Category Archives: Active Attacks

Posts relating to attacks that are currently under way.

Scams In The Time of Coronavirus

Posted on 2020-03-26 by mike

(with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez) As expected, scammers are trying to take advantage of fears over Covid-19 (the Coronavirus) to push their victims into unwise actions – often for profit. I have already seen two scams announcing UK government … Continue reading →

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‘;–have i been pwned?

Posted on 2020-02-10 by mike

There is a well known “white-hat” web site called “‘;–have i been pwned?” which :- Publicises large data breaches of personal information. Collects data breaches looking for compromised accounts. Allows people to check if their own account has been compromised. … Continue reading →

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Diagnosing a Phishing Attack

Posted on 2019-12-27 by mike

I was clearing out some older emails today and encountered an attempt to phish Apple credentials; although this one was specific to Apple, the general lessons apply to all phishing attacks … and indeed more general malicious spam. The attack … Continue reading →

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Zoom Desktop Vulnerability for macOS

Posted on 2019-07-09 by mike

Update: Apple is now silently pushing out an update to remove the Zoom “hidden feature” so you will be please to know that the geeky removal is no longer necessary. Just make sure you have opted in to all recent … Continue reading →

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The Big RDP Vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708)

Posted on 2019-05-16 by mike

Microsoft have released a whole bunch of patches to fix security vulnerabilities this Tuesday (which is quite normal of course), but one unusual aspect was the release of a patch for older versions of Windows that do not normally get … Continue reading →

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Do You Like Justin Bieber?

Posted on 2019-02-07 by mike

On of the stories I was reading this morning mentioned that some of those with Nest security cameras have been subjected to hack attacks. One of the attacks they were subjected to were hackers asking Alexa to play Justin Bieber … Continue reading →

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The New Mirai

Posted on 2017-11-30 by mike

According to one news report, a new version of Mirai has recently been released causing an increase in the number of scans against port 2323 and port 23. According to our firewall logs, the number of scans against tcp/2323 has … Continue reading →

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Serious OSX Vulnerability – Get Root Without A Password

Posted on 2017-11-29 by mike

Apple’s latest version of their OSX (or macOS) operating system – High Sierra – has been found to have a serious vulnerability that allows anyone with access to the device to have full administrative access (“root”) without a password. On … Continue reading →

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BadRabbit Up And Running

Posted on 2017-10-27 by mike

According to reports, a new ransomware infection dubbed “BadRabbit” is spreading in Russia and Ukraine, and one or two other places further afield. Early indications are that this is not going to become a really nasty problem, but that could be wrong. … Continue reading →

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The Ukranian Ransomware (Petya, NotPetya, WannaCry2)

Posted on 2017-06-28 by mike

Those keeping aware of the security scene may well have become aware of the latest ransomware worm hitting around the world. Various names have been associated with this outbreak, and the most readily identifiable name (Petya) is technically incorrect. This … Continue reading →

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