News

Jun 24, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Crime / Cryptocurrency A U.K. citizen who took part in the massive July 2020 hack of Twitter has been sentenced to five years in prison in the U.S. Joseph James O’Connor (aka PlugwalkJoe), 24, was awarded the sentence on Friday in the Southern District of New York, a little over a

Jun 24, 2023Ravie LakshmananThreat Intel / Zero Day The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added a batch of six flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. This comprises three vulnerabilities that Apple patched this week (CVE-2023-32434, CVE-2023-32435, and CVE-2023-32439), two flaws in VMware (CVE-2023-20867 and CVE-2023-20887), and

Jun 23, 2023Ravie LakshmananSocial Engineering / Phishing A threat actor known as Muddled Libra is targeting the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry with persistent attacks that leverage advanced social engineering ploys to gain initial access. “The attack style defining Muddled Libra appeared on the cybersecurity radar in late 2022 with the release of the 0ktapus

Jun 22, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Phishing A new phishing campaign codenamed MULTI#STORM has set its sights on India and the U.S. by leveraging JavaScript files to deliver remote access trojans on compromised systems. “The attack chain ends with the victim machine infected with multiple unique RAT (remote access trojan) malware instances, such as Warzone

Jun 21, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat / Privacy The North Korean threat actor known as ScarCruft has been observed using an information-stealing malware with previous undocumented wiretapping features as well as a backdoor developed using Golang that exploits the Ably real-time messaging service. “The threat actor sent their commands through the Golang backdoor that is using

Jun 20, 2023Ravie LakshmananOperational Technology Three security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in operational technology (OT) products from Wago and Schneider Electric. The flaws, per Forescout, are part of a broader set of shortcomings collectively called OT:ICEFALL, which now comprises a total of 61 issues spanning 13 different vendors. “OT:ICEFALL demonstrates the need for tighter scrutiny

A new information-stealing malware called Mystic Stealer has been found to steal data from about 40 different web browsers and over 70 web browser extensions. First advertised on April 25, 2023, for $150 per month, the malware also targets cryptocurrency wallets, Steam, and Telegram, and employs extensive mechanisms to resist analysis. “The code is heavily

As Threat Actors Continuously Adapt their TTPs in Today’s Threat Landscape, So Must You Earlier this year, threat researchers at Cybersixgill released the annual report, The State of the Cybercrime Underground. The research stems from an analysis of Cybersixgill’s collected intelligence items throughout 2022, gathered from the deep, dark and clear web. The report examines

Jun 17, 2023Ravie LakshmananCryptojacking / Network Security Cybersecurity researchers have discovered previously undocumented payloads associated with a Romanian threat actor named Diicot, revealing its potential for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. “The Diicot name is significant, as it’s also the name of the Romanian organized crime and anti-terrorism policing unit,” Cado Security said in a

Jun 16, 2023Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Network Security The threat actor known as ChamelGang has been observed using a previously undocumented implant to backdoor Linux systems, marking a new expansion of the threat actor’s capabilities. The malware, dubbed ChamelDoH by Stairwell, is a C++-based tool for communicating via DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) tunneling. ChamelGang was first outed

Jun 15, 2023Ravie LakshmananCryptocurrency / Ransomware Ransomware actors and cryptocurrency scammers have joined nation-state actors in abusing cloud mining services to launder digital assets, new findings reveal. “Cryptocurrency mining is a crucial part of our industry, but it also holds special appeal to bad actors, as it provides a means to acquire money with a

Jun 14, 2023Ravie LakshmananZero-Day / Network Security The Chinese state-sponsored group known as UNC3886 has been found to exploit a zero-day flaw in VMware ESXi hosts to backdoor Windows and Linux systems. The VMware Tools authentication bypass vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-20867 (CVSS score: 3.9), “enabled the execution of privileged commands across Windows, Linux, and PhotonOS

Jun 13, 2023Ravie LakshmananCrimeware / Cryptocurrency A novel multi-stage loader called DoubleFinger has been observed delivering a cryptocurrency stealer dubbed GreetingGhoul in what’s an advanced attack targeting users in Europe, the U.S., and Latin America. “DoubleFinger is deployed on the target machine, when the victim opens a malicious PIF attachment in an email message, ultimately

Jun 12, 2023Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Software Security researchers have warned about an “easily exploitable” flaw in the Microsoft Visual Studio installer that could be abused by a malicious actor to impersonate a legitimate publisher and distribute malicious extensions. “A threat actor could impersonate a popular publisher and issue a malicious extension to compromise a targeted

Jun 10, 2023Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Cyber Threat Progress Software, the company behind the MOVEit Transfer application, has released patches to address brand new SQL injection vulnerabilities affecting the file transfer solution that could enable the theft of sensitive information. “Multiple SQL injection vulnerabilities have been identified in the MOVEit Transfer web application that could allow

Jun 10, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Malware Vietnamese public companies have been targeted as part of an ongoing campaign that deploys a novel backdoor called SPECTRALVIPER. “SPECTRALVIPER is a heavily obfuscated, previously undisclosed, x64 backdoor that brings PE loading and injection, file upload and download, file and directory manipulation, and token impersonation capabilities,” Elastic Security

Jun 09, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat / Financial Security Banking and financial services organizations are the targets of a new multi-stage adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attack, Microsoft has revealed. “The attack originated from a compromised trusted vendor and transitioned into a series of AiTM attacks and follow-on BEC activity spanning multiple organizations,”

Jun 08, 2023Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Zero-Day Details have emerged about a now-patched actively exploited security flaw in Microsoft Windows that could be abused by a threat actor to gain elevated privileges on affected systems. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-29336, is rated 7.8 for severity and concerns an elevation of privilege bug in the Win32k

Jun 07, 2023Ravie LakshmananPrivacy / Technology Microsoft has agreed to pay a penalty of $20 million to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that the company illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console without their parents’ knowledge or consent. “Our proposed order makes

Jun 06, 2023Ravie LakshmananCryptocurrency / Cyber Threat A recent malware campaign has been found to leverage Satacom downloader as a conduit to deploy stealthy malware capable of siphoning cryptocurrency using a rogue extension for Chromium-based browsers. “The main purpose of the malware that is dropped by the Satacom downloader is to steal BTC from the

Jun 05, 2023Ravie LakshmananZero Day / Cyber Attack Microsoft has officially linked the ongoing active exploitation of a critical flaw in the Progress Software MOVEit Transfer application to a threat actor it tracks as Lace Tempest. “Exploitation is often followed by deployment of a web shell with data exfiltration capabilities,” the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team

A survey of global cybersecurity leaders through the 2023 Certified CISO Hall of Fame Report commissioned by the EC-Council identified 4 primary areas of grave concern: cloud security, data security, security governance, and lack of cybersecurity talent. EC-Council, the global leader in cybersecurity education and training, released its Certified Chief Information Security Officer Hall of

Jun 03, 2023Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Linux An analysis of the Linux variant of a new ransomware strain called BlackSuit has covered significant similarities with another ransomware family called Royal. Trend Micro, which examined an x64 VMware ESXi version targeting Linux machines, said it identified an “extremely high degree of similarity” between Royal and BlackSuit.

Jun 02, 2023Ravie LakshmananBotnet / Malware Spanish-speaking users in Latin America have been at the receiving end of a new botnet malware dubbed Horabot since at least November 2020. “Horabot enables the threat actor to control the victim’s Outlook mailbox, exfiltrate contacts’ email addresses, and send phishing emails with malicious HTML attachments to all addresses

Jun 01, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat / Network Security An analysis of the “evasive and tenacious” malware known as QBot has revealed that 25% of its command-and-control (C2) servers are merely active for a single day. What’s more, 50% of the servers don’t remain active for more than a week, indicating the use of an adaptable

May 31, 2023Ravie LakshmananServer Security / Cryptocurrency A financially motivated threat actor is actively scouring the internet for unprotected Apache NiFi instances to covertly install a cryptocurrency miner and facilitate lateral movement. The findings come from the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC), which detected a spike in HTTP requests for “/nifi” on May 19, 2023.

May 30, 2023Ravie LakshmananZero Day / Vulnerability Multiple security flaws uncovered in Sonos One wireless speakers could be potentially exploited to achieve information disclosure and remote code execution, the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) said in a report published last week. The vulnerabilities were demonstrated by three different teams from Qrious Secure, STAR Labs, and DEVCORE

May 29, 2023Ravie LakshmananAuthentication / Mobile Security Researchers have discovered an inexpensive attack technique that could be leveraged to brute-force fingerprints on smartphones to bypass user authentication and seize control of the devices. The approach, dubbed BrutePrint, bypasses limits put in place to counter failed biometric authentication attempts by weaponizing two zero-day vulnerabilities in the

May 27, 2023Ravie LakshmananAPI Security / Vulnerability A critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in the Open Authorization (OAuth) implementation of the application development framework Expo.io. The shortcoming, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2023-28131, has a severity rating of 9.6 on the CVSS scoring system. API security firm Salt Labs said the issue rendered services using

A new stealthy information stealer malware called Bandit Stealer has caught the attention of cybersecurity researchers for its ability to target numerous web browsers and cryptocurrency wallets. “It has the potential to expand to other platforms as Bandit Stealer was developed using the Go programming language, possibly allowing cross-platform compatibility,” Trend Micro said in a