Viktor Markopoulos, a CloudDefense.ai security researcher, discovered millions of Chinese citizen identity numbers leaking online after an e-commerce store left its database exposed on the Internet. According to Markopoulos, the database belongs to Zhefengle, a China-based e-commerce store used to import goods from other countries. Markopoulos found that the database contained over 3.3 million orders from 2015 to 2020 but was not password protected. The order database included customer shipping addresses, phone numbers, and the customers' government-issued resident identity card numbers.

Attackers are exploiting the recently patched critical Atlassian Confluence authentication bypass flaw to encrypt victims' files in Cerber ransomware attacks. According to Atlassian, the bug, which is tracked as CVE-2023-22518, is an improper authorization vulnerability. It impacts all versions of the Confluence Data Center and Confluence Server software.

SideCopy, a Pakistan-linked threat actor, has been using the recent WinRAR security vulnerability in its attacks against Indian government entities to deliver various Remote Access Trojans (RATs) such as AllaKore RAT, Ares RAT, and DRat. The enterprise security company SEQRITE describes the campaign as multi-platform. The attacks are also designed to infiltrate Linux systems with a compatible version of Ares RAT. SideCopy has been active since at least 2019, and is known for its attacks on Indian and Afghan entities.

According to Quantum Xchange, cryptography is often taken for granted because it is rarely evaluated or checked, which could have disastrous consequences for businesses as attack surfaces expand, the cost of a data breach rises, and the age of quantum computing approaches. After examining over 200 terabytes of network traffic, or the total sum of all packets, for all connections, between all pairs, it was discovered that up to 80 percent had some defeatable flaw in its encryption, with 61 percent of the traffic being unencrypted.

The Allied Pilots Association (APA) says it has made progress in restoring its systems after falling victim to a file-encrypting ransomware attack last week.  The American Airlines pilot union says the incident occurred on October 30 and resulted in certain systems being encrypted.  The restoration efforts, APA said, would focus on pilot-facing products and tools, with full operations expected to be restored later.  Over the weekend, the organization announced that it had restored most functionality, including access to the alliedpilots.org website.

The Gootloader Group is using GootBot, a new destructive post-compromise tool that spreads bots throughout enterprise environments following infiltration. According to researchers with the IBM X-Force threat intelligence group, Gootloader has been active since 2014 and uses Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning to trick victims into downloading infected business document templates for initial compromise.

Five Canadian hospitals have recently confirmed that patient and employee data that was stolen in a ransomware attack has been leaked online.  The data breach impacts Bluewater Health, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, and Windsor Regional Hospital, along with service provider TransForm Shared Service Organization.  A shared drive was compromised as part of the incident.

Google recently announced patches for 37 vulnerabilities as part of the November 2023 Android security updates, with additional fixes released for Pixel devices.  The first part of the security update addresses 15 vulnerabilities in Android's Framework and System components.  Google noted that the most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could lead to local information disclosure with no additional execution privileges needed.

Three researchers have discovered a long-sought way for secretly retrieving information from large databases, bringing us closer to fully private Internet searches. How to retrieve information from a public database without revealing anything about what was accessed is a critical question in cryptography. Developing a strategy to solve this problem, known as private information retrieval, is a valuable building block in many privacy-preserving applications, according to David Wu, a cryptographer at the University of Texas, Austin.

New research by David Choffnes, an associate professor of computer science at Northeastern University, and a team of others explores the privacy and security flaws of smart home devices, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT). The team tested 93 IoT devices to see how they interacted within a local network for the study. They discovered security flaws in the way these devices' mobile apps work.