Week in review: Fireball malware infects 250 million computers, attacks within the Dark Web

Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news and articles:

OneLogin suffers data breach, again
OneLogin, a popular single sign-on service that allows users to access thousands of popular cloud-based apps with just one password, has suffered what seems to be a serious data breach.

Analyzing phishing attacks against 500,000 mailboxes at 100 organizations
In 2016 alone, the SANS Institute revealed that 95 percent of all cyberattacks began with spear-phishing.

Hackers hosted tools on a Stanford University website for months
Compromising legitimate websites and the web servers that store and deliver them is a time-honoured tactic of opportunistic hackers, and a failure to keep them out can result in the servers hosting phishing and scam pages, spam mailers, exploit kits, or malware.

New Gmail anti-phishing features rely on machine learning
Google has announced several new security features and improvement of existing ones in order to protect Gmail users against phishing emails.

Fireball malware infected 250 million computers worldwide
Check Point researchers discovered a high volume Chinese threat operation which has infected over 250 million computers worldwide. The installed malware, named Fireball, takes over target web browsers, turning them into zombies.

US visa applicants will have to provide social media handles
US consular officials have been provided with a new questionnaire that they can give selected visa applicants to complete. Among other things, Form DS-5535 requires applicants to share all social media handles and email addresses they used in the last five years.

Attacks within the Dark Web
For six months, Trend Micro researchers operated a honeypot setup simulating several underground services on the Dark Web. The goal of their research was to see if those hidden services will be subjected to attacks.

What’s really stopping users from adopting secure communication tools?
“Users’ goal to communicate with others overrides everything else, including security,” a group of researchers has concluded after interviewing sixty individuals about their experience with different communication tools and their perceptions of the tools’ security properties.

5 incident response practices that keep enterprises from adapting to new threats
How can enterprises expect to evolve at the same rapid pace as the cyber threat landscape by relying on practices that don’t adapt to real-time?

Intelligence data, security credentials found exposed in the Amazon cloud
Located on an unsecured, publicly accessible Amazon server, the repository included some 60,000 files that, among other things, contained passwords to a US government system containing sensitive information, and the security credentials of a lead senior engineer at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Half of US firms don’t have cybersecurity insurance
In the US, the healthcare industry is particularly behind on protecting itself with cybersecurity risk insurance.

Vulnerability affecting 1,000+ apps is exposing terabytes of data
A newly discovered backend data exposure vulnerability, dubbed HospitalGown, highlights the connection between mobile apps and insecure backend databases.

Hackers blackmail patients of cosmetic surgery clinic
Hackers have been trying to blackmail patients of a Lithuanian plastic surgery clinic, by threatening to publish their nude “before and after” photos online.

Balancing act: Ensuring compliance with GDPR and US regulations
The impending GDPR, which will go into effect in a little less than a year from now, is going to have a significant impact on enterprise cybersecurity and data governance policies and practices beyond the European Union, significantly impacting global organizations based in the United States that handle data on EU citizens and residents.

What will it take to keep smart cities safe?
Currently, over half of the world’s population resides in urban areas, and by 2050, that percentage is expected to rise to 66%. This influx will create considerable social, economic, and environmental challenges for those tasked with making these cities thrive – challenges that can successfully addressed through the implementation and secure running of smart city technologies.

Vulnerability opens FreeRADIUS servers to unauthenticated attackers
A vulnerability in the free, open source FreeRADIUS server could be exploited by remote attackers to bypass authentication via PEAP or TTLS.

New infosec products of the week​: June 2, 2017
A rundown of infosec products released last week.

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