By now, you have probably heard about the recently discovered backdoor into versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 of the tarballs of the xz utilities, a popular compression/decompression library for xz files, which provides unauthorized remote access under certain conditions. This vulnerability was reported under CVE-2024-3094. Andres Freund, of Microsoft, who discovered the vulnerability, summarized it well.

In any system, it’s important to know who is trying to gain access, whether successful or not. This is especially important when trying to keep something secure, like a network or confidential data. Ensure ‘Audit Credential Validation’ is set to ‘Success and Failure' keeps track of attempts to access a system, whether successful or not, using specific credentials, such as a username and password, and logs it.

LastPass has warned that one of its employees was targeted by a social engineering attack that used an audio deepfake that impersonated the company’s CEO. Fortunately, the employee grew suspicious and avoided falling for the attack. Mike Kosak, Senior Principal Intelligence Analyst at LastPass, explained in a blog post, “In our case, an employee received a series of calls, texts, and at least one voicemail featuring an audio deepfake from a threat actor impersonating our CEO via WhatsApp.

The role of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is critical in an interconnected business environment. A modern CISO will ensure that their organization is well-prepared to handle the myriad of cybersecurity challenges it faces. It is multifaceted, extending beyond traditional IT security to encompass various responsibilities to protect an organization's information assets.

Let’s catch up on the more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news gathered from articles across the web this week. This is what we have been reading about on our coffee break! Something to look out for in Windows land…

Ciphertext refers to data that is encrypted and unreadable. The only way to read encrypted data is by decrypting it using an encryption key. Since ciphertext can’t be read without providing the encryption key, it’s the best way to protect your sensitive data from prying eyes and unauthorized access. Continue reading to learn more about ciphertext and the important role it plays in cybersecurity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the term on everyone's lips. As a powerful tool that can simplify our daily lives, it has become a technological revolution that impacts us all.

Sensitive personal data is among the most valuable information attached to us; it’s so valuable that there are international regulations for its maintenance, storage, and management. It is data that contains essential details about us, like Social Security Numbers (SSNs), bank accounts, tax IDs, health insurance data, and all the other “unique-to-one” credentials.

As your business evolves to serve more users, your applications and infrastructure will generate an increasing volume of logs, which may contain sensitive data such as credit card numbers, IP addresses, and tokens. When you collect sensitive data, you may be subject to laws such as GDPR—which restricts the transfer of personal data across borders, and you may face legal consequences if this data is exposed outside your infrastructure.

In late March 2024, the cybersecurity community was shaken by the revelation of a critical vulnerability in XZ Utils, a popular open source compression tool integral to many Linux systems. The discovery was made by Andres Freund, a developer at Microsoft, who reported that versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 had a backdoor that could potentially allow unauthorised remote code execution.