanning 2019 to the present.   Lucerne resident Kottman, also known as “deletescape” and “tillie crimew,” allegedly conspired with