MacOS Targeted by Malware

?? Edwin Kwan, Sydney, Australia ↗

New Atomic macOS info-stealing malware targets 50 crypto wallets

Top Tech CEOs Meet with VP Harris to Discuss AI 

?? Katy Craig, San Diego, California ↗

Nuclei OSS Tool For Pentesting

?? Olimpiu Pop, Transylvania, Romania ↗

GitHub – projectdiscovery/nuclei: Fast and customizable vulnerability scanner based on simple YAML based DSL.
GitHub – projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates: Community curated list of templates for the nuclei engine to find security vulnerabilities.
Nuclei Cheatsheet: The Go-to Resource for Penetration Testers
Battle of Thermopylae – Wikipedia

This Day in Tech History 

?? Marcel Brown, St. Louis, Missouri ↗
http://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/03

Pokie Huang:

Hey, it’s 5:05 on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023. From The Sourced Podcast network in New York city, this is your host Pokie Huang. Stories in today’s episode come from Edwin Kwan in Sydney, Australia, Katy Craig in San Diego, California, Olimpiu Pop in Transylvania, Romania and Marcel brown in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Let’s get to it.

Edwin Kwan: 

This is Edwin Kwan from Sydney, Australia. 

The MacOS was once thought to be a highly secured operating system. However, we’re starting to see more malware designed specifically to target MacOS. 

One such example is the new MacOS information stealing malware named Atomic. The malware is designed to steal keychain passwords, files from the local file system, passwords, cookies, and credit cards stored in browsers.

 It also attempts to steal data from over 50 cryptocurrency extensions. It is being sold to cyber criminals on Telegram as a $1,000 monthly subscription. The malware is sold as a DMG installer and comes with a ready to use web panel for easy victim management.

Katy Craig: 

Tomorrow, Vice President Kamala Harris will host a meeting with the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to discuss critical artificial intelligence or AI issues. This gathering is expected to provide a platform for conversation on the safety and responsibility of AI driven technologies, as well as the role that companies play in ensuring their products are safe before releasing them to the public.

This is Katy Craig in San Diego, California.

 The invitation, according to Reuters, highlighted President Joe Biden’s expectation that tech companies must prioritize safety. While President Biden has not yet made a definitive statement on whether AI presents a danger, he emphasized in April that technology companies hold a significant responsibility in ensuring that their products are safe for public use.

This meeting signifies an important step in fostering collaboration between government and industry leaders to address potential risks and ethical considerations related to AI. It is likely to touch on topics such as AI transparency, data privacy, and the prevention of unintended consequences. 

As the AI landscape continues to evolve, the collaboration between government officials and tech leaders is crucial in striking a balance between innovation and security. This meeting serves as a reminder that while AI holds tremendous potential, it is essential for companies to prioritize the safety and wellbeing of the public they serve. 

This is Katy Craig. Stay safe out there.

Olimpiu Pop: 

Whenever I talk or write about vulnerabilities, I tend to be a bit frustrated. The hackers always don’t play by the rules. They can use any means necessary to get their job done. You have to admire their perseverance. The problem is that their success is our failure. 

What if there could be a shortcut for the good guys as well?

I bet there are multiple, but Nuclei is the one that I will talk about today. Nuclei is an application that closes the gap between the vulnerabilities catalogs, and actual pen testing. Do you want a more formal description? According to the project’s readme file, it is a tool used to send requests across targets based on a template, promising zero false positives when scanning a large number of hosts.

And because sharing is caring, there is a dedicated template repository where the work of 300 security researchers is shared. Yes, the number is the pure coincidence and it has nothing to do with the 300 Spartans decimated at Thermopylae while fighting the invaders.

Enough with the history back to Nuclei. 

Besides the unique identifiers like ID and info tag, a template has a collection of requests to be sent and a bunch of matchers to determine if the responses follow an expected pattern. It supports scanners for a variety of protocols, including TCP, DNS, HTTP, DSL, File, Whois, Websocket, Headless and many more. Yes, I practice this traveling salesman pitch. 

As it is a fast CLI tool. It can’t be written in anything else but in go. Obviously! An indication of the success of the tool is the Repository’s popularity. More than a half a million downloads, more than 100 contributors, almost 13,000 stars, and almost 2000 forks on GitHub. 

As you might expect, it can be easily integrated with other CLI tools by piping it. For instance, you can use it with: 

– Subfinder to target, newly discovered sub-domains

– httpx if you want to filter and process the URLs beforehand. 

All in all, a nice tool you should use, whether you use it from the command line or you integrate it in your CI pipeline. For the whole episode, transcripts and resources, visit 505updates.com. 

This was Olimpiu Pop reporting from Transylvania, Romania.

Marcel Brown: ​

This is Marcel Brown, the most trusted name in technology coming at you with your tech history for May 3rd. 

May 3rd, 1978. Gary Thuerk, a marketing representative for Digital Equipment Corporation, sends out an email promoting an open house for the company’s latest computer systems to 393 recipients on the ARPANET, a precursor to the modern internet.

While this number sounds small by today’s standards, this was all the ARPANET users on the West Coast of the United States. Given that this was an unsolicited commercial email, it is now considered the first of its kind. In other words, the first spam message well before the term was coined. It brought a quick and negative response from many users, and Thuerk was warned by ARPANET administrators that mass mailings were not an acceptable use of the network.

The backlash notwithstanding, the open house was largely successful with over $12 million of DEC equipment being sold. I guess it was better to ask forgiveness than permission in this case.

May 3rd, 1984. Dell Computer Corporation is founded by Michael Dell running the direct to order PC company from his dorm room. Using this innovative direct to order model, Dell Incorporated eventually became the largest manufacturer of PCs in the world for many years. Through ups and downs, it is still currently in the top three as of 2022, in market share for personal computers. 

That’s your technology history for today. For more, tune in tomorrow and visit my website ThisDayInTechHistory.com.

Pokie Huang: 

That’s it for today’s open source and cybersecurity updates. For direct links to all stories and resources mentioned in today’s episode, go to 505Updates.com, where you can listen to our growing library of over 100 episodes. You can also download the transcript of all episodes for easy reference.

5:05 is a Sourced Networks Production with updates available Monday through Friday on your favorite audio streaming platform. Just search for “It’s 5:05!”. And please consider subscribing while you’re there. 

Thank you to Edwin Kwan, Katy Craig, Olimpiu Pop and Marcel Brown for today’s contributions.

The Executive Producer and the editor is Mark Miller. The sound engineer is Pokie Huang. Music for today’s episode is by Blue Dot Sessions. We use Descript for spoken text editing and Audacity to layer in the soundscapes. The show distribution platform is provided by Captivate.fm. This is Pokie Huang. See you tomorrow… at 5:05.