Opinion

Cybercriminals exploit SVB collapse to steal money and data

By Bill Toulas March 14, 2023 11:55 AM

My thoughts using Barracuda Complte Mail Protection in front of O365 or G-suite is very in expensive compared to your complet network or computers being taking down with malware.

 
The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10, 2023, has sent ripples of turbulence throughout the global financial system, but for hackers, scammers, and phishing campaigns, it’s becoming an excellent opportunity.

As multiple security researchers report, threat actors are already registering suspicious domains, conducting phishing pages, and gearing up for business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

These campaigns aim to steal money, steal account data, or infect targets with malware.
SVB going defunct

SVB was a U.S.-based commercial bank, the 16th largest in the country, and the largest bank by deposits in Silicon Valley, California.

On March 10, 2023, the bank failed after a run on its deposits. This failure was the largest of any bank since the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the second-largest in U.S. history.

This event has impacted many businesses and people in the technology, life science, healthcare, private equity, venture capital, and premium wine industries who were customers of SVB.

The chaotic situation is further worsened by the prevailing elements of urgency, uncertainty, and the significant amounts of money deposited at the bank.
Scammers jump at the opportunity

 

Security researcher Johannes Ulrich reported yesterday that threat actors are jumping at the opportunity, registering suspicious domains related to SVB that are very likely to be used in attacks.

Some of the examples given in a report published on the SANS ISC website include:

login-svb[.]com
svbbailout[.]com
svbcertificates[.]com
svbclaim[.]com
svbcollapse[.]com
svbdeposits[.]com
svbhelp[.]com
svblawsuit[.]com

Ulrich warned that the scammers might attempt to contact former clients of SVB to offer them a support package, legal services, loans, or other fake services relating to the bank’s collapse.

An attack already seen in the wild is from BEC threat actors who are impersonating SVB customers and telling customers that they need payments sent to a new bank account after the bank’s collapse.

However, these bank accounts belong to the threat actors, who steal payments meant to go to the legitimate company.

Cyber-intelligence firm Cyble published a similar report today exploring developing SVB-themed threats, warning about these additional domains:

svbdebt[.]com
svbclaims[.]net
svb-usdc[.]com
svb-usdc[.]net
svbi[.]io
banksvb[.]com
svbank[.]com
svblogin[.]com

Many of these sites were registered on the day of the bank’s collapse, March 10, 2023, and are already hosting cryptocurrency scams.

These scam pages tell SVB customers that the bank is distributing USDC as part of a “payback” program.

“March 13 2023 – Silicon Valley Bank is actively distributing USDC as part of the SVB USDC payback program to eligible USDC holders. USDC payouts can only be claimed once per wallet,” claims the cryptocurrency scam.

However, clicking on the site’s ‘Click here to claim’ button brings up a QR code that attempts to compromise Metamask, Exodus, and the Trust Wallet crypto wallets when scanned.

Article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cybercriminals-exploit-svb-collapse-to-steal-money-and-data/)
Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Microsoft 365 outage takes down Teams, Exchange Online, Outlook

By Sergiu Gatlan January 25, 2023 04:11 AM

MspPortal Partners Comment: I hate to say this but all companies are a gluten for punishment, Microsoft needs to stay in the Software development space not the hosting environment. There support is one of the worst in the industry, they need to refund dollars for downtime.
There is much better products in the market place.

Microsoft is investigating an ongoing outage impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services after customers have reported experiencing connection issues.

“We’re investigating issues impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services. We’ve identified a potential networking issue and are reviewing telemetry to determine the next troubleshooting steps,” the Microsoft 365 team said in a Twitter thread.

“We’ve isolated the problem to networking configuration issues, and we’re analyzing the best mitigation strategy to address these without causing additional impact.

According to Redmond, users across all regions currently being serviced by the impacted infrastructure may be unable to access the affected Microsoft 365 services.

The list of services impacted by this outage includes Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, Outlook, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, PowerBi, Microsoft 365 Admin Center, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, and Microsoft Defender for Identity, as revealed in a service health notification.

We’re investigating issues impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services. More info can be found in the admin center under MO502273.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 25, 2023

The Azure team shared additional information related to this incident on the Microsoft Azure service status page.

“Starting at 07:05 UTC on 25 January 2023, customers may experience issues with networking connectivity, manifesting as network latency and/or timeouts when attempting to connect to Azure resources in Public Azure regions, as well as other Microsoft services including M365, PowerBI,” the update reads.

“We’ve determined the network connectivity issue is occurring with devices across the Microsoft Wide Area Network (WAN). This impacts connectivity between clients on the internet to Azure, as well as connectivity between services in datacenters, as well as ExpressRoute connections.

“The issue is causing impact in waves, peaking approximately every 30 minutes. We are actively investigating and will share updates as soon as more is known.”

At the moment, some customers also have issues loading the Microsoft Azure status page, which intermittently displays “504 Gateway Time-out” errors.
Azure status page error

Article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-365-outage-takes-down-teams-exchange-online-outlook/)

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Microsoft shares workaround for ongoing Outlook login issues

Microsoft shares workaround for ongoing Outlook login issues (What New)

By Sergiu Gatlan October 28, 2022 02:57 PM

Microsoft is working on a fix for ongoing sign-in issues affecting some Outlook for Microsoft 365 customers and preventing them from accessing their accounts.

The login problems impact users trying to sign in to Outlook using their Outlook.com accounts or those who have already added the accounts to their Outlook profiles.

Instead of logging in, the users will see the following error messages asking them to use a work or school account: “You can’t sign in here with a personal account. Use your work or school account instead.”

While Microsoft says that the Outlook Team is working on a solution for this known issue, an official workaround is available for those who want to access their accounts until a fix rolls out.

“To work around the issue, you can turn off Support Diagnostics, which turns off the option to submit an In App ticket using Help and then selecting Contact Support. The bug is related to how Outlook is authenticating for the diagnostics in some situations,” Microsoft said.
To disable support diagnostics in Outlook and prevent it from communicating client information on failure to support services, you have to enable the DisableSupportDiagnostics policy setting.

“This policy setting determines if Outlook can communicate client information on failure to support services with the intent of diagnosing the issue or making the information available to support to help with the diagnosis/resolution of the issue and/or provide contextual error messaging to the user,” according to the Group Policy Administrative Templates Catalog.

Last week, Redmond said it was working to resolve another bug that might prevent users from configuring Exchange Online mailboxes in Outlook for Windows.

In early October, the company began rolling out a fix for another issue known since August that’s causing Outlook for Microsoft 365 to freeze and crash after launch.

Microsoft has also recently addressed a bug that triggered Outlook email client crashes when reading emails containing tables like Uber receipt emails.

Article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-shares-workaround-for-ongoing-outlook-login-issues/)

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Google fixes seventh Chrome zero-day exploited in attacks this year

By Bill Toulas October 28, 2022 07:34 AM

I have warned more folks get off this browser (Use Firefox with duckduckgo.com)

Google has released an emergency security update for the Chrome desktop web browser to address a single vulnerability known to be exploited in attacks.

The high-severity flaw (CVE-2022-3723) is a type confusion bug in the Chrome V8 Javascript engine discovered and reported to Google by analysts at Avast.

“Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2022-3723 exists in the wild,” highlights the notice.

The company doesn’t provide many details about the vulnerability for security reasons, allowing Chrome’s user base enough time to update the web browser to version 107.0.5304.87/88, which addresses the problem.

“Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix,” Google says.

“We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed.”

In general, type confusion vulnerabilities occur when the program allocates a resource, object, or variable using a type and then accesses it using a different, incompatible type, resulting in out-of-bounds memory access.

By accessing memory regions that shouldn’t be reachable from the context of the application, an attacker could read sensitive information of other apps, cause crashes, or execute arbitrary code.

Google does not clarify the level of activity involving the exploit that exists in the wild, so whether attacks using CVE-2022-3723 are widespread or limited is not known at this time.

Chrome users can update their browser by opening Settings → About Chrome → Wait for the download to finish → Restart the program.

Article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-fixes-seventh-chrome-zero-day-exploited-in-attacks-this-year/)

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) – Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow

Microsoft Releases October 2022 Security Updates
10/11/2022 02:15 PM EDT

Original release date: October 11, 2022
Link (https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/releaseNote/2022-Oct)

Microsoft has released updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. An attacker can exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review Microsoft’s October 2022 Security Update Summary and Deployment Information and apply the necessary updates.

Meta warns 1 million Facebook users their login info may have been compromised

Naomi Nix- Washington Post
Fri, October 7, 2022 at 3:09 PM

Suggestion folks in the IT industry keep Facebook out the company network , if they need it for marketing get them another computer/laptop and keep off the network. It bad enough we have issue’s with Microsoft and Google for security issues. Facebook is a non essential, my personal opinion.

Facebook parent Meta is warning 1 million users that their login information may have been compromised through malicious apps.

Meta’s researchers found more than 400 malicious Android and Apple iOS apps this year that were designed to steal the personal Facebook login information of its users, the company said Friday in a blog post. Meta spokesperson Gabby Curtis confirmed that Meta is warning 1 million users who may have been affected by the apps.

Meta said the apps they identified were listed in Apple’s app store and Google Play Store as games, photo editors, health and lifestyle services and other types of apps to trick people into downloading them. Often the malicious app would ask users to “login with Facebook” and later steal their username and password, according to the company.
“This is a highly adversarial space and while our industry peers work to detect and remove malicious software, some of these apps evade detection and make it onto legitimate app stores,” wrote Meta’s Threat Disruption Director David Agranovich, and Malware Discovery and Detection Engineer Ryan Victory.

Meta said it reported the apps to Apple and Google and the apps had since been taken down. Google spokesperson Edward Fernandez said in a statement that the “apps identified in the report are no longer available on Google Play.” A representative for Apple responded but didn’t comment.

Meta has faced scrutiny over its privacy practices for years. In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission approved a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook after reports found the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed personal data of millions Facebook users.

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Hackers Have It Out for Microsoft Email Defenses

Tara Seals Managing Editor, News, Dark Reading
October 06, 2022

If you insist in Using O365 at least have a filter in front to protect yourselves , I recommend Barracuda Advance Spam/Phishing  filtering they clean it and then deliver to your mailbox

“Many hackers think of email and Microsoft 365 as their initial points of compromise, [so they] will test and verify that they are able to bypass Microsoft’s default security,” according to a new report from Avanan that flags an uptick in its customer telemetry of malicious emails landing in Microsoft-protected email boxes.

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

For MspPortal Partners only

Starting August 3rd we will be  spinning up partner requests for 30 day trials of Bitdefender new additions of there XDR release.

probably the most comprehensive release ever. Security on steroids

If you wish to set up a trial please send me a email

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

 

UPDATE 1-Amazon.com’s Ring gave police data without user consent 11 times in 2022

WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) – Amazon.com’s Ring doorbell unit, which makes videos of the outside of an owner’s home, gave footage to law enforcement without the user’s consent 11 times so far this year, the company said.

Amazon said it provided the video under emergency circumstances. Senator Edward Markey, a lawmaker interested in privacy, on Wednesday released a letter from Amazon on the topic that was a response to his inquiry to the company.

“In each instance, Ring made a good-faith determination that there was an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to a person requiring disclosure of information without delay,” wrote Brian Huseman, vice president of public policy for Amazon.

The company also said that it had 2,161 law enforcement agencies on its Neighbors Public Safety Service, which allows police and others to ask Ring owners for footage.

“Increasing law enforcement reliance on private surveillance creates a crisis of accountability,” Markey said in a statement.

Amazon’s Ring said in a statement that it followed the law.

“The law authorizes companies like Ring to provide information to government entities if the company believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, such as a kidnapping or an attempted murder, requires disclosure without delay,” the company said in a statement.

In the letter, Huseman declined to specify when Ring technology can capture audio and how sensitive the audio recordings are. Users can easily disable audio.

He also declined to pledge to make end-to-end encryption the default for Ring data. End-to-end encryption is available although it would disable some features.

Markey said that he was concerned that Amazon and other tech companies would begin using biometric data in their systems and noted that he and others had introduced a bill aimed at restricting law enforcement access to such information. Hold Your Breath
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

In closing you might want to remove SPYING DEVICES this is one of them

Microsoft has revealed that this week’s Microsoft 365 worldwide outage

By Sergiu Gatlan June 22, 2022 07:23 AM

Microsoft has revealed that this week’s Microsoft 365 worldwide outage was caused by an infrastructure power outage that led to traffic management servicing failovers in multiple regions.

Starting on Monday, June 20, at 11:00 PM UTC, customers began experiencing and reporting several issues while trying to access and use Microsoft 365 services.
Microsoft reveals cause behind this week’s Microsoft 365 outage

According to Microsoft, problems encountered during the incident included delays and failures when accessing some Microsoft 365 services.

Customer reports also shared info on continuous re-login requests, emails not getting delivered after being stuck in queues, and the inability to access Exchange Online mailboxes despite trying all available connection methods.

The affected services included the Microsoft Teams communication platform, the Exchange Online hosted email platform, SharePoint Online, Universal Print, and the Graph API.

Microsoft’s response while investigating the root cause behind the outage also brought to light some issues related to how the company fails to share new incident-related info with customers.

Even though Microsoft told customers they could find out more about this incident from the admin center under EX394347 and MO394389, user reports suggest that those incident tickets were not showing up, effectively keeping the customers in the dark.

This is the reason we will not sell O365..We do not want to support the product. MspPortal Partners has a relationship with RackSpace hosting email, we have a 99.9 uptime..nothing is perfect but we/RackSpace is far superior to O365

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”