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IT Security Newsletter - 2/14/2023

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Top News

Russian Hackers Disrupt NATO Earthquake Relief Operations

NATO's Special Operations Headquarters and Strategic Airlift Capability - both working to deliver humanitarian aid to victims of the recent Turkish-Syrian earthquake - were among NATO organizations disrupted by a weekend cyberattack. Russian-based Killnet threat group has claimed responsibility for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against NATO, according to reports. READ MORE...

Hacking

Record-Breaking 71 Million RPS DDoS Attack Seen by Cloudflare

Web protection company Cloudflare over the weekend mitigated a record-setting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that peaked at 71 million requests per second (RPS). The assault, the company says, was the largest HTTP DDoS attack on record, but was not the only one observed this past weekend. In fact, Cloudflare identified and mitigated dozens of DDoS attacks at the end of last week, most of which peaked between 50-70 million RPS. READ MORE...

Trends

'Pig butchering' scams on the rise, luring victims with promises of relationships and riches

Scammers seeking to con unsuspecting targets into giving up money under the guise of friendship or love are alive and well ahead of this Valentine's Day, a researcher said in a report released Monday. In the report from the cybersecurity firm Sophos, senior researcher Sean Gallagher detailed two recent so-called "pig butchering" scams - a macabre term for frauds in which scammers attempt to extract as much money as possible from their victims - he observed over the past 18 months. READ MORE...


Ransomware attacks surge against US manufacturing plants

The manufacturing industry suffered at least 437 ransomware attacks in 2022, making up more than 70% of these types of costly and disruptive assaults that industrial companies faced last year, according to the cybersecurity firm Dragos. The number of attacks against manufacturing plants also jumped about 107% compared with the 211 recorded against the sector in 2021. READ MORE...

Software Updates

Apple fixes zero-day spyware implant bug - patch now!

Apple has just released updates for all supported Macs, and for any mobile devices running the very latest versions of their respective operating systems. Given that the Safari browser has been updated on the pre-previous and pre-pre-previous versions of macOS, we're assuming that older mobile devices will eventually receive patches, too, but you'll have to keep your eyes on Apple's official HT201222 Security Updates portal to know if and when they come out. READ MORE...

Malware

~11,000 sites have been infected with malware that's good at avoiding detection

Nearly 11,000 websites in recent months have been infected with a backdoor that redirects visitors to sites that rack up fraudulent views of ads provided by Google Adsense, researchers said. All 10,890 infected sites, found by security firm Sucuri, run the WordPress content management system and have an obfuscated PHP script that has been injected into legitimate files powering the websites. READ MORE...


New 'MortalKombat' ransomware targets systems in the U.S.

Hackers conducting a new financially motivated campaign are using a variant of the Xortist commodity ransomware named 'MortalKombat,' together with the Laplas clipper in cyberattacks. Both malware infections are used to conduct financial fraud, with the ransomware used to extort victims to receive a decryptor and Laplas to steal cryptocurrency by hijacking crypto transactions. READ MORE...


451 PyPI packages install Chrome extensions to steal crypto

Over 450 malicious PyPI python packages were found installing malicious browser extensions to hijack cryptocurrency transactions made through browser-based crypto wallets and websites. This discovery is a continuation of a campaign initially launched in November 2022, which initially started with only twenty-seven malicious PyPi packages, and now greatly expanding over the past few months. READ MORE...

On This Date

  • ...in 1948, illusionist and writer Raymond Joseph Teller, AKA the silent half of comedy magic duo Penn & Teller, is born in Philadelphia, PA.
  • ...in 1970, actor Simon Pegg ("Shaun of the Dead", "Mission: Impossible" series) is born in Gloucestershire, England.
  • ...in 1990, the Voyager 1 space probe takes one last photograph of Earth before leaving our Solar System, a 6-billion-mile shot known as "Pale Blue Dot".
  • ...in 2005, the video sharing site YouTube is launched by founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim.