Hacking

Pierluigi Paganini December 16, 2018
Security Affairs newsletter Round 192 – News of the week

A new round of the weekly SecurityAffairs newsletter arrived! The best news of the week with Security Affairs. Let me inform you that my new book, “Digging in the Deep Web” is online with a special deal 20% discount Kindle Edition Paper Copy Once again thank you! STOLEN PENCIL campaign, hackers target academic institutions. WordPress […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 16, 2018
Twitter fixed bug could have exposed Direct Messages to third-party apps

Researcher Terence Eden discovered that the permissions dialog when authorizing certain apps to Twitter could expose direct messages to the third-party. The flaw is triggered when apps that require a PIN to complete the authorization process instead of the using the OAuth protocol. The expert discovered that some permissions such as that to access direct messages, remained […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 15, 2018
Which are the worst passwords for 2018?

Which are the worst passwords for 2018? SplashData report confirms that  123456 is the most used password for the 5th year in a row Bad habits are hard to die, 123456 is the most used password for the 5th year in a row followed by “password”. Even if security experts continue to make awareness campaign, people continue to […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 15, 2018
Magellan RCE flaw in SQLite potentially affects billions of apps

Security experts at Tencent’s Blade security team discovered the Magellan RCE flaw in SQLite database software that exposes billions of vulnerable apps. Security experts at Tencent’s Blade security team have discovered a critical vulnerability in SQLite database software that exposes billions of vulnerable apps to hackers. The vulnerability tracked as ‘Magellan‘ could allow remote attackers […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 14, 2018
WordPress version 5.0.1 addressed several vulnerabilities

This week, the WordPress development team released on Thursday the version 5.0.1 of the popular CMS, that addresses several flaws. The Researcher Tim Coen discovered several cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the CMS. One of the flaws is caused by the ability of contributors to edit new comments from users with higher privileges. Coen also discovered that it […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 14, 2018
New Sofacy campaign aims at Government agencies across the world

Security experts at Palo Alto Networks uncovered a new espionage campaign carried out by Russia-Linked APT group Sofacy. Russian Cyber espionage group Sofacy (aka APT28, Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, Sednit, Tsar Team, and Strontium)) carried out a new cyber campaign aimed at government agencies in four continents in an attempt to infect them with malware. The campaign has been focusing on Ukraine and NATO […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 13, 2018
French foreign ministry announced its Travel Alert Registry Hack

The French foreign ministry announced today that its travel alert registry website had been hacked and personal data of citizens “could be misused”. The French foreign ministry confirmed tha hackers breached into the Ariane system, its travel alert registry website, and personal data of citizens “could be misused”. The Ariane system provides security alerts to registered […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 13, 2018
Operation Sharpshooter targets critical infrastructure and global defense

McAfee uncovered a campaign tracked as Operation Sharpshooter that hit at least 87 organizations in global defense and critical infrastructure. Security experts at McAfee uncovered a hacking campaign, tracked as Operation Sharpshooter, aimed at infrastructure companies worldwide. The threat actors are using malware associated with Lazarus APT group that carried out Sony Pictures attack back in […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 12, 2018
A new variant of Shamoon was uploaded to Virus Total while Saipem was under attack

A new variant of the Shamoon malware, aka DistTrack, was uploaded to VirusTotal from Italy this week, but experts haven’t linked it to a specific attack yet. Shamoon was first observed in 2012 when it infected and wiped more than 30,000 systems at Saudi Aramco and other oil companies in the Middle East. Four years later, a […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 12, 2018
Cyber attack hit the Italian oil and gas services company Saipem

Some of the servers of the Italian oil and gas services company Saipem were hit by a cyber attack early this week.  Saipem has customers in more than 60 countries, including Saudi Arabian oil and gas giant Saudi Aramco. It could be considered a strategic target for a broad range of threat actors. The attack has […]