Experts believe that the success tied to a recent spate of DDoS-for-hire groups may be because many are copycat collectives operating with a shorter lifespan. Researchers with Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based firm that tracks real time threat intelligence, said Monday that they’ve noticed an increase in would-be hackers asking for guidance on forums when it comes to...

A group of attackers are behind a strain of payment card malware that has bootkit functionality, something that makes it very difficult to detect, much less remove. “FIN1,” the group behind the malware, appears to be based in Russia, according to researchers at both FireEye and Mandiant who described the group on Monday. The two...

The Let’s Encrypt initiative reached yet another milestone this week when it entered public beta, something it claims should help make it easier for website owners to embrace HTTPS encryption. The latest step comes on the heels of the movement issuing its first certificate back in September and becoming an official Certificate Authority in October. Now, anyone...

A new analysis of the Sofacy APT gang, a Russian-speaking group carrying out targeted attacks against military and government offices for close to a decade, shows a relentless wave of intrusions peaking this summer against victims in a number of NATO countries and the Ukraine. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab this morning released their update on...

In March when Moxie Marlinspike and Open Whisper Systems released the iOS version of the Signal encrypted messaging app, the noted security researcher promised to expand its reach and among other things, eventually release a desktop version of Signal. That vision was realized on Wednesday with the public availability of the Signal Desktop beta, written...

As expected, it didn’t take long for one of the most popular exploit kits, Angler, to start spreading the latest iteration of Cryptowall ransomware. A drive-by campaign that uses a one-two punch to drop Cryptowall 4.0 has been observed in the wild this week, according to researchers at Heimdal Security. First, the password stealing malware Pony...

An APT gang linked to China and alleged to be responsible for targeted attacks against foreign governments and ministries, has now pointed its focus inward at China’s autonomous territory Hong Kong. An August attack against several media companies in Hong Kong was carried out shortly after a high-profile controversy over an appointment at the prestigious...

UPDATE VTech, a company that manufactures electronic learning devices, baby monitors, toys, and other equipment, announced Monday that information from five million customer accounts, which include identity information belonging to children, were accessed in an attack earlier this month. The news follows up a statement from the company late last week that attackers had infiltrated one of...

Lenovo has patched two serious vulnerabilities that hackers could abuse in targeted attacks, or at scale, to easily guess administrator passwords on a compromised device, or elevate privileges to Windows SYSTEM user. The vulnerabilities were patched last Thursday by the manufacturer and details were disclosed Tuesday by researchers at IOActive, who privately reported the flaws...

In short order, the newest version of Cryptowall has begun showing up in exploit kits. The SANS Internet Storm Center said on Tuesday that an attacker working off domains belonging to Chinese registrar BizCN has been moving the ransomware via the Nuclear Exploit Kit. SANS ISC handler and Rackspace security engineer Brad Duncan said that...