In this week’s episode of the podcast (#168), sponsored by Signal Sciences, Chris Eng of Veracode joins us to talk about the 10th annual State of Software Security Report and the problem of application security debt. Also, Brendan Macaraeg of Signal Sciences talks about the expanding landscape of web application attacks and defenses.
Web
Israeli Group Exploited WhatsApp to Spy on Users
An Israeli firm has exploited a flaw in the popular messaging mobile app WhatsApp to plant spyware on iPhones and Android. One phone call is all it takes for software developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group to install itself on a vulnerable iPhone or Android device, according to a published report in the FT Times. The publication broke the news, saying it potentially affects 1.5 billion users of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messaging application, on Monday. WhatsApp quickly issued a fix for the exploit, described in an alert on the Facebook website as “a buffer overflow vulnerability in WhatsApp VOIP stack” that allows for “remote code execution via specially crafted series of SRTCP packets sent to a target phone number.” “WhatsApp encourages people to upgrade to the latest version of our app, as well as keep their mobile operating system up to date, to protect against potential targeted exploits designed […]
Drive-By Malware Uses Google Sites for Drive by Download Attacks
New malware, LoadPCBanker, is leveraging Google’s Sites to spread via drive-by download attacks, according to a new report. Companies are advised to block uploads and downloads from the service.
Report: Bad Bots sent One in Five Web Requests in 2018
Distil Network’s annual assessment of bad bots, “Bad Bot Report 2019: The Bot Arms Race Continues,” found that bad bots accounted for one in five website requests in 2018, or 20.4 percent of web traffic.
Report: EU may slap new GDPR Fines on Old Data Breaches
The European Union (EU) wants to send a clear message to companies that it’s serious about data privacy, suggesting it will still slap fines on data breaches that happen even before the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect in late May if companies don’t disclose them first.