The Threatpost Podcast: Recent Episodes
Mike Mimoso, Chris Brook
Threatpost writers Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss security threats, attacks, vulnerability research and trends with a variety of industry executives, researchers and experts.
There is no question that companies are in the sights of would-be criminals looking to exploit them. While companies look at solutions and trainings to help keep the perimeter secure, the biggest fail point is often the employees, AKA the human element.
In this Threatpost podcast, sponsored by Egress, we sit down with Jack Chapman to discuss the steps and tactics that companies can take to stay one step ahead of their adversaries.
During our conversation, we discuss:
- Weaknesses that attackers look to exploit
- Evolution of toolkits
- Securing MFA and more
There is no question that the level of threats facing today’s businesses continues to change on a daily basis. So what are the trends that CISOs need to be on the lookout for?
For this episode of the Threatpost podcast, I am joined by Derek Manky, , Chief Security Strategist & VP Global Threat Intelligence, Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs to discuss the threats facing CISOs along with more.
During the course of our discussion, we dive into:
- What an attack on all fronts looks like
- The current state of the threat landscape
- New techniques being leveraged be adversaries
- The automation of threats
We also lay out what CISOs need to consider when laying out and producing their threat action plan.
Can I tell you a secret? Will you keep it between us?
You’ve probably said this or heard this when it comes to friends and family. However, do you also know that secret keeping, or lack thereof is one of the biggest issues that businesses face?
According to the recent The State of the Secret Sprawl from GitGuardian further defines the breadth of business secrets.
“A secret can be any sensitive data that we want to keep private. When discussing secrets in the context of software development, secrets generally refer to digital authentication credentials that grant access to services, systems and data. These are most commonly API keys, usernames and passwords, or security certificates. Secrets are what tie together different building blocks of a single application by creating a secure connection between each component. Secrets grant access to the most sensitive systems.”
In this podcast with Mackenzie Jackson, developer advocate at GitGuardian, we dive into the report and also the issues that corporations face with public leaks from groups like Lapsus and more, along with as ways that developers can keep their code safe.
For the full report, click here.
It’s about time, AttackIQ’s Jonathan Reiber said about 24H/72H report deadlines mandated in the new spending bill: Visibility into adversary behavior has been muck.
The ransomware group’s benefits – monthly bonuses, fines, employee of the month, performance reviews and top-notch training materials – might be better than your own company’s, says BreachQuest’s Marco Figueroa.
There's a yawning gap between IT decision makers' confidence about security vs. their concession that repeated incidents are their own fault, says ExtraHop's Jamie Moles.
It’s not just Ukraine: Threat intel experts are seeing a flood of data on Russian military, nukes and crooks, even with the Conti ransomware gang having shuttered its leaking Jabber chat server.
Stock your liquor cabinets and take a shot whenever you hear GitLab Staff Security Researcher Mark Loveless say “Zero Trust.”
With human error being the common factor in most cyberattacks, employee training has got to get better. To that end, Trustwave cybersec training expert Darren Van Booven explains the importance of fish stress balls and management buy-in.
Applications are the most preferred vectors for cybercriminals. Yet no single team or process can assure the rollout of safe cloud applications. From code design to unit testing to deployment, teams and tools have to work together to detect risks early while keeping the pipeline of digital products moving.
Alex Rice, CTO at HackerOne and Johnathan Hunt, VP of Security at GitLab, help development teams evolve their processes to build security directly into their workflows for smooth and safe cloud app rollouts.
They dropped by the Threatpost podcast recently to share tips on DevSecOps, including:
- How to build a continual testing, monitoring, and feedback processes to drive down application risk.
- Developing a continuous approach to application security and DevOps security tools.
- Why collaboration and continual feedback is essential across development, cloud and security teams.
…as well as how to deal with the boatload of animosity between development and security teams. One tip: Assume positive intent!
Threatpost podcast: Cybereason CTO Yonatan Striem-Amit shares details about the company's vaccine: a fast shot in the arm released within hours of the Apache Log4j zero-day horror show having been disclosed.
Imperva’s Peter Klimek visited Threatpost podcast to discuss the evolution of DDoS attacks: They started out as inconveniences but evolved to the point where attackers can disrupt businesses for as little as the price of a cup of coffee,
Imperva's Elad Erez discusses findings that 46% of on-prem databases are sitting ducks, unpatched and vulnerable to attack, each with an average of 26 flaws.
Bryce Webster-Jacobsen – director of intelligence operations at digital risk protection/ransomware negotiators GroupSense – dropped by the Threatpost podcast to tell us what percentage of Ragnar Locker’s warning that victims shouldn't call the FBI/police/negotiators is a bluff and what, if anything, security teams should take seriously.
Interos CEO Jennifer Bisceglie drops by the Threatpost podcast to talk about avoiding the mess a T-Mobile size breach can lead to, with the damage it can do to a business's brand, reputation, customer loyalty and revenue stream.
Trillions of dollars in notional value are controlled by hedge funds and private equity firms, many of which have no cybersecurity protection to speak of. The calamitous, widespread SolarWinds attacks was a wakeup call: Another attack of that ilk could lead to the next 2008-esque financial meltdown. Agio CEO Bart McDonough says AI-enabled service platform could maybe, just maybe, help avert it.
FuzzCon panelists Damilare D. Fagbemi of Resilience Software Security and Anmol Misra of Autodesk say join the party as they share fuzzing wins & fuzzing fails when building a security testing program
n the company’s annual Human Factor 2021 report assessing how the threat landscape morphed over the past year, Proofpoint researchers scratched their heads over the reasons for so many users succumbing to malicious email attachments.
Could be that threat actors jumped on our Pavlovian work-from-home security conditioning, as suggested by Proofpoint vice president and general manager of email fraud defense Rob Holmes. Check out the Threatpost podcast for his take on how the pandemic influenced the threat landscape.
SpecterOps researchers Lee Christensen and Will Schroeder discuss their work, to be presented at Black Hat, on how AD “misconfiguration debt” lays out a dizzying array of attack paths such as the one in the PetitPotam exploit for which Microsoft rushed out a fix.
Threat actors have been building enormous botnets using IoT devices to try to compromise the computing systems that control crucial infrastructure, such as pipelines (case in point: the DarkSide ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline) and other utilities, preying on legacy systems that have decades-old vulnerabilities. In this Threatpost podcast, Armis CISO Curtis Simpson delves into how to fight back.
Podcast: Is protecting your phone from spyware attacks a la NSO Group's Pegasus as simple as getting a new SIM card? Former spyware insider, current mobile white hat hacker Adam Weinberg on how to block three types of spyware attacks.
SophosLabs Principal Researcher Andrew Brandt discusses what makes organizations prime targets for ransomware threat actors, what steps could help them to protect themselves, and what’s stopping them from implementing those steps.
"Trust is a human emotion. Computers don't have emotions. They don't need that trust, inherently" – that's the heart of Zero Trust cybersecurity, and SASE is how to make it happen.
Forcepoint’s Nico Fischbach, global CTO and VPE of SASE, and Chase Cunningham, chief strategy officer at Ericom Software, on using SASE to make Zero Trust a reality.
Forcepoint’s Michael Crouse talks about risk-adaptive data-protection approaches and how to develop a behavior-based approach to insider threats and risk: particularly important as security perimeters have expanded due to the pandemic.
Derek Manky Chief, Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs is joined by Threatpost podcast host Cody Hackett about the cybersecurity supply chain. What is it? How is it funded? And who are the victims and criminals within this multi-million dollar dark economy?
Weeks after the disclosure around the ProxyLogon group of security bugs, exploitation attempts against unpatched Microsoft Exchange servers have skyrocketed.
Derek Manky, Chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs, said that last week researchers with FortiGuard Labs saw activity double over two days for cybercriminals targeting the vulnerabilities. The attackers are using the flaws to deploy cryptominers, ransomware (such as the recently discovered DearCry ransomware) and other malicious campaigns, he said.
Ransomware attacks continue to be a top security issue plaguing companies, with researchers from Fortinet's Fortiguard Labs saying they saw an explosion in ransomware activity towards the end of the fourth quarter of 2020.
Yaniv Balmas, the head of cyber research with Check Point Software, and Oded Vanunu, the head of products vulnerability research with Check Point Software, talk on this week's Threatpost podcast about the new discoveries around the NSA-linked exploit tools, as well as the implications of the SolarWinds supply-chain hack.
Law enforcement have been on a malware-takedown rampage: Last week, several agencies took down servers supporting the Emotet malware. Sherrod DiGrippo, senior director of threat research and detection with Proofpoint, said that no activity involving Emotet has been detected since the takedown effort occurred last week.
Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony last week marked a new strategy for the government's cybersecurity initiatives, with the US president's COVID-19 relief plan including $10 billion in funding for various cybersecurity defense initiatives - from hiring key security personnel to support for the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
In this week’s Threatpost podcast, senior editor Lindsey Welch talks with Steve Moore, chief security strategist with Exabeam, about the data privacy challenges posed by impending exposure notification implementations in the workplace.
Threatpost editors Tom Spring, Tara Seals and Lindsey Welch break down the top security stories to look out for in this week's first podcast of 2021 - from the SolarWinds hack to surging ransomware hospital cyberattacks.
Security defense strategy can be very complex - with security teams not dealing with mere small bits of information, but instead dealing with tens of thousands of data points, from IoCs to TTPs, said Derek Manky, Chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet.
From eCommerce threats, to security concerns in connected speakers, Fortinet researchers discuss the top evolving threats of 2020, heading into the new year.
Researchers - as well as the U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - are warning of a set of serious vulnerabilities affecting TCP/IP stacks. The flaws impact millions of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and embedded systems, including smart thermometers, smart plugs and printers, Forescout researcher Daniel dos Santos said during this week's Threatpost podcast.
Peter Lowe, security researcher with DNSFilter, talks to Cody Hackett on this week's Threatpost Podcast about how DNS filtering tactics are evolving to keep up with new cybercriminal tricks, as well as how companies can protect themselves.
Matt Lewis, research director at NCC Group discloses serious security and privacy in 11 different smart doorbells, which could be exploited by attackers to physically switch off the devices.
Cybercriminals are recognizing that the data that automotive companies have to offer - from customer and employee personal identifiable information (PII) to financial data - are invaluable. Paul Proudhomme, cyber threat intelligence analyst at IntSights, warns that this is translating into cyberattacks - whether it's aimed at Intellectual Property (IP) theft, or ransomware. And, with the ongoing pandemic shaking up both the sales and supply chain across the automotive industry, the risks of cyberthreats are only adding on to an existing pile of problems.
Cybercriminals behind botnets are increasingly shifting their infrastructure from the cloud to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, according to Derek Manky, Chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs.
Threatpost talks to Dragos' Lesley Carhart about the top cybersecurity challenges facing manufacturers during the pandemic.
This Halloween week, Threatpost editors break down the scariest stories haunting the security space, including:
- A wave of ransomware attacks targeting a number of hospitals, sparking worries about healthcare security and the impact on patents during COVID-19
- "Zombie" vulnerabilities - including Zerologon and SMBGhost - that continued to haunt system admins this week
- Election security scares, from disinformation campaigns to cyberattacks hitting election infrastructure.
Chris Eng, chief research officer with Veracode, warns that the deluge of in-person shoppers during the pandemic has pushed restaurants, boutique shops and other retailers to utilize new online software ecommerce platforms - but they aren't prepared for implementing the correct security measures for these platforms.
Derek Manky, Chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs, said that cybercriminals cashed in on the surge of COVID-19 earlier this year with phishing emails purporting to be from healthcare professionals offering more resources and information about the pandemic.
The Threatpost editors break down the top security stories of the week ended Oct. 16, including:
- Patch Tuesday insanity, with Microsoft and Adobe releasing fixes for severe vulnerabilities - including a critical, potentially wormable remote code execution Microsoft vulnerability
- Barnes and Noble being hacked - and why some readers are unhappy with how the book purveyor announced the cyberattack
- DDoS extortion email threats hitting various companies across the globe - including Travelex
- Zoom finally rolling out end-to-end encryption on the video conferencing platform - and why this is different than the video conferencing application's earlier "full encryption" claims
Larry Cashdollar shares his craziest bug finding stories, including a flaw (CVE-1999-0765) found during his position as a UNIX Systems Administrator, which existed in the SGI IRIX midikeys program - and accidentally threw a wrench in a demo for a navy admiral on the Aegis destroyer class ship.
Sharon Brizinov, the principal vulnerability researcher with Claroty, who discovered vulnerabilities a software component used by various critical infrastructure systems, talks about why patching is a headache for manufacturers and other industrials firms.
The Zero Day Initiative team talks about the biggest vulnerability disclosure challenges that ethical hackers are facing - particularly in markets like the industrial world and IoT.
With the U.S. presidential elections looming, disinformation is a top challenge. In the four years since the previous 2016 presidential election, threat actors have created an entire sophisticated and intricate industry around misinformation - raising the bar for social media companies to detect and protect against this threat, new Wednesday Cisco Talos research found.
Threatpost editors Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch and Tara Seals discuss the top security news stories of the week ended Aug. 21, including:
- IBM, the owner of the Weather Channel mobile app, has reached a settlement with the Los Angeles city attorney's office after a 2019 lawsuit alleged that the app was deceiving its users in how it was using their geolocation data.
- A cryptomining worm from the group known as TeamTNT is spreading through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud and collecting credentials.
- Researchers are urging connected-device manufacturers to ensure they have applied patches addressing a flaw in a module used by millions of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.
Researchers are warning of an active campaign that utilized HTML smuggling to deliver malware, effectively bypassing various network security solutions, including sandboxes, legacy proxies and firewalls.
Because HTML smuggling is not necessarily a novel technique - it's been used by attackers for awhile - this campaign shows that bad actors continue to rely on older attack methods that are working. Learn more about this latest attack and how attackers are raising the bar during this week's Threatpost podcast.
Derek Manky, Chief, Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs, said that the semi-annual FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report for the first half of 2020, released Wednesday, reveals an "unprecedented cyber threat landscape."
Information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) may have many of the same objectives - but too often they don't see eye-to-eye when it comes to priorities, said Andrew Ginter, VP Industrial Security at Waterfall Security Solutions in this sponsored podcast.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic pushing the Black Hat USA 2020 conference onto a virtual platform for the first time ever, you can expect the same hot security research and threat intel, high-profile speakers, and vulnerability research being disclosed.
Threatpost editors Tom Spring, Tara Seals and Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch break down the top sessions, keynotes, speakers and themes to look out for in this week's podcast.
From the coronavirus pandemic breaking out, and corporate workforces going remote, "uncertainty is a key word" for 2020, Derek Manky, Chief, Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs said.
Manky talks about the biggest lessons learned so far from 2020, including the most dire threats to date - from sophisticated social engineering lures, to Internet of Things (IoT) vulnerabilities to targeted ransomware attacks.
In this week's Threatpost news wrap podcast, editors Tara Seals and Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch break down the top security news stories, including:
- Hackers accessed direct messages (DMs) for 36 of the 130 high-profile users whose accounts were hacked in an unprecedented account breach last week, Twitter confirmed Wednesday.
- Privacy commissioners worldwide urged video conferencing systems like Microsoft, Cisco and Zoom to adopt end-to-end encryption, two-factor authentication and other security measures.
- Apple's Security Research Device program is now open to select researchers – but some are irked by the program's vulnerability disclosure restrictions.
Christoph Hebeisen, with Lookout, reveals the behind-the-scenes threat intel efforts for discovering a 7-year-old surveillance campaign that was targeting the Uyghur ethnic minority group.
A newly discovered, sophisticated threat group that targets organizations without DMARC implemented and relies on business email compromise is heralding what researchers call "a new age" of business email compromise.
The group, called Cosmic Lynx, is the first reported Russian BEC cybercriminal ring, and it's bringing the once run-of-the-mill email scam attack vector to the next level. The group has been associated with more than 200 BEC campaigns targeting senior-level executives in 46 countries since last July. It uses clear, articulate emails -- with vocabulary like "accretive" and "synergistic" -- that purport to be related to an a "merger and acquisition," keeping with a sensitive theme that targeted employees likely won't discuss.
Jesus Molina, with Waterfall Security, talks to Threatpost host Cody Hackett about the risks that rail operators are facing - from the security issues in railways to the trains themselves - and how railways can stay up-to-date on the best cybersecurity measures by adopting unidirectional gateways and separating enterprise and operational networks.
Mac expert Thomas Reed talks about how the newly discovered EvilQuest ransomware is ushering in a new class of Mac malware.
After months of public concerns surrounding facial recognition's implications for data privacy, surveillance and racial bias, tech companies and governments alike are putting stoppers down on the technology until adequate regulation is proposed.
Threatpost talks to Paul Bischoff, consumer privacy expert with Comparitech, about recent research showcasing flaws in the accuracy of Amazon's facial recognition platform - and why concerns around racial bias and data privacy aren't going away anytime soon.
For the week ended June 19, Threatpost editors Lindsey O'Donnell Welch, Tom Spring and Tara Seals break down the top cybersecurity stories. This week's top news stories include:
- Google removing 106 Chrome browser extensions from its Chrome Web Store in response to a report that they were being used to siphon sensitive user data.
- An internal investigation into the 2016 CIA breach condemning the agency's security measures, saying it "focused more on building up cyber tools than keeping them secure."
- How the insider threat landscape is changing due to work from home - a topic that Threatpost will continue to discuss in its webinar coming up next week (register here).
As a world afflicted by the coronavirus pandemic begins to re-open restaurants, retail stores and more, public health officials remain concerned about the spread of the virus. Technology for contact-tracing apps, intended to help citizens track whether they were exposed to someone who has tested positive for the virus, have been created by countries, U.S. states (like Utah) and by tech giants like Apple and Google.
But behind the public health benefits of contact tracing are privacy worries, technology issues like interoperability, and other challenges. Threatpost discusses the benefits - and the challenges - of contact tracing apps with Steve Moore, chief security strategist at Exabeam.
Threatpost editors Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch and Tara Seals discuss the top security news stories of the week, including:
- Reports emerged earlier this week that the Minneapolis police department had been breached by hacktivist group Anonymous. Security expert Troy Hunt debunked the reports, however.
- Zoom sparked debate after announcing that it would offer end-to-end encryption to paying users only - explaining that it couldn't offer it to everyone as it needs to work with law enforcement to crack down on platform abuse.
With the proliferation of cloud in enterprise environments, identity today is very different than how it used to be. Threatpost host Cody Hackett talks to Brian Johnson, CEO and co-founder of DivvyCloud, about how identity access management (IAM) is rapidly changing - and how businesses can keep up.
Verizon's 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), released Tuesday, analyzed 32,002 security incidents and 3,950 data breaches across 16 industry verticals. While cyber-espionage attacks and malware decreased, other trends, such as security "errors" (like misconfigurations, etc.), denial of service (DoS) attack and web application attacks saw startling growth.
Threatpost editors discuss the top news stories of the week ended May 15, including:
- Recent ransomware attacks, including ones targeting healthcare giant Magellan, the IT office that supports Texas appellate courts and judicial agencies, and a popular law firm that works with several A-list celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Drake and Madonna.
- "Double extortion" methods being increasingly used by ransomware actors - and new research that found paying a ransom to unlock systems can actually cost companies more financially than recovering data themselves in the long run.
- The state of Utah announcing it has settled on a contact-tracing mobile app that collects detailed user location information to track the spread of COVID-19 among citizens – eschewing the API model proposed by Apple and Google in April.
- The roadmap for a COVID-19 contact-tracing app, to be rolled out by the UK's National Health Service (NHS), thrust into the spotlight thanks to sensitive documents being leaked via a public Google Drive link.
Companies are increasingly dealing with a slew of security and compliance issues across cloud services and containers – from AWS to Azure to GCP. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security capabilities can help companies "shift left" to improve developer productivity, avoid misconfigurations and prevent policy violations.
Threatpost host Cody Hackett talks to Chris Hertz, vice president of cloud security sales at DivvyCloud by Rapid7, about the top trends he's seeing around cloud security and how IaC is helping companies handle security and compliancy.
Threatpost editors Tom Spring, Tara Seals and Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch talk about the biggest news stories of the week ended May 1, including:
- A "PhantomLance" espionage campaign discovered targeting specific Android victims, mainly in Southeast Asia — which could be the work of the OceanLotus APT.
- A highly targeted phishing campaign, uncovered this week, with a Microsoft file platform twist, that successfully siphoned the Office 365 credentials of more than 150 executives since mid-2019.
- A Microsoft vulnerability found in Microsoft Teams that could have allowed an inside attacker to weaponize a single GIF image and use it to pilfer data from targeted systems and take over all of an organization's Teams accounts.
Thousands of recycled Zoom credentials have been unearthed on underground forums as cybercriminals tap into remote workers. In this week's podcast, Threatpost does a deep dive into how these credentials are being collected, shared and used.
For the week ended April 24, Threatpost editors discuss a bevy of recent cybersecurity news stories, including:
- Apple zero days were disclosed in the iPhone iOS; researchers say they have been exploited for years, but Apple has pushed back and said there's no evidence to support such activity
- Nintendo confirming that over 160,000 accounts have been hacked, due to attackers abusing a legacy login system
- With the NFL's virtual draft kicking off this week, security researchers and teams have been sounding off on security issues leading to data theft or denial of service attacks
In this week's Threatpost Podcast, Threatpost talks to Dan Dahlberg, director of security research at BitSight, about new research that found that work from home remote office networks are 3.5 times more likely than corporate networks to have a malware infection present.
Researchers with Cisco Talos created threat models outlining how fingerprint scanners could be bypassed utilizing 3D printing technology, and tested them on various mobile devices (including the iPhone 8 and Samsung S10), laptops (including the Samsung Note 9, Lenovo Yoga and HP Pavilion X360) and smart devices (a smart padlock and two USB encrypted pen drives). Craig Williams, director of Cisco Talos Outreach, walks through the results on the Threatpost podcast.
For the week ended March 20, Threatpost editors break down the top security stories, including:
- The various cybercriminal activity - from malware, phishing and other scams - tapping into the coronavirus pandemic
- The security risks of businesses working from home due to the virus' spread
- Privacy concerns as more governments use facial recognition and mobile apps for tracking the virus
- The results of Pwn2Own, which took place this week
A recent 2020 IoT report found that more than half of IoT devices are vulnerable to medium- or high-severity attacks, making IoT the low-hanging fruit for attackers.
Threatpost talks to Ryan Olson, vice president of Threat Intelligence for Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks, and May Wang, senior distinguished engineer at Palo Alto Networks and former Zingbox CTO, about the top IoT threats.
The RSA 2020 conference kicks off next week in San Francisco, this year with a theme looking at the "human element" of cybersecurity. As they prepare to cover the show, Threatpost editors Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch, Tom Spring and Tara Seals break down the biggest news, stories and trends that they expect to hear about at RSA 2020 this year - from trends in the industrial cybersecurity landscape, to connected medical device security issues that will be flagged.
Threatpost editors Tara Seals and Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch break down the top stories for this week, ended Feb. 14, including:
- Recent phishing scams - including ones with a romance hook - continue to trick victims, showing that phishing tactics still work in stealing millions from individuals, corporations, and even government agencies.
- Emotet has a newly discovered feature that hacks nearby Wi-Fi networks, allowing the prolific malware to spread rapidly, like a worm.
- The operators behind the Robbinhood ransomware are using a new tactic called "bring your own bug," which researchers think will continue in future campaigns.
- Patch Tuesday craziness this week included 99 patches from Microsoft, as well as vulnerability fixes from Adobe, Intel and Mozilla Firefox.
Bug bounty programs continue to increase in popularity – but that popularity has its downsides. Since the launch of the Hack the Pentagon program in 2016, bug bounty programs have quickly grown in popularity.
However, as more programs are created, some companies are forgetting the real reason behind bug bounties. That is, instead of making their systems more secure, companies want to merely hunt bugs. Threatpost talked to Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security, to hear more about her thoughts about the challenges in developing – and launching – bug bounty programs.
Researchers on Wednesday disclosed five critical vulnerabilities in Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP), the Cisco Proprietary Layer 2 network protocol that is used to discover information about locally attached Cisco equipment. Threatpost talked to Ben Seri, VP of Research at Armis, who discovered the flaws, about the CDPwn flaws, their impact, and why Layer 2 protocols are an under-researched area.
Researchers say that the vulnerabilities, which they collectively dub CDPwn, can allow attackers to remotely take over millions of devices. The flaws specifically exist in the parsing of CDP packets, in the protocol implementation for various Cisco products, from its software to IP cameras. Cisco issued patches on Wednesday addressing the five flaws, and is urging users to update as soon as possible.
Oded Vanunu, head of products vulnerability research at Check Point research, has seen his share of WhatsApp vulnerabilities – the researcher at Black Hat 2019 demoed several flaws in the messaging platform could be used to manipulate chats, for instance.
However, Vanunu told Threatpost at CPX 360, Check Point's annual security conference that takes place this week, WhatsApp is a prime example of how mobile devices are increasingly becoming targeted by nation state actors, in stark contrast to previous, less serious threats mobile devices have faced like adware.
Threatpost talks to Nick Biasini, a threat researcher at Cisco Talos, about a recently-uncovered threat actor, dubbed Vivin, has made thousands of U.S. dollars through a large-scale cryptomining campaign.
This week's news wrap podcast breaks down the biggest Threatpost security stories of the week, including:
- Various proof-of-concept exploits being released for serious vulnerabilities this week - including for the recently-patched crypto-spoofing vulnerability found by the National Security Agency and reported to Microsoft.
- Multiple cable modems used by ISPs to provide broadband into homes have a critical vulnerability in their underlying reference architecture, dubbed "Cable Haunt," that would allow an attacker full remote control of the device.
- Google's continual battle against attackers who are infiltrating Google Play with Android apps (more than 17,000 apps to date) distributing the Joker malware.
- Google setting an aggressive two-year deadline for dropping support for third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser.
A major Microsoft crypto-spoofing bug impacting Windows 10 made waves this Patch Tuesday, particularly as the flaw was found and reported by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Microsoft's January Patch Tuesday security bulletin disclosed the "important"-severity vulnerability, which could allow an attacker to spoof a code-signing certificate, vital to validating executable programs in Windows, and make it appear as if an application was from a trusted source.
Threatpost talked to Pratik Savla, senior security engineer at Venafi, about the vulnerability, whether the hype around the flaw was warranted, and what the disclosure means for the NSA.
The California Consumer Privacy Act is being touted as one of the strongest privacy regulations in the U.S. enacted so far. However, though the CCPA was adopted on January 1, 2020, the act still has several loose ends and privacy loopholes that need to be fleshed out.
At a high level ,the CCPA mandates strict requirements for companies to notify users about how their user data will be used and monetized along with giving them straightforward tools for opting out. However, one of the bigger challenges with the CCPA is the question of tracking the location of that user data, Terry Ray, SVP and fellow with Imperva, tells Threatpost.
In 2019, diversity in the cybersecurity was thrust to the forefront with recognition from both vendors and experts. The tech industry is facing challenges around diversity in general, but women are particularly underrepresented. And with an estimated 3.5 million jobs are expected to remain unfilledby 2021, infosec is certainly a lucrative space for women.
Threatpost sat down with Jessica LaBouve, a pen tester with A-LIGN, to discuss the personal challenges she's faced in the cybersecurity industry and the opportunities in the space that she sees for improvement.
In this sponsored podcast, Threatpost sits down with Arctic Wolf's Matt Duench to discuss the lessons learned from this year's top data breaches.
From data breaches and the ransomware epidemic, to new regulation and outcry around data privacy, 2019 has been a wild ride for the infosec community. Threatpost breaks down the top news stories, trends and topics for this year.
In a new report, "Holiday Season Cyber Heists" released Thursday morning, Carbon Black said that cybercrime activity tracked during 2019 is already setting the holiday shopping season for an upward trajectory in malware and ransomware attacks.
From constantly-evolving malware like Kryptik, to island hopping attacks, holiday shoppers are the ones who find themselves constantly at risk during cyberattacks against retailers. And retail companies are paying the price: Up to 40 percent of surveyed retail organizations said they've lost revenue as a result of a cyberattack in 2019.
Tom Kellerman, the head cybersecurity strategist with VMware Carbon Black, talks about the newest threats that retail organizations - and shoppers - are facing this holiday shopping season.
In this week's Threatpost news wrap, editors Tara Seals and Lindsey O'Donnell break down the top infosec news, including:
- Authorities cracked down on cybercrime group Evil Corp. with sanctions and charges against its leader, known for his lavish lifestyle.
- The developers behind a commodity remote-access tool (RAT) that allows full control of a victim’s computer has been taken down by Australian and global authorities.
- Feds say they have halted over 600 domestic money mules – exceeding last year’s 400 money mules stopped last year.
The "identifiers" behind data collection - the ways that companies identify consumers who they're collecting the data from - has extended far beyond cookies prevalent in web browsers, privacy experts warn.
Now, consumers and regulators struggling to understand who is collecting data, how that data is being shared and how it's being stored, must also think about 'identifiers" that are used in mobile tracking and even physical tracking - including facial biometrics or credit cards. And unfortunately, according to a new report released this week, these new types of tracking identifiers are still in a stage where its difficult to reign them in via regulation.
We talk to EFF about how data is being tracked and used, how consumers can protect themselves - and why it's not all bad news in our Threatpost Podcast interview.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday-related scams are nothing new - but researchers warn that this year, they are seeing an uptick in scams using more sophisticated methods to lure users to hand over their payment data.
A research report released Tuesday by ZeroFOX uncovered some of the threats that attackers are using to tap into the Black Friday shopping craze, including social media scams, domain impersonation scams, and malware.
Threatpost news editors break down the top stories of the week, including:
- The Coalition Against Stalkerware launched this week, with the aim of offering a centralized location for helping victims of stalkerware, as well as defining what stalkerware is in the first place.
- Five U.S. Senators are demanding that Amazondisclose how it's securing Ring home-security device footage – and who is allowed to access that footage.
- D-Link has warned that more of its routers are vulnerableto critical flaws that allow remote hackers to take control of hardware and steal data - but the routers won't be fixed as they have reached end of life.
Threatpost talks to researchers about a newly-disclosed, high-severity vulnerability in the Google Camera App, the camera built into Android smartphones, that could allow attackers to hijack Android cameras.
In this sponsored podcast, Threatpost podcast host Cody Hackett and Sam McLane, chief technical services officer with Arctic Wolf, discuss important considerations when building a multi-layered cybersecurity strategy and best practices when evaluating security vendors in a crowded landscape.
From insider threats, to Internet of Things (IoT) medical device security, ENFUSE 2019 broke down the top privacy and security issues that consumers are seeing today - and which regulatory efforts are being developed to address them.
Threatpost editors break down the top news stories for the week ended Nov. 8. The top stories of the week include:
- Despite trillions of dollars in breach fine payouts, each year the number of compromised companies and individuals with private data exposed rise - a Threatpost feature looks at why.
- The DoJ charged two former Twitter employeesfor allegedly accessing thousands of accounts on behalf of Saudi Arabia.
- Trend Micro said that a rogue employee sold the data of 68,000 customersto a malicious third party, who then used that data to target customers with scam calls.
- Researchers disclosed a new way to hack Alexa and Sirismart speakers - using a laser light beam.
- What to expect out of our upcoming free Threatpost webinar, "Trends in Fortune 1000 Breach Exposure." (Click here to register)
Emotet, the infamous banking trojan that mysteriously disappeared over the summer, returned last monthdropping other banking trojans, information stealers, email harvesters, self-propagation mechanisms and ransomware.
But since the malware returned from its hiatus, there was no clear novel technique or tactic that researchers observed - until eventually throughout the weeks, security researcher Suweera De Souza started seeing more and more development. De Souza discusses the new techniques with Threatpost on this week's Threatpost Podcast.
Threatpost editors Tara Seals and Lindsey O'Donnell break down the top security news of this week, from data breaches to Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) activity. Top stories include:
- A Microsoft alert that APT group Fancy Bearhas targeted anti-doping authorities and sporting organizations around the world as the world begins to gear up for the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, which kick off July 2020.
- A report outlining that Chinese state-sponsored hackersare attacking telecom networks to sniff out SMS messages that contain keywords revolving around political dissidents.
- Bed, Bath and Beyond disclosing a data breachthat allowed the adversaries to access customers' online accounts - and what researchers say the attack may have stemmed from.
- A nasty phishing campaignthat uses fake voicemail messages to lure victims into revealing their Office 365 email credentials.
John Scott Railton, senior researcher at Citizen Lab, led the charge on the investigation into NSO Group and the alleged WhatsApp hack. The lawsuit by WhatsApp parent company Facebook into NSO Group, he said, is a "certified big deal" and will have widespread implications for commercial spyware companies in general.
Threatpost editors break down the top news stories for the week ended Oct. 25. The biggest stories include:
- An unsecured NFC tag opening a door totrivial exploitation of robotsthat are used inside Japanese hotels.
- The FTC has bannedthe sale of three apps – marketed to monitor children and employees – unless the developers can prove that the apps will be used for legitimate purposes.
- Developer interfaces were used by Security Research Labs researchers to turn digital home assistantsinto 'Smart Spies'.