Cybersecurity Patch Notes Vol. 9
Cyber Chaos as usual, Breaches, Blunders, and Band-Aid Fixes
Another week, another trainwreck in the world of cyber chaos. This week’s like a rollercoaster, but instead of thrilling twists and turns, we’re just straight up dropping into the dumpster fire. No cotton candy for you! No fun! Just pure, unfiltered digital stupidity.
First up, our pals over at Mozilla are still shoving Onerep down Firefox users’ throats. Don’t remember Onerep? That so-called personal data removal service—which, plot twist, was founded by the same guy who built a whole cottage industry of people-search companies in the first place. It’s like selling you an umbrella after flooding your basement. Lipstick on a piggy.
Meanwhile, over in Microsoft-land, they’re slapping band-aids on 56 vulnerabilities this week—two of them active zero-days. Yeah, FIFTY. SIX. Their security updates are looking more like a desperate game of whack-a-mole, but hey, at least they’re swinging. Go hard, Microsoft!
Now, for the most spy-movie-but-make-it-dumb moment of the week: A 19-year-old cyber gremlin with a track record of dodgy online behavior somehow got access to sensitive U.S. government systems—while working for Elon Musk’s DOGE. Who exactly is in charge of background checks over there? A blind, drunk monkey?
Over at Amazon, some enterprising troublemaker figured out a name confusion attack that lets anyone sneak into an AWS account by publishing an Amazon Machine Image with a specific name. Amazon says they patched it in September, but, surprise! It’s still hanging around like that one weird uncle at family gatherings.
Across the pond, Dutch police are waging war against ZServers/XHost, a bulletproof hosting operation that’s been laundering ransomware money like a mafia boss with a laundromat. They managed to take down 127 servers, but we all know how this game goes—another digital cockroach is gonna be rearing its head pretty soon.
Speaking of cyber heists, decentralized lender zkLend just took a $9.5 million gut punch after some enterprising hacker exploited a smart contract flaw and ran off with 3,600 Etherium. That’s one hell of a payday. $9741471.29 DOGE, I mean dollars (US) at the exact time of writing this.
And if you thought your personal data was safe, think again. Zacks Investment Research just had their customer info leaked all over a hacker forum. Meanwhile, over in the definitely not shady corner, a China-based threat actor known as Emperor Dragonfly pulled off a ransomware attack using tools previously linked to espionage ops. Their price tag? A cool $2 million.
That’s a wrap on this week’s cyber freak show. Hope you’ve enjoyed the unnecessary metaphors and thinly veiled sarcasm. Until next time,
Stay safe,
Stay skeptical and,
For the love of all things digital, update your damn software!
See ya!