News

Apr 03, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Data Security Data storage devices maker Western Digital on Monday disclosed a “network security incident” that involved unauthorized access to its systems. The breach is said to have occurred on March 26, 2023, enabling an unnamed third party to gain access to a “number of the company’s systems.” Following

Apr 01, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Vulnerability Critical security flaws in Cacti, Realtek, and IBM Aspera Faspex are being exploited by various threat actors in hacks targeting unpatched systems. This entails the abuse of CVE-2022-46169 (CVSS score: 9.8) and CVE-2021-35394 (CVSS score: 9.8) to deliver MooBot and ShellBot (aka PerlBot), Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said in

Apr 01, 2023Ravie LakshmananAzure / Active Directory Microsoft has patched a misconfiguration issue impacting the Azure Active Directory (AAD) identity and access management service that exposed several “high-impact” applications to unauthorized access. “One of these apps is a content management system (CMS) that powers Bing.com and allowed us to not only modify search results, but

Mar 31, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / APT The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as Winter Vivern is now targeting officials in Europe and the U.S. as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign. “TA473 since at least February 2023 has continuously leveraged an unpatched Zimbra vulnerability in publicly facing webmail portals that allows them

Mar 30, 2023Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Vulnerability Details have emerged about a now-patched vulnerability in Azure Service Fabric Explorer (SFX) that could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution. Tracked as CVE-2023-23383 (CVSS score: 8.2), the issue has been dubbed “Super FabriXss” by Orca Security, a nod to the FabriXss flaw (CVE-2022-35829, CVSS score: 6.2) that

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