Apple blocked over $2B of fraudulent App Store transactions in 2022

Apple continues to prioritise user safety and security within its App Store ecosystem, reporting that it successfully prevented over $2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2022.

The company says that it has been intensifying its efforts to reject suspicious apps and ensure that only reliable and trustworthy apps are available to users.

With millions of weekly visitors and over 36 million registered developers, the App Store has become a thriving platform....

17 May 2023 | App Stores

ChatGPT-generated code is often insecure

OpenAI's large language model, ChatGPT, is capable of generating code but produces insecure code without alerting users to its inadequacies, according to research by computer scientists from the Université du Québec in Canada.

The researchers asked ChatGPT to generate 21 programs in five programming languages to illustrate specific security vulnerabilities such as memory corruption, denial of service, and improperly implemented cryptography.

ChatGPT produced only five...

21 April 2023 | Development Tools

Sophos endpoint security upgrades boost cyberthreat defences

Sophos, a specialist in cybersecurity as a service, has unveiled advancements to its portfolio of industry-leading endpoint security offerings.

New adaptive active adversary protection; Linux malware protection enhancements; account health check capabilities; an integrated zero trust network access (ZTNA) agent for Windows and macOS devices; and more improve frontline defences against advanced cyberthreats and streamline endpoint security management.

Raja Patel, senior...

10 March 2023 | Developer

Clipper malware found in over 451 PyPI packages

Phylum security researchers have discovered over 451 packages on the Python Package Index (PyPI) that are infected with “clipper” malware.

Clippers replace the contents of a victim’s clipboard with something which benefits the attacker. The most prevalent clippers today look for cryptocurrency addresses and modify them to steal funds.

Starting on February 9th, Phylum was alerted by its automated risk detection platform to a long series of suspicious publications to...

15 February 2023 | Hacking & Security

India demonstrates its security-focused ‘BharOS’

India has demonstrated its security-focused homegrown mobile operating system, BharOS.

Government officials teased a homegrown mobile OS earlier this month. Local media outlet Business Standard initially reported it would be called ‘IndOS’ and will be a collaboration between the government, academia, and startups.

"India is one of the largest mobile device markets in the globe. Our objective is to create a secure Indian mobile operating system that could also create...

25 January 2023 | App Stores

Visual Studio Marketplace is the latest supply chain attack vector

Aqua Security researchers have found that hackers are using Visual Studio Marketplace to conduct supply chain attacks.

In a new report, the researchers uncovered that attackers could impersonate popular VS Code extensions to trick developers into downloading malicious versions.

VS Code is the most popular IDE, with around 74.48 percent of developers using it. The vast array of extensions available for VS Code is partly what drives its popularity.

Here are some...

9 January 2023 | Development Tools

Hackers compromised Okta’s private GitHub repos

Okta says hackers compromised its private GitHub repos earlier this month and stole its source code.

BleepingComputer got hold of a “confidential” email notification sent by Okta to its “security contacts” about the breach.

The Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions leader says GitHub alerted Okta to the suspicious access earlier this month.

“Upon investigation, we have concluded that such access was used to copy Okta code repositories," wrote...

21 December 2022 | Git

Malware campaign targets official Python and JavaScript repos

An active malware campaign is targeting official Python and JavaScript repositories.

Software supply chain security firm Phylum spotted the campaign. Phylum said that it discovered the campaign after noticing a flurry of activity around typosquats of the popular Python requests package.

Typosquats take advantage of simple typos to install malicious packages.

In this case, the PyPI typos include: dequests, fequests, gequests, rdquests, reauests, reduests,...

13 December 2022 | Hacking & Security

Syntax error breaks KmsdBot cryptomining botnet

A syntax error broke an otherwise advanced cryptomining botnet called KmsdBot.

The malware, which could also be used for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, was discovered by Akamai Security Research.

Akamai’s researchers witnessed the authors “accidentally crash” KmsdBot after observing the malware stopped sending attack commands after receiving:

!bigdata www.bitcoin.com443 / 30 3 3 100 

The lack of a space between the website and the...

6 December 2022 | Hacking & Security

Simon Maple, Snyk: Developing the future of cybersecurity

Simon Maple, field CTO at Snyk, discusses the importance of embedding security into the development stage.

Could you tell us a little bit about the company and what you guys do?

Absolutely. Snyk’s a seven-year-old developer-focused company that happens to specialise in security. So seven years ago it realised there's a big gap where developers were the ones who needed to focus on security. They're the ones who actually fix issues. And so we decided the fix here is to create a...

3 October 2022 | Developer