Showing only posts in Ars Technica. Show all posts.

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 …

Hackers backed by Russia and China are infecting SOHO routers like yours, FBI warns

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) The FBI and partners from 10 other countries are urging owners of Ubiquiti EdgeRouters to check their gear for signs they’ve been hacked and are being used to conceal ongoing malicious operations by Russian state hackers. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouters make an ideal hideout for …

Avast ordered to stop selling browsing data from its browsing privacy apps

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Avast, a name known for its security research and antivirus apps, has long offered Chrome extensions, mobile apps, and other tools aimed at increasing privacy. Avast's apps would "block annoying tracking cookies that collect data on your browsing activities," and prevent web services from "tracking …

Ransomware associated with LockBit still spreading 2 days after server takedown

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Two days after an international team of authorities struck a major blow at LockBit, one of the Internet’s most prolific ransomware syndicates, researchers have detected a new round of attacks that are installing malware associated with the group. The attacks, detected in the past …

iMessage gets a major makeover that puts it on equal footing with Signal

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) iMessage is getting a major makeover that makes it among the two messaging apps most prepared to withstand the coming advent of quantum computing, largely at parity with Signal or arguably incrementally more hardened. On Wednesday, Apple said messages sent through iMessage will now be …

After years of losing, it’s finally feds’ turn to troll ransomware group

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) After years of being outmaneuvered by snarky ransomware criminals who tease and brag about each new victim they claim, international authorities finally got their chance to turn the tables, and they aren't squandering it. The top-notch trolling came after authorities from the US, UK, and …

DOJ quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) More than 1,000 Ubiquiti routers in homes and small businesses were infected with malware used by Russian-backed agents to coordinate them into a botnet for crime and spy operations, according to the Justice Department. That malware, which worked as a botnet for the Russian …

Nginx core developer quits project in security dispute, starts “freenginx” fork

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A core developer of Nginx, currently the world's most popular web server, has quit the project, stating that he no longer sees it as "a free and open source project... for the public good." His fork, freenginx, is "going to be run by developers, and …

Ongoing campaign compromises senior execs’ Azure accounts, locks them using MFA

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Hundreds of Microsoft Azure accounts, some belonging to senior executives, are being targeted by unknown attackers in an ongoing campaign that's aiming to steal sensitive data and financial assets from dozens of organizations, researchers with security firm Proofpoint said Monday. The campaign attempts to compromise …

Canada declares Flipper Zero public enemy No. 1 in car-theft crackdown

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Enlarge / A Flipper Zero device (credit: https://flipperzero.one/) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has identified an unlikely public enemy No. 1 in his new crackdown on car theft: the Flipper Zero, a $200 piece of open source hardware used to capture, analyze and interact with simple radio communications …

London Underground is testing real-time AI surveillance tools to spot crime

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Enlarge (credit: John Keeble/Getty Images ) Thousands of people using the London Underground had their movements, behavior, and body language watched by AI surveillance software designed to see if they were committing crimes or were in unsafe situations, new documents obtained by WIRED reveal. The machine-learning software was combined …

A password manager LastPass calls “fraudulent” booted from App Store

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) As Apple has stepped up its promotion of its App Store as a safer and more trustworthy source of apps, its operators scrambled Thursday to correct a major threat to that narrative: a listing that password manager maker LastPass said was a “fraudulent app impersonating …

Critical vulnerability affecting most Linux distros allows for bootkits

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Enlarge Linux developers are in the process of patching a high-severity vulnerability that, in certain cases, allows the installation of malware that runs at the firmware level, giving infections access to the deepest parts of a device where they’re hard to detect or remove. The vulnerability resides in …

As if 2 Ivanti vulnerabilities under exploit weren’t bad enough, now there are 3

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Mass exploitation began over the weekend for yet another critical vulnerability in widely used VPN software sold by Ivanti, as hackers already targeting two previous vulnerabilities diversified, researchers said Monday. The new vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-21893, is what’s known as a server-side request forgery …

A startup allegedly “hacked the world.” Then came the censorship—and now the backlash.

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Enlarge (credit: WIRED staff/Getty Images ) Hacker-for-hire firms like NSO Group and Hacking Team have become notorious for enabling their customers to spy on vulnerable members of civil society. But as far back as a decade ago in India, a startup called Appin Technology and its subsidiaries allegedly played …

Agencies using vulnerable Ivanti products have until Saturday to disconnect them

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Federal civilian agencies have until midnight Saturday morning to sever all network connections to Ivanti VPN software, which is currently under mass exploitation by multiple threat groups. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency mandated the move on Wednesday after disclosing three critical vulnerabilities in …

Chinese malware removed from SOHO routers after FBI issues covert commands

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Enlarge / A Wi-Fi router. (credit: Getty Images | deepblue4you ) The US Justice Department said Wednesday that the FBI surreptitiously sent commands to hundreds of infected small office and home office routers to remove malware China state-sponsored hackers were using to wage attacks on critical infrastructure. The routers—mainly Cisco and …

Ars Technica used in malware campaign with never-before-seen obfuscation

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Ars Technica was recently used to serve second-stage malware in a campaign that used a never-before-seen attack chain to cleverly cover its tracks, researchers from security firm Mandiant reported Tuesday. A benign image of a pizza was uploaded to a third-party website and was then …

OpenAI says mysterious chat histories resulted from account takeover

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) OpenAI officials say that the ChatGPT histories a user reported result from his ChatGPT account being compromised. The unauthorized logins came from Sri Lanka, an Open AI representative said. The user said he logs into his account from Brooklyn, New York. “From what we discovered …

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