A Review of the Best News of the Week on Cyber Threats & Defense
Intel will soon bake anti-malware defenses directly into its CPUs (Ars Technica, Jun 15 2020)
Control-Flow Enforcement Technology will debut in Tiger Lake microarchitecture.
Ryuk Continues to Dominate Ransomware Response Cases (Dark Reading, Jun 15 2020)
Analysis reveals how Ryuk’s operators are changing their techniques and using new means to break in.
Bundlore adware brings a new nest of risks to Mac users (Naked Security – Sophos, Jun 18 2020)
As the name suggests, Bundlore isn’t really one item of adware, but what SophosLabs likes to call bundleware – a software installer that lures you in, for example with promises of enabling you to “download, play and organise third party files, video, audio and other content.”
Filter Out the Noise
Since I started this curated newsletter in June 2017, I’ve clipped ~14,000 articles and narrowed them down into the best 20 per day & best 15 per week. This is my favorite way to cut through all the security marketing and hype. If you’re enjoying it, tell a friend. If you hate it, tell an enemy.
Thanks! – Lucas Samaras
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Half of Firms Likely Running Vulnerable Oracle E-Business Suite (Dark Reading, Jun 16 2020)
Two security vulnerabilities could open up companies to financial attacks and compliance violations if the software is not updated, Onapsis says.
To evade detection, hackers are requiring targets to complete CAPTCHAs (Ars Technica, Jun 18 2020)
Requiring human interaction thwarts automated analysis used by good guys.
Email security challenges and BEC trends during the pandemic (Help Net Security, Jun 18 2020)
COVID-related attacks increased 436% between the second and third weeks of March 2020, with an average 173% week-over-week increase during the quarter, according to Abnormal Security. A trend toward payment fraud There has also been a shift from individual to group BEC attacks, with campaigns with more than 10 recipients up 27% compared to Q4 2019.
Microsoft Defender ATP Gets UEFI Scanner (SecurityWeek, Jun 18 2020)
Microsoft has extended the protection capabilities of Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with the addition of a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) scanner.
Bot Mafias Have Wreaked Havoc in ‘World of Warcraft Classic’ (Wired, Jun 17 2020)
Blizzard has suspended or closed over 74,000 accounts in the last month, as bots have upended the game’s economy.
Mysterious ‘AcidBox’ Malware Used Turla Exploit to Target Russian Organizations (SecurityWeek, Jun 19 2020)
Targeted attacks delivering a new piece of malware leveraged an exploit previously associated with the Russian-linked Turla hacking group, Palo Alto Networks reveals.
Password Resets and the Remote Workforce: A Security Disaster Waiting to Happen (Infosecurity Magazine, Jun 22 2020)
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new challenge is beginning to arise – the need to change or reset passwords remotely
AMD Preparing Patches for UEFI SMM Vulnerability (SecurityWeek, Jun 22 2020)
AMD last week said it was preparing patches for a vulnerability affecting the System Management Mode (SMM) of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) shipped with systems that use certain notebook and embedded processors.
What Is a Side Channel Attack? (Wired, Jun 21 2020)
Computers constantly give off more information than you might realize—which hackers can use to pry out their secrets.