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Posted by Rex Pan, software engineer, Google Open Source Security Team Today, we’re launching the OSV-Scanner, a free tool that gives open source developers easy access to vulnerability information relevant to their project. Last year, we undertook an effort to improve vulnerability triage for developers and consumers of open source software. This involved publishing the Open Source Vulnerability (OSV) schema and launching the OSV.dev service, the first distributed open source vulnerability database. OSV allows all the different open source ecosystems and vulnerability databases to publish and consume information in one simple, precise, and machine readable format. The OSV-Scanner is the next step in this effort, providing an officially supported frontend to the OSV database that connects a project’s list of dependencies with the vulnerabilities that affect them. OSV-Scanner Software projects…

Posted by Brooke Davis, Android Security and Privacy Team The App Defense Alliance launched in 2019 with a mission to protect Android users from bad apps through shared intelligence and coordinated detection between alliance partners. Earlier this year, the App Defense Alliance expanded to include new initiatives outside of malware detection and is now the home for several industry-led collaborations including Malware Mitigation, MASA (Mobile App Security Assessment) & CASA (Cloud App Security Assessment). With a new dedicated landing page at appdefensealliance.dev, the ADA has an expanded mission to protect Android users by removing threats while improving app quality across the ecosystem. Let’s walk through some of the latest program updates from the past year, including the addition of new ADA members. Malware Mitigation Together, with the founding ADA members…

Millions of people likely just received an email or snail mail notice saying they’re eligible to claim a class action payment in connection with the 2017 megabreach at consumer credit bureau Equifax. Given the high volume of reader inquiries about this, it seemed worth pointing out that while this particular offer is legit (if paltry), scammers are likely to soon capitalize on public attention to the settlement money. One reader’s copy of their Equifax Breach Settlement letter. They received a check for $6.97. In 2017, Equifax disclosed a massive, extended data breach that led to the theft of Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, addresses and other personal information on nearly 150 million people. Following a public breach response perhaps best described as a giant dumpster fire, the big-three consumer…

Photo: BrandonKleinPhoto / Shutterstock.com Two U.S. men have been charged with hacking into the Ring home security cameras of a dozen random people and then “swatting” them — falsely reporting a violent incident at the target’s address to trick local police into responding with force. Prosecutors say the duo used the compromised Ring devices to stream live video footage on social media of police raiding their targets’ homes, and to taunt authorities when they arrived. Prosecutors in Los Angeles allege 20-year-old James Thomas Andrew McCarty, a.k.a. “Aspertaine,” of Charlotte, N.C., and Kya Christian Nelson, a.k.a. “ChumLul,” 22, of Racine, Wisc., conspired to hack into Yahoo email accounts belonging to victims in the United States. From there, the two allegedly would check how many of those Yahoo accounts were associated with…

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) today seized four-dozen domains that sold “booter” or “stresser” services — businesses that make it easy and cheap for even non-technical users to launch powerful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks designed knock targets offline. The DOJ also charged six U.S. men with computer crimes related to their alleged ownership of the popular DDoS-for-hire services. The booter service OrphicSecurityTeam[.]com was one of the 48 DDoS-for-hire domains seized by the Justice Department this week. The DOJ said the 48 domains it seized helped paying customers launch millions of digital sieges capable of knocking Web sites and even entire network providers offline. Booter services are advertised through a variety of methods, including Dark Web forums, chat platforms and even youtube.com. They accept payment via PayPal, Google…

Microsoft has released its final monthly batch of security updates for 2022, fixing more than four dozen security holes in its various Windows operating systems and related software. The most pressing patches include a zero-day in a Windows feature that tries to flag malicious files from the Web, a critical bug in PowerShell, and a dangerous flaw in Windows 11 systems that was detailed publicly prior to this week’s Patch Tuesday. The security updates include patches for Azure, Microsoft Edge, Office, SharePoint Server, SysInternals, and the .NET framework. Six of the update bundles earned Microsoft’s most dire “critical” rating, meaning they fix vulnerabilities that malware or malcontents can use to remotely commandeer an unpatched Windows system — with little to no interaction on the part of the user. The bug already…

InfraGard, a program run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to build cyber and physical threat information sharing partnerships with the private sector, this week saw its database of contact information on more than 80,000 members go up for sale on an English-language cybercrime forum. Meanwhile, the hackers responsible are communicating directly with members through the InfraGard portal online — using a new account under the assumed identity of a financial industry CEO that was vetted by the FBI itself. On Dec. 10, 2022, the relatively new cybercrime forum Breached featured a bombshell new sales thread: The user database for InfraGard, including names and contact information for tens of thousands of InfraGard members. The FBI’s InfraGard program is supposed to be a vetted Who’s Who of key people…

Ransomware groups are constantly devising new methods for infecting victims and convincing them to pay up, but a couple of strategies tested recently seem especially devious. The first centers on targeting healthcare organizations that offer consultations over the Internet and sending them booby-trapped medical records for the “patient.” The other involves carefully editing email inboxes of public company executives to make it appear that some were involved in insider trading. Alex Holden is founder of Hold Security, a Milwaukee-based cybersecurity firm. Holden’s team gained visibility into discussions among members of two different ransom groups: CLOP (a.k.a. “Cl0p” a.k.a. “TA505“), and a newer ransom group known as Venus. Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) warned that Venus ransomware attacks were targeting a number of U.S. healthcare…

Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, Dianne Hackborn, and Eugenio Marchiori We care deeply about privacy. We also know that trust is built by transparency. This blog, and the technical paper reference within, is an example of that commitment: we describe an important new Android privacy infrastructure called Private Compute Core (PCC). Some of our most exciting machine learning features use continuous sensing data — information from the microphone, camera, and screen. These features keep you safe, help you communicate, and facilitate stronger connections with people you care about. To unlock this new generation of innovative concepts, we built a specialized sandbox to privately process and protect this data. Android Private Compute Core PCC is a secure, isolated data processing environment inside of the Android operating system that gives you control of…

Posted by Benjamin Ackerman (Chrome Security and Jonathan Li (Safe Browsing) As a follow-up to a previous blog post about How Hash-Based Safe Browsing Works in Google Chrome, we wanted to provide more details about Safe Browsing’s Enhanced Protection mode in Chrome. Specifically, how it came about, the protections that are offered and what it means for your data. Security and privacy have always been top of mind for Chrome. Our goal is to make security effortless for you while browsing the web, so that you can go about your day without having to worry about the links that you click on or the files that you download. This is why Safe Browsing’s phishing and malware protections have been a core part of Chrome since 2007. You may have seen…