Tag: ransomware malware

A Chinese national has been indicted in the U.S. on charges of conducting a “multi-year” spear-phishing campaign to obtain unauthorized access to computer software and source code created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), research universities, and private companies. Song Wu, 39, has been charged with 14 counts of wire fraud and 14…

The evolution of software always catches us by surprise. I remember betting against the IBM computer Deep Blue during its chess match against the grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, only to be stunned when the machine claimed victory. Fast forward to today, would we have imagined just three years ago that a chatbot could write…

Sep 18, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Malware A North Korea-linked cyber-espionage group has been observed leveraging job-themed phishing lures to target prospective victims in energy and aerospace verticals and infect them with a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed MISTPEN. The activity cluster is being tracked by Google-owned Mandiant under the moniker UNC2970, which it said overlaps…

Sep 18, 2024Ravie LakshmananBrowser Security / Privacy Google has announced that it’s rolling out a new set of features to its Chrome browser that gives users more control over their data when surfing the internet and protects against online threats. “With the newest version of Chrome, you can take advantage of our upgraded Safety Check,…

Sep 18, 2024Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Encryption The GSM Association, the governing body that oversees the development of the Rich Communications Services (RCS) protocol, on Tuesday, said it’s working towards implementing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to secure messages sent between the Android and iOS ecosystems. “The next major milestone is for the RCS Universal Profile to…

Sep 18, 2024Ravie LakshmananVirtualization / Network Security Broadcom on Tuesday released updates to address a critical security flaw impacting VMware vCenter Server that could pave the way for remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-38812 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as a heap-overflow vulnerability in the DCE/RPC protocol. “A malicious actor with network…

Sep 17, 2024Ravie LakshmananArtificial Intelligence / Regulatory Compliance Meta has announced that it will begin training its artificial intelligence (AI) systems using public content shared by adult users across Facebook and Instagram in the U.K. in the coming months. “This means that our generative AI models will reflect British culture, history, and idiom, and that…

Sep 17, 2024Ravie LakshmananSpyware / Privacy The U.S. Department of Treasury has imposed fresh sanctions against five executives and one entity with ties to the Intellexa Consortium for their role in the development, operation, and distribution of a commercial spyware called Predator. “The United States will not tolerate the reckless propagation of disruptive technologies that…

Sep 17, 2024Ravie LakshmananBrowser Security / Quantum Computing Google has announced that it will be switching from KYBER to ML-KEM in its Chrome web browser as part of its ongoing efforts to defend against the risk posed by cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs). “Chrome will offer a key share prediction for hybrid ML-KEM (codepoint 0x11EC),”…

Sep 17, 2024The Hacker NewsGenAI Security / SaaS Security Since launching ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has defied expectations with a steady stream of product announcements and enhancements. One such announcement came on May 16, 2024, and for most consumers, it probably felt innocuous. Titled “Improvements to data analysis in ChatGPT,” the post outlines how users…