Author Archives: Sean Lyngaas

Signal wants to protect protesters’ privacy with new face-blurring feature

Posted on by

Protesters worried about government or corporate surveillance will soon have a new tool to protect themselves. Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app, will release a feature that enables users to blur faces in photos they share, Signal Foundation co-founder Moxie Marlinspike said Wednesday. The feature will be built into forthcoming versions of Signal for Android and iOS to automatically detect faces and obscure them. For faces that aren’t detected, the user can manually blur the image before sending, Marlinspike said. The announcement comes as U.S. authorities have increased their efforts to monitor protests following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man. The U.S. Department of Justice has given the Drug Enforcement Administration new authority to “conduct covert surveillance” of some protesters, according to a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News. (Exact details of the surveillance remains unclear.) More than 10,000 people have been arrested in protests against systemic racism since Floyd’s killing on May […]

The post Signal wants to protect protesters’ privacy with new face-blurring feature appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Signal wants to protect protesters’ privacy with new face-blurring feature→

This matters more: How cyber pros are confronting racism in their own ranks, and beyond

Posted on by

The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week prompted Leroy Terrelonge to do something he had never done: vividly recall all of his experiences with racism since youth. “I was surprised by how incidents that I had buried deep suddenly surged back to my memory and hurt all over again,” said Terrelonge, 34, a black cyber-risk analyst at Moody’s. “I imagined how they could have taken a wrong turn under certain circumstances and I, too, could be dead.” Terrelonge is one of millions of black Americans experiencing Floyd’s death in visceral ways. He’s also one of many cybersecurity professionals searching for the right balance between work and advancing social justice. The daily grind of reverse-engineering malware feels trivial when police are teargassing peaceful protesters, neighborhoods are in flames and opportunists unaffiliated with black social-justice causes are violently exploiting the unrest. “Information security is not often a matter of life or death, even for those […]

The post This matters more: How cyber pros are confronting racism in their own ranks, and beyond appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading This matters more: How cyber pros are confronting racism in their own ranks, and beyond→

Researcher claims $100,000 for ‘Sign in with Apple’ hack

Posted on by

The same login feature that Apple introduced last year to protect privacy could have been abused to hack into third-party applications on an iPhone, a security researcher has found. The discovery earned New Delhi-based programmer Bhavuk Jain $100,000, he said, highlighting the critical nature of the flaw and the big payouts Apple has been offering through a bug bounty program it expanded last year. Jain figured out how to generate a login token for an Apple ID and use it to access third-party apps with lax security. Manipulating the tokens at their source was all Jain needed to access the apps. The research comes a year after Apple unveiled the “Sign in with Apple” feature, which authenticates users on apps without disclosing their Apple IDs. Apple has touted it as a more privacy-conscious alternative to requiring users to log in to apps through their social media accounts. Jain did not detail […]

The post Researcher claims $100,000 for ‘Sign in with Apple’ hack appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Researcher claims $100,000 for ‘Sign in with Apple’ hack→

How GitHub untangled itself from the ‘Octopus’ malware that infected 26 software projects

Posted on by

For GitHub, not all reports about malicious software on its platform are of equal importance. The company behind the popular software repository, where developers often share code rather than building it from scratch, revealed this week that attackers were trying to exploit the open-source nature of the site to distribute malware. A hacking tool was designed to spread through software projects, then leave a “backdoor” that could offer hackers persistent access to the software. By infiltrating open-source software, hackers could have given themselves a foothold in code that was later included in corporate apps or websites. Open-source websites continue to represent valuable targets for hackers hoping that technology companies will adopt compromised tools to build their own software. (GitHub claims the site has tens of millions of users.) In this case, the malicious code — which spread to 26 different GitHub projects — is an example of the potentially insidious nature of open-source supply chain compromises. Dubbed Octopus Scanner, […]

The post How GitHub untangled itself from the ‘Octopus’ malware that infected 26 software projects appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading How GitHub untangled itself from the ‘Octopus’ malware that infected 26 software projects→

Japanese IT services firm reveals hack affecting up to 621 customers

Posted on by

Hackers earlier this month breached the computer systems of Japanese data-management company NTT Communications in an incident that could affect 621 clients, the company said Thursday. NTT Communications, which powers data centers in more than 20 countries or regions, said the unidentified hackers had breached the company’s Active Directory server, a repository of network data, and used it as the focal point of their attack. Four days after the breach began, NTT officials realized that data may be leaving their network. In a rare level of detail for a breach disclosure, the company said it had identified external websites the attackers were using to communicate with their malware and shut off those access points. Between cloud computing and other IT services, NTT Communications has a wealth of data for hackers to aim at. It is one of several subsidiaries of NTT Group, a Fortune 100 tech giant with more than 303,000 employees. NTT officials are in […]

The post Japanese IT services firm reveals hack affecting up to 621 customers appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Japanese IT services firm reveals hack affecting up to 621 customers→

Israeli official confirms attempted cyberattack on water systems

Posted on by

Israel last month thwarted a cyberattack on control systems at water facilities, a senior government official said Thursday while warning of the dangers of escalating conflicts in cyberspace. The “synchronized and organized attack” on civilian infrastructure was aimed at disrupting the industrial computers that underpin Israeli water facilities, said Yigal Unna, head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, in the most extensive public comments from an Israeli official yet on the incident. “Serious damage” could have been done to those systems if Israeli authorities hadn’t foiled the attack, Unna claimed. “We’re now in the middle of preparing for the next phase [of attacks] to come — because it will come eventually,” he said in a speech streamed at the CybertechLive Asia conference. Public details on the attack are scarce, as Israeli officials have not released forensic data in connection with the incident. The Israeli cyber directorate issued a terse statement in late April about attempted breaches […]

The post Israeli official confirms attempted cyberattack on water systems appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Israeli official confirms attempted cyberattack on water systems→

‘Valak’ gives crooks flexibility in multi-stage malware attacks

Posted on by

Hackers often plant their malicious software on computers in stages. One piece of code can be a foothold onto a network, another delivers the malware, and yet another executes it to steal or manipulate data. But looks can be deceiving. The same code used as a staging tool in one attack might be the tip of the spear in another. For targeted organizations, spotting the difference can mean saving your data. That’s the case with a malicious program that has been used in hacking attempts against multiple economic sectors in the U.S. and Germany in the last six months, according to research published Thursday by security company Cybereason. About 150 organizations in the financial, retail, manufacturing, and health care sectors have been targeted by the Valak malware since it emerged late last year, the researchers said. More than just a “loader” that delivers malicious code, Valak can also be used […]

The post ‘Valak’ gives crooks flexibility in multi-stage malware attacks appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading ‘Valak’ gives crooks flexibility in multi-stage malware attacks→

Canadian judge OKs extradition proceedings for Huawei CFO

Posted on by

A Canadian judge has ruled that extradition proceedings to the U.S. should continue for an executive of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. The ruling is a blow to Huawei’s efforts to shield its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, from the U.S. justice system, and a further escalation in the long-running war between the U.S. government and one of the world’s biggest technology companies. U.S. prosecutors have for over a year sought the extradition of Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, on charges that she participated in a bank fraud scheme that violated trade sanctions against Iran. After Canadian authorities arrested Meng in December 2018, she fought extradition, arguing that the allegations did not constitute a crime in Canada. But a British Columbia Supreme Court judge dismissed that argument Wednesday, saying that the offense she is accused of would be a crime if it occurred in Canada, potentially clearing the way for her extradition. […]

The post Canadian judge OKs extradition proceedings for Huawei CFO appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Canadian judge OKs extradition proceedings for Huawei CFO→

German intelligence agencies warn of Russian hacking threats to critical infrastructure

Posted on by

A Kremlin-linked hacking group has continued its long-running efforts to target German companies in the energy, water and power sectors, according to a confidential German government advisory obtained by CyberScoop. Investigators earlier this year uncovered evidence of the hackers’ “longstanding compromises” at unnamed German companies, according to the memo that German intelligence and security agencies sent last week to operators of critical infrastructure. The hacking group — dubbed Berserk Bear and suspected by some industry analysts of operating on behalf of Russia’s FSB intelligence agency — has been using the supply chain to access the German companies’ IT systems, said the alert from the BSI, BND, and BfV federal agencies. “The attackers’ goal is to use publicly available but also specially written malware to permanently anchor themselves in the IT network…steal information or even gain access to productive systems [OT networks],” the advisory said. There was no evidence of a disruptive attack […]

The post German intelligence agencies warn of Russian hacking threats to critical infrastructure appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading German intelligence agencies warn of Russian hacking threats to critical infrastructure→

‘Turla’ spies have been stealing documents from foreign ministries in Eastern Europe, researchers find

Posted on by

A notorious group of suspected Russian hackers have used a revamped tool to spy on governments in Eastern Europe and quietly steal sensitive documents from their networks, researchers said Tuesday. The discovery shines greater light on the operations of Turla, an elite cyber-espionage group that’s been around well over a decade and is widely believed to be working on behalf of Russia’s FSB intelligence agency. It’s the latest example of Turla’s ability to write code designed to lurk on victim computers for years and extract state secrets. Turla is “still actively developing complex and custom pieces of malware in order to achieve long-term persistence in their target’s network,” said Matthieu Faou, a malware researcher at anti-virus firm ESET, who analyzed the code. The attacks started roughly two years ago, and hit two foreign affairs ministries in Eastern Europe and a national parliament in the Caucasus region bordering Russia, according to […]

The post ‘Turla’ spies have been stealing documents from foreign ministries in Eastern Europe, researchers find appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading ‘Turla’ spies have been stealing documents from foreign ministries in Eastern Europe, researchers find→