Weekly Cyber Security News 30/08/2019

A selection of this week’s more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news. What a week of news this has been, more MageCart, a few large take downs, and some surprising breaches. We start with a first, the first ‘hack’ from space:

• NASA Astronaut Accused of Identity Theft in First Criminal Allegation from Space

Another bizarre news item revolves around the Black Hat Conference. One of the speakers suffered heckling during their talk which then quickly esculated:

• Company Sues Black Hat Conference Over Mocked Presentation

• Snake oil or genius? Crown Sterling tells its side of Black Hat controversy

Back to normal exaggeration over terrible security practices… This one though is what many of feared – biometrics leak + linkage to identified individuals. Throw on top of that another undisclosed tracking project at one of the UK’s major transit hubs and should we be worried? What makes that biometric leak extra concerning is that it appears to be possibly for building access – all the things you need to do a Mission Impossible on it:

• Fingerprints of 1M Exposed in Public Biometrics Database A publicly accessible database exposed the fingerprints and facial recognition information of millions, thrusting biometrics security into the spotlight once again.

• UK watchdog to investigate King’s Cross facial recognition tech used to spy on public

 

In other news…

• Hostinger Resets User Passwords Following System Breach

• A new IOT botnet is infecting Android-based set-top boxes

• Alleged Capital One Hacker Also Accused of Crypto-Jacking

• Apache Struts Called Out For Incorrect Security Advisories

• Backdoor Found in Utility for Linux, Unix Servers Backdoor was intentionally planted in 2018 and found during the DEF CON 2019 security conference when researchers stumbled upon malicious code.

• Book publishers sue Audible to stop new speech-to-text feature

• Bulgarian lender Banka DSK fined 1M leva for data breach

• Elderly China Chopper Tool Still Going Strong in Multiple Campaigns Multiple actors in multiple campaigns are using the web shell for remote access, even though it’s almost a decade old and hasn’t been updated.

• Facebook Listened to User’s Conversations: Report

• Four wormable bugs in newer versions of Windows need your attention now

• Fraught ‘naut who sought consort’s report says: I was up to naught, I will thwart fault tort

• Hackers mount attacks on Webmin servers, Pulse Secure, and Fortinet VPNs

• Imperva discloses security incident impacting cloud firewall users

• Joint Effort Neutralized Over 850K Infections of Retadup Worm

• Judge Orders Woman in Capital One Case to Remain in Custody

• Magecart Hits 80 Major eCommerce Sites in Card-Skimming Bonanza Mainly motorsports and luxury apparel sites, all of them were running outdated versions of the Magento eCommerce platform.

• Microsoft Wants exFAT in Linux Kernel, Opens File System Specs

• Police costs for Gatwick drone fiasco double to nearly £900k – and still no one”s been charged

• Police Seize £1m From UK Hacker

• Researchers Analyze Tools Used by ‘Hexane’ Attackers Against Industrial Firms

• Starbucks Abandons Azure Site, Exposed Subdomain to Hijacking

• TGI Fridays Delivers Customer Indigestion Over Data Exposure

• UK National Cyber Security Centre urge to drop Python 2

• Up to 14 Million Hostinger Clients Impacted by Security Incident

• Woman accused of Capital One hack had stolen data from 30 companies, authorities say

• Yes, TfL asked people to write down their Oyster passwords – but don’t worry, they didn’t inhale

• Android PDF app with just 100m downloads caught sneaking malware into mobes

• Dangerous Cryptomining Worm Racks Up 850K Infections, Self-Destructs Law enforcement takedown causes Retadup malware to eat itself.

• Malware Takes Down Lumber Liquidator’s Network

• UK Police Investigations Still Affected by Ransomware Attack

• Can’t bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year

• Kaspersky AV injected unique ID that allowed sites to track users, even in incognito mode

• Google Squashes High-Severity Blink Browser Engine Flaw The bug could enable remote code-execution, information-siphoning or denial-of-service attacks.