News

Mar 29, 2023Ravie LakshmananZero-Day / Mobile Security A number of zero-day vulnerabilities that were addressed last year were exploited by commercial spyware vendors to target Android and iOS devices, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has revealed. The two distinct campaigns were both limited and highly targeted, taking advantage of the patch gap between the release

Mar 28, 2023Ravie LakshmananArtificial Intelligence / Cyber Threat Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled Security Copilot in preview, marking its continued push to embed AI-oriented features in an attempt to offer “end-to-end defense at machine speed and scale.” Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative AI and its own security-specific model, it’s billed as a security analysis tool that

Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, the 20-year-old founder and the administrator of the now-defunct BreachForums has been formally charged in the U.S. with conspiracy to commit access device fraud. If proven guilty, Fitzpatrick, who went by the online moniker “pompompurin,” faces a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison. He was arrested on March 15,

Mar 25, 2023Ravie LakshmananEnterprise Security / Microsoft Microsoft on Friday shared guidance to help customers discover indicators of compromise (IoCs) associated with a recently patched Outlook vulnerability. Tracked as CVE-2023-23397 (CVSS score: 9.8), the critical flaw relates to a case of privilege escalation that could be exploited to steal NT Lan Manager (NTLM) hashes and

Mar 25, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Crime / DDoS Attack In what’s a case of setting a thief to catch a thief, the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) revealed that it has created a network of fake DDoS-for-hire websites to infiltrate the online criminal underground. “All of the NCA-run sites, which have so far been accessed by

Mar 24, 2023Ravie LakshmananDevSecOps / Software Security A malicious Python package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository has been found to use Unicode as a trick to evade detection and deploy an info-stealing malware. The package in question, named onyxproxy, was uploaded to PyPI on March 15, 2023, and comes with capabilities to harvest

Mar 23, 2023Ravie LakshmananBrowser Security / Artificial Intelligence Google has stepped in to remove a bogus Chrome browser extension from the official Web Store that masqueraded as OpenAI’s ChatGPT service to harvest Facebook session cookies and hijack the accounts. The “ChatGPT For Google” extension, a trojanized version of a legitimate open source browser add-on, attracted

Mar 22, 2023Ravie LakshmananICS/SCADA Security The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released eight Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on Tuesday, warning of critical flaws affecting equipment from Delta Electronics and Rockwell Automation. This includes 13 security vulnerabilities in Delta Electronics’ InfraSuite Device Master, a real-time device monitoring software. All versions prior to

Mar 21, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber War / Cyber Threat Amid the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, government, agriculture, and transportation organizations located in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea have been attacked as part of an active campaign that drops a previously unseen, modular framework dubbed CommonMagic. “Although the initial vector of compromise is unclear, the details

Mar 20, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat / Malware A new piece of malware dubbed dotRunpeX is being used to distribute numerous known malware families such as Agent Tesla, Ave Maria, BitRAT, FormBook, LokiBot, NetWire, Raccoon Stealer, RedLine Stealer, Remcos, Rhadamanthys, and Vidar. “DotRunpeX is a new injector written in .NET using the Process Hollowing technique and

Mar 18, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Crime / Data Breach U.S. law enforcement authorities have arrested a New York man in connection with running the infamous BreachForums hacking forum under the online alias “Pompompurin.” The development, first reported by Bloomberg Law, comes after News 12 Westchester, earlier this week, said that federal investigators “spent hours inside and

Mar 18, 2023Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Cyber Espionage The zero-day exploitation of a now-patched medium-severity security flaw in the Fortinet FortiOS operating system has been linked to a suspected Chinese hacking group. Threat intelligence firm Mandiant, which made the attribution, said the activity cluster is part of a broader campaign designed to deploy backdoors onto

Mar 17, 2023The Hacker NewsZero Trust / Access Control Think of the typical portrayal of a cyberattack. Bad guy pounding furiously on a keyboard, his eyes peeking out from under a dark hoodie. At long last, his efforts pay off and he hits the right combination of keys. “I’m in!” he shouts in triumph. Clearly,

Threat activity clusters affiliated with the Chinese and Russian cybercriminal ecosystems have been observed using a new piece of malware that’s designed to load Cobalt Strike onto infected machines. Dubbed SILKLOADER by Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure, the malware leverages DLL side-loading techniques to deliver commercial adversary simulation software. The development comes as improved detection capabilities

Mar 15, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Data Security A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed YoroTrooper has been targeting government, energy, and international organizations across Europe as part of a cyber espionage campaign that has been active since at least June 2022. “Information stolen from successful compromises include credentials from multiple applications, browser histories and cookies,

Mar 14, 2023Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Botnet A new Golang-based malware dubbed GoBruteforcer has been found targeting web servers running phpMyAdmin, MySQL, FTP, and Postgres to corral the devices into a botnet. “GoBruteforcer chose a Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) block for scanning the network during the attack, and it targeted all IP addresses within that

Mar 13, 2023Ravie LakshmananWeb Security / Cyber Threat A widespread malicious cyber operation has hijacked thousands of websites aimed at East Asian audiences to redirect visitors to adult-themed content since early September 2022. The ongoing campaign entails injecting malicious JavaScript code to the hacked websites, often connecting to the target web server using legitimate FTP

Mar 10, 2023Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Cyber Threat A suspecting China-linked hacking campaign has been observed targeting unpatched SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 appliances to drop malware and establish long-term persistence. “The malware has functionality to steal user credentials, provide shell access, and persist through firmware upgrades,” cybersecurity company Mandiant said in a technical

Mar 11, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat Intelligence The malware downloader known as BATLOADER has been observed abusing Google Ads to deliver secondary payloads like Vidar Stealer and Ursnif. According to cybersecurity company eSentire, malicious ads are used to spoof a wide range of legitimate apps and services such as Adobe, OpenAPI’s ChatGPT, Spotify, Tableau, and Zoom.

Mar 10, 2023Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Hacking An updated version of a botnet malware called Prometei has infected more than 10,000 systems worldwide since November 2022. The infections are both geographically indiscriminate and opportunistic, with a majority of the victims reported in Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey. Prometei, first observed in 2016, is a modular botnet

Mar 09, 2023Ravie LakshmananThreat Intelligence / Malware Security vulnerabilities in remote desktop programs such as Sunlogin and AweSun are being exploited by threat actors to deploy the PlugX malware. AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC), in a new analysis, said it marks the continued abuse of the flaws to deliver a variety of payloads on

As threats grow and attack surfaces get more complex, companies continue to struggle with the multitude of tools they utilize to handle endpoint security and management. This can leave gaps in an enterprise’s ability to identify devices that are accessing the network and in ensuring that those devices are compliant with security policies. These gaps

Mar 07, 2023Ravie LakshmananData Safety / Cyber Threat Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new information stealer dubbed SYS01stealer targeting critical government infrastructure employees, manufacturing companies, and other sectors. “The threat actors behind the campaign are targeting Facebook business accounts by using Google ads and fake Facebook profiles that promote things like games, adult content, and

Mar 06, 2023Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Malware A never-before-seen complex malware is targeting business-grade routers to covertly spy on victims in Latin America, Europe, and North America at least since July 2022. The elusive campaign, dubbed Hiatus by Lumen Black Lotus Labs, has been found to deploy two malicious binaries, a remote access trojan dubbed

Mar 04, 2023Ravie LakshmananBanking Security / Cyber Crime A new ATM malware strain dubbed FiXS has been observed targeting Mexican banks since the start of February 2023. “The ATM malware is hidden inside another not-malicious-looking program,” Latin American cybersecurity firm Metabase Q said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Besides requiring interaction via

Mar 04, 2023The Hacker NewsSaaS Security / Cyber Security This past January, a SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) company named Wing Security (Wing) made waves with the launch of its free SaaS-Shadow IT discovery solution. Cloud-based companies were invited to gain insight into their employees’ SaaS usage through a completely free, self-service product that operates

Mar 03, 2023Ravie LakshmananEnterprise Security / IoT A pair of serious security defects has been disclosed in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 reference library specification that could potentially lead to information disclosure or privilege escalation. One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-1017, concerns an out-of-bounds write, while the other, CVE-2023-1018, is described as an out-of-bounds read.

Mar 02, 2023Ravie LakshmananContainer Security / Cyber Threat A sophisticated attack campaign dubbed SCARLETEEL is targeting containerized environments to perpetrate theft of proprietary data and software. “The attacker exploited a containerized workload and then leveraged it to perform privilege escalation into an AWS account in order to steal proprietary software and credentials,” Sysdig said in

Mar 01, 2023Ravie LakshmananThreat Intelligence / Malware Six different law firms were targeted in January and February 2023 as part of two disparate threat campaigns distributing GootLoader and FakeUpdates (aka SocGholish) malware strains. GootLoader, active since late 2020, is a first-stage downloader that’s capable of delivering a wide range of secondary payloads such as Cobalt

Feb 28, 2023Ravie LakshmananRansomware / Malware A new post-exploitation framework called EXFILTRATOR-22 (aka EX-22) has emerged in the wild with the goal of deploying ransomware within enterprise networks while flying under the radar. “It comes with a wide range of capabilities, making post-exploitation a cakewalk for anyone purchasing the tool,” CYFIRMA said in a new