"Ransomware Rising Despite Takedowns, Says Corvus Report"

According to Corvus Insurance, new ransomware gangs filled the void left by LockBit and ALPHV/BlackCat in the first quarter of 2024. The cyber insurance firm has published "Ransomware Groups Don't Die, They Multiply," which reveals that ransomware activity increased by 21 percent in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same time in 2023. At 1,075, the number of recorded victims in the first quarter of 2024 is significantly higher than in the same period in 2023, at 699.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 12:41

"Millions of Malicious 'Imageless' Containers Planted on Docker Hub Over 5 Years"

JFrog researchers found multiple campaigns planting millions of malicious "imageless" containers on Docker Hub over the past five years, highlighting how open source registries can enable supply chain attacks. More than four million Docker Hub repositories are imageless and contain only the repository documentation, according to JFrog security researcher Andrey Polkovnichenko. The documentation is unrelated to the container. Instead, it is a page that directs users to phishing or malware sites.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 12:27

"Critical Vulnerabilities in Judge0 Lead to Sandbox Escape, Host Takeover"

Tanto Security warns that three critical-severity vulnerabilities in the Judge0 open source service enable attackers to conduct sandbox escapes and take over the host machine. Judge0 is an online service for executing arbitrary code in a secure sandbox. This service facilitates the development of applications that require online code execution, such as programming, e-commerce, recruitment platforms, online code editors, and more.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 12:14

"FCC Fines Carriers $200m For Selling User Location Data"

According to the FCC, four of America’s largest mobile operators sold access to customer location data to third parties without gaining customer consent or putting adequate safeguards in place. The FCC is fining Sprint ($12m), T-Mobile ($80m), AT&T ($57m), and Verizon ($47m) close to $200m in total for breaking the law.

Submitted by Adam Ekwall on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 10:51

"Ransom Payments Surge by 500% to an Average of $2m"

According to security researchers at Sophos, average ransom payments surged by 500% in the past year to reach $2m per payment. This compares to an average payment of $400,000 calculated by Sophos in its 2023 study, demonstrating that ransomware operators are seeking increasingly large payoffs from victims. The researchers noted that nearly two-thirds (63%) of ransom demands made in the past year were $1m or more, with 30% of demands demanding over $5m. This is despite a reduction in the rate of organizations being hit by ransomware in the past year, at 59%.

Submitted by Adam Ekwall on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 10:33

"Muddling Meerkat Hackers Manipulate DNS Using China's Great Firewall"

"Muddling Meerkat," a new cluster of activity, has been suspected of being linked to a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor's manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS) to probe networks since October 2019, with a surge in activity observed in September 2023. The hackers behind this activity manipulate Mail Exchange (MX) records by injecting fake responses through China's Great Firewall (GFW).

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 08:51

The Challenges of Software Assurance and Supply Chain Risk Management

Read more about The Challenges of Software Assurance and Supply Chain Risk Management

Cognitive Programming Model for Reliable and Inspectable Automated Decision Making using Large Language Models Tristan Vanderbruggen & Matthew Sottile, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory The past year has seen the rapid progress and adoption of large language models (LLMs) within many customer applications. Particularly chatbots powered by LLMs have demonstrated capabilities that few were expecting: they can write essays, web applications, and help with all matter of prototyping. Unfortunately, these systems often produce incorrect or misleading results.

10th IEEE International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing

Read more about 10th IEEE International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing

"IEEE CIC has been conceived as the key multidisciplinary venue to serve as a premier international forum for discussion among academic and industrial researchers, practitioners, and students interested in Internet technologies, applications and services, collaborative networking, technology and systems, and applications."

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to security, privacy, and trust in collaborative computing.

Cognitive Programming Model for Reliable and Inspectable Automated Decision Making using Large Language Models

Read more about Cognitive Programming Model for Reliable and Inspectable Automated Decision Making using Large Language Models

Systems today are primarily assemblies of reused components many of which are Open-Source software. The reuse of software has enabled faster fielding of systems since common components, but all software comes with vulnerabilities, and attackers have expanded their capabilities to exploit them in products that have broad use especially Open Source. How should an organization make appropriate trade-off choices among cost, schedule, and cybersecurity?

Measurements to Improve AI/ML Training Data Sets

Read more about Measurements to Improve AI/ML Training Data Sets

Adequacy of training data is critical for a wide range of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods. Current approaches are insufficient, and can result in unreliable performance, bias, and problems in transferring models to new or changing environments. Concepts from combinatorial testing can add confidence by providing a quantitative measure of the thoroughness of a data set.

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