Showing only posts in Ars Technica. Show all posts.

Missouri county declares state of emergency amid suspected ransomware attack

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Enlarge / Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, which is part of Jackson County. (credit: Eric Rogers ) Jackson County, Missouri, has declared a state of emergency and closed key offices indefinitely as it responds to what officials believe is a ransomware attack that has made some of its IT systems inoperable. "Jackson …

What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) On Friday, a lone Microsoft developer rocked the world when he revealed a backdoor had been intentionally planted in xz Utils, an open source data compression utility available on almost all installations of Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The person or people behind this …

Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility breaks encrypted SSH connections

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Enlarge / Internet Backdoor in a string of binary code in a shape of an eye. (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have found a malicious backdoor in a compression tool that made its way into widely used Linux distributions, including those from Red Hat and Debian. The compression utility, known as …

Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility targets encrypted SSH connections

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Enlarge / Internet Backdoor in a string of binary code in a shape of an eye. (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have found a malicious backdoor in a compression tool that made its way into widely used Linux distributions, including those from Red Hat and Debian. The compression utility, known as …

PyPI halted new users and projects while it fended off supply-chain attack

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Enlarge / Supply-chain attacks, like the latest PyPI discovery, insert malicious code into seemingly functional software packages used by developers. They're becoming increasingly common. (credit: Getty Images) PyPI, a vital repository for open source developers, temporarily halted new project creation and new user registration following an onslaught of package uploads …

Thousands of servers hacked in ongoing attack targeting Ray AI framework

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Thousands of servers storing AI workloads and network credentials have been hacked in an ongoing attack campaign targeting a reported vulnerability in Ray, a computing framework used by OpenAI, Uber, and Amazon. The attacks, which have been active for at least seven months, have led …

“MFA Fatigue” attack targets iPhone owners with endless password reset prompts

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Enlarge / They look like normal notifications, but opening an iPhone with one or more of these stacked up, you won't be able to do much of anything until you tap "Allow" or "Don't Allow." And they're right next to each other. (credit: Kevin Purdy) Human weaknesses are a rich …

Thousands of phones and routers swept into proxy service, unbeknownst to users

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Crooks are working overtime to anonymize their illicit online activities using thousands of devices of unsuspecting users, as evidenced by two unrelated reports published Tuesday. The first, from security firm Lumen, reports that roughly 40,000 home and office routers have been drafted into a …

Justice Department indicts 7 accused in 14-year hack campaign by Chinese gov

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Enlarge (credit: peterschreiber.media | Getty Images) The US Justice Department on Monday unsealed an indictment charging seven men with hacking or attempting to hack dozens of US companies in a 14-year campaign furthering an economic espionage and foreign intelligence gathering by the Chinese government. All seven defendants, federal prosecutors …

Never-before-seen data wiper may have been used by Russia against Ukraine

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have unearthed never-before-seen wiper malware tied to the Kremlin and an operation two years ago that took out more than 10,000 satellite modems located mainly in Ukraine on the eve of Russia’s invasion of its neighboring country. AcidPour, as researchers from security …

Unpatchable vulnerability in Apple chip leaks secret encryption keys

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Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Apple) A newly discovered vulnerability baked into Apple’s M-series of chips allows attackers to extract secret keys from Macs when they perform widely used cryptographic operations, academic researchers have revealed in a paper published Thursday. The flaw—a side channel allowing end-to-end key extractions …

“Disabling cyberattacks” are hitting critical US water systems, White House warns

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Enlarge / Aerial view of a sewage treatment plant. (credit: Getty Images) The Biden administration on Tuesday warned the nation’s governors that drinking water and wastewater utilities in their states are facing “disabling cyberattacks” by hostile foreign nations that are targeting mission-critical plant operations. “Disabling cyberattacks are striking water …

Fujitsu says it found malware on its corporate network, warns of possible data breach

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Japan-based IT behemoth Fujitsu said it has discovered malware on its corporate network that may have allowed the people responsible to steal personal information from customers or other parties. “We confirmed the presence of malware on several of our company's work computers, and as a …

ASCII art elicits harmful responses from 5 major AI chatbots

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Enlarge / Some ASCII art of our favorite visual cliche for a hacker. (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have discovered a new way to hack AI assistants that uses a surprisingly old-school method: ASCII art. It turns out that chat-based large language models such as GPT-4 get so distracted trying to …

Member of LockBit ransomware group sentenced to 4 years in prison

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Charles O'Rear) A dual Canadian-Russian national has been sentenced to four years in prison for his role in infecting more than 1,000 victims with the LockBit ransomware and then extorting them for tens of millions of dollars. Mikhail Vasiliev, a 33-year-old who most recently …

Hackers can read private AI-assistant chats even though they’re encrypted

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Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) AI assistants have been widely available for a little more than a year, and they already have access to our most private thoughts and business secrets. People ask them about becoming pregnant or terminating or preventing pregnancy, consult them when considering a divorce …

Never-before-seen Linux malware gets installed using 1-day exploits

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have unearthed Linux malware that circulated in the wild for at least two years before being identified as a credential stealer that’s installed by the exploitation of recently patched vulnerabilities. The newly identified malware is a Linux variant of NerbianRAT, a remote access …

Microsoft says Kremlin-backed hackers accessed its source and internal systems

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Microsoft said that Kremlin-backed hackers who breached its corporate network in January have expanded their access since then in follow-on attacks that are targeting customers and have compromised the company's source code and internal systems. The intrusion, which the software company disclosed in January, was …

Attack wrangles thousands of web users into a password-cracking botnet

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Attackers have transformed hundreds of hacked sites running WordPress software into command-and-control servers that force visitors’ browsers to perform password-cracking attacks. A web search for the JavaScript that performs the attack showed it was hosted on 708 sites at the time this post went live …

VMware sandbox escape bugs are so critical, patches are released for end-of-life products

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) VMware is urging customers to patch critical vulnerabilities that make it possible for hackers to break out of sandbox and hypervisor protections in all versions, including out-of-support ones, of VMware ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and Cloud Foundation products. A constellation of four vulnerabilities—two carrying severity …

After collecting $22 million, AlphV ransomware group stages FBI takedown

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) The ransomware group responsible for hamstringing the prescription drug market for two weeks has suddenly gone dark, just days after receiving a $22 million payment and standing accused of scamming an affiliate out of its share of the loot. The events involve AlphV, a ransomware …

Hackers exploited Windows 0-day for 6 months after Microsoft knew of it

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Hackers backed by the North Korean government gained a major win when Microsoft left a Windows zero-day unpatched for six months after learning it was under active exploitation. Even after Microsoft patched the vulnerability last month, the company made no mention that the North Korean …

US prescription market hamstrung for 9 days (so far) by ransomware attack

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Nine days after a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate took down the biggest US health care payment processor, pharmacies, health care providers, and patients were still scrambling to fill prescriptions for medicines, many of which are lifesaving. On Thursday, UnitedHealth Group accused a notorious ransomware gang known …

Hugging Face, the GitHub of AI, hosted code that backdoored user devices

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Code uploaded to AI developer platform Hugging Face covertly installed backdoors and other types of malware on end-user machines, researchers from security firm JFrog said Thursday in a report that’s a likely harbinger of what’s to come. In all, JFrog researchers said, they …

GitHub besieged by millions of malicious repositories in ongoing attack

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) GitHub is struggling to contain an ongoing attack that’s flooding the site with millions of code repositories. These repositories contain obfuscated malware that steals passwords and cryptocurrency from developer devices, researchers said. The malicious repositories are clones of legitimate ones, making them hard to …

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