IT Security Newsletter - 2/26/2020
Massachusetts Electric Utility Hit by Ransomware
The Reading Municipal Light Department (RMLD), an electric utility in Massachusetts, informed customers on Monday that its systems were targeted last week in a ransomware attack. RMLD says it serves over 68,000 residents in the towns of Reading, North Reading, Wilmington and Lynnfield Center. The company says the ransomware attack had no impact on the delivery of electricity, and it has found no evidence that customer financial data has been compromised as a result of the incident. READ MORE...
Google Patches Chrome Browser Zero-Day Bug, Under Attack
Google said Monday it has patched a Chrome web browser zero-day bug being actively exploited in the wild. The flaw affects versions of Chrome running on the Windows, macOS and Linux platforms. The zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-6418, is a type of confusion bug and has a severity rating of high. Google said the flaw impacts versions of Chrome released before version 80.0.3987.122. The bug is tied to Chrome's open-source JavaScript and Web Assembly engine, called V8. READ MORE...
The "Cloud Snooper" malware that sneaks into your Linux servers
SophosLabs has just published a detailed report about a malware attack dubbed Cloud Snooper. The reason for the name is not so much that the attack is cloud-specific (the technique could be used against pretty much any server, wherever it's hosted), but that it's a sneaky way for cybercrooks to open up your server to the cloud, in ways you very definitely don't want, "from the inside out". READ MORE...
Stalkerware Attacks Increased 50 Percent Last Year, Report
The number of stalkerware attacks on mobile devices increased 50 percent over the last year, showing an upward and continued trend in the emerging threat, researchers said. Over the past year, the instances of stalkerware-which tracks users without their knowledge and can result in harassment, surveillance, stalking and even domestic violence-increased from 40,386 unique users in 2018 to 67,500 in 2019, according to new research from Kaspersky. READ MORE...
Multiple WordPress Plugin Vulnerabilities Actively Being Attacked
Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the recent security flaws reported recently in popular WordPress plugins and are targeting websites that still run vulnerable versions. At least two threat actors are actively attacking unpatched variants of ThemeGrill Demo Importer, Profile Builder, and Duplicator plugins which are installed on. What the three WordPress components have in common are recent reports of a critical severity bug that could be exploited to compromise the website they run on. READ MORE...