Cyber Bites

As businesses’ daily operations become more dependent on cloud services, ransomware authors will follow to maximize profits. The good news: Many of the best practices for physical servers also apply to the cloud. Ransomware is now a billion-dollar enterprise for cybercriminals, and — as in any industry — it has evolved over time to become more efficient and maximize profits. Source: Dark Reading  

Mac laptops and desktops running OSX have a reputation as being virus- and malware-free, but as Apple's market share increases, cybercriminals are beginning to focus their efforts on OSX machines, according to a recent report by Malwarebytes. The State of Malware 2020 report is a deep dive into what this anti-malware company has found on computers and devices across its installation base, covering Windows, macOS/OSX, iOS and Android operating systems, and splitting threats into categories such as...

A very clever phishing campaign is underway that pretends to be fraud protection emails from American Express and Chase that ask you to confirm if the listed credit card transactions are legitimate. If you have credit cards and commonly use them, you may have received emails in the past asking you to confirm if a particular credit card transaction is valid. Source: Bleeping Computer  

The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. accidentally left over 440 million records publicly exposed after failing to password-protect a corporate database, according to a researcher who spotted the oversight. The misconfigured database was found to contain user emails in plain text, including those sent from internal email addresses; references to reports and internal documents; and IP addresses, ports, pathways and storage information. Additionally, it stored Production, Audit, Error, CMS and Middleware logs. All in all, a...

Katie Price has been forced to battle Facebook after hackers stole control of her account and changed it into a page for quotes and memes. The 41-year-old former glamour model has been locked out of her verified Katie Price account for weeks, and has accused mysterious repeat hackers of taking control of it for the third time. Katie's rep told Mirror Online: "She's been hacked - we've been trying to get it back via Facebook. Source: Mirror

Criminal groups are exploiting fears over the recent novel coronavirus outbreak in an email phishing campaign directed at the global shipping industry, according to a report issued Monday by a California-based cybersecurity firm. Source: Global News

Phishing emails have been uncovered that request a full rundown of personal data – even asking for photos of passports. A recently uncovered phishing campaign, targeting PayPal users, pulls out all the stops and asks victims for the complete spectrum of personal data – even going so far as to ask for social security numbers and uploaded photos of their passports. Source: Threat Post

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 54th Research Institute were charged for hacking the credit reporting agency Equifax in 2017. On January 28, 2020, a federal grand jury in Atlanta returned an indictment alleging that Wu Zhiyong (吴志勇), Wang Qian (王乾), Xu Ke (许可), and Liu Lei (刘磊) broke into Equifax's computing systems and stole sensitive personal info of nearly half of all U.S. citizens and Equifax trade secrets. Source: Bleeping Computer

Facebook has been targeted by Saudi-based hacking collective OurMine after compromise of its Twitter and Instagram accounts. Red faces for security teams at both Twitter and Instagram, after the official accounts of Facebook and Messenger were briefly compromised on those platforms. Source: Silicon