The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently started accepting submissions for its Voice Cloning Challenge, a public competition with a $25,000 top prize for ideas that protect consumers from the danger of AI-enabled voice cloning for fraudulent activity.  The Challenge was announced in mid-November in an effort to find ways to counter the misuse of voice cloning technology as it becomes more sophisticated due to the improvement of text-to-speech with the help of artificial intelligence.

A threat actor named "RET" claims to have sold the source code and a cracked version of the Zeppelin ransomware builder for $500. The threat intelligence company KELA discovered the claim on a cybercrime forum. Although the offer's legitimacy has yet to be confirmed, screenshots from the seller suggest that the package is real. The buyer could use the malware to launch a new Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation or create a new Zeppelin-based locker. Zeppelin stems from the Delphi-based Vega/VegaLocker malware family, which was active between 2019 and 2022.

Since mid-November, an Iran-linked hacktivist group called Cyber Toufan has breached over 100 organizations in and around Israel. The group has wiped servers, leaked sensitive data, and conducted follow-on attacks down the supply chain. Cyber Toufan compromised Signature-IT, an Israeli company specializing in hosting international websites for businesses, on November 16. The hacktivists were able to reach dozens of major Israeli companies and government organizations, as well as international companies.

Google recently announced the first Chrome security update of 2024, which resolves six vulnerabilities, including four reported by external researchers.  Google noted that all the four externally reported security defects are high-severity memory safety flaws, but bug bounty rewards were handed out only for three of them.  The first two bugs, tracked as CVE-2024-0222 and CVE-2024-0223, are use-after-free and heap buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the graphics rendering engine ANGLE.

Health technology company HealthEC has recently disclosed a data breach impacting close to 4.5 million customers of its business partners.  The company said that, between July 14, 2023, and July 23, 2023, an unauthorized actor accessed certain systems and exfiltrated files entrusted to HealthEC by its business partners.  The stolen files contained personal information such as names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, taxpayer identification numbers, medical information, health insurance information, and billing and claims information.

Freight shipping giant Estes Express Lines has recently started informing more than 21,000 individuals that their personal information was stolen in a ransomware attack.  The incident was identified on October 1, 2023, and the investigation into the matter determined that the attackers gained access to the company's network on September 26, 2023.  Estes told the Maine Attorney General's Office that the personal information that was compromised in the attack included names, other personal identifiers, and Social Security numbers.

Qualcomm has disclosed a critical vulnerability that would enable remote attacks through malicious voice calls over LTE networks. The company listed 26 vulnerabilities, four of which are critical, affecting Qualcomm chipsets. According to Qualcomm, the most severe vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-33025 with a CVSS score of 9.8, involves a buffer overflow flaw. It causes memory corruption in the data modem, which happens during Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) calls when the Session Description Protocol (SDP) body is non-standard.

According to Hudson Researchers, a mysterious hacker by the name of "irleaks" launched a series of attacks against industry-leading companies in Iran. The hacker announced the sale of over 160 million records allegedly stolen from 23 leading insurance companies in Iran. The stolen data is said to include first and last names, birth dates, mobile phone numbers, company national codes, and other information. A sample of the data, which is being sold for $60,000, was also shared.

Over the next 12 months, the European Central Bank (ECB) will stress test 109 banks to determine whether they are adequately prepared for cyberattacks. The tests will prioritize the banks' response and recovery capabilities, not the potential to prevent incidents. The ECB directly supervises the 109 banks in question. The stress test scenario aims to disrupt the banks' day-to-day operations, allowing existing contingency plans to be put to the test. Although the ECB performs stress tests regularly, the emphasis on cyber resilience is new.

According to CloudSEK researchers, the dark web is experiencing a "gold rush" as threat actors target verified accounts on X, formerly Twitter, for large-scale attacks. There has been a surge of posts selling accounts with X gold verification on dark web forums, marketplaces, and Telegram channels. On X, verified organizations can buy a gold checkmark, which is part of the platform's verification system. Blue badges are available for premium subscribers, while gray badges are available for NGOs and government agencies.