Many Windows users don’t even bother looking at Microsoft’s Windows release notes, but those who do often pay close attention. 
For those users who do rely on information about Microsoft’s operating system, the company is preparing improvements to Windows release notes, the Windows update history pages, and informational articles. 

Windows 10

Reflecting Microsoft’s shift to the Microsoft 365 bundle for Windows 10, Office 365 and management tools, Microsoft is now merging the support.office.com and support.microsoft.com sites into a unified support site. 
Users should be able to find support and troubleshooting resources for Microsoft 365 more easily when using a search engine, according to Microsoft. Additionally, consolidating the two sites helps Microsoft quickly publish new articles and update existing ones. 
These changes will be rolling out in the coming weeks, the company says.    
Microsoft is also reformatting the structure of its URLs for Windows 10 release notes, giving the KB (knowledge base) article number a more prominent position in the URL and on the page itself. 
This change is designed to help users distinguish between two pages with similar-looking titles and make it easier to search for support articles by KB ID number. 
As Microsoft notes, the existing URL structure also includes the KB ID that users can copy from the address bar and append to the root URL, https://support.microsoft.com/help. However, sometimes KB IDs aren’t listed in the article and can only be seen in the URL. In these situations, it’s harder to use search engines to find an article by KB ID. 
“For greater consistency and to support improved search indexing, the URL structure moving forward will include both the GUID and the KB ID. Since many are familiar with appending the KB ID to the URL, we will continue to support this approach and use automatic redirects to ensure you land on the appropriate article,” Microsoft explains.   
The Windows 10 release notes pages currently only support sharing articles by email. Microsoft is updating sharing options to include Facebook and LinkedIn. The share controls will be at the bottom of each page.
There’s no change to Microsoft’s current release note content strategy, which includes Monthly security updates (B week releases), non-security updates (Preview releases), and out-of-band updates (OOB releases). 
It’s also tweaking the formatting, user interface and the type of metadata available, which may affect tools that admins use to organize Microsoft’s support and release notes. 
Articles on support.microsoft.com will no longer serve articles in a JSON format, which are then rendered on the client, but will rather render the articles in HTML. Also, metadata from each article won’t be served as JSON anymore and will instead be rendered in a block of meta tags.  
Microsoft is also paring back the metadata available in the page’s source and has provided a table of changes affecting KB numbers, release dates, last updated details, Windows versions the article applies to, heading details, and the locale of the article. More

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The source code of the Cerberus banking Trojan has been released as free malware on underground hacking forums following a failed auction. 

Speaking at Kaspersky NEXT 2020 on Wednesday, Kaspersky cybersecurity researcher Dmitry Galov said that the leaked code, distributed under the name Cerberus v2, presents an increased threat for smartphone users and the banking sector at large.  
Cerberus is a mobile banking Trojan designed for the Google Android operating system. In circulation since at least July 2019, the Remote Access Trojan (RAT) is able to conduct covert surveillance, intercept communication, tamper with device functionality, and steal data including banking credentials by creating overlays on existing banking, retail, and social networking apps. 
The malware is able to read text messages that may contain one-time passcodes (OTP) and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes, thereby bypassing typical 2FA account protections. OTPs generated through Google Authenticator may also be stolen. 
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In early July, Avast researchers discovered Cerberus in Google Play, wrapped up and disguised as a legitimate currency converter. It is thought that when the application was submitted to Google for approval, the functions were innocent and legitimate — but once a large user base was established, an update package deployed the Trojan on victim devices. 
Later in the same month, Hudson Rock spotted Cerberus going to auction. An advert was posted by the maintainer of the malware, revealing that the development team was breaking up, and so a new owner was being sought. 
The operator set a starting price of $50,000 — with the aim of generating up to $100,000 — for the malware’s .APK source code, client list, servers, and code for administrator panels. The auctioneer claimed that Cerberus generated $10,000 in revenue per month. 
However, it seems there were no takers. 
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“Despite Cerberus’ Russian speaking developers earmarking a new vision for the project in April this year, auctions for the source code began in late July due to the breakup of the development team,” Kaspersky says. “Due to an unclear culmination of factors, the author later decided to publish the project source code for premium users on a popular Russian-speaking underground forum.”
The cybersecurity firm says that following the free release of Cerberus source code in the underground, there was an “immediate rise” in mobile app infections across Europe and Russia. Of particular note, Galov says, is that previous clients were not encouraged to strike Russian mobile device users — but the moment the code was released, the attack landscape changed.
When Cerberus was offered as Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS), the scope of the threat was contained to attack groups able to pay for the code, on subscription from $4,000 for one month to $12,000 for a year. Now the developer has washed their hands of the project and released the source code for free, we may not only see rising adoption of Cerberus, but also potentially new variants based on the leaked code in the future. 
See also: Your email threads are now being hijacked by the QBot Trojan
“We continue to investigate all found artifacts associated with the code, and will track related activity,” Galov commented. “But, in the meantime, the best form of defense that users can adopt involves aspects of security hygiene that they should be practicing already across their mobile devices and banking security.”

Previous and related coverage
Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

IBM announced plans to acquire endpoint security company ReaQta on Tuesday, expanding its footprint in the extended detection and response (XDR) market. IBM said ReaQta’s tools use AI to “automatically identify and manage threats” while staying hidden from cyberattackers. The technology giant said the acquisition was part of a larger announcement about the expansion of its QRadar brand, which will now include a new suite of XDR offerings. Mary O’Brien, general manager at IBM Security, said the complexity of modern computer systems had “created a cloak” that allowed cybercriminals and nation states to get around security systems. “The future of security is open, using technologies that can connect the security insights that are buried across disparate tools and advanced AI to identify and automatically respond to threats more quickly across their entire infrastructure, from endpoint to cloud,” O’Brien said. “With our expanded capabilities via QRadar XDR and the planned addition of ReaQta, IBM is helping clients get ahead of attackers with the first XDR solution that reduces vendor lock-in via the use of open standards.”The QRadar XDR platform is designed to provide “comprehensive visibility” across IBM’s slate of security tools and data sources. ReaQta’s tools will help offer clients “continuous monitoring and rapid response as part of a zero trust approach,” according to IBM. 

ReaQta is based in the Netherlands and has a headquarters in Singapore. IBM said it expects the deal to close later this year. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. “ReaQta’s behavioral-based platform helps stop known and unknown threats in real-time and can be deployed in a hybrid model — on premise or in the cloud as well as air gapped environments,” IBM explained. “Through deep learning done natively on the endpoint the platform constantly improves on defining threat behavior tailored to each business per endpoint, allowing it to block any abnormal behavior. ReaQta’s platform also leverages a unique ‘Nano OS’ that monitors the operating systems from the outside, helping to prevent interference by adversaries.” ReaQta CEO Alberto Pelliccione added that their mission has always been to better equip cybersecurity teams with advanced technology to quickly identify and block new attacks”Joining forces with IBM will enable us to enhance and scale our unique AI capabilities across all types of environments via a proven platform for threat detection and response,” Pelliccione said. ReaQta’s tools will be integrated into the IBM QRadar XDR suite, which was built on IBM’s Cloud Pak for Security. The suite includes tools that deal with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Network Detection and Response (NDR), and Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) and now, thanks to ReaQta, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). IBM has worked with a number of other cybersecurity companies and alliances, including the Open Cybersecurity Alliance, to build out the XDR ecosystem. More