Wow, the source code of one of the most prolific backdoor tools – CARBANAK – is now available on Github. FireEye has a series of articles dedicated to the analysis of this complex tool, starting with this one.
We kick off CARBANAK Week with the first post in our four-part blog series.
Source: CARBANAK Week Part One: A Rare Occurrence « CARBANAK Week Part One: A Rare Occurrence
Say what you may about Apple’s infamous app-approval process. But Google Play Store’s permissive approach is what allows such apps to exists.
Security researchers have found a new kind of government malware that was hiding in plain sight within apps on Android’s Play Store. And they appear to have uncovered a case of lawful intercept gone wrong.
Source: Researchers Find Google Play Store Apps Were Actually Government Malware
Find out more about spyware/malware and some techniques to prevent infection here.
This is a common and recurring problem due to lack of awareness and the difficulty of securing data. Think twice before you donate your old devices. At least make an attempt to erase or remove the storage device before doing so.
If you are concern with data compliance, you may refer to
NIST SP 800-88r1 – Guidelines for Media Sanitization. For the rest of us, try to adopt security best practices such as:
In the space of six months, one security researcher found thousands of files from dozens of computers, phones and flash drives — most of which contained personal information. All the researcher did was scour the second-hand stores for donated and refurbished tech. New research published by security firm Rapid7 revealed how problematic discarded technology can […]
Source: Donated devices are doxing your data, says new research
Writing secure software is impossibly hard. Even with all the resources that the Chrome team has and focus on security that they are famous for, vulnerabilities can still exists and may be exploited for nefarious purpose.
When a security expert on the Chrome team says, “update your Chrome installs… like right this minute” – well, here’s how to check!
Source: Serious Chrome zero-day – Google says update “right this minute”
Free vulnerability scan by the government for Japan netizens.
Can’t say it’s a bad idea, if it’s well-managed. The fact is there are a lot of devices out there which have default credentials or unpatched vulnerabilities. These devices usually end up being exploited by threat actors for personal gains. Ability to identify vulnerable devices is a necessary first step towards mitigating potential cyber incidents.
Japan will attempt to access Internet-connected devices in homes and offices to find their vulnerabilities. The first-of-its-kind survey is aimed at beefing up cyber-security.
Source: Govt. to access home devices in security survey – News – NHK WORLD – English
This is a serious one. A vulnerability exists on Android that will allow the phone to be hacked simply by viewing a malicious PNG image.
The most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in Framework that could allow a remote attacker using a specially crafted PNG file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process. The severity assessment is based on the effect that exploiting the vulnerability would possibly have on an affected device, assuming the platform and service mitigations are turned off for development purposes or if successfully bypassed.
Source: Android Security Bulletin — February 2019 | Android Open Source Project
This is brazen.
Someone is openly selling aggregated databases containing PII (personally identifiable information) of Singaporeans – names, email, mobile, address, company, job title, etc. and even offering a CNY promotion of “only” SGD 688 for a total of 8 databases.
Some of the sample databases – which I won’t embed here – are not properly blurred out – you can even make out the name, email, mobile and address of the individual.
The FAQ says that:
Q: Is It Legal To Purchase Databases?
Yes. It is legal to purchase database for marketing or advertising purposes. All information in our databases are publicly available data which can be found online or offline.
That is blatantly false.
The organization behind this website claims to be SPADB, which doesn’t appear to be a legitimate company. According to archive.org, they seem to have been operating since 2015. It has another similar looking website which sells databases of registered property agents.
The server hosting the website seems to be based in Singapore, so there’s a possibility that PDPC or SingCert can do something about it.
Singapore’s most comprehensive business & consumer databases with over 1 million contact list. Buy 1 Get 6 Free. 7 databases For just one low price. 100% Lowest Price Guaranteed!
Source: CNY Promotion | Singapore Business & Consumer Email Databases
The cost of data is not just the bytes that are required to store them. Increasingly laws will target companies for over-collecting, misusing, and not doing enough to protect PII data.
California recently passed an extremely powerful, far-reaching law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), that will likely drive even more change than the GDPR. Here’s what your dev team needs to know and how to prepare.
Source: CCPA will hit your dev team harder than GDPR. Here’s why.
This is not a good day for cloud services. Gmail outage followed by Office 365 outage (unrelated).
This is a serious hijack of a toolchain used by developers.
Pear.php.net shuts down after maintainers discover serious supply-chain attack.
Source: If you installed PEAR PHP in the last 6 months, you may be infected | Ars Technica
