Hikers rescued after following non-existent trail on Google Maps
A search-and-rescue group in British Columbia advised hikers to use a paper map and compass instead of street map programs after it said two hikers had been rescued by helicopter after likely following a trail that did not exist, but that appeared on Google Maps. The group, North Shore Rescue, said on Facebook that on November 6 Google Maps had removed the non-existent trail, in a very steep area with cliffs north of Mount Fromme, which overlooks Vancouver.
Information-Stealing Malware Escalates in Online Gaming
The global online gaming community is facing a rising threat from cyber-criminals exploiting vulnerabilities inherent in gamers’ interactions with digital content. A recent report by Sekoia.io has shed light on a targeted campaign using Discord messages and fake download websites to distribute information-stealing malware within the gaming sphere. According to the post, gamers, in their quest for enhanced experiences, inadvertently expose themselves to deceptive tactics employed by threat actors.
Omegle has been a controversial service. While Chatroulette got all the attention as a service to randomly connect with video to others online, it grew fast and burned out fast. Omegle was basically the same service, but had a slower ramp up, and became quite popular over the last few years. Except that now Omegle is dead. While many people will talk about the awful content they encountered on these services, it also enabled some really fun and interesting interactions. I have a friend who was an amateur magician, who would use Omegle as a great way to practice card tricks in front of many, many people in a short period of time. Some others created some really fun content using Omegle, like SomethingAboutChickens, fooling various people they’d connect to with camera tricks.
In a first, cryptographic keys protecting SSH connections stolen in new attack
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a large portion of cryptographic keys used to protect data in computer-to-server SSH traffic are vulnerable to complete compromise when naturally occurring computational errors occur while the connection is being established. Underscoring the importance of their discovery, the researchers used their findings to calculate the private portion of almost 200 unique SSH keys they observed in public Internet scans taken over the past seven years. The researchers suspect keys used in IPsec connections could suffer the same fate. SSH is the cryptographic protocol used in secure shell connections that allows computers to remotely access servers, usually in security-sensitive enterprise environments. IPsec is a protocol used by virtual private networks that route traffic through an encrypted tunnel.
NORTH KOREA-LINKED APT SAPPHIRE SLEET TARGETS IT JOB SEEKERS WITH BOGUS SKILLS ASSESSMENT PORTALS
The North Korea-linked APT group Sapphire Sleet (aka APT38, BlueNoroff, CageyChameleon, and CryptoCore) is considered a sub-group of the popular Lazarus APT group. The APT group’s campaigns focus on cryptocurrency exchanges, venture capital firms, and banks. Microsoft researchers warn of a new social engineering campaign aimed at IT job seekers that relied on a new cluster of bogus skills assessment portals. “The threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Sapphire Sleet, known for cryptocurrency theft via social engineering, has in the past few weeks created new websites masquerading as skills assessment portals, marking a shift in the persistent actor’s tactics.” warns Microsoft through a series of posts on X.
EU, Ukrainian Agencies Team for Joint Cybersecurity Enhancement
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has signed a working agreement with Ukraine to bolster digital defense cooperation amidst the Russian invasion. The agreement aims to further prepare the cyber capabilities and tools to protect Kyiv and EU sovereign states against current and future cyber threats. Lessons learned from multiple digital assaults since Russian forces attacked Ukraine informed the decision. This partnership was introduced during the EU-Ukraine Cybersecurity Dialogue in Warsaw last year.
