Executive Summary There has been considerable focus on the recent disclosures associated with SolarWinds, and while existing analysis on the broader campaign has resulted in detection against specific IoCs associated with the Sunburst trojan, the focus within the Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team has been to determine the possibility of additional persistence measures. Our analysis into the backdoor reveals that the level of access lends itself to the assumption that additional persistence mechanisms could have…

End users just want to do their job, not become cybersecurity experts. When providing users with cybersecurity help, keep these tips in mind. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto For many years, IT professionals have been trying to turn everyone who uses a computing device into a tech-savvy superuser who understands precisely what’s needed to stay safe while traversing the internet. People have indeed become superusers, but not necessarily super secure. To make matters worse, if users are…

Researchers have discovered a botnet dubbed PgMiner that targets PostgreSQL databases running on Linux servers to install a cryptocurrency miner. Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks have discovered a new botnet, tracked as PgMiner, that targets PostgreSQL databases running on Linux servers to install a cryptocurrency miner. PostgreSQL, also known as Postgres, is one of the most-used open-source relational database management systems (RDBMS) for production environments. It ranks fourth among all database management systems (DBMS)…

Researchers at a British university have created a new algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to predict which Twitter users are going to spread disinformation before they do it. The machine-learning algorithm was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Sheffield, led by PhD student Yida Mu and Dr. Nikos Aletras from the university’s Department of Computer Science. It can pinpoint with 79.7% accuracy which users are likely to share content from a news source…

Jack Wallen shows you how easy it can be to encrypt text to be sent via email, using Apple Mail and the GPG Suite. Image: iStockphoto/metamorworks If you’re at all security minded, you probably use encryption on some level. If you send sensitive documentation or information to others via email, you certainly use encryption. If not, it’s time you do. Problem is, most fail to use encryption because it’s not exactly the easiest task to…

Last week, we held our first Community All Hands and the response was phenomenal. A huge thank you to all 1,100+ people who joined. If you missed it, you can watch the recording here. You can also find answers to those questions that came in towards the end that we didn’t have time to answer here. This all-hands was an effort to further deepen our engagement with the community and bring users, contributors and staff…