Threats

Report: China, Like Russia, Uses Social Media to Sway U.S. Public Opinion

Russia isn’t the only nation using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to spread its political message across in the United States; China also is using social media–albeit in different ways–to sway public opinion and make the Communist country look favorable to the American public, research has found. China’s state-sponsored media is using English-language social-media operations–including targeted advertisements on Facebook–to push positive propaganda about the country to American users, according to a new assessment from security intelligence firm Recorded Future. It’s already well known that Russia has used U.S. social media to sway not just public opinion but also results in the 2006 U.S. presidential election. Now the research takes a deeper dive into how China is doing something similar, although to support a different political agenda, according to a blog post outlining the findings by Recorded Future’s Insikt Group. “These differences in technique are driven by dissimilar […]

Devices’ UPnP Service Emerges as Key Threat to Home IoT Networks

Home connected device users are putting their IoT networks at risk by leaving exposed a common service devices use to seamlessly connect and communicate with each other, according to cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. Hackers recently have been found to exploit the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) service of poorly configured routers and home networking devices, as evidenced by an attack earlier this year that allegedly hijacked thousands of Chromecast streaming dongles, Google Home devices and smart TVs to play an ad for a YouTuber PewDiePie’s channel. This event prompted Trend Micro researchers dig deeper into UPnP, discovering that the potential to exploit this service remains significant as many home users are leaving UPnP enabled–unknowingly or not–and often with older, unpatched versions of the service installed on devices, they said. “In a nutshell, we found that most devices still use old versions of UPnP libraries,” wrote Tony Yang, a Trend Micro […]

Research: Sextortion Scams more frequent, sophisticated

So-called “sextortion” attacks are a growing threat, replacing other e-mail borne threats like spam, ransomware and business e-mail compromise attacks as they increase in sophistication and scope, a new report finds.

ExileRAT Malware Targets Tibetan Exile Government

Researchers have discovered a new cyber-espionage campaign targeting the organization representing the exiled Tibetan government.

Russian Cyber Criminal Named as Source of Massive Collection 1 Data Dump

A Russian cyber criminal going by the name of “C0rpz” is believed to be the source of a massive trove of over one billion online credentials known as “Collection 1,” the firm Recorded Future reports.