A new variant of the Conficker, or Downadup, worm has emerged, and researchers believe it has been designed to neutralize the efforts of an industry coalition that is trying to prevent infected machines from receiving additional instructions or code updates, according to a report this week from nonprofit research institute SRI International. The Conficker B++ variant finds a new way for its authors to communicate with compromised computers thanks to features that allow drones to receive binary updates without being forced to meet an "internet rendezvous" point. — DK
Organizations using Progress Software's enterprise-grade WS_FTP Server secure file transfer software have been urged to immediately remediate a maximum severity vulnerability, which has been fixed along with other bugs as part of a security update, reports BleepingComputer.
SiliconAngle reports that more companies have been conducting purple team cybersecurity threat evaluations, with security penetration testing firm SpecterOps being the latest to create a collaboration between its offensive and defensive cybersecurity teams in testing and defending corporate systems.