The shadowy world of private spyware has long caused alarm in cybersecurity circles, as authoritarian governments have repeatedly been caught targeting the smartphones of activists, journalists, and political rivals with malware purchased from unscrupulous brokers. The surveillance tools these companies provide frequently target iOS and Android, which have seemingly been unable to keep up with the threat. READ MORE...
Discord has a malware problem. And although the platform is predominantly used by gamers, it turns out even users who have never interacted with Discord are at risk. Discord creates servers or specific groups or communities of users who can send voice, text and other media messages between one another quickly. Researchers say there has been a massive uptick in the number of found Discord malware detections compared to last year. READ MORE...
Scammers are already taking advantage of the hype surrounding Microsoft's next Windows release to push fake Windows 11 installers riddled with malware, adware, and other malicious tools. While Windows 11 will start rolling out worldwide during early 2022, Microsoft has already made it available for install to all customers enrolled in the Insider program after officially unveiling it as the next version of Windows last month. READ MORE...
Security researchers have discovered a specific single bit (Trap Flag) in the Intel CPU register that malware can abuse to evade sandbox detection. According to researchers at Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat research group, malware can detect whether it is executing in a physical or virtual machine (VM) by monitoring the response of the CPU after setting this single bit. READ MORE...
French researcher Gilles Lionel, who goes by @topotam77, recently published proof-of-concept code that attackers could use to take over a Windows network. The hack, which he has dubbed PetitPotam (which is a nod to the endangered Pygmy Hippopotamus, as far as we can tell), involves what's known as an NTLM relay attack, which is a form of manipulator-in-the-middle (MitM) attack against Microsoft's NTLM authentication system. READ MORE...