Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Security Immutability: The Importance of Change

A few years ago, I wrote about the importance of security immutability. More specifically, I discussed how important it is that your environment be unchangeable in order to ensure that it remains secure. As I looked back on the article, I found it rather amusing that the article was published 4 years ago, but that feels like a lifetime ago. In the last few years, we really have seen just how volatile the world can be.

Google's Vertex AI Platform Gets Freejacked

The Sysdig Threat Research Team (Sysdig TRT) recently discovered a new Freejacking campaign abusing Google’s Vertex AI platform for cryptomining. Vertex AI is a SaaS, which makes it vulnerable to a number of attacks, such as Freejacking and account takeovers. Freejacking is the act of abusing free services, such as free trials, for financial gain. This freejacking campaign leverages free Coursera courses that provide the attacker with no-cost access to GCP and Vertex AI.

Windows Remote WMI Security Primer for the Faint-Hearted

Local WMI querying is straightforward to implement and troubleshoot — but remote WMI querying is another story. Indeed, setting up secure remote WMI querying for a user with no admin rights is a daunting task. This blog can help. I’ll walk you through the steps I used to enable a standard domain user to query the Microsoft SQL Server WMI namespace class on a Windows Server 2012 R2 running Microsoft SQL Server 2016.

Common Hacker Tools that Complement Mimikatz

Mimikatz is a popular post-exploitation tool that hackers use for lateral movement and privilege escalation. While Mimikatz is quite powerful, it does have some important limitations: As a result, other toolkits have been created to complement Mimikatz. This article explains how three of them — Empire, DeathStar and CrackMapExec — make attacks easier for adversaries.

3 Ways to Reduce Your Security Operations Centre Costs

A typical security operations centre (SOC) has three core costs: People, data and tools. The total cost of these will vary dramatically based on factors like how many endpoints and users are in your environment and the number of SOC team members you need. Various SOC cost calculators available online put the cost of building a SOC for a 1000-user environment at upwards of £2 million per annum.

The Price of Convenience: How Security Vulnerabilities in Global Transportation Payment Systems Can Cost You

Public transportation payment systems have undergone significant changes over the years. Mobile payment solutions have become increasingly popular, allowing passengers to pay for their fare using smartphones or other mobile devices. This trend is likely to continue in the years to come. But how secure are mobile payment solutions for public transportation?

Creating a better internet at IETF117

The other week in San Francisco at IETF117, a group of developers and subject matter experts gathered to do just that. The IETF mission is: “To make the internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the internet.” This standards body is quite unique – anyone with the right passion can join. Believe it or not, humming is a measure of consensus.

CVE-2023-39143: Critical Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in PaperCut Print Management Server

On August 4, 2023, security researchers published a blog detailing a critical remote code (RCE) vulnerability in PaperCut NG/MF print management servers (CVE-2023-39143: CVSS 8.4). CVE-2023-39143 could allow unauthenticated threat actors to read, delete, and upload arbitrary files on compromised systems, which results in RCE. Additionally, this vulnerability does not require user interaction.