RSS_Virtulization

Got a grudge against an Instagram user? Well, scammers may just have the perfect service for you – at quite an affordable price. As Joseph Cox at Motherboard reports, the criminal underground has stepped beyond the likes of offering ransomware-as-a-service and DDoS-attacks-for-hire to advertise an easy way for anyone to target an Instagram account and have it banned – for $60 or less. Motherboard found the ban-as-a-service operations advertised on underground forums, and – according…

Microsoft continues to work on securing Windows Print Spooler after several vulnerabilities have been disclosed. One remains unpatched, despite new limitations on Point and Print functionality. Background Over the last few months, Microsoft has been reckoning with a series of vulnerabilities in the Windows Print Spooler, a service that provides printer functionality on domain controllers — where it is enabled by default — desktops and servers. In its August Patch Tuesday release, Microsoft patched several…

As the predominantly pandemic-caused global chip shortage rolls on, businesses are now facing another challenge–component scams and bogus supply-chain claims. Image: GettyImages/Jorg Greuel Semiconductor scams are presently big business. As a consequence of the global chip shortage largely created by the over-demand in the COVID-19 pandemic era, fraudsters have stepped up their game to swindle enterprises in dire need of the circuital components.       And the chip drought—according to many experts—could last until…

Nearly three-quarters (72%) of IT leaders are concerned that tools and techniques used by nation-states will eventually end up in the hands of cyber-criminals and be used to attack their organization, according to HP. The findings come from a poll of 1100 IT decision-makers in the UK, the US, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Australia and Japan. Ian Pratt, global head of security, personal systems at HP, argued that such concerns are well-founded. He cited recent events such as…

The US Census Bureau has been heavily criticized by a government inspector after a 2020 breach which could have been prevented by prompt patching. Although the attacker was not able to access servers used for the 2020 census, they could modify user account data to prepare for remote code execution, according to the US Office of Inspector General (OIG) report. Fortunately, the attacker’s attempt to maintain access to the system by creating a backdoor was unsuccessful, thanks to the Bureau’s firewalls….

T-Mobile has admitted that threat actors have stolen personal information on 48.6 million current, former and prospective customers. The US carrier revealed in a notice yesterday that the breach affected 7.8 million current T-Mobile post-paid customer accounts, over 40 million records of former or prospective customers who had applied for credit and 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customers. Previous reports had claimed that over 100 million customers might have been hit after a threat actor offered customer records for sale on…

With increased internet usage during the new normal of remote working, phishing attacks continue to challenge business security defenses. Cyberthugs often distribute malicious codes via various kinds of phishing baits, causing severe consequences to organizations’ critical digital infrastructure. A joint study from Proofpoint and Ponemon Institute revealed that the financial damages from phishing attacks have skyrocketed amid distributed work environments. The 2021 Cost of Phishing Study found that phishing attacks cost organizations nearly $14.8 million (over…

Communication with instructors and students is still crucial to fighting ransomware attacks against higher education institutions, though there needs to be a safety net, a group of university cybersecurity officials said during a panel discussion Thursday. Schools are centralizing data storage, adopting multi-factor authentication and segmenting networks for students, staff and researchers to protect data in case of a breach, panelists said. Mary Dickerson, the chief information security officer at the University of Houston, said…