Plaintext: News Roundup Just Before Black Hat

In this issue of Dark Reading in Plaintext, we take a moment to breathe. It has been a busy week for news and we are only up to Tuesday. Black Hat USA begins tomorrow, so let's take a quick look at news before they get swallowed up by the conference.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday. The latest Patch Tuesday bulletin warned of a newly discovered zero-day attack exploiting a remote code execution vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT). This vulnerability is a variant of Dogwalk, a different vulnerability disclosed back in June. Attackers are tricking users into opening or interacting with specially crafted files, Microsoft says.

GitHub Will Support Code Signing. GitHub announced plans to support code signing for npm software packages using Sigstore. The tool makes it easier for open source maintainers to verify that the code they create is the same code that people are downloading.

“Supply chain attacks are on the rise, and adding signed build information to open source packages that validates where the software came from and how it was built is a great way to reduce the attack surface.”-Justin Hutchings, GitHub

Deepfake Attacks on the Rise. Sophisticated crooks are increasingly using deepfakes in their attacks, according to VMware's?Global Incident Response Threat Report. The use of deepfakes shot up this year, by 13 percent to 66 percent of respondents reporting they had featured in an attack. The majority were video, and the top delivery method was email, at 78 percent. The report also found that a quarter of all ransomware attacks included double-extortion techniques, with top methods including blackmail (63 percent), data auction (60 percent) and name and shame (37 percent.)

This is a Test. Critical vulnerabilities in the federal government's Emergency Alert System (EAS) systems, if exploited, could enable intruders to send fake alerts out over television, radio, and cable networks. Organizations operating the EAS should ensure their devices and supporting systems are updated with the most recent software versions and patches. Other precautions include protecting the systems by a firewall, monitoring the sytems, and regularly reviewing audit logs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisory?noted a sense of urgency because the exploit could be presented at DEF CON later this week.

"In short, the vulnerability is public knowledge and will be demonstrated to a large audience in the coming weeks," the agency wrote in the advisory.

Fell for Phishing. A threat actor successfully tricked employees at Twilio into giving up login credentials. "The attackers then used the stolen credentials to gain access to some of our internal systems, where they were able to access certain customer data," Twilio added.

Safety Board Reviews Incidents. The Cyber Safety Review Board studies incidents to understand what happened and the impact of the incident. The first report focused on Log4j -- identifying major ongoing gaps and making practical recommendations. While the board found no evidence of any organization significantly being impacted by an attacker exploiting Log4j, that isn't enough to breathe easily. Just because one wasn't found doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Heads Up!

This is the last daily issue of Dark Reading in Plaintext. After this, we will be moving to a weekly cadence. Stay tuned and we will be back next week.

Find Us At Black Hat

Dark Reading New Desk is back and will be broadcasting live from Black Hat this week! The livestream will be full of interviews with Black Hat speakers and other security experts. Tune in via YouTube or watch on via the Dark Reading News Desk page.

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On That Note

Dark Reading's 2022 Strategic Security Survey?looks at ways enterprise security teams are managing threats and risk. In?last year's survey,46% of respondents said high-profile incidents have put more pressure on the security organization and team members were experiencing significantly elevated stress levels. Take the 2022 Strategic Security Survey for a chance to win an Amazon gift card!