From The Blog
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NetSPI’s Offensive Security Offering Leverages Subject Matter Experts to Enhance Pen Testing
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 Las Vegas. The term offensive security has always been an interesting one for me. On the surface is brings to mind reaching…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 17:05 in Security Talk Read 1262 times Read more...
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Black Kite Looks to Offer a Better View of Risk in a Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas. Risk is an interesting subject and has many different meanings to many different people. For the most part Risk…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 14:56 in Security Talk Read 773 times Read more...
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Microsoft Finally Reveals how they Believe a Consumer Signing Key was Stollen
Written by Sean KalinichIn May of 2023 a few sensitive accounts reported to Microsoft that their environments appeared to be compromised. Due to the nature of these accounts,…Written on Thursday, 07 September 2023 14:40 in Security Talk Read 1149 times Read more...
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Mandiant Releases a Detailed Look at the Campaign Targeting Barracuda Email Security Gateways, I Take a Look at What this all Might Mean
Written by Sean KalinichThe recent attack that leveraged a 0-Day vulnerability to compromise a number of Barracuda Email Security Gateway appliances (physical and virtual, but not cloud) was…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 16:09 in Security Talk Read 943 times Read more...
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Threat Groups Return to Targeting Developers in Recent Software Supply Chain Attacks
Written by Sean KalinichThere is a topic of conversation that really needs to be talked about in the open. It is the danger of developer systems (personal and…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 13:29 in Security Talk Read 1011 times Read more...
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Leaked Data from Duolingo incident Shows US is most Impacted
Written by Sean KalinichDuolingo, is a language learning site (not to be confused with an LLM) and has a very large base of users. The site is a…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:12 in Security Talk Read 1426 times Read more...
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We talk about the Ransomware Threat Landscape with SecureWorks at Black Hat 2023
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas, NV – One of my personal focuses is understanding the “Why” behind changes in the threat landscape. In simple…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:26 in Security Talk Read 1022 times Read more...
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Now Patched Flaw Leverages Abandoned Reply URL found in Entra ID allows for Privilege Escalation
Written by Sean KalinichMicrosoft has not been having the greatest of months. First it was identified that a stollen MSA signing key was used by a Nation State…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 15:39 in Security Talk Read 1647 times Read more...
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Qrypt Looking to Attack the Inefficiencies in Quantum Encryption to make Quantum Secure Communication a Reality Today
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023, Las Vegas – At Black Hat one of my favorite things to do is see what the latest buzzword(s)/phrases are. One of…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 12:53 in Security Talk Read 1142 times Read more...
Recent Comments
- Sean, this is a fantastic review of a beautiful game. I do agree with you… Written by Jacob 2023-05-19 14:17:50 Jedi Survivor – The Quick, Dirty, and Limited Spoilers Review
- Great post. Very interesting read but is the reality we are currently facing. Written by JP 2023-05-03 02:33:53 The Dangers of AI; I Think I Have Seen this Movie Before
- I was wondering if you have tested the microphone audio frequency for the Asus HS-1000W? Written by Maciej 2020-12-18 14:09:33 Asus HS-1000W wireless headset impresses us in the lab
- Thanks for review. I appreciate hearing from a real pro as opposed to the blogger… Written by Keith 2019-06-18 04:22:36 The Red Hydrogen One, Possibly One of the Most “misunderstood” Phones Out
- Have yet to see the real impact but in the consumer segment, ryzen series are… Written by sushant 2018-12-23 10:12:12 AMD’s 11-year journey to relevance gets an epic finish.
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DLL Hijacking used Against Ransomware to Stop Encryption Process
Written by Sean Kalinich
The idea of DLL hijacking is a well known one and one that is used by attackers to compromise security tools and even sophisticated anti-malware solutions. DLLs (Dynamic Link Library) are not much more than static files that sit idle on a system until loaded. These libraries contain information that is important to the operation of the program calling it. If an attacker can replace a DLL with one of their own that prevents or alters the operation of the calling program, they have successfully hijacked it. Because of the flexibility and shared nature of DLL they are an easy target.
Chat Logs Expose Ransomware Groups Methods and Styles of Interactions with Victims
Written by Sean Kalinich
Ransomware is a huge shadow over many businesses and individuals’ heads. It has loomed as a significant threat since the first stains hit the internet inside malicious zip files masquerading as “Xerox” documents. Since that time ransomware and the groups behind it have evolved significantly. At the top of the food chain are groups like Hive and Conti who have not only evolved their own tools but utilize strategic approaches to their organizations complete with acquisitions and, in some cases, attempted legitimate business fronts to further their activities.
Google Says they Will Fight Doxxing, With Some Conditions of Course
Written by Sean Kalinich
Google is an odd company. They have used the personal vs corporate data ownership line like a jump rope over the years. We have watched them for a long time and all we can say is that their track record on protecting personal information and privacy has been both good and bad with them being on the bad side for most of recent history. After being a vehement opposer of bills like SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect our Intellectual Property Act) they quickly dropped those stances and started facilitating blanket takedown noticed from the MPAA (now the MPA) and RIAA. The blanket notices often came from law firms that provided little more than links to Google which Google then removed from their search engine and YouTube.
Cloud Services Suffer the Same Issue as On Prem Services, they just Hide it Better
Written by Sean Kalinich
It Cloud services are exceptionally popular as a cost effective and simple method to maintain common operational needs. Everything from email to fully fledged infrastructures can be maintained in the “cloud”. All of these can be accomplished at lower overall cost than trying to maintain the same systems on prem. By shifting the general operation, maintenance and even security to the cloud service provider organizations get to reduce their total ownership cost including reducing the number of skilled employees they need to keep on staff. This reduction in the total cost of ownership and maintenance is a huge item when you are trying to ensure profitability.
Conti has a New Toy as Bumblebee Malware Replaces BazarLoader
Written by Sean Kalinich
April must be the month for new malware tools to be released, or at least announced as we have already heard about new forms of attack/infection from the group behind Emotet and now we hear that Conti has replaced BazarLoader with new malware tracked as Bumblebee. The newly disclosed malware is also under active development with multiple new features showing up this month.
More Flaws Found in NPM Allowing Attackers to Attach Malicious Packages to Known Good Devs.
Written by Sean Kalinich
A new flaw has been identified in the Node.js package manager, NPM. The flaw is being described as a logical flaw, but in reading over the data it seems more like a permissions flaw. The good news is that as of April 26, the flaw has been addressed by NPM, the bad is that it was in play until then. According to the researchers that discovered it, the flaw related to the way you can attach other accounts to an uploaded package.
Yet Another New Attack Method Shows Up From the Group Behind Emotet
Written by Sean Kalinich
Yesterday we told you that the gang behind Emotet was looking to used Excel add-ins as a possible new technique to compromise systems as part of their spamming campaigns. The detected techniques were labeled as potentially being part of research and development efforts on the part of the group TA542 due to changes Microsoft is making in Office (and ones many admins already push). The R&D efforts do not stop there though as multiple security research teams are now saying they have identified another new technique associated with Emotet.
The Group Behind Emotet is Looking to Get Around Microsoft’s VBA Changes
Written by Sean Kalinich
TA542 the wonderful people that brought you Emotet appears to be in the middle of a development and testing cycle on new delivery methods. According to researchers at ProofPoint the creators or the Emotet Botnet are potentially looking to find a new delivery method in response to the, long overdue, default disabling of VBA based Macros by Microsoft in their office products. Although ProofPoint seems to think this is development testing, the activity could also be part of a more targeted campaign.
Amazon’s Awkward Moment as Log4J Fix has an Escalation and Escape Bug
Written by Sean Kalinich
It seems that Amazon’s hotfix for Log4Shell in their AWS environment might have been a bit rushed. According to a review of the hot there are a total of four CVEs specifically related to the hotfix and how it functions. CVE-2021-3100, CVE-2021-3101, CVE-2022-0070, and CVE-2022-0071 have a CVSS score of 8.8 and allow for privilege escalation and container escape. It is not often that a fix for one bad bug contains a potentially worse one, but here we are.
Okta now says Lapsus$ only had 25 Minutes of Fame with Two Clients
Written by Sean Kalinich
The breach of IDAM group Okta in January by the self-promoting group Lapsus$ amidst other high-profile breaches and data leaks this year was a significant concern. The concern rose because when the incident first happened, Okta passed it off as an unsuccessful attempt to breach a third-party vendor’s system that had access to Okta systems. However, in March the Lapsus$ group released screenshots of internal systems including what appeared to be Okta’s superuser system.
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There is Good News and Bad news in the Atlassian Outage.
Written by Sean Kalinich
On April 6th news of an outage at Atlassian that affected customers using Jira, Confluence and other products started to surface. The outage started the day before on the 5th and started rumors of everything from a ransomware attack to a potential breach. The rumors were quickly dispelled by Atlassian who stated that a routine maintenance script accidentally “disabled” a small number of customer sites. While their status page showed the status of affected products to be “active Incident”. The messages to customers indicated that restoration of sites would take “several days”, but now a week later there are still people reporting that their sites are still unavailable.
CISA warns that US ICS/SCADA Systems are being Targeted by Threat Groups
Written by Sean Kalinich
CISA has issued another warning that SCADA/ICS systems are being targeted for attack. This time they are in the sights of Nation-State groups and with customized tools. The tools are part of follow-on activities after the initial beachhead has been established. These days gaining initial access to a network, even for infrastructure, does not seem to be a difficult task for nation-state groups.
Law Enforcement Celebrates Another Hacker Forum Takedown as the Seizure of RaidForums is Announced.
Written by Sean Kalinich
2022 has been a busy year for the information security industry on both sides of the playing field. We have seen an increase in target attacks on businesses, a larger number of Zero-Day vulnerabilities disclosed that were being actively exploited in the wild, several major companies had data stollen and leaked, and we cannot forget the threat actor war going on over the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. With all these items, law enforcement agencies have also been very busy with the seizure and shut down of two major “hacker” marketplaces, Hydra and RaidForums.
Open Source Takes Another Hit as 3rd Protestware Shows up in NPM Repository
Written by Sean Kalinich
The Open Source community has been one that many leverage to help build their applications. It has become a great place to find applications packages that make building out a larger application or eco systems less time consuming. We see this in just about every development space from large to small. Having helpful sources of working code can speed up the development lifecycle and allow for greater interoperability as many applications use the same dependencies and core functions. The open source community is a great resource and typically is one that you can trust to pull code from.