Cyber Bites

Google has taken steps to axe dozens of malicious apps from the official Play Store that were spotted propagating Facestealer, Joker, and Coper malware families through the virtual marketplace. Bad actors have repeatedly found ways to sneak past security barriers put up by Google in hopes of luring unsuspecting users into downloading the fraudulent apps. On Monday, researchers Viral Gandhi and Himanshu Sharma said in a report that "Joker is one of the most prominent malware...

The FBI has warned US financial institutions and investors of a surge in fake apps designed to trick consumers into depositing cryptocurrency. Over an unspecified time scale, such scams have already cost $42.7million to 244 identified victims. The Private Industry Notification claimed, "The FBI has observed cyber-criminals using the names, logos and other identifying information of legitimate US businesses, including creating fake websites with this information, as part of their ruse to gain investors.” “Financial...

A court in Moscow has imposed a fine of $358million (21 billion rubles) on Google LLC for failing to restrict access to information that the country considers prohibited. An announcement by Russia's internet watchdog, Roskomnadzor, Google, and its subsidiary YouTube, have failed to remove the following materials even after many requests from the Russian IT controller: Content promoting extremism and terrorism Information that promotes participation in unauthorised mass action Content promoting harmful acts for the...

The Matrix open network for decentralised communication now counts more than 60 million users, announcing a record growth of 79%. The network is run by a small team of developers and volunteers working to provide a secure and private alternative to other messaging options. In the past year, 25 million users have joined the service, as a result of three key events. First, individuals and corporate entities sought a secure collaboration platform after recognising the...

Data generated by OnePoll from a survey of over 2000 general population Americans from April 28th to May 3rd 2022 on behalf of AT&T found that the average person happens upon a suspicious social media account or online site 6.5 times a day. It also found that 54% of consumers said that they were unaware of the difference between active and passive security threats, with the majority being reactive as opposed to proactive about password...

Crypto exchanges on the dark web are facing a "bank run" because of falling cryptocurrency prices, security researchers have discovered. The fall in value is making it harder for threat actors to "monetise" their attacks, fun malware-as-a-service operations or buy vulnerabilities. Cryptocurrencies have lost up to $1.8tn in value since the market's peak in November 2021, Dov Lerner, security research lead at Cybersixgill, suggested. Holders are exchanging their crypto for more stable currencies. Lerner also...

The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System (VCU) has warned almost 4500 transplant participants about a privacy breach affecting the healthcare information. The company warned that some transplant recipients' medical records included information about their donor too. Some recipient information also appeared on donors' records too. In some cases, this information has been exposed since 2006. The information visible included Social Security numbers, names, and medical record numbers, amongst other things. In total, 4441 people were...

During an attack earlier this week, Uniswap, a popular decentralised cryptocurrency exchange, lost close to $8million worth of Ethereum. The cyberattack has impacted many investors in digital assets. The threat actors used the lure of free UNI tokens (airdrops) to trick victims into approving a transaction that gave hackers full access to wallets. The trap was a disguised "setApprovalForAll" function that assigns or revokes full approval rights to the operator. This essentially allows the attacker...

A 2022 report by the security firm Digital Shadows analyzed 90 data leak sites on the dark web and found that there were a 705 victims in Q2. This is a 21% increase compared to Q1 where the firm found 582 victims on the same sites. The leading ransomware group was Lockbit, utilizing the new ransomware operation Lockbit 3.0, which they claim is the “world’s fastest and most stable ransomware”. Lockbit overtook the infamous Conti...

In Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday update this week, Microsoft patched a zero-day bug that allowed remote execution on Windows machines and which is already being exploited in the wild. CVE-2022-22047 is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Client/Server Runtime Subsystem (CSRSS), which is responsible for Windows features, including the shutdown process. Details on how to exploit the bug have not been publicly disclosed. An attack that succeeds could, however, gain access to SYSTEM...