The Daily Index — Wednesday, August 30, 2023

ATTACKS & VULNERABILITIES

TLDR Cybersecurity

HACKERS CAN SILENTLY GRAB YOUR IP THROUGH SKYPE

A security researcher has found that it’s possible to reveal a Skype app user’s IP address without the target needing to even click a link. Microsoft said the vulnerability does not need immediate attention.

404media.co · 4 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

US HACKS QAKBOT, QUIETLY REMOVES BOTNET INFECTIONS

The US government coordinated a crackdown on the QakBot malware family. The international team seized control of the botnet’s infrastructure and removed the malware from tens of thousands of infected devices.

krebsonsecurity.com · 2 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

DARKGATE - THREAT BREAKDOWN JOURNEY

A new malspam campaign has been observed deploying an off-the-shelf malware called DarkGate. It leverages hijacked email threads to trick recipients into downloading the malware. The attack uses phishing to direct users to an MSI payload subject to certain conditions. This article breaks down how this malware works and the technicalities behind it.

0xtoxin.github.io · 15 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

PIVOTING CLOUDS IN AWS ORGANIZATIONS

This is part 2 of a series on pen-testing AWS organizations. The first part of the series provided an overview of AWS organizations and some of the “easy wins.” Part 2 covers newer and more advanced AWS security mechanisms.

netspi.com · 10 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

USING HASHICORP VAULT TO DYNAMICALLY CREATE MYSQL CREDENTIALS

A tutorial on how to configure Hashicorp Vault (and a MySQL database) to dynamically create time-limited credentials for a MySQL database.

ahead.com · 4 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

AMAZON GUARDDUTY ADDS NEW ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES

Amazon GuardDuty announced a new capability to allow Delegated Admins of an AWS Organization to enable GuardDuty features for all new and existing members of the organization.

aws.amazon.com · 1 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

STATE OF CYBER INSURANCE 2023

The survey results find that most organizations are not approaching cyber insurance with the same diligence – they are simply looking to get covered. What they’re not checking is whether the policy they had last year is what they need now, or if their policy changed at renewal. This ‘cyber insurance gap’ could put a lot of organizations in a tough place when a cybersecurity incident occurs, and they want to utilize this financial safety net.

delinea.com · 8 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

THE 2023 STATE OF RISK REDUCTION: A NEED FOR SPEED

Report providing fresh insight into how security pros handle the challenging vulnerability remediation life cycle from discovery to resolution. Some interesting tidbits include the time it takes to remediate critical security risks from start to finish (4 weeks) and the fact that 49% of security professionals do not know who to contact to fix or verify fixes.

22415572.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net · 60 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

AN AI THREAT MODELING FRAMEWORK FOR POLICYMAKERS

A thought piece from Daniel Miessler in which he proposes a framework for thinking about AI risks through the lens of threat modeling. His proposed model focuses on Actors, Technique, Harm, and Impact (ATHI). A GitHub repo is linked with community-sourced examples of ATHIs.

danielmiessler.com · 5 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

LINKEDIN AND X WILL WORK WITHOUT PASSWORDS IN THE FUTURE

LinkedIn and X look like the next major platforms to ditch passwords in favor of passkeys.

9to5mac.com · 1 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

UKRAINE

Ukraine's cybersecurity success under Viktor Zhora was lauded at the Black Hat conference, but experts suggest that Western nations struggle to replicate their collaborative methods due to regulatory and legal hurdles.

arstechnica.com · 4 min

TLDR Cybersecurity

GOOGLE DEBUTS DUET AI TO TACKLE CLOUD CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGES

Google debuted new AI-based solutions focused on enhancing the cybersecurity capabilities of the company's cloud and security solutions at Google Next, the tech giant's annual conference.

zdnet.com · 4 min