Lifeboat Foundation

The National research center for Cybersecurity ATHENE has found a way to break one of the basic mechanisms used to secure internet traffic. The mechanism, called RPKI, is actually designed to prevent cybercriminals or government attackers from diverting traffic on the internet.

Such redirections are surprisingly common on the internet, for example, for espionage or through misconfigurations. The ATHENE scientist team of Prof. Dr. Haya Shulman showed that attackers can completely bypass the security mechanism without the affected network operators being able to detect this. According to analyses by the ATHENE team, popular implementations of RPKI worldwide were vulnerable by early 2021.

The team informed the manufacturers, and now presented the findings to the international expert public.

As part of another BYOVD attack, BlackByte ransomware exploits a flaw in a legitimate Windows driver to bypass security software.

Rudimentary malware hidden inside fake photo editors, VPNs and even horoscope and flashlight apps has affected a large number of Facebook users, says a new report released by Meta.

A new Android malware dubbed “RatMilad” has been observed targeting Middle Eastern enterprise mobile devices by posing as VPNs and spoofing apps.

Avast has released a decryptor for variants of the Hades ransomware known as ‘MafiaWare666’, ‘Jcrypt’, ‘RIP Lmao’, and ‘BrutusptCrypt,’ allowing victims to recover their files for free.

The security company says it discovered a flaw in the encryption scheme of the Hades strain, allowing some of the variants to be unlocked. However, this may not apply to newer or unknown samples that use a different encryption system.

Utilizing Avast’s tool, victims of the supported ransomware variants can decrypt and access their files again without paying a ransom to the attackers, which ranges between $50 and $300. However, ransom demands reached tens of thousands in some cases.

Security researchers have found a new piece of malware targeting Microsoft SQL servers. Named Maggie, the backdoor has already infected hundreds of machines all over the world.

Maggie is controlled through SQL queries that instruct it to run commands and interact with files. Its capabilities extend to brute-forcing administrator logins to other Microsoft SQL servers and doubling as a bridge head into the server’s network environment.

The backdoor was discovered by German analysts Johann Aydinbas and Axel Wauer of the DCSO CyTec. Telemetry data shows that Maggie is more prevalent in South Korea, India, Vietnam, China, Russia, Thailand, Germany, and the United States.

Millions of people could suddenly lose electricity if a ransomware attack just slightly tweaked energy flow onto the U.S. power grid.

No single power utility company has enough resources to protect the entire grid, but maybe all 3,000 of the grid’s utilities could fill in the most crucial security gaps if there were a map showing where to prioritize their security investments.

Purdue University researchers have developed an algorithm to create that map. Using this tool, regulatory authorities or cyber insurance companies could establish a framework that guides the security investments of power utility companies to parts of the grid at greatest risk of causing a blackout if hacked.

A popular Chinese-language YouTube channel has emerged as a means to distribute a trojanized version of a Windows installer for the Tor Browser.

Kaspersky dubbed the campaign OnionPoison, with all of the victims located in China. The scale of the attack remains unclear, but the Russian cybersecurity company said it detected victims appearing in its telemetry in March 2022.

The malicious version of the Tor Browser installer is being distributed via a link present in the description of a video that was uploaded to YouTube on January 9, 2022. It has been viewed over 64,500 times to date.

Researchers have disclosed details about a now-patched high-severity security flaw in Packagist, a PHP software package repository, that could have been exploited to mount software supply chain attacks.

“This vulnerability allows gaining control of Packagist,” SonarSource researcher Thomas Chauchefoin said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Packagist is used by the PHP package manager Composer to determine and download software dependencies that are included by developers in their projects.

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