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2021 is over, and we are able to sit up for a hopefully more healthy, safer, and extra regular 2022.
Nonetheless, it was a giant yr for expertise and cybersecurity with huge cyberattacks and information breaches, progressive phishing assaults, privateness issues, and naturally, zero-day vulnerabilities.
Some tales, although, have been extra common to our readers than others.
Under we listing the ten hottest tales at BleepingComputer throughout 2021, with a abstract of every.
10. Fired NY credit score union worker nukes 21GB of information in revenge
A former New York credit score union worker pleaded responsible to hacking into the monetary establishment’s laptop programs with out authorization and destroying over 21 gigabytes of information in revenge after being fired.
As a part of the revenge assault, the defendant deleted over 20,000 recordsdata and round 3,500 directories throughout that point, totaling roughly 21.3 gigabytes of information saved on the financial institution’s share drive.
9. 533 million Fb customers’ cellphone numbers leaked on a hacker discussion board
After first attempting to promote the information, a menace actor leaked the cell phone numbers and different private info for roughly 533 million Fb customers worldwide on a hacking discussion board at no cost.
What made this leak stand out was that it contained member info that was scraped from public profiles in addition to personal cell numbers related to accounts.
The information included 533,313,128 Fb customers, together with a member’s cell quantity, Fb ID, identify, gender, location, relationship standing, occupation, date of start, and electronic mail addresses.
Whereas Fb stated that the information was scraped utilizing a bug mounted in 2019, it nonetheless contained a treasure trove of private info that might be used for focused phishing or to breach different accounts.
8. New phishing assault makes use of Morse code to cover malicious URLs
A phishing marketing campaign was found to be utilizing a novel obfuscation strategy of utilizing Morse code to cover malicious URLs in an electronic mail attachment.
As phishing emails generally get caught by safety software program and safe electronic mail gateways, the menace actors tried a intelligent tactic of changing the malicious URLs and touchdown pages into Morse code to evade detection.
This extra code would then be decrypted by embedded JavaScript within the HTML attachment when it was opened.
7. New zero-day exploit for Log4j Java library is an enterprise nightmare
Whereas this story is available in because the seventh most learn article, it most likely deserves to be #1 as a result of its worldwide affect and use by menace actors.
Final month, exploits have been launched for a vital zero-day vulnerability within the Apache Log4j Java-based logging library that allowed menace actors to remotely execute virtually any command they wished on weak servers.
As many different purposes use Log4j, menace actors shortly used the “Log4Shell” vulnerability in cyberattacks to deploy ransomware, set up the Dridex banking trojan, or unfold laterally to VMware vCenter servers.
6. Grownup content material from lots of of OnlyFans creators leaked on-line
A shared Google Drive folder was shared on-line, exposing the personal movies and pictures from lots of of OnlyFans accounts, main a researcher to create a instrument permitting content material creators to test if they’re a part of the leak.
Whereas it isn’t unusual for folks to share personal OnlyFans content material, this leak stood out as a result of many creators impacted by the leak.
BackChannel founder Aaron DeVera instructed BleepingComputer that the Google Drive folder initially contained folders for 279 OnlyFans creators, with one of many folders having over 10GB of movies and images.
5. How you can repair the Home windows 0x0000011b community printing error
2021 has been a whole mess for Home windows printing, with safety replace after safety replace inflicting extra points for Home windows admins than we’ve seen in a very long time.
This began after a Home windows Printer Spool vulnerability referred to as PrintNightmare was by accident disclosed. This disclosure led to a sequence of public exploits being launched, which menace actors shortly utilized in assaults.
To repair the vulnerabilities, Microsoft launched quite a few safety updates that restricted Home windows printing performance and brought about quite a few errors when trying to carry out community printing.
One difficulty that occurred as a result of these fixes was a Home windows 0x0000011b error stopping customers from printing, inflicting an enormous headache for Home windows admins worldwide.
Fortunately a repair was found that allowed Home windows admins to repair the Home windows 0x0000011b community printing errors.
4. Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
Canon USA was sued for not permitting sure printers to scan or fax in the event that they run out of ink, which isn’t used for these capabilities.
A buyer of Canon filed the category motion lawsuit alleging misleading advertising and marketing and unjust enrichment by the printer producer.
Since not less than 2016, prospects who contacted Canon about this difficulty have been instructed by help brokers that ink cartridges should be put in and comprise ink to make use of the printer’s options, as proven by the agent’s response beneath.
3. Over 9 million Android gadgets contaminated by info-stealing trojan
A large-scale malware marketing campaign on Huawei’s AppGallery led to roughly 9.3 million installs of Android malware that impersonated over 190 completely different apps.
The menace actors hid their malware in Android apps pretending to be simulators, platformers, arcades, RTS technique, and capturing video games for Russian-speaking, Chinese language, or worldwide (English) customers.
The performance of this trojan allowed menace actors to carry out varied malicious actions, together with spying on SMS texts and downloading and putting in different malware.
2. Researcher hacks over 35 tech companies in novel provide chain assault
Utilizing a brand new dependency confusion assault, a researcher breached over 35 main firms’ inside programs, together with Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, and Uber.
The assault comprised importing malware to open supply repositories together with PyPI, npm, and RubyGems, which then acquired distributed downstream routinely into the corporate’s inside purposes.
Not like conventional typosquatting assaults that depend on social engineering techniques, this explicit provide chain assault wanted no motion by the sufferer, who routinely acquired the malicious packages.
1. Home windows 10 bug corrupts your laborious drive on seeing this file’s icon
This yr, our hottest story was a zero-day Home windows 10 vulnerability that triggered corruption warnings and subsequent chkdsk on NTFS formatted laborious drives.
To do that, the assaults may enter a singly one-line command that makes an attempt to entry a particular Home windows NTFS Index Attribute, as proven beneath.
Whereas the corruption warnings are pretend, and for most individuals, no points occurred, it might result in Blue Display screen of Demise crashes in a few of our assessments, as seen within the video beneath.
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