Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it will expand its cybersecurity skilling initiative to 23 additional countries. The campaign, which began last year in the U.S., is part of the company's push to help solve the cybersecurity industry's growing talent problem, while also helping diversify the industry. From a report: Like many industries within tech, cybersecurity is facing both a workforce shortage and a widening skills gap among workers. According to Kate Behncken, vice president and lead of Microsoft Philanthropies, by 2025 there will be 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs open globally. Microsoft originally launched the skilling campaign in the U.S. last fall, partnering with 135 community colleges to skill and recruit workers into the cybersecurity industry. By expanding skilling and training to 23 countries, Microsoft aims to get ahead of the demand. The countries, which include Australia, Brazil, Canada and India, were chosen due to their "elevated cyberthreat risk."

Firefox is finally gaining proper AV1 support. Neowin reports: According to an update made to a post on Bugzilla, the Mozilla Foundation is finally ready to add hardware acceleration for the AV1 video format. Developers plan to implement improved AV1 support in the upcoming release of Firefox 100, scheduled to arrive on May 3, 2022. Hardware acceleration for AV1 video brings several noticeable benefits to customers. The standard developed by Alliance for Open Media and initially released in March 2018 offers better video compression than H.264 (about 50%) and VP9 (about 20%). Shifting AV1 video processing from software to hardware improves efficiency and reduces energy consumption, resulting in better battery life on tablets and laptops. Google and Microsoft announced hardware-accelerated AV1 video in Chrome and Edge in late 2020. Mozilla, on the other hand, did not rush to introduce improved AV1 support in Firefox. While it is easy to dunk on Firefox, there is a reason why developers took their time. Hardware-accelerated AV1 video is not something you can add to any computer with Windows 10, and it requires a PC with the most recent and powerful hardware.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A digital extortion gang with a murky background and unconventional methods -- one researcher called them "laughably bad" at times -- has claimed responsibility for a string of compromises against some of the world's largest technology companies. The group, known as Lapsus$, said in a series of public posts on the messaging app Telegram this week that it had accessed Okta, the San Francisco-based identity-management firm that provides authentication tools for an array of business clients. Okta said Tuesday that attackers may have viewed data from approximately 2.5% of its customers after breaching the laptop of an engineer at a third-party vendor.

Lapsus$ previously claimed to breach organizations including Nvidia, Samsung Electronics, and the gaming company Ubisoft Entertainment. The group said it also accessed data from Microsoft, saying it had gathered source code from the company's Bing search engine, Bing Maps and the Cortana digital assistant. Microsoft said attackers gained "limited access" to its systems, and that attackers had compromised a single account to gather data. In recent years, most hacking groups have used malware to encrypt a victim's files, then demanded payment to unlock them, so-called ransomware. Sometimes the groups steal sensitive data and threaten to make it public unless they are paid. Lapsus$ functions as a "large-scale social engineering and extortion campaign," though it does not deploy ransomware, Microsoft said. The group uses phone-based tactics to target personal email accounts at victim organizations and pays individual employees or business partners of an organization for illicit access, according to Microsoft. Lapsus$ also is known for hijacking individual accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges to drain user holdings.

Authentication services provider Okta is investigating a report of a digital breach, the company said on Tuesday, after hackers posted screenshots showing what they claimed was its internal company environment. From a report: A hack at Okta could have major consequences because thousands of other companies rely on the San Francisco-based firm to manage access to their own networks and applications. The company was aware of the reports and was investigating, Okta official Chris Hollis said in a brief statement. "We will provide updates as more information becomes available," he added. The screenshots were posted by a group of ransom-seeking hackers known as LAPSUS$ on their Telegram channel late on Monday. In an accompanying message, the group said its focus was "ONLY on Okta customers." TechCrunch adds: Okta chief executive Todd McKinnon confirmed the breach in a tweet thread overnight on March 22: "In late January 2022, Okta detected an attempt to compromise the account of a third party customer support engineer working for one of our subprocessors. The matter was investigated and contained by the subprocessor. We believe the screenshots shared online are connected to this January event. Based on our investigation to date, there is no evidence of ongoing malicious activity beyond the activity detected in January."

apoc.famine shares a report from Ars Technica: Hundreds of thousands of sites use the OAuth protocol to let visitors login using their existing accounts with companies like Google, Facebook, or Apple. Instead of having to create an account on the new site, visitors can use an account that they already have -- and the magic of OAuth does the rest. The Browser-in-the-Browser (BitB) technique capitalizes on this scheme. Instead of opening a genuine second browser window that's connected to the site facilitating the login or payment, BitB uses a series of HTML and cascading style sheets (CSS) tricks to convincingly spoof the second window. The URL that appears there can show a valid address, complete with a padlock and HTTPS prefix. The layout and behavior of the window appear identical to the real thing.

While the method is convincing, it has a few weaknesses that should give savvy visitors a foolproof way to detect that something is amiss. Genuine OAuth or payment windows are in fact separate browser instances that are distinct from the primary page. That means a user can resize them and move them anywhere on the monitor, including outside the primary window. BitB windows, by contrast, aren't a separate browser instance at all. Instead, they're images rendered by custom HTML and CSS and contained in the primary window. That means the fake pages can't be resized, fully maximized or dragged outside the primary window. All users should protect their accounts with two-factor authentication. One other thing more experienced users can do is right click on the popup page and choose "inspect." If the window is a BitB spawn, its URL will be hardcoded into the HTML.

Microsoft says they are investigating claims that the Lapsus$ data extortion hacking group breached their internal Azure DevOps source code repositories and stolen data. BleepingComputer reports: Unlike many extortion groups we read about today, Lapsus$ does not deploy ransomware on their victim's devices. Instead, they target the source code repositories for large companies, steal their proprietary data, and then attempt to ransom that data back to the company for millions of dollars. While it is not known if the extortion group has successfully ransomed stolen data, Lapsus has gained notoriety over the past months for their confirmed attacks against NVIDIA, Samsung, Vodafone, Ubisoft, and Mercado Libre. Unfortunately, Lapsus$ has a good track record, with their claims of attacks on other companies later confirmed to be true.

While the leaking of source code makes it easier to find vulnerabilities in a company's software, Microsoft has previously stated that leaked source code does not create an elevation of risk. Microsoft says that their threat model assumes that threat actors already understand how their software works, whether through reverse engineering or previous source code leaks. "At Microsoft, we have an inner source approach -- the use of open source software development best practices and an open source-like culture -- to making source code viewable within Microsoft. This means we do not rely on the secrecy of source code for the security of products, and our threat models assume that attackers have knowledge of source code," explained Microsoft in a blog post about the SolarWinds attackers gaining access to their source code. "So viewing source code isn't tied to elevation of risk." However, source code repositories also commonly contain access tokens, credentials, API keys, and even code signing certificates.

President Biden on Monday urged American companies to put up their cyber-defenses, citing "evolving intelligence that the Russian Government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks" against the U.S. From a report: "The Federal Government can't defend against this threat alone," Biden said in a lengthy statement released by the White House. He called on the private sector, as "critical infrastructure owners and operators," to "accelerate efforts to lock their digital doors." [...] "I urge our private sector partners to harden your cyber defenses immediately," Biden said in the statement. In the lead-up to the invasion of Ukraine, the White House repeatedly publicized its intelligence about Moscow's plans in an effort to deter them.

schwit1 shares a report: About 10 years ago, when Erik Arbuthnot first started hearing about phony-kidnapping hustles, his fellow agents at the FBI scoffed at the cases. "Don't worry about those," they told Arbuthnot. "Those are fake. We handle the real ones." Now the cases have become so widespread that the bureau has a name for them: virtual kidnappings. "It's a telephone extortion scheme," says Arbuthnot, who heads up virtual-kidnapping investigations for the FBI out of Los Angeles. Because many of the crimes go unreported, the bureau doesn't have a precise number on how widespread the scam is. But over the past few years, thousands of families like the Mendelsteins have experienced the same bizarre nightmare: a phone call, a screaming child, a demand for ransom money, and a kidnapping that -- after painful minutes, hours, or even days -- is revealed to be fake. There's the pastor in Memphis who, like Mendelstein, was told his daughter had been kidnapped. The man in Miami who thought his wife and baby daughter were being held for ransom. The guy in Missouri who got conned into thinking his elderly mother had been taken. Overall, the FBI reports, internet scams nearly doubled in 2020 -- and extortion cases like virtual kidnapping have rung up the third-most victims, right behind phishing schemes and phony sales calls.

A data breach at HubSpot, a tool used by many companies to manage marketing campaigns and on-board new users, has affected BlockFi, Swan Bitcoin, NYDIG and Circle. From a report: However, all the companies said their operations were not affected and their treasuries were not at risk. HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool used to store users' names, phone numbers and email addresses for marketing purposes, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. While user information was leaked to hackers, the affected companies said passwords and other internal information were not affected. In outreach emails seen by CoinDesk, the companies said HubSpot is an external tool and hackers did not gain access to internal systems. HubSpot said the breach was the result of a bad actor getting access to an employee account and using it to target stakeholders in the cryptocurrency industry. The company said 30 clients were affected, but has not published a full list.

ZDNet describes CafePress as "a U.S. platform offering print-on-demand products" like custom t-shirts, hats, and mugs.

"CafePress's past owner has been fined $500,000 over a litany of security failures and data breaches," ZDNet reported this week: CafePress became the subject of a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation surrounding how it handled security — and how the firm allegedly "failed to secure consumers' sensitive personal data and covered up a major breach." On March 15, the US regulator said that Residual Pumpkin is required to pay $500,000 in damages. According to the FTC's complaint (PDF), issued against the platform's former owner Residual Pumpkin Entity, LLC, and its current owner PlanetArt, LLC, there was a lack of "reasonable security measures" to prevent data breaches.

In addition, the FTC claims that CafePress kept user data for longer than necessary, stored personally identifiable information including Social Security numbers and password reset answers in cleartext, and did not patch against known system vulnerabilities. "As a result of its shoddy security practices, CafePress' network was breached multiple times," the FTC says. CafePress experienced a major security incident in 2019. An attacker infiltrated the platform in February 2019 and was able to access data belonging to millions of users. This included email addresses, poorly-encrypted passwords, names, home addresses, security questions and answers, some partial card payment records, phone numbers, and at least 180,000 unencrypted Social Security numbers....

According to the FTC, CafePress was notified a month after the breach and did patch the security flaw — but did not investigate the breach properly "for several months." Customers were also not told. Instead, CafePress implemented a forced password reset as part of its "policy" and only informed users in September 2019, once the data breach had been publicly reported. In a separate case in 2018, CafePress allegedly was made aware of shops being compromised. These accounts were closed — and the shopkeepers, the victims, were then charged $25 account closure fees.

The FTC also claims that the company "misled" users by using consumer email addresses for marketing, despite promises to the contrary.

The board members of the FIDO alliance include Amazon, Google, PayPal, RSA, and Apple and Microsoft (as well as Intel and Arm). It describes its mission as reducing the world's "over-reliance on passwords."

Today Wired reports that the group thinks "it has finally identified the missing piece of the puzzle" for finally achieving large-scale adoption of a password-supplanting technology: On Thursday, the organization published a white paper that lays out FIDO's vision for solving the usability issues that have dogged passwordless features and, seemingly, kept them from achieving broad adoption....

The paper is conceptual, not technical, but after years of investment to integrate what are known as the FIDO2 and WebAuthn passwordless standards into Windows, Android, iOS, and more, everything is now riding on the success of this next step.... FIDO is looking to get to the heart of what still makes passwordless schemes tough to navigate. And the group has concluded that it all comes down to the procedure for switching or adding devices. If the process for setting up a new phone, say, is too complicated, and there's no simple way to log in to all of your apps and accounts — or if you have to fall back to passwords to reestablish your ownership of those accounts — then most users will conclude that it's too much of a hassle to change the status quo.

The passwordless FIDO standard already relies on a device's biometric scanners (or a master PIN you select) to authenticate you locally without any of your data traveling over the Internet to a web server for validation. The main concept that FIDO believes will ultimately solve the new device issue is for operating systems to implement a "FIDO credential" manager, which is somewhat similar to a built-in password manager. Instead of literally storing passwords, this mechanism will store cryptographic keys that can sync between devices and are guarded by your device's biometric or passcode lock. At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference last summer, the company announced its own version of what FIDO is describing, an iCloud feature known as "Passkeys in iCloud Keychain," which Apple says is its "contribution to a post-password world...."

FIDO's white paper also includes another component, a proposed addition to its specification that would allow one of your existing devices, like your laptop, to act as a hardware token itself, similar to stand-alone Bluetooth authentication dongles, and provide physical authentication over Bluetooth. The idea is that this would still be virtually phish-proof since Bluetooth is a proximity-based protocol and can be a useful tool as needed in developing different versions of truly passwordless schemes that don't have to retain a backup password. Christiaan Brand, a product manager at Google who focuses on identity and security and collaborates on FIDO projects, says that the passkey-style plan follows logically from the smartphone or multi-device image of a passwordless future. "This grand vision of 'Let's move beyond the password,' we've always had this end state in mind to be honest, it just took until everyone had mobile phones in their pockets," Brand says....

To FIDO, the biggest priority is a paradigm shift in account security that will make phishing a thing of the past.... When asked if this is really it, if the death knell for passwords is truly, finally tolling, Google's Brand turns serious, but he doesn't hesitate to answer: "I feel like everything is coalescing," he says. "This should be durable."
Such a change won't happen overnight, the article points out. "With any other tech migration (ahem, Windows XP), the road will inevitably prove arduous."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Early in March, a bunch of Facebook users got a mysterious, spam-like email titled "Your account requires advanced security from Facebook Protect" and telling them that they were required to turn on the Facebook Protect feature (which they could do by hitting a link in the email) by a certain date, or they would be locked out of their account. The program, according to Facebook, is a "security program for groups of people that are more likely to be targeted by malicious hackers, such as human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials." It's meant to do things like ensure those accounts are monitored for hacking threats and that they are protected by two-factor authentication (2FA).

Unfortunately, the email that Facebook sent from the address security@facebookmail.com resembled a rather common form of spam, and so it's probable that many people ignored it. It actually wasn't spam. In fact, it was real. The first deadline to hit for many people was Thursday, March 17th. And now, they are locked out of their Facebook accounts -- and are having trouble with the process that Facebook has provided to get them back in. Those who did not activate Facebook Protect before their deadline are apparently getting a message explaining why they can't get into their accounts and offering to help them turn it on. However, it's not always working.

The U.S. government is warning of "possible threats" to satellite communication networks amid fears that recent attacks on satellite networks in Europe, sparked by the war in Ukraine, could soon spread to the United States. From a reportL: A joint CISA-FBI advisory published this week urges satellite communication (SATCOM) network providers and critical infrastructure organizations that rely on satellite networks to bolster their cybersecurity defenses due to an increased likelihood of cyberattack, warning that a successful intrusion could create risk in their customer environments.

While the advisory did not name specific sectors under threat, the use of satellite communications is widespread across the United States. It's estimated that about eight million Americans rely on SATCOM networks for internet access. Ruben Santamarta, a cybersecurity expert who specializes in analyzing satellite communications systems, told TechCrunch that networks are used in a wide number of industries, including aviation, government, the media and the military, as well as gas facilities and electricity service stations that are located in remote places.

joshuark writes: In one of those in-your-face irony or karmic debt, Bleeping Computer reports that Microsoft Defender tags Office updates as ransomware. The article states: "Windows admins were hit today by a wave of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint false positives where Office updates were tagged as malicious in alerts pointing to ransomware behavior detected on their systems."

Further on, an explanation for the source of the karmic irony is: "The root cause of the false positives was a recently deployed update within service components for detecting ransomware alerts." Couldn't this have waited for April 1st?

Bleeping Computer goes on, "A Microsoft spokesperson was not available for comment when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier today."

Russian cyber attacks have so far struggled to successfully target Ukraine's critical national infrastructure, according to government officials. From a report: While they are aware of Russian intent to disrupt or infiltrate Ukrainian systems, according to the officials, they have continued to function and Ukraine has mounted a strong defense. Many denial-of-service attacks targeting Ukraine are of low sophistication and impact, the people said, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The country's experience fending off major cyber attacks since 2015 may have helped prepare it for recent attempts, they added. The destructive "wiper" malware seen in Ukraine is more insidious and the officials said they are on alert for it appearing outside of the country. In the hours prior to Russia's invasion, some Ukrainian government agencies were targeted with the software, which deleted data held on infected computers. More aggressive network take-downs or attacks may not fit with Russian objectives, they added, and Russia could even be leaving the broadband network active for its own means to gather intelligence.

Internet security analysts have spotted a spike in backdoor infections on WordPress websites hosted on GoDaddy's Managed WordPress service, all featuring an identical backdoor payload. The case affects internet service resellers such as MediaTemple, tsoHost, 123Reg, Domain Factory, Heart Internet, and Host Europe Managed WordPress. BleepingComputer reports: The discovery comes from Wordfence, whose team first observed the malicious activity on March 11, 2022, with 298 websites infected by the backdoor within 24 hours, 281 of which were hosted on GoDaddy. The backdoor infecting all sites is a 2015 Google search SEO-poisoning tool implanted on the wp-config.php to fetch spam link templates from the C2 that are used to inject malicious pages into search results. The campaign uses predominately pharmaceutical spam templates, served to visitors of the compromised websites instead of the actual content.

The goal of these templates is likely to entice the victims to make purchases of fake products, losing money and payment details to the threat actors. Additionally, the actors can harm a website's reputation by altering its content and making the breach evident, but this doesn't seem to be the actors' aim at this time. The intrusion vector hasn't been determined, so while this looks suspiciously close to a supply chain attack, it hasn't been confirmed. [...] In any case, if your website is hosted on GoDaddy's Managed WordPress platform, make sure to scan your wp-config.php file to locate potential backdoor injections. Wordfence also reminds admins that while removing the backdoor should be the first step, removing spam search engine results should also be a priority.

Google's Threat Analysis Group has observed a financially-motivated threat actor working as an intermediary for the Russian hackers, including the Conti ransomware gang. From a report: The group, which Google refers to as "Exotic Lily," acts as an initial access broker, finding vulnerable organizations and selling access to their networks to the highest bidder. By contracting out the initial access to a victim's network, ransomware gangs like Conti can focus on the execution phase of an attack. In the case of Exotic Lily, this initial access was gained through email campaigns, in which the group masqueraded as legitimate organizations and employees through the use of domain and identity spoofing. In the majority of cases, a spoofed domain was nearly identical to the real domain name of an existing organization, but changed the top-level domains to ".us," ".co" or ".biz." In order to appear as legitimate employees, Exotic Lily set up social media profiles and AI-generated images of human faces. The attackers, which Google believes are operating from Central or Eastern Europe due to the threat actors' working hours, would then send spear-phishing emails under the pretext of a business proposal, before ultimately uploading a payload to a public file-sharing service such as WeTransfer or Microsoft OneDrive.

"A little noticed side effect of all the sanctions Russia is under for its invasion of Ukraine is that related to IT," writes Slashdot reader quonset. "U.S. sanctions prohibit any technology transfers to the country, including computer chips. However, another issue is Russia is now cut off from cloud storage companies in the West. As a result, Russia is two months away from using up all its domestic storage capacity. Four options have been proposed to counter this issue. BleepingComputer reports: Last week, the Ministry of Digital Development amended the Yarovaya Law (2016) to suspend a yearly requirement for telecom operators to increase storage capacity allocations by 15% for anti-terrorist surveillance purposes. Another move that could free up space would be to demand ISPs abandon media streaming services and other online entertainment platforms that eat up precious resources. Thirdly, there's the option of buying out all available storage from domestic data processing centers. However, this will likely lead to further problems for entertainment providers who need additional storage to add services and content. Russia is also considering seizing IT servers and storage left behind by companies who pulled out of Russia and integrating them into public infrastructure. There is one more option mentioned in the report and it has to do with China. Russia could "tap into Chinese cloud service providers and IT system sellers," reports BleepingComputer, although China has yet to decide how much it's willing to help Russia.

Sophos threat researcher Nick Gregory discovered a hole in Linux's netfilter firewall program that's "exploitable to achieve kernel code execution (via ROP [return-oriented programming]), giving full local privilege escalation, container escape, whatever you want." ZDNet reports: Behind almost all Linux firewalls tools such as iptables; its newer version, nftables; firewalld; and ufw, is netfilter, which controls access to and from Linux's network stack. It's an essential Linux security program, so when a security hole is found in it, it's a big deal. [...] This problem exists because netfilter doesn't handle its hardware offload feature correctly. A local, unprivileged attacker can use this to cause a denial-of-service (DoS), execute arbitrary code, and cause general mayhem. Adding insult to injury, this works even if the hardware being attacked doesn't have offload functionality! That's because, as Gregory wrote to a security list, "Despite being in code dealing with hardware offload, this is reachable when targeting network devices that don't have offload functionality (e.g. lo) as the bug is triggered before the rule creation fails."

This vulnerability is present in the Linux kernel versions 5.4 through 5.6.10. It's listed as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE-2022-25636), and with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8), this is a real badie. How bad? In its advisory, Red Hat said, "This flaw allows a local attacker with a user account on the system to gain access to out-of-bounds memory, leading to a system crash or a privilege escalation threat." So, yes, this is bad. Worse still, it affects recent major distribution releases such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x; Debian Bullseye; Ubuntu Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15.3. While the Linux kernel netfilter patch has been made, the patch isn't available yet in all distribution releases.

Seven long, long years ago, Google started offering users a way to buy a domain without having to deal with a host provider. Now, Google Domains is at last out of beta as a full-fledged product. Engadget: Google says, to date, millions of people have used the service to manage a domain. It has added more features and tools to Domains over the years. Folks in 26 countries can now use the full version of the service. [...] To mark the occasion of Domains becoming a fully formed entity, Google's offering new and returning users a discount until April 15th.