Lifeboat Foundation

Another dire warning for Windows users this week, after threat researchers at Proofpoint disclosed” a previously undocumented malware.” This one had a twist, though, this malware was not an attack in itself, it was an enabler, hiding on infected computers, establishing a proxy that other malware can then use to manage traffic to the PC and carry out their threats.

Given that going viral on the Internet is often cyclical, it should come as no surprise that an app that made its debut in 2017 has once again surged in popularity. FaceApp applies various transformations to the image of any face, but the option that ages facial features has been especially popular. However, the fun has been accompanied by controversy; since biometric systems are replacing access passwords, is it wise to freely offer up our image and our personal data? The truth is that today the face is ceasing to be as non-transferable as it used to be, and in just a few years it could be more hackable than the password of a lifetime.

Our countenance is the most recognisable key to social relationships. We might have doubts when hearing a voice on the phone, but never when looking at the face of a familiar person. In the 1960s, a handful of pioneering researchers began training computers to recognise human faces, although it was not until the 1990s that this technology really began to take off. Facial recognition algorithms have improved to such an extent that since 1993 their error rate has been halved every two years. When it comes to recognising unfamiliar faces in laboratory experiments, today’s systems outperform human capabilities.

Continue reading “How to Hack a Face: From Facial Recognition to Facial Recreation” »

New SystemBC malware spotted in the wild helping other malware strains bypass firewalls, hide bad traffic.

A new malware strain is being distributed by threat actors via exploit kits like Fallout and RIG to hide malicious network traffic with the help of SOCKS5 proxies set up on compromised computers.

The malware, provisionally named SystemBC by the Proofpoint Threat Insight Team researchers who found it, uses secure HTTP connections to encrypt the information sent to command-and-control servers by other strains dropped on the infected machines.

“SystemBC is written in C++ and primarily sets up SOCKS5 proxies on victim computers that can then be used by threat actors to tunnel/hide the malicious traffic associated with other malware,” says Proofpoint.

Warnings about connected vehicle vulnerabilities have been a steady drumbeat for years. Now a consumer-advocacy group is putting it in starker terms, suggesting a mass cyberattack against such vehicles could lead to Sept. 11-level casualties.

California-based Consumer Watchdog has issued a 49-page report that paints the dire picture and urges automakers to install 50-cent “kill switches” to allow vehicles to be disconnected from the Internet. The report highlights numerous widely reported instances of remote vehicle hacking, such as a 2015 demonstration involving a Jeep Cherokee left crawling along a St. Louis-area freeway.

“Millions of cars on the internet running the same software means a single exploit can affect millions of vehicles simultaneously. A hacker with only modest resources could launch a massive attack against our automotive infrastructure, potentially causing thousands of fatalities and disrupting our most critical form of transportation,” the group warns.

A new ransomware family targeting Android devices spreads to other victims by sending text messages containing malicious links to the entire contact list found on already infected targets.

The malware dubbed Android/Filecoder. C (FileCoder) by the ESET research team which discovered it is currently targeting devices running Android 5.1 or later.

“Due to narrow targeting and flaws in both execution of the campaign and implementation of its encryption, the impact of this new ransomware is limited,” ESET’s researchers found.

MILWAUKEE (AP) — A British cybersecurity expert credited with helping stop a worldwide computer virus in May 2017 won’t serve any additional time behind bars for creating malware years before he won international acclaim.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller sentenced 25-year-old Marcus Hutchins on Friday in Milwaukee to time served, with a year of supervised release. Stadtmueller said the virus Hutchins helped stop was far more damaging than the malware he wrote.

Hutchins pleaded guilty in May to developing and conspiring to distribute malware called Kronos from 2012 to 2015. Prosecutors dismissed eight charges in exchange for his plea.

GitHub Bluekeep explainer significantly lowers the bar for writing malware similar to NotPetya and WannaCry, Threats and Risks, Github, WannaCry, NotPetya, ransomware, BlueKeep”

Credit card info and autofill data is up for grabs as browser-based attacks surge.