All news with #mfa tag

🔐 AWS announced that AWS Multi-Party Approval now requires approvers to verify voting actions with a one-time password sent to their registered AWS Identity Center email address. The OTP is a six-digit code that must be entered within 10 minutes of receipt, with up to three attempts allowed. Verification occurs when the approver submits their vote, after they have reviewed request details. Administrators cannot bypass this control via credential resets or authentication endpoint changes.

📞 Google-owned Mandiant reported an expansion of ShinyHunters-style extortion activity that combines advanced voice phishing with fake credential-harvesting sites to capture SSO credentials and MFA codes to access cloud SaaS environments. The team is tracking multiple clusters (UNC6661, UNC6671, UNC6240) and observed attackers impersonating IT staff, registering attacker-controlled MFA devices, and exfiltrating data from services such as SharePoint and OneDrive. Mandiant recommends strengthening help-desk verification, improving logging and detection, restricting weak authentication methods, and adopting phishing-resistant options like FIDO2 or passkeys.

📰 Hazel Burton opens this Threat Source newsletter by acknowledging how difficult it can be to stay engaged with the news and suggests small, human respites—like the U.K. show Taskmaster—to remind readers creativity and levity persist under pressure. On the technical side, Cisco Talos Incident Response’s Q4 2025 report shows exploitation of public-facing applications remains the leading initial access vector (down from 62% to ~40%), while phishing and credential harvesting rose and ransomware incidents fell to 13% with Qilin still common. The newsletter urges rapid patching, correct MFA configuration and monitoring, and comprehensive logging to detect suspicious activity.

🔐 The FBI has launched Operation Winter SHIELD, a ten-week campaign outlining ten concrete actions organisations should adopt to improve cyber resilience across IT and OT environments. Developed with domestic and international partners and informed by recent investigations, the initiative connects observed adversary behaviour to practical defenses such as phish-resistant authentication, immutable offline backups, vulnerability management and reduced administrator privileges. Aligned with the US National Cyber Strategy and the FBI Cyber Strategy, the effort aims to harden critical infrastructure and reduce the attack surface.

🏥The NHS has issued an open letter (22 January) signaling more proactive engagement with suppliers to bolster cyber resilience across health and social care. The initiative builds on last year’s voluntary cybersecurity supply chain charter and responds to persistent ransomware and supply-chain threats. NHS England stresses this is not an audit but a partnership to identify risks and agree proportionate remediation. Expectations include MFA, patched systems, effective logging and immutable backups with tested recovery plans.

🔔 Okta warns of bespoke vishing phishing kits sold as a service that enable live adversary-in-the-middle attacks to steal Okta SSO credentials. These kits include a C2 panel that lets callers control the victim's authentication flow in real time and synchronize fraudulent MFA dialogs to bypass push-based protections. Okta urges adoption of phishing-resistant MFA such as Okta FastPass, FIDO2 security keys, or passkeys and recommends user education and vendor notifications.

🔒 A critical two-factor authentication bypass (CVE-2026-0723) in GitLab Community and Enterprise editions allows an attacker who knows a user’s credentials to submit forged device responses and bypass MFA. GitLab released patches in versions 18.8.2, 18.7.2 and 18.6.4 and strongly recommends that all self-managed instances upgrade immediately. Additional fixes address several denial-of-service and authorization flaws; GitLab.com and Dedicated tenants are already protected.

🔒 GitLab has patched a high-severity two-factor authentication bypass (CVE-2026-0723) that could allow attackers who know a target's account ID to submit forged device responses and bypass 2FA. The release also addresses two high-severity denial-of-service flaws (CVE-2025-13927, CVE-2025-13928) and two medium-severity DoS issues affecting Wiki rendering and SSH authentication. Administrators should upgrade to 18.8.2, 18.7.2, or 18.6.4 immediately; GitLab.com is already patched.

🔍 Regular cyber risk assessments are essential for identifying vulnerabilities, prioritizing remediation, and documenting security progress for leadership. CISOs receive actionable insights about exposed data, authentication gaps, and compliance obligations (for example, GDPR and PCI DSS). Analyses show one in ten cloud datasets is broadly accessible and more than 99% of compromised accounts lacked MFA. Typical assessments take two to four hours and deliver prioritized, immediately actionable recommendations.

🔒 Modern security must treat identity as the perimeter rather than the network. As remote work and cloud adoption dissolved traditional edges, attackers increasingly target credentials — a trend underscored by reports from Verizon, Microsoft and Okta — making identity the primary attack surface. Organizations must adopt Zero Trust identity controls such as MFA, SSO, RBAC, PAM, device trust and continuous, adaptive monitoring, and treat identity lifecycle and privilege management as core infrastructure.

🔒 LinkedIn's vast professional network provides abundant intelligence that threat actors exploit to support spear-phishing, business email compromise and direct recruitment efforts. Profiles and connections help attackers craft highly credible lures, while messages sent within the platform can bypass corporate email controls. To reduce risk, users should limit public detail, enable MFA, maintain patched devices and complete targeted security awareness training focused on fake profiles and malicious DMs.

🔒 Cybercriminals are increasingly using browser-in-the-browser (BitB) attacks to harvest Facebook credentials, researchers at Trellix report. Attackers distribute phishing emails with spoofed, shortened links and present a fake in-browser pop-up that mimics the Facebook login — even hardcoding the real Facebook URL and displaying a bogus CAPTCHA to boost credibility. Victims are prompted for personal details and then asked to confirm their password; enabling two-factor authentication and avoiding embedded links can mitigate these scams.

🔒 If you learn your personal or financial data is on the dark web, act quickly: cybercriminals use stolen PII, credentials, session cookies and payment details to commit account takeover, identity theft and fraud. Immediately change compromised passwords, enable MFA (prefer authenticator apps or hardware keys), sign out of all devices, scan for infostealer malware and contact your bank to freeze or reissue cards. For longer-term protection, freeze credit, tighten privacy settings, use email aliasing and a password manager, and enroll in monitoring services such as HaveIBeenPwned.

🔐 Meta says it patched a bug that allowed an external party to mass-request Instagram password reset emails and denies any systems breach after claims that data from more than 17 million accounts was posted online. Malwarebytes warned customers of a 17.5M-account dump containing phone numbers, emails, addresses and Instagram IDs, though not every record includes all fields. Meta told reporters it is not aware of an API incident in 2022 or 2024, and Instagram accounts remain secure. Users should ignore unsolicited reset emails, enable two-factor authentication, and stay alert to phishing and smishing attempts.

📧 Microsoft Threat Intelligence warns attackers are increasingly abusing complex email routing and misconfigured DMARC and SPF policies to make phishing messages appear internal. Campaigns exploit MX records that do not point directly to Microsoft 365, allowing messages with the recipient's address in both To and From fields to bypass filters. Lures include password resets and shared-document notices, and some attacks use Phishing-as-a-Service platforms such as Tycoon 2FA to perform Adversary-in-the-Middle attacks that can defeat MFA. Microsoft recommends strict DMARC reject policies, SPF hard-fails, correct connector configuration, and phishing-resistant MFA like FIDO2.

📧 Microsoft Threat Intelligence warns of a surge in phishing campaigns that exploit misconfigured mail routing and domain spoofing protections to make malicious messages appear internal to Microsoft 365 tenants. Attackers target users with HR- and IT-themed lures to steal credentials, often pairing the technique with phishing-as-a-service kits like Typhoon2FA. The vector depends on tenants whose MX records are not pointed directly at Office 365, bypassing built-in spoof detection. Organizations should correct MX configuration, enforce DMARC and deploy phishing-resistant MFA for privileged roles.

🛡️ This week's ThreatsDay highlights a critical RustFS gRPC authentication flaw with a hard-coded token (CVSS 9.8) that allowed network attackers to perform privileged operations and was patched in 1.0.0-alpha.78. Other notable stories include GeoServer-based XMRig miners, an evolution in Iran-linked MuddyWater custom backdoors, a surge in Taiwanese infrastructure attacks, and CISA's KEV catalog expansion. Organizations should apply patches, enable MFA, and monitor credentials and exposed services.

🔐 Microsoft will require MFA for all users signing into the Microsoft 365 admin center and will block accounts that do not have MFA enabled starting February 9, 2026. The enforcement covers portal.office.com/adminportal/home, admin.cloud.microsoft, and admin.microsoft.com and follows an initial rollout that began in February 2025. Administrators are urged to enable MFA using Microsoft's setup wizard or official documentation to avoid service interruptions; Microsoft notes that MFA significantly reduces the risk of account compromise.

🔐 Credential stuffing exploits reused login credentials harvested from breaches or captured by infostealer malware, then systematically automates login attempts across services. Attackers increasingly use bots, IP rotation and AI-assisted scripts to mimic human behavior and evade basic defenses, enabling stealthier and larger-scale attacks. Because it uses valid credentials, it often bypasses alarms that detect brute-force failures. Protect yourself with a password manager, enable 2FA/MFA, and monitor for exposed credentials.

🔒 ownCloud has urged users to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) after reports that threat actors used credentials stolen via infostealer malware to access self-hosted file-sharing instances. The company said the platform was not breached via a zero-day or vulnerability; attackers reused credentials harvested by malware such as RedLine, Lumma, and Vidar. ownCloud recommends enabling MFA, resetting passwords, invalidating sessions, and reviewing access logs to protect data.