Cyber Bites

Jeremy Fleming, the head of intelligence at intelligence agency GCHQ has said that the technology on which we rely will no longer be shaped by the West. When addressed with the growing challenge from China, he claimed: "we have to keep evolving our approach if we're going to keep up." As an example he listed the so-called 'smart cities', which, in the future, will collect large amounts of personal data. In addition, he warned that:...

Moxie Marlinspike, CEO of encrypted messaging app Signal has found vulnerabilities in the software developed by Cellebrite. The vulnerabilities found in the data extraction company's code allow for arbitrary code execution on the device. Cellebrites products are mostly used by governments and the police to unlock any iOS and Android devices to extract data. Late last year it was announced that the Physical Analyzer also had access to data stored on Signal. In a blogpost,...

New figures published by the UK government show that almost half (49%) of UK residents have purchased at least one new smart device since the beginning of COVID-19. As a result, manufacturers of smart devices such as phones, speakers, and doorbells will need to provide customers with information about how long they will be guaranteed to receive crucial security updates. Everyday devices such as these (or smart watches, TVs, cameras, etc.) have many positive benefits,...

Domino's in India has suffered a data breach in which credit card details and personal information of both customers and employees have been exposed. The leaked information is being sold on the dark web, for which the hacker is demanding 10 BTC. Included in the data stolen are names, contact numbers, email IDs, addresses, credit card details and more. The total number of customers affected in the breach is still unknown, however the total size...

Cert-In, the Indian cybersecurity watchdog has recently issued a 'high' severity rating against WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business. The emergency response team has reported finding 'multiple' vulnerabilities within the mobile application, which could give hackers access to sensitive information.  A vulnerability note was released stating: “Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code or access sensitive information on a target system." This issue only affects users still running an old version...

Yesterday the University of Hertfordshire was targetted by a cyberattack which resulted in the universities entire IT network being taken down, as well as all access to cloud-based services being blocked. The attack started on Wednesday night at 22:00, when the universities Wi-Fi network was taken down alongside the email system and the universities student portal. Since the attack students have also reported that they have not been able to access Office 365 services, such...

Capcom has released the final update on their investigation into the major ransomware attack they suffered last year. The investigation has found that the attackers accessed the company through an outdated VPN device. Through this avenue, the attackers were able to access the companies network, as well as any compromised devices in the network. The attack took place in November 2020, when Capcom was targeted by the Ragnar Locker ransomware. The attack resulted in Capcom...

The FBI has been removing web shells from compromised Microsoft Exchange serves following court authorisation. However, owners of the Microsoft Exchange servers were never informed or able to approve of the FBI's actions. In February, the hacking group HAFIUM exploited several vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange's servers. The group installed web shells in compromised Exchange servers which allowed them to remotely access the servers. Following the attack, Microsoft released a security update that patched the exploited...

Microsoft has recently launched a cyberattack simulator that allows security researchers to study AI-driven attacks in simulated network environments. The simulator is named CyberBattleSim and can be accessed through an open-source license that uses a Python-based Open AI Gym toolkit. The sim can be used to train automated agents through reinforcement learning algorithms. Microsoft's 365 Defender Research Team launched the CyberBattleSim as part of their efforts to use AI and machine learning in their security...

A new report by criminologists at the University of Surrey and cybersecurity researchers at HP has found that nation-state attacks have risen considerably in the last three years. The report also revealed that both enterprises and businesses are amongst the most targetted organisations by nation-state attackers. The research analyses nation-state attacks taking place between 2017 and 2020. The report discovered that around a third of organisations targeted by the attacks were businesses. The industries that...