Apple wants to reduce lifespan of TLS certificates to only 10 days
pIn other news Russian government forgets about Operation Triangulation Japanese police trace Monero transactions to detain suspects SEC fines four companies over SolarWinds hack disclosuresppThis newsletter is brought to you by Okta You can subscribe to an audio version of this newsletter as a podcast by searching for Risky Business News in your podcatcher or subscribing via this RSS feed On Apple PodcastsppApple has put forward a proposal to gradually reduce the lifespan of TLS certificates from the current 398 days to only 45ppThe planned move will take place across four phases between September next year and April 2027ppTLS lifespan will be reduced to 200 days in September 2025 to 100 in September 2026 and just 45 in April 2027ppApple has put the proposal for a vote with the CAB Forum an informal group made up of browser vendors and Certificate Authorities CAs the companies that issue TLS certificatesppIf approved this would mark the fourth time that the maximum lifespan of TLS certificates is changed after TLS certs went from 10year validity periods to three two and then one the current 398 daysppApples proposal would be the second time browser makers try to reduce TLS lifespans to a super short time period Google tried and failed to have TLS lifespans reduced to 90 days in a proposal made last yearppSectigo formerly known as Comodo and one of todays largest CAs has already announced its support for the TLS lifespan reduction The company also backed Googles proposal last year citing the need for CAs to modernize and move to automated certificate lifecycle management CLM proceduresppOver the past years browser makers have constantly tried to push CA vendors to adopt shorter and shorter TLS certificate lifespansppThe benefit is that if customers lose control of their certificate the short expiration date limits the damage it can do and the malware and phishing sites it can support In previous years heaps of malware have been signed by the same leaked and longlived certs because of shoddy certificate revocation systemsppAs time has gone by and as certificate management tools have exploded on the market it has become harder and harder for CAs to play the its not possible to automate at scale card You can basically thank Lets Encrypt for thatppCERP ransomware attack French pharmaceutics company CERP was hit by ransomware over the weekend Additional coverage in France BleuppTapioca DAO cryptoheist A threat actor has stolen 47 million worth of cryptoassets from DAO platform Tapioca The attackers obtained private keys for some wallets through a social engineering attack Tapioca says it managed to recover 27 million of the stolen assets shortly after the hack Early evidence suggests the hack may be linked to North Korea Additional coverage in CryptoSlateppCyprus DDoS attacks The Cypriot government says it blocked a DDoS attack that targeted its central online portal The Black Maskers Army LulzSec Black and several other proPalestine groups took credit for the attacks Additional coverage in the APppSEC fines four companies over SolarWinds hacks The US Securities and Exchange Commission has fined four companies over misleading statements made over breaches related to the SolarWinds supply chain attack The agency levied fines against Unisys 4 million Avaya 1 million Check Point 995000 and Mimecast 990000 The SEC says the four companies minimized the impact of their hacks in public statements Additional coverage in CyberScoopppSSL lib comparisons Prossimo has published new performance tests between RusTLS OpenSSl and BoringSSLppSession leaves Australia after police visit Encrypted chat app Session says it will relocate and reorganize as a foundation in Switzerland after Australian police paid a visit to the home of one of its employees Additional coverage in 404 MediappItaly blocks Google Drive Italy has blocked access to Google Drive via its Privacy Shield antipiracy system The block was quickly reverted after causing a national blackout of various Google services Additional coverage in TorrentFreakppNudity warnings in Google Messages The Google Messages app will now warn users when they attempt to send or receive nude images The company says the new feature is intended to prevent accidental sends and protect underage users The new nudity warning is part of five new features the company has added to the Messages app this week The update also includes warnings for common package delivery and job scams warnings for dangerous links the ability to block messages from unknown senders and a system to flag users trying to impersonate one of your contactsppGoogles Secure by Design pledge Google has published an update on the progress of its Secure by Design pledge the company made to White House officials earlier this yearppMeta tests face recognition to combat hacks and scams Meta will use facial recognition as part of its Facebook and Instagram account protection and security systems The company plans to use facial recognition as part of its account recovery process Users will be asked to record a selfie video that Meta will use to compare their faces against official documents and public posts It also plans to use facial recognition software to detect celebbait scams that use ads with celebrity videos to scam users for money The system scans all Meta ads for celebrity faces and triggers a review of an ad if one is found Meta says early tests with a small group of celebrities and public figures have shown promising resultsppMetavNSO lawsuit update Meta has asked the judge to award the company a win in its lawsuit filed against Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group The social media company claims that NSO defied a court order and violated legal discovery requirements Meta says NSO refused to produce internal email communications and the source code of its technology after being ordered to do so in March Additional coverage in The InterceptppMeta bans flighttracking accounts Meta has banned dozens of Instagram and Threads accounts tracking the personal jets of celebrities and politicians At least 38 accounts were run by Jack Sweeney a Florida college student who became famous after getting banned from Twitter for tracking Elon Musks personal jet Meta says it banned the accounts because the accounts posed a risk of physical harm to individuals Additional coverage in GizmodoppUber adds rider verification feature Uber has introduced a verification system for passengers who provide a copy of their governmentissued ID Uber says riders who verify accounts will be put in a priority queue and have shorter waiting times The company hopes the new system will help drivers avoid confrontations with unruly passengers On the informal side I really hope the screenshot below is the riders view of their own profile and that drivers cant see the last four digits of a riders card number Now that would be some epic level of failppDOJ bulk data sale proposal The US Justice Department has proposed new rules to block the bulk sale of Americans personal information to foreign adversary states on the grounds of national security risk This includes countries like China Russia Iran North Korea Cuba and Venezuela The new rules bar data brokers from selling or transferring abroad certain types of data that are considered to be too sensitive and could enable hacking surveillance and influence campaigns The DOJ published the rules on the grounds of a White House executive order issued in late FebruaryppWhite House to review ICE contract The US government has paused a recent ICE contract with Israeli spyware vendor Paragon Solutions According to WIRED the contract is now under compliance review by the ICEs Homeland Security Investigations division for breaking a White House executive order that limits how US government agencies can use spyware and surveillance solutionsppDOD asks tech execs to volunteer The US Department of Defense is asking Silicon Valley tech executives to volunteer and join the reserve forces where they could lead and help implement shortterm tech and cybersecurity projects Additional coverage in the WSJppRussian government forgets about Operation Triangulation The Russian government has bought four times more iPhones in 2024 than the previous year despite a ban on using the device The increased numbers are ironic since Russian intelligence services accused Apple of helping the NSA spy on Russian officials through their iPhones The hacks were exposed by Kaspersky and are known as Operation Triangulation Apple denied any role in the incidents The Russian government banned government workers from using iPhones shortly after Additional coverage in VedomostippNSO lobbying efforts target GOP The Intercept reports on NSO Groups new lobby efforts in the US mostly targeting the Republican Party and Texas officials in particularppUK allows dissident to sue Saudi Arabia over spyware A UK court has ruled that an exiled Saudi dissident can sue the Saudi Arabian government over being targeted with spyware Yahya Assiri alleges that Saudi officials targeted his devices with the NSO Groups Pegasus spyware and other spyware from Israeli firm QuaDream Assiri is the founder of the National Assembly Party the firstever prodemocracy opposition party in Saudi Arabia Earlier this month another London court ruled that Bahrain cant claim state immunity and must stand trial in a lawsuit filed by two dissidents over the governments use of spyware Additional coverage in the Middle East MonitorppIn this Risky Business News sponsored interview Tom Uren talks to Brett Winterford Oktas APAC Chief Security Officer Brett has mined Oktas data and finds strong evidence that organizations invest in phishingresistant authentication methods once they know theyve been targeted by groups that excel at social engineering such as Scattered Spider ppHere is the research that Brett talks about in this discussionppData sellers detained in Turkey Turkish authorities have detained nine suspects and seized 18 websites that sold the personal data of Turkish citizens Officials claim the websites advertised their services on social media and sold data to Israeli intelligence and terrorist organizations Some of the data was also used to extort children and for espionage operations This was Turkeys second crackdown against illegal data brokerage services Authorities previously arrested 11 suspects in August ht Ersin ÇahmutoğluppJapanese police trace Monero transactions Japans National Police Agency has arrested 18 members of a cybercrime group after tracing their Monero transactions The group stole money from victims via fake online classified ads and laundered the funds through Monero accounts The group has been active since mid2021 and laundered over 100 million yen 660000 This marks the first case where authorities have publicly confirmed to have successfully traced Monero transactions Additional coverage in NikkeippTech scammer detained Italian authorities have arrested a 43yearold ItalianAustralian for his role in a tech support scam operation The suspect was detained at the Milano airport after arriving from Singapore The FBI had been looking for the suspect for more than three years Additional coverage in Milano TodayppClickFix campaign GoDaddy says that a malware distribution campaign tracked as ClickFix has infected over 6000 WordPress sites since June this year The attacker deployed malicious plugins on the hacked sites that were used to prompt users with popups that led to malwareppGophish campaign Cisco Talos has published a report on a malware distribution campaign abusing the Gophish red team phishing tool to distribute PowerRAT and DCRATppSteam abused as a DDR More and more threat actors are using the Steam platform as a dead drop resolver DDR to hide information on their C2 infrastructure according to a new PT reportppSafe Browsing removal services There are several threat actors selling access to cybercrime services to remove malicious sites from the Google Safe Browsing list Some of these services are advertised as red page removal services after the Safe Browsing red page shown inside browsersppNew npm campaign Phylum has discovered a new set of malicious packages on npm These ones were posing as packages designed to work with the Ethereum blockchain but stole Ethereum wallet private keysppFake wood scams GroupIB looks at a novel scam campaign it spotted targeting French userswebsites advertising firewoodppLumma Stealer Qualys researchers look at Lumma Stealer an informationstealing malware available through a MalwareasaService MaaSppLatrodectus Logpoint and VMRay have published technical reports on the Latrodectus malware Also check out this report from Forcepoint on the same malwareppGrandoreiro Kaspersky looks at Grandoreiro the Brazilian banking trojan that appears to have survived a law enforcement takedown earlier this yearppSRBMiner Trend Micro has discovered a new threat actor targeting Docker servers with the SRBMiner cryptocurrency minerppmacOSNotLockBit SentinelOne has published a report on macOSNotLockBit a new ransomware strain modeled on the LockBit code and targeting macOS systemsfirst spotted last week by Trend MicroppMallox TargetCompany decrypter Avast has released a free decrypter to allow victims of the Mallox ransomware to recover their files without paying the ransom The decrypter works for Mallox versions used in attacks between January 2023 and February 2024 The ransomware is also known as TargetCompanyppAkira ransomware Cisco Talos looks at recent changes in the operation of the Akira ransomware such as the group reverting to older and tested encryption methods and their migration back from Rust to CppIn this sponsored product demo Oktas Harish Chakravarthy and Brett Winterford walk through four new features Okta introduced in the wake of the emergence of modern attacker techniques targeting identity providers These features will help you to prevent or limit the damage to your environment if an attacker manages to compromise a session tokenppiSOON reporting Reporters from Japanese public broadcaster NHK paid a visit to the headquarters of iSOON the Chinese government cyber contractor that got hacked and its data posted online earlier this year ht Ashley ShenppRomanian disinfo farm Romanian news outlet Public Record has published an investigation into an individual believed to be at the center of a disinformation operation that helps boost conspiracy theories and the typical antiwestern tropes coming out of SputnikppRussian disinfo targets Walz A Russian disinformation group is behind a Twitter campaign claiming that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his former students The campaign used deepfake videos claiming to be from whistleblowers in an attempt to smear the VP candidate ahead of the election Experts and US intelligence agencies have linked the campaign to Storm1516 a Russian group known to use fabricated videos to interfere in elections across the globe Microsoft had previously warned last month that the group switched targets from the EU to the US presidential race The videos were also boosted by members of the Trump campaign Additional coverage in WIREDppImprompter attack A team of academics has developed a new attack that can steal the personal data of users who interact with AI systems The attack is named Imprompeter and targets LLM agents the apps where users post commands and requests to an AI system Researchers say the Imprompter attack can poison AI systems so they steal user data and then share it with the threat actorppOpenSSL security update The OpenSSL project has released a security update to fix a memory corruption vulnerability Impact is considered lowppOPA vulnerability Tenable has disclosed a vulnerability in the Open Policy Agent OPA for Windows clientppAcquisition news UK cybersecurity firm Sophos has agreed to acquire Atlantabased Secureworks for almost 860 million in an allcash acquisition Sophos says it plans to merge both products going forward Dell acquired SecureWorks for 612 million in 2011 and has been trying to sell the company since early 2023ppNew toolCloudTail Permiso has opensourced CloudTail a tool designed to enhance the longterm retention and searchability of cloud logsppNew toolAuthzAI Bug hunter Ron Chan has released AuthzAI a tool to test and analyze API endpoints for potential permission model violations using OpenAI structured outputsppNew toolFirefox Password Decryptor A software engineer named Sohimaster has released Firefox Password Decryptor a tool to extracting and decrypting passwords from FirefoxppThreattrend reports ANYRUN Deloitte and Trustwave have recently published reports and summaries covering various infosec trends and industry threatsppIn this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about a new attempt to measure cyber power the International Institute for Strategic Studies Cyber Power MatrixppIn this podcast Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about the evolving relationship between Russian intelligence services and the country cybercriminals The GRUs sabotage unit for example has been recruiting crooks to build a destructive cyber capability Tom suspects that GRU thugs are not so good at handsonkeyboard operations but excellent at coercing weedy cybercriminals to hack for the stateppRisky Business is now on YouTube with video versions of our main podcasts Below is our latest weekly show with Pat and Adam at the helmppIn other news Police arrest tech company CEO for building DDoS function hackers steal 17 million from Ugandas central bank Windows Server 2012 zeroday awaits patchppIn other news FTC opens Microsoft antitrust probe US court overturns Tornado Cash sanctions ESET finds first Ubuntu UEFI bootkitppYour weekly dose of Seriously Risky Business news is written by Tom Uren and edited by Patrick Gray Its supported by Lawfare with help from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation This weeks edition is sponsored by Stairwell
You can hear a podcast discussion of thisppIn other news Geico fined over 2020 security breach a new proKremlin group emerges out of India Russian group behind Firefox and Windows zerodayspp
Risky Business publishes cybersecurity newsletters and podcasts for security professionals
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You can hear a podcast discussion of thisppIn other news Geico fined over 2020 security breach a new proKremlin group emerges out of India Russian group behind Firefox and Windows zerodayspp
Risky Business publishes cybersecurity newsletters and podcasts for security professionals
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