Lifeboat Foundation

LYNCHBURG, Va (WSET) — Strangers may soon be able to use your Wi-Fi — It’s all through Amazon Sidewalk.

It’s an internet-sharing network for Amazon Echo, Ring and Tile devices. Officials say it’s a way to use WiFi from neighboring homes that also have Amazon products.

Randy Marchany a cybersecurity expert with Virginia Tech feels this is another way to collect information. He says it’s specifically picking up on user habits and whereabouts.

This is the sixth zero day vulnerability to be found in Chrome since the turn of the year and the latest version of Chrome also contains a total of 10 security patches, seven of which are listed as ‘High’ threat with another described as ‘Critical’. To its credit, Google has been consistently quick to release fixes for these flaws with the current fix taking under a week.

If you have been holding off updating your browser, now is the time to put that right. Speaking to BleepingComputer, cyber security vendor Kaspersky warned that a new group of hackers calling themselves ‘PuzzleMaker’ have been successful in hacking both Chrome and Windows this month with Microsoft also issuing an urgent upgrade warning to Windows users.

Kaspersky advises that further undisclosed zero-day hacks in the near future could not be ruled out, so stay alert and make sure both your browser and operating system security are kept up to date.

“This can be hugely damaging in the event of ransomware attacks, where high privileges can enable the attackers to stop or destroy backups and other security tools,” Breen explained. “The ‘exploit detected’ tag means attackers are actively using them, so for me, it’s the most important piece of information we need to prioritize the patches.”

If you need any further incentive to update, these seven zero day exploits are part of 50 security vulnerabilities (including another five labelled ‘Critical’) which June’s Patch Tuesday will address. Google has also issued a similar warning for Chrome users.

If you are blocking Windows 10 system updates (a popular pastime for many users), now would be a very good time to stop doing so. Go to Start Settings Update & Security and in the Windows Update Window look to see if the update has already been downloaded. If not, click Check for Updates.

Dear friends and colleagues, it is my pleasure to share come of my recent writings and events with you on topics of cybersecurity, emerging tech, and other issues. Thanks and stay safe, Chuck Chuck Brooks LinkedIn Profile: https://www.

An emerging ransomware strain in the threat landscape claims to have breached 30 organizations in just four months since it went operational, riding on the coattails of a notorious ransomware syndicate.

First observed in February 2021, “Prometheus” is an offshoot of another well-known ransomware variant called Thanos, which was previously deployed against state-run organizations in the Middle East and North Africa last year.

The affected entities are believed to be government, financial services, manufacturing, logistics, consulting, agriculture, healthcare services, insurance agencies, energy and law firms in the U.S., U.K., and a dozen more countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America, according to new research published by Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 threat intelligence team.

More organizations feel the pain as the ransomware scourge grows more pernicious.

Toshiba’s research team has broken a new record for optical fiber-based quantum communications, thanks to a new technology called dual band stabilization.

Stefan Thomas really could have used a quantum computer this year.

The German-born programmer and crypto trader forgot the password to unlock his digital wallet, which contains 7002 bitcoin, now worth $265 million. Quantum computers, which will be several million times faster than traditional computers, could have easily helped him crack the code.

Though quantum computing is still very much in its infancy, governments and private-sector companies such as Microsoft and Google are working to make it a reality. Within a decade, quantum computers could be powerful enough to break the cryptographic security that protects cell phones, bank accounts, email addresses and — yes — bitcoin wallets.

“Siloscape”, the first malware to target Windows containers, breaks out of Kubernetes clusters to plant backdoors and raid nodes for credentials.

Windows containers have been victimized for over a year by the first known malware to target Windows containers. The ongoing campaign pierces Kubernetes clusters so as to plant backdoors, allowing attackers to steal data and user credentials, or even hijack an entire databases hosted in a cluster.

The malware was discovered by Unit 42 security researcher Daniel Prizmant. He dubbed it Siloscape, which he pronounces “Silo escape.” The malware pries open known vulnerabilities in web servers and databases so as to compromise Kubernetes nodes and to backdoor clusters.