"The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added a critical security bug in Linux to its list of vulnerabilities known to be actively exploited in the wild," reported Ars Technica on Friday. "The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1086 and carrying a severity rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10, allows people who have already gained a foothold inside an affected system to escalate their system privileges." It's the result of a use-after-free error, a class of vulnerability that occurs in software written in the C and C++ languages when a process continues to access a memory location after it has been freed or deallocated. Use-after-free vulnerabilities can result in remote code or privilege escalation. The vulnerability, which affects Linux kernel versions 5.14 through 6.6, resides in the NF_tables, a kernel component enabling the Netfilter, which in turn facilitates a variety of network operations... It was patched in January, but as the CISA advisory indicates, some production systems have yet to install it. At the time this Ars post went live, there were no known details about the active exploitation. A deep-dive write-up of the vulnerability reveals that these exploits provide "a very powerful double-free primitive when the correct code paths are hit." Double-free vulnerabilities are a subclass of use-after-free errors...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Hackers are attempting to sell what they say is confidential information belonging to millions of Santander staff and customers. They belong to the same gang which this week claimed to have hacked Ticketmaster. The bank -- which employs 200,000 people worldwide, including around 20,000 in the UK -- has confirmed data has been stolen. Santander has apologized for what it says is "the concern this will understandably cause" adding it is "proactively contacting affected customers and employees directly." "Following an investigation, we have now confirmed that certain information relating to customers of Santander Chile, Spain and Uruguay, as well as all current and some former Santander employees of the group had been accessed," it said in a statement posted earlier this month. "No transactional data, nor any credentials that would allow transactions to take place on accounts are contained in the database, including online banking details and passwords." It said its banking systems were unaffected so customers could continue to "transact securely." In a post on a hacking forum -- first spotted by researchers at Dark Web Informer- the group calling themselves ShinyHunters posted an advert saying they had data including: 30 million people's bank account details, 6 million account numbers and balances, 28 million credit card numbers, and HR information for staff. Santander has not commented on the accuracy of those claims.

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Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin confirmed on Friday that it had been the victim of a hack resulting in the theft of 4,502.9 bitcoin, or about $305 million. From a report: According to crypto security firm Elliptic, this is the eighth largest crypto theft in history. DMM Bitcoin said it detected "an unauthorized leak of Bitcoin (BTC) from our wallet" on Friday and that it was still investigating and had taken measures to stop further thefts. The crypto exchange said it also "implemented restrictions on the use of some services to ensure additional safety," according to a machine translation of the company's official blog post (written in Japanese).

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A widespread outage affecting over 600,000 routers connected to Windstream's Kinetic broadband service left customers without internet access for several days last October, according to a report by security firm Lumen Technologies' Black Lotus Labs. The incident, dubbed "Pumpkin Eclipse," is believed to be the result of a deliberate attack using commodity malware known as Chalubo to overwrite router firmware. Windstream, which has about 1.6 million subscribers in 18 states, has not provided an explanation for the outage. The company sent replacement routers to affected customers, many of whom reported significant financial losses due to the disruption. ArsTechnica adds: After learning of the mass router outage, Black Lotus began querying the Censys search engine for the affected router models. A one-week snapshot soon revealed that one specific ASN experienced a 49 percent drop in those models just as the reports began. This amounted to the disconnection of at least 179,000 ActionTec routers and more than 480,000 routers sold by Sagemcom. The constant connecting and disconnecting of routers to any ISP complicates the tracking process, because it's impossible to know if a disappearance is the result of the normal churn or something more complicated. Black Lotus said that a conservative estimate is that at least 600,000 of the disconnections it tracked were the result of Chaluba infecting the devices and, from there, permanently wiping the firmware they ran on. After identifying the ASN, Black Lotus discovered a complex multi-path infection mechanism for installing Chaluba on the routers.

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The term "auth" is ambiguous, often meaning either authentication (authn) or authorization (authz), which leads to confusion and poor system design. Instead, Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya, a software engineer at AI market research platform Remesh, argues that the industry adopt the terms "login" for authentication and "permissions" for authorization, as these are clearer and help maintain distinct, appropriate abstractions for each concept. From their blog post: We should always use the most clear terms we have. Sometimes there's not a great option, but here, we have wonderfully clear terms. Those are "login" for authentication and "permissions" for authorization. Both are terms that will make sense with little explanation (in contrast to "authn" and "authz", which are confusing on first encounter) since almost everyone has logged into a system and has run into permissions issues. There are two ways to use "login" here: the noun and the verb form. The noun form is "login", which refers to the information you enter to gain access to the system. And the verb form is "log in", which refers to the action of entering your login to use the system. "Permissions" is just the noun form. To use a verb, you would use "check permissions." While this is long, it's also just... fine? It hasn't been an issue in my experience. Both of these are abundantly clear even to our peers in disciplines outside software engineering. This to me makes it worth using them from a clarity perspective alone. But then we have the big benefit to abstractions, as well. When we call both by the same word, there's often an urge to combine them into a single module just by dint of the terminology. This isn't necessarily wrong -- there is certainly some merit to put them together, since permissions typically require a login. But it's not necessary, either, and our designs will be stronger if we don't make that assumption and instead make a reasoned choice.

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The Internet Archive is "currently in its third day of warding off an intermittent DDoS cyber-attack," writes Chris Freeland, Director of Library Services at Internet Archive, in a blog post. While library staff stress that the archives are safe, access to its services are affected, including the Wayback Machine. From the post: Since the attacks began on Sunday, the DDoS intrusion has been launching tens of thousands of fake information requests per second. The source of the attack is unknown. "Thankfully the collections are safe, but we are sorry that the denial-of-service attack has knocked us offline intermittently during these last three days," explained Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive. "With the support from others and the hard work of staff we are hardening our defenses to provide more reliable access to our library. What is new is this attack has been sustained, impactful, targeted, adaptive, and importantly, mean." Cyber-attacks are increasingly frequent against libraries and other knowledge institutions, with the British Library, the Solano County Public Library (California), the Berlin Natural History Museum, and Ontario's London Public Library all being recent victims. In addition to a wave of recent cyber-attacks, the Internet Archive is also being sued by the US book publishing and US recording industries associations, which are claiming copyright infringement and demanding combined damages of hundreds of millions of dollars and diminished services from all libraries. "If our patrons around the globe think this latest situation is upsetting, then they should be very worried about what the publishing and recording industries have in mind," added Kahle. "I think they are trying to destroy this library entirely and hobble all libraries everywhere. But just as we're resisting the DDoS attack, we appreciate all the support in pushing back on this unjust litigation against our library and others."

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A hacker group called RansomHub said it was behind the cyberattack that hit the Christie's website just days before its marquee spring sales began, forcing the auction house to resort to alternatives to online bidding. From a report: In a post on the dark web on Monday, the group claimed that it had gained access to sensitive information about the world's wealthiest art collectors, posting only a few examples of names and birthdays. It was not immediately possible to verify RansomHub's claims, but several cybersecurity experts said they were a known ransomware operation and that the claim was plausible. Nor was it clear if the hackers had gained access to more sensitive information, including financial data and client addresses. The group said it would release the data, posting a countdown timer that would reach zero by the end of May. At Christie's, a spokesman said in a statement, "Our investigations determined there was unauthorized access by a third party to parts of Christie's network." The spokesman, Edward Lewine, said that the investigations "also determined that the group behind the incident took some limited amount of personal data relating to some of our clients." He added, "There is no evidence that any financial or transactional records were compromised." Hackers said that Christie's failed to pay a ransom when one was demanded.

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"Merged this Friday evening into the Linux 6.10 kernel is the new mseal() system call for memory sealing," reports Phoronix: The mseal system call was led by Jeff Xu of Google's Chrome team. The goal with memory sealing is to also protect the memory mapping itself against modification. The new mseal Linux documentation explains: "Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e. the attacker can't just write to arbitrary memory and point the code to it, the memory has to be marked with X bit, or else an exception will happen. Memory sealing additionally protects the mapping itself against modifications. This is useful to mitigate memory corruption issues where a corrupted pointer is passed to a memory management system... Memory sealing can automatically be applied by the runtime loader to seal .text and .rodata pages and applications can additionally seal security-critical data at runtime. A similar feature already exists in the XNU kernel with the VM_FLAGS_PERMANENT flag and on OpenBSD with the mimmutable syscall." The mseal system call is designed to be used by the likes of the GNU C Library "glibc" while loading ELF executables to seal non-writable memory segments or by the Google Chrome web browser and other browsers for protecting security sensitive data structures.

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Hackers have compromised a popular courtroom recording software, JAVS, gaining full control through a backdoored update. Louisville, Kentucky-based Justice AV Solutions, its maker, pulled the compromised software, reset passwords, and audited its systems. Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 found that the corrupted installer grants attackers full access and transmits host system data to a command-and-control server. The Record adds: In its advisory, Rapid7 stressed the need to reimage all endpoints where the software was installed, and to reset credentials on web browsers and for any accounts logged into affected endpoints, both local and remote. "Simply uninstalling the software is insufficient, as attackers may have implanted additional backdoors or malware. Re-imaging provides a clean slate," they wrote. "Completely re-imaging affected endpoints and resetting associated credentials is critical to ensure attackers have not persisted through backdoors or stolen credentials."

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A hacker claims to have breached a scam call center, stolen the source code for the company's tools, and emailed the company's scam victims, according to multiple screenshots and files provided by the hacker to 404 Media. From the report: The hack is the latest in a long series of vigilante actions in which hackers take matters into their own hands and breach or otherwise disrupt scam centers. A massively popular YouTube community, with creators mocking their targets, also exists around the practice. "Hello, everyone! If you are seeing this email then you have been targeted by a fake antivirus company known as 'Waredot,'" the hacker wrote in their alleged email to customers, referring to the scam call center. The email goes on to suggest that customers issue a chargeback "as this trash software isn't worth anywhere NEAR $300-$400 per month, and these trash idiots don't deserve your money!"

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A consumer-grade spyware app has been found running on the check-in systems of at least three Wyndham hotels across the United States, TechCrunch reported Wednesday. From the report: The app, called pcTattletale, stealthily and continually captured screenshots of the hotel booking systems, which contained guest details and customer information. Thanks to a security flaw in the spyware, these screenshots are available to anyone on the internet, not just the spyware's intended users. This is the most recent example of consumer-grade spyware exposing sensitive information because of a security flaw in the spyware itself. It's also the second known time that pcTattletale has exposed screenshots of the devices that the app is installed on. Several other spyware apps in recent years had security bugs or misconfigurations that exposed the private and personal data of unwitting device owners, in some cases prompting action by government regulators. pcTattletale allows whomever controls it to remotely view the target's Android or Windows device and its data, from anywhere in the world. pcTattletale's website says the app "runs invisibly in the background on their workstations and can not be detected."

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday urged water utilities to take action to improve their digital defenses, following a spate of recent cyberattacks. From a report: The agency's "enforcement alert" said that recent inspections of water systems found that more than 70 percent fail to meet basic cybersecurity standards, including some with "critical" vulnerabilities, such as relying on default passwords that haven't been updated and single logins that "can easily be compromised." The notice comes after a Russian hacktivist group claimed credit for digital assaults on water sites in Texas and Indiana. Late last year, Iran-linked Cyber Av3ngers group took responsibility for striking a water authority in Pennsylvania.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted amendments to Regulation S-P that require certain financial institutions to disclose data breach incidents to impacted individuals within 30 days of discovery. Regulation S-P was introduced in 2000 and controls how some financial entities must treat nonpublic personal information belonging to consumers. These rules include developing and implementing data protection policies, confidentiality and security assurances, and protecting against anticipated threats. The new amendments (PDF) adopted earlier this week impact financial firms, such as broker-dealers (funding portals included), investment firms, registered investment advisers, and transfer agents. The modifications were initially proposed in March of last year to modernize and improve the protection of individual financial information from data breaches and exposure to non-affiliated parties. Below is a summary of the introduced changes: - Notify affected individuals within 30 days if their sensitive information is, or is likely to be, accessed or used without authorization, detailing the incident, breached data, and protective measures taken. Exemption applies if the information isn't expected to cause substantial harm or inconvenience to the exposed individuals. - Develop, implement, and maintain written policies and procedures for an incident response program to detect, respond to, and recover from unauthorized access or use of customer information. This should include procedures to assess and contain security incidents, enforce policies, and oversee service providers. - Expand safeguards and disposal rules to cover all nonpublic personal information, including that received from other financial institutions. - Require documentation of compliance with safeguards and disposal rules, excluding funding portals. - Align annual privacy notice delivery with the FAST Act, exempting certain conditions. - Extend safeguards and disposal rules to transfer agents registered with the SEC or other regulatory agencies.

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The FBI has seized the notorious BreachForums hacking forum that leaked and sold stolen corporate data to other cybercriminals. From a report: The seizure occurred on Wednesday morning, soon after the site was used last week to leak data stolen from a Europol law enforcement portal. The website is now displaying a message stating that the FBI has taken control over it and the backend data, indicating that law enforcement seized both the site's servers and domains. [...] The seizure message also shows the two forum profile pictures of the site's administrators, Baphomet and ShinyHunters, overlaid with prison bars.

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The Russia-linked ransomware group Black Basta is responsible for Wednesday's cyberattack on St. Louis-based Ascension health system, according to sources reported by CNN. The attack disrupted access to electronic health records, some phone systems and "various systems utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications," the company said in a statement. From a report: On Friday, the nonprofit group Health-ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center) issued an alert about the group, saying that Black Basta has "recently accelerated attacks against the healthcare sector." HHS said that Black Basta was initially spotted in early 2022, known for its double extortion attack. The group not only executes ransomware but also exfiltrates sensitive data, operating a cybercrime marketplace to publicly release it should a victim fail to pay a ransom. "The level of sophistication by its proficient ransomware operators, and reluctance to recruit or advertise on Dark Web forums, supports why many suspect the nascent Black Basta may even be a rebrand of the Russian-speaking RaaS threat group Conti, or also linked to other Russian-speaking cyber threat groups," the alert from HHS said. According to one report from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic and cybersecurity risk-focused Corvus Insurance, Black Basta in less than two years has won itself more than $100 million via ransomware schemes from 329 organizations. Previous victims of its attacks include Dish Network, the American Dental Association, business process services firm Capita and tech firm ABB.

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The U.S. FBI is working towards charging hackers from the aggressive Scattered Spider criminal gang who are largely based in the U.S. and western countries and have breached dozens of American organisations, a senior official said. From a report: The young hackers grabbed headlines last year when they broke into the systems of casino-operators MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment locking up the companies' systems and demanding hefty ransom payments. From health and telecom companies to financial services, they have hacked a range of organisations over two years, piling pressure on law enforcement agencies to thwart them. "We are working towards charging individuals where we can with criminal conduct, in this case, largely around the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," Brett Leatherman, the FBI's cyber deputy assistant director, told Reuters in an interview. The group was a rare alliance of hackers in Western countries with veteran cybercriminals from eastern Europe, he said on the sidelines of the RSA Conference in San Francisco Wednesday. "Often we don't see that mingling of geographical hackers working together outside the confines of like hacktivism, for example," he said. Security researchers have tracked Scattered Spider since at least 2022 and say the group is far more aggressive than other cybercrime gangs - skilled especially at hijacking the identities of IT helpdesk staff to penetrate into company networks. Caesars paid around $15 million to free its systems from the hackers.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Ransomware infections have morphed into "a psychological attack against the victim organization," as criminals use increasingly personal and aggressive tactics to force victims to pay up, according to Google-owned Mandiant. "We saw situations where threat actors essentially SIM swap the phones of children of executives, and start making phone calls to executives, from the phone numbers of their children," Charles Carmakal, Mandiant's CTO, recounted during a Google Security Threat Intelligence Panel at this year's RSA Conference in San Francisco on Monday. "Think about the psychological dilemma that the executive goes through – seeing a phone call from the children, picking up the phone and hearing that it's somebody else's voice? Sometimes, it's caller ID spoofing. Other times, we see demonstrated SIM swapping family members." Either way, it's horrifying. It's the next step in the evolution of ransomware tactics, which have now moved far beyond simply encrypting victims' files and even stealing their data. "There are a few threat actors that really have no rules of engagement in terms of how far [they] try to coerce victims," Carmakal noted, recalling ransomware incidents in which the criminals have directly contacted executives, their family members, and board members at their homes. The criminals have moved from just staging an attack against a company, its customers and their data, and becomes "more against the people," he added. It changes the calculation involved in deciding whether to pay the extortion demand, Carmakal said. "It's less about 'do I need to protect my customers?' But more about 'how do I better protect my employees and protect the families of employees?' That's a pretty scary shift."

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Google is streamlining the process of setting up two-factor authentication (2FA). From a report: Instead of entering your phone number first to enable 2FA, you can now add a "second step method" to your account such as an authenticator app or a hardware security key to get things set up. This should make it safer to turn on 2FA, as it lets you avoid using less secure SMS verification. You can choose to enter a time-based one-time passcode through apps like Google Authenticator, or you can follow the steps to link a hardware security key.

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An international coalition of police agencies have resurrected the dark web site of the notorious LockBit ransomware gang, which they had seized earlier this year, teasing new revelations about the group. From a report: On Sunday, what was once LockBit's official darknet site reappeared online with new posts that suggest the authorities are planning to release new information about the hackers in the next 24 hours, as of this writing. The posts have titles such as "Who is LockBitSupp?," "What have we learnt," "More LB hackers exposed," and "What have we been doing?" In February, a law enforcement coalition that included the U.K.'s National Crime Agency, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as forces from Germany, Finland, France, Japan and others announced that they had infiltrated LockBit's official site. The coalition seized the site and replaced information on it with their own press release and other information in a clear attempt to troll and warn the hackers that the authorities were on to them.

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