Starting in April security experts at FireEye spotted a massive uptick in Cerber ransomware attacks delivered via a rolling wave of spam. Researchers there link the Cerber outbreaks to the fact that attackers are now leveraging the same spam infrastructure credited for making the potent Dridex financial Trojan extremely dangerous. Cerber, which is best known...

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the news of the week, including zero day vulnerabilities–both in Adobe Flash and Windows, a nasty vulnerability in SAP business applications, Mozilla asking FBI to disclose a Tor exploit, and more. Download: Threatpost_News_Wrap_May_13_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

News of yet another attack involving a bank and SWIFT, the financial network used by thousands of banks to transfer funds, came to light Thursday as investigators continue to probe a separate $81 million heist in February involving the network and the central bank of Bangladesh. The Brussels-based global financial messaging network notified users on...

The Petya ransomware strain signaled a new escalation for crypto-malware when it surfaced in March. For the first time, ransomware went beyond encrypting files on local and shared drives and instead set its sights on locking up the Master File Table on compromised machines. Petya did have its shortcomings and before long, researchers were able...

Fast-food chain Wendy’s disclosed it was a victim of a point-of-sale system attack that installed malware on PoS computers affecting 300 franchise restaurants. The disclosure was part the company’s first quarter 2016 SEC filings on Wednesday and is the most complete account to date of a 2015 data breach. “In January, we began to investigate unusual...

More than 100 North American companies were attacked by crooks exploiting a Windows zero day vulnerability. The attacks began in early March and involved the zero day vulnerability (CVE-2016-0167) reported and partially fixed in April’s Patch Tuesday security bulletins by Microsoft. The zero day was found by researchers at FireEye, who on Tuesday disclosed details. FireEye said...

The latest Android malware campaign to wend its way through Google’s Play marketplace can leverage victims’ phones for ad fraud, carry out DDoS attacks, send spam, and more, researchers warn. Dubbed Viking Horde, the campaign ropes Android devices into a botnet without their owners being any the wiser. A handful of apps that spread the...

IBM is leveraging the power of its Watson supercomputer to thwart viruses, ransomware and DDoS attacks. On Tuesday it unveiled an ambitious plan to feed Watson billions of data points from security sources daily so that Watson can spot anomalies as they happen and stop them dead in their tracks before they can cause any...

We all know outdated software, browsers, and plugins are unsafe, but how unsafe? Duo Labs has taken a hard look at the dangers of outdated software in a report released Tuesday that said 25 percent of business systems risk exposure to 700 possible vulnerabilities. The most insecure software, Duo reported, is Microsoft’s family of Internet Explorer browsers....

Bangladeshi police this week alleged that technicians associated with the financial network SWIFT introduced vulnerabilities that made it easier for hackers to infiltrate the systems of Bangladesh Bank and carry out a massive heist. Earlier this year hackers used stolen credentials to inject malware into the bank’s SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication,...