The University of Michigan recently confirmed that personal information was accessed in a data breach discovered in August 2023.  The incident involved unauthorized access to the academic institution’s campus computer network and resulted in system disruption and internet outages.  The university’s investigation into the data breach has revealed that the attackers had access to certain systems between August 23 and 27.

The backdoor implanted on Cisco devices by exploiting a couple of zero-day vulnerabilities in the IOS XE software has been modified to evade detection through previous fingerprinting techniques. According to NCC Group's Fox-IT team, network traffic to a compromised device has shown that the threat actor has changed the implant to perform an additional header check. Therefore, the implant remains active for many devices but now only responds if the proper Authorization HTTP header is set.

According to Tines, growing workloads, shrinking budgets, and a worsening skills shortage are the main factors holding security professionals back from pursuing high-impact work. Nine out of 10 security teams automate at least a portion of their work, and 93 percent of respondents believe that more automation would improve their work-life balance. Sixty-three percent of surveyed security decision-makers and practitioners are experiencing burnout due to constant cyberattacks, internal pressures, and a lack of resources.

Ransomware activity reached unprecedented levels in September, following a relative pause in August that was still well above summer norms. In September, ransomware groups launched 514 attacks, according to data from NCC Group. This exceeds March 2023's total of 459 attacks, which was significantly skewed by Clop's MOVEit Transfer data theft attacks. During the month, Clop exhibited almost no activity, which may indicate that the sophisticated ransomware group is preparing for its next major attack.

The District of Columbia Board of Elections (DCBOE) recently announced that its full voter roll might have been accessed in a recent data breach at a third-party services provider.  The incident was initially disclosed on October 6, when the agency said that a threat actor accessed 600,000 lines of US voter data after breaching DataNet, which provides website hosting services to DCBOE.  In a recent update, DCBOE revealed that the attackers might have accessed the information of all registered voters.

Vulnerabilities in the implementation of the Open Authorization (OAuth) standard across three major online services may have exposed users to credential theft, financial fraud, and other cybercriminal activities. Researchers from Salt Labs discovered critical Application Programming Interface (API) misconfigurations on the websites of several online companies, including Grammarly, Vidio, and Bukalapak, which leads them to believe that dozens of other websites are likely compromised in the same way.

According to security researchers at IBM, generative AI tools can save phishing actors 16 hours of work designing a scam email but still can’t match a human.  The researchers noted that with only five simple prompts, they were able to trick a generative AI model to develop highly convincing phishing emails in just 5 minutes.  Among the prompts were the top areas of concern for employees working in specific industries; social engineering and marketing techniques that should be used; and the people/company that should be impersonated.

Muaho Chen, a new assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis, will study jailbreaking attacks and other security problems associated with Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. As the development of LLMs and intelligent applications rises, Chen emphasizes that it is crucial to understand how LLM attacks can occur, as well as other dangerous behaviors such as generating hate speech. As their use increases, so does the sensitivity of shared information.