The Pentagon’s strategy for proactive disruption of malicious activity has been influenced by the unfolding events in Ukraine, according to a classified document sent to Congress. The US Department of Defense’s 2023 DoD Cyber Strategy is not immediately available to view, but a fact sheet summarized some of the key points for public consumption. “Since 2018,
Month: May 2023
by Paul Ducklin Researchers at web coding security company SALT just published a fascinating description of how they found an authentication bug dubbed CVE-2023-28131 in a popular online app-buildin toolkit known as Expo. The good news is that Expo responded really quickly to SALT’s bug report, coming up with a fix within just a few
May 31, 2023Ravie LakshmananAdvanced Persistent Threat The threat actor known as Dark Pink has been linked to five new attacks aimed at various entities in Belgium, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam between February 2022 and April 2023. This includes educational entities, government agencies, military bodies, and non-profit organizations, indicating the adversarial crew’s continued focus on
Nearly half a million members of a notorious cybercrime forum have had their details publicly exposed after a key database was published on another hacking site. Cybersecurity researchers at VX-Underground confirmed the news that over 478,000 users of RaidForums had their data leaked on up-and-coming forum Exposed. “The administrative staff of Exposed would not tell
May 30, 2023Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Android A new open source remote access trojan (RAT) called DogeRAT targets Android users primarily located in India as part of a sophisticated malware campaign. The malware is distributed via social media and messaging platforms under the guise of legitimate applications like Opera Mini, OpenAI ChatGOT, and Premium versions
A critical security flaw in the Expo framework has been discovered that could be exploited to reveal user data in various online services. The vulnerability (CVE-2023-28131) was discovered by Salt Security and has a CVSS score of 9.6. In particular, the bug was found in the way Expo’s Open Authorization (OAuth) social-login feature is implemented.
A new phishing technique called “file archiver in the browser” can be leveraged to “emulate” a file archiver software in a web browser when a victim visits a .ZIP domain. “With this phishing attack, you simulate a file archiver software (e.g., WinRAR) in the browser and use a .zip domain to make it appear more
Romanian cybersecurity firm Safetech launched its official presence in the UK on May 23, 2023, underscoring the recent growth of the UK’s cybersecurity sector. Plans to build a security operations center (SOC) at the Plexal Innovation Hub based in London were announced during the company’s launch event. Anca Stancu, co-founder and managing partner of Safetech
ESET research uncovers an Android app that initially had no harmful features but months later turned into a spying tool This week, ESET malware researcher Lukas Stefanko revealed how an initially legitimate Android app morphed into a malicious trojan that could steal users’ files and record surrounding audio from the device’s microphone and then exfiltrate
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
New Russian-linked malware designed to take down electricity networks has been identified by Mandiant threat researchers, who have urged energy firms to take action to mitigate this “immediate threat.” The specialized operational technology (OT) malware, dubbed COSMICENERGY, has similarities to malware used in previous attacks targeting electricity grids, including the ‘Industroyer’ incident that took down
ESET researchers reveal details about a prevalent cryptor, operating as a cryptor-as-a-service used by tens of malware families In this blogpost we examine the operation of AceCryptor, originally documented by Avast. This cryptor has been around since 2016 and because – throughout its existence – it has been used to pack tens of malware families,
May 26, 2023Ravie LakshmananData Safety / Cloud Security A new security flaw has been disclosed in the Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP) Cloud SQL service that could be potentially exploited to obtain access to confidential data. “The vulnerability could have enabled a malicious actor to escalate from a basic Cloud SQL user to a full-fledged sysadmin
Perception Point has observed a 356% growth in the number of advanced phishing attacks attempted by threat actors in 2022. According to the company’s 2023 Annual Report: Cybersecurity Trends & Insights report, the total number of attacks increased by 87%. Among the reasons behind this growth is the fact that malicious actors continue to gain widespread
by Paul Ducklin A PYTHON PERSPECTIVE VORTEX No audio player below? Listen directly on Soundcloud. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found. Or just drop the URL of our
May 26, 2023Ravie LakshmananEmail Security / Zero-Day Email protection and network security services provider Barracuda is warning users about a zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited to breach the company’s Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances. The zero-day is being tracked as CVE-2023-2868 and has been described as a remote code injection vulnerability affecting
North Korea threat actor Lazarus group is targeting Windows IIS web servers to launch espionage attacks, according to a new analysis by AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC). The researchers said the approach represents a variation on the dynamic-link library (DLL) side-loading technique, a tactic regularly utilized by the state-affiliated group. Here, they believe the
by Paul Ducklin It’s taken more than five years for justice to be served in this case, but the cops and the courts got there in the end. The UK law enforcement office SEROCU, short for South East Regional Organised Crime Unit, this week reported the peculiar tale of one Ashley Liles, the literal Man
Nobody wants to spend their time dealing with the fallout of a security incident instead of building up their business Approximately one in seven people in Europe and the United States are self-employed, often realizing their dream to be in charge of their own destiny and having more freedom and control over their careers. But
May 24, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat / Web Security At least eight websites associated with shipping, logistics, and financial services companies in Israel were targeted as part of a watering hole attack. Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity company ClearSky attributed the attacks with low confidence to an Iranian threat actor tracked as Tortoiseshell, which is also called Crimson
Google has enhanced the security of its first-party Android applications by launching the Mobile Vulnerability Reward Program (Mobile VRP). The tech giant made the announcement on Twitter Monday, hours after publishing the new initiative. The Mobile VRP aims to encourage researchers and security experts to identify and report vulnerabilities in Google-developed or maintained Android apps.
by Paul Ducklin Public source code repositories, from Sourceforge to GitHub, from the Linux Kernel Archives to ReactOS.org, from PHP Packagist to the Python Package Index, better known as PyPI, are a fantastic source (sorry!) of free operating systems, applications, programming libraries, and developers’ toolkits that have done computer science and software engineering a world
Summary Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service, and it supports multiple authentication methods. The premium version of Azure AD also supports Conditional Access policies (CAPs) that grant or block access based on defined criteria, such as device compliance or user location. Azure AD stores the settings for the
ESET researchers discover AhRat – a new Android RAT based on AhMyth – that exfiltrates files and records audio ESET researchers have discovered a trojanized Android app that had been available on the Google Play store with over 50,000 installs. The app, named iRecorder – Screen Recorder, was initially uploaded to the store without malicious
May 23, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat / APT Government and diplomatic entities in the Middle East and South Asia are the target of a new advanced persistent threat actor named GoldenJackal. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which has been keeping tabs on the group’s activities since mid-2020, characterized the adversary as both capable and stealthy. The targeting
China has banned products sold by US chipmaker giant Micron, citing cybersecurity concerns. The Cyberspace Administration of China announced the decision on May 21, 2023, following a cybersecurity review of Micron products sold in China that was initiated in March 2023. In the statement, the Chinese government said the review had flagged “serious cybersecurity problems”
by Naked Security writer In November 2022, we wrote about a multi-country takedown against a Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) system known as iSpoof. Although iSpoof advertised openly for business on a non-darkweb site, reachable with a regular browser via a non-onion domain name, and even though using its services might technically have been legal in your country
May 22, 2023Ravie LakshmananData Protection / Privacy Facebook’s parent company Meta has been fined a record $1.3 billion by European Union data protection regulators for transferring the personal data of users in the region to the U.S. In a binding decision taken by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), the social media giant has been
The CommonMagic malware implant has been associated with a previously unknown advanced persistent threat campaign linked to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and relies on a new modular framework. Dubbed “CloudWizard,” the framework was discovered by security researchers at Kaspersky, who described it in an advisory published today. Leonid Bezvershenko, Georgy Kucherin and Igor Kuznetsov highlighted that sections
May 21, 2023Ravie LakshmananSoftware Security / Malware The maintainers of Python Package Index (PyPI), the official third-party software repository for the Python programming language, have temporarily disabled the ability for users to sign up and upload new packages until further notice. “The volume of malicious users and malicious projects being created on the index in
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