Security

Until a few weeks ago, sinmed was one of the largest drug vendors at Dream Market, the foremost dark web bazaar. It took in millions of dollars shipping fentanyl-laced heroin, methamphetamines, and hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Xanax tablets across the US—until the Manhattan district attorney's office shut it down, and arrested the three men who allegedly ran it. Dark web takedowns happen all the time. But sinmed was a power player, among Dream Market's top three percent of vendors in terms of sheer transactions. And its rise and fall, as detailed by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance and a recently unsealed indictment, shows not only how dark web storefronts operate, but how law enforcement at every level has become increasingly savvy at tracking them down. Act Local When you read about dark web takedowns, they typically involve sweeping actions by federal agencies. The Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team—which comprises agents from the FBI, DEA, CBP, and … [Read more...] about A Top Dark Web Drug Ring Goes Down—Thanks to ATM Withdrawals

Credit: ShutterstockUnderdog Security, a cybersecurity and penetration testing consultancy firm, revealed yesterday that a security flaw in Electronic Arts' Origin game launcher enabled remote code execution. That means someone could have exploited the vulnerability to "execute any kind of commands their heart desired," as the security firm put it, on any Windows system with Origin installed. (The macOS version of the launcher wasn't affected by the flaw.) EA fixed the problem on Monday, TechCrunch reported.  Underdog said it was "simply curious and looking around at the origin2 URI handler, when we came across a parameter where we could supply data that would be echoed back to us in the Origin client, prompting us to start tinkering." They eventually found a way to inject templates into Origin, and because the launcher is based on AngularJS, they easily found ways to escape sandboxing to wreak havoc on a target system. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when … [Read more...] about EA Patches Major Security Flaw In its Origin Launcher

Distil Networks today published its 2019 Bad Bot Report, which looks at the current state of automated web traffic, both good and bad. The paper highlights some startling figures, including that bots accounted for 37.9 percent of all online traffic during 2018. This is a admittedly a startling number, but it actually represents a welcome decrease on last year’s figures. This decrease can be found across legitimate bot traffic (like, for example, the scrapers travel sites use to identify flight deals) as well as ill-intentioned bots (like those used to conduct denial-of-service attacks). These slumped by 14.4 percent and 6.4 percent respectively. The share of human traffic, on the other hand, grew by 7.5 percent to 62.1 percent. Love tech? You should go to TNW2019 Find out why See more It’s not clear why this shift took place, and Distil doesn’t try any qualitative analysis to figure out why. One plausible example could be the increasing levels of Internet access, … [Read more...] about Bots drove nearly 40% of internet traffic last year — and the naughty ones are getting smarter

Credit: ShutterstockMicrosoft's products are practically ubiquitous. Sure, Internet Explorer is no longer synonymous with the Internet for many people, but the company's Office productivity suite remains a staple for many Windows users. That's great for Microsoft, but Kaspersky Labs' report that 70 percent of the cyberattacks it saw in the fourth quarter of 2018 targeted Office vulnerabilities suggests that it might not be great for the software's users. Kaspersky presented these findings at its Security Analyst Summit in Singapore last week; ZDNet reported on the presentation on Monday. According to the publication, Kaspersky said Office was involved in just 16 percent of attacks in Q4 2016. That number quadrupled in just two years, and unless there are some dramatic changes with the productivity suite or its popularity, there's little reason to believe it will fall anytime soon. Not all of the attacks involving Office vulnerabilities actually rely on flaws in the software … [Read more...] about Most Cyber Attacks Targeted Microsoft Office in Q4

It is the most important industry in the world. Energy. We need it. Without it, nothing works. Without the oil producers and refiners, there’s no petrol to fuel our cars. Without power plans and the supporting infrastructure, there’s no electricity to keep the lights on. Without natural gas pipelines, there’s nothing to heat our homes with. Never been to TNW Conference? You. Are. Missing. Out. Get tickets Put simply, energy is foundational to our entire economy. It’s for that reason, and that reason alone, why it presents such a tempting target for hackers. And troublingly, according to a damning report from F-Secure, The State of the Station, companies working in the energy industry are failing to properly protect themselves from attackers. Two certainties in life, geopolitics and taxes The report points out that when it comes to security in the energy industry, there’s no smoke without fire. Incidents tend to coincide with external factors, be they … [Read more...] about F-Secure report highlights the woeful state of insecurity in the energy industry