Threats & Vulnerabilities: Page

Ransomware on the rise, hitting schools and healthcare

October ransomware disclosures and public reports tracked by TechTarget Editorial increased from previous months, with notable attacks on education and healthcare organizations.

By Arielle Waldman • Nov. 3, 2022

U.S. Treasury: Ransomware attacks increased in 2021

A new report from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network showed an increase in businesses reporting ransomware attacks in the second half of 2021.

By Shaun Nichols • Nov. 2, 2022

OpenSSL vulnerabilities get high-priority patches

The OpenSSL Project released version 3.0.7 Tuesday to address a pair of high-severity buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the widely used cryptography library.

By Shaun Nichols • Nov. 1, 2022

Types of cloud malware and how to defend against them

Cloud malware isn't going away anytime soon, but organizations have a growing number of tools at their disposal to combat the threat.

By Dave Shackleford • Oct. 27, 2022

Ukraine: Russian cyber attacks aimless and opportunistic

Victor Zhora, a key Ukrainian cybersecurity official, says Russia is acting with "no particular strategy" in its cyber attacks on his country as their military invasion drags on.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 26, 2022

Cisco, CISA warn 2 AnyConnect flaws are under attack

CISA added two Cisco AnyConnect flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, which signals active exploitation and an urgency to patch.

By Arielle Waldman • Oct. 26, 2022

Researchers criticize HackerOne over triage, mediation woes

HackerOne researchers told TechTarget Editorial that they regularly encountered months-long wait times for responses and a mediation process that rarely favors researchers.

By Alexander Culafi • Oct. 26, 2022

Cryptomining campaign abused free GitHub account trials

Cloud security vendor Sysdig uncovered the largest cryptomining operation it's ever seen as threat actors used free account trials to shift the costs to service providers.

By Arielle Waldman • Oct. 25, 2022

Apple patches actively exploited zero-day iOS bug

The iOS zero-day was joined by a slew of other vulnerabilities in Apple's Oct. 24 security update. The iOS 16 update contained patches for 13 arbitrary code execution flaws.

By Alexander Culafi • Oct. 25, 2022

CISA warns of ransomware attacks on healthcare providers

A new CISA advisory warned administrators at hospitals and healthcare providers about newly discovered ransomware variant, dubbed Daixin Team, that poses a particular threat.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 24, 2022

BlackByte ransomware using custom data exfiltration tool

Symantec researchers say BlackByte ransomware may be poised to move into the elite ransomware ranks, as the group has begun developing its own custom malware tools.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 21, 2022

Brazil arrests alleged Lapsus$ hacker

Federal police in Brazil arrested a person accused of being a key member of the Lapsus$ hacking group on charges related to the takedown of government websites.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 20, 2022

RAT (remote access Trojan)

A RAT (remote access Trojan) is malware an attacker uses to gain full administrative privileges and remote control of a target computer.

By Kinza Yasar • Oct. 20, 2022

Azure vulnerability opens door to remote takeover attacks

Orca Security researchers uncovered a flaw in Azure Service Fabric that was fixed in last week's Patch Tuesday. It allows elevation of privilege and remote takeover of nodes.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 19, 2022

Python vulnerability highlights open source security woes

A 15-year-old unpatched vulnerability in a tarfile module for the Python programming language prompted researchers from cybersecurity vendor Trellix to take action.

By Arielle Waldman • Oct. 18, 2022

supply chain attack

A supply chain attack is a type of cyber attack that targets organizations by focusing on weaker links in an organization's supply chain.

By Alexander Gillis • Oct. 18, 2022

NPM API flaw exposes secret packages

A flaw in the API for NPM could potentially allow a threat actor to see the internal packages for corporate users -- a possible first step for a supply chain attack.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 13, 2022

Despite LockBit rebound, ransomware attacks down in 2022

LockBit cybercriminals are back in action with new ransomware attacks and publicity pushes. But many other new groups saw lower levels in activity in Q3, according to Cyberint.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 13, 2022

NPM malware attack goes unnoticed for a year

A cybercriminal crew known as "LofyGang" poisoned software supply chains with bad NPM packages for more than a year, according to Checkmarx researchers.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 11, 2022

Critical Fortinet vulnerability under active exploitation

Fortinet said the critical vulnerability affects three of its services -- FortiOS, FortiProxy and FortiSwitch Manager -- and urged customers to take immediate action.

By Alexander Culafi • Oct. 11, 2022

LinkedIn scams, fake Instagram accounts hit businesses, execs

Even the most secure business and executive social media accounts that have strong passwords and multifactor authentication are vulnerable to cloning schemes.

By Bridget Botelho • Oct. 11, 2022

CISA lists top vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese hackers

The U.S. government published a list of the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors, including Log4Shell and the ProxyLogon bugs.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 7, 2022

Ransomware attacks ravage schools, municipal governments

Attacks disclosed in September revealed that K-12 schools, universities and local governments continued to suffer at the hands of gangs such as Vice Society and BlackCat/Alphv.

By Rob Wright • Oct. 5, 2022

spambot

A spambot is an automated system that sends unwanted, unsolicited messages to users, known as spam.

By Sean Kerner • Oct. 3, 2022

Intermittent encryption attacks: Who’s at risk?

Threat analysts have observed some ransomware gangs using a new technique that only partially encrypts victims' files, which could evade some ransomware defenses.

By Shaun Nichols • Oct. 3, 2022