ESET Research ESET researchers discuss the dynamics within and between various groups of scammers who use a Telegram bot called Telekopye to scam people on online marketplaces ESET Research 18 Dec 2023 • , 1 min. read In this episode of our podcast, ESET malware researchers talk about the dynamics within and between various Neanderthal
Month: December 2023
Dec 19, 2023NewsroomRansomware / Cybercrime The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) has officially announced the disruption of the BlackCat ransomware operation and released a decryption tool that victims can use to regain access to files locked by the malware. Court documents show that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) enlisted the help of a confidential
Delta Dental of California and affiliates disclosed a data breach following a global security incident linked to the vulnerability in MOVEit file transfer software by Progress Software. According to a breach notification filed with the Maine Attorney General on December 14, unauthorized actors accessed protected health information. The exposed data includes individuals’ names coupled with a mix
ESET Research has discovered a cluster of malicious Python projects being distributed in PyPI, the official Python package repository. The threat targets both Windows and Linux systems and usually delivers a custom backdoor. In some cases, the final payload is a variant of the infamous W4SP Stealer, or a simple clipboard monitor to steal cryptocurrency,
Dec 18, 2023NewsroomEmail Security / Vulnerability Technical details have emerged about two now-patched security flaws in Microsoft Windows that could be chained by threat actors to achieve remote code execution on the Outlook email service sans any user interaction. “An attacker on the internet can chain the vulnerabilities together to create a full, zero-click remote
Tens of thousands of current and former employees of a leading US cybersecurity and nuclear research laboratory were impacted by a major data breach discovered in November, it has been revealed. The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) said in an updated notice published this week that it first became aware of the incident on November 20.
ESET researchers analyzed a growing series of OilRig downloaders that the group has used in several campaigns throughout 2022, to maintain access to target organizations of special interest – all located in Israel. These lightweight downloaders, which we named SampleCheck5000 (SC5k v1-v3), OilCheck, ODAgent, and OilBooster, are notable for using one of several legitimate cloud
Dec 17, 2023NewsroomCyber Attack / Data Security MongoDB on Saturday disclosed it’s actively investigating a security incident that has led to unauthorized access to “certain” corporate systems, resulting in the exposure of customer account metadata and contact information. The American database software company said it first detected anomalous activity on December 13, 2023, and that
The UK government has proposed new rules designed to regulate the datacenter sector, in a bid to improve baseline cybersecurity and resilience. It’s seeking industry feedback on a new consultation document, Protecting and enhancing the security and resilience of UK data infrastructure, which will be open until February 22 2024. Under the current proposals, datacenter providers
Video Your iPhone has just received a new feature called iMessage Contact Key Verification that is designed to help protect your messages from prying eyes 15 Dec 2023 Apple has shipped iOS 17.2 to all users and it includes a new feature that is intended to protect users from attackers who could be misusing the
Dec 16, 2023NewsroomCyber Security / Incident Response China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on Friday unveiled draft proposals detailing its plans to tackle data security events in the country using a color-coded system. The effort is designed to “improve the comprehensive response capacity for data security incidents, to ensure timely and effective control,
Four US residents have been charged with a series of money laundering offenses connected to a major “pig butchering” fraud syndicate. Lu Zhang, 36, of Alhambra, California; Justin Walker, 31, of Cypress, California; Joseph Wong, 32, of Rosemead, California; and Hailong Zhu, 40, of Naperville, Illinois, are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, concealment
Mobile Security A security compromise so stealthy that it doesn’t even require your interaction? Yes, zero-click attacks require no action from you – but this doesn’t mean you’re left vulnerable. Márk Szabó 11 Dec 2023 • , 3 min. read In a world of instant communication and accelerated by the ever-spreading notion that if you
Dec 15, 2023NewsroomBotnet / Advanced Persistent Threat A new botnet consisting of firewalls and routers from Cisco, DrayTek, Fortinet, and NETGEAR is being used as a covert data transfer network for advanced persistent threat actors, including the China-linked threat actor called Volt Typhoon. Dubbed KV-botnet by the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies, the
Cozy Bear, a threat group linked with the Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR), has been conducting a global hacking campaign targeting servers hosting JetBrains TeamCity software, according to US, UK and Polish government agencies. In a joint advisory published on December 13, 2023, six security and intelligence agencies in the US, the UK and Poland
Cybercrime continues to grow rapidly; indeed, it is a highly lucrative global industry. Without accurately accounting for profits from cybercrime (1, 2), we are left looking at the staggering estimated cost of US$7.08 trillion in 2022 for reference. Measured in terms of GDP, the illegal proceeds would rank as the third-largest “economy” worldwide. Regardless, this
Dec 14, 2023NewsroomMalware / Supply Chain Attack Cybersecurity researchers have identified a set of 116 malicious packages on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that are designed to infect Windows and Linux systems with a custom backdoor. “In some cases, the final payload is a variant of the infamous W4SP Stealer, or a simple clipboard
The cyber threat to critical infrastructure is increasing, prompting cyber government agencies to issue more warnings and advisories for industrial businesses. Against this backdrop, MITRE has launched EMB3D, a new threat model framework for defenders tasked with protecting operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS). EMB3D provides a knowledge base of cyber threats to
We Live Progress ChatGPT would probably say “Definitely not!”, but will we learn any lessons from the rush to regulate IoT in the past? Tony Anscombe 11 Dec 2023 • , 3 min. read The accelerated pace in the advancement of technology is challenging for any of us to keep up with, especially for public
Dec 13, 2023NewsroomCyber Threat / Phishing Attack The threat actors behind the BazaCall call back phishing attacks have been observed leveraging Google Forms to lend the scheme a veneer of credibility. The method is an “attempt to elevate the perceived authenticity of the initial malicious emails,” cybersecurity firm Abnormal Security said in a report published
The most significant data breach that has ever occurred in the history of UK policing was due to force-wide security failings and a “light touch approach” to data protection. In August 2023, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) suffered from a cyber incident that resulted in 9483 police officers and civilian staff having their
Dec 12, 2023NewsroomCyber Espionage / Malware The Russian nation-state threat actor known as APT28 has been observed making use of lures related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war to facilitate the delivery of a custom backdoor called HeadLace. IBM X-Force is tracking the adversary under the name ITG05, which is also known as BlueDelta, Fancy Bear,
Europol has issued a new warning regarding an emerging trend in organized crime involving the use of Bluetooth trackers. Originally designed to help individuals locate personal items and prevent vehicle theft, these small devices are being increasingly exploited by criminals for illicit activities. According to a new blog post published by Europol today, criminals are
Critical Infrastructure Legacy protocols in the healthcare industry present dangers that can make hospitals extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks. Tony Anscombe 08 Dec 2023 • , 3 min. read The healthcare industry will, I am sure, remain a significant target for cybercriminals due to the huge potential it provides them to monetize their efforts through ransomware
Dec 11, 2023NewsroomThreat Intelligence / Cyber Attack Tactical and targeting overlaps have been discovered between the enigmatic advanced persistent threat (APT) called Sandman and a China-based threat cluster that’s known to use a backdoor known as KEYPLUG. The assessment comes jointly from SentinelOne, PwC, and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team based on the fact that
The ransomware epidemic hitting UK businesses is leading many to increase their prices, adding to already high inflation, new data from Veeam has warned. The data protection firm surveyed 100 directors of UK businesses with over 500 employees that had been successfully compromised at least once by ransomware in the past 18 months. It found that large
Video ESET Research reveals details about a growth in the number of deceptive loan apps on Android, their origins and modus operandi 08 Dec 2023 This week, ESET researchers have taken a look at a steep increase in deceptive loan apps for Android. According to ESET Research, there has been a large growth of these
Dec 09, 2023NewsroomMalware / Cyberattack Threat hunters have unmasked the latest tricks adopted by a malware strain called GuLoader in an effort to make analysis more challenging. “While GuLoader’s core functionality hasn’t changed drastically over the past few years, these constant updates in their obfuscation techniques make analyzing GuLoader a time-consuming and resource-intensive process,” Elastic
Europe’s cybersecurity agency has warned that geopolitics is fueling a current increase in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. ENISA analyzed 310 publicly reported DoS attacks between January 2022 and August 2023, to compile its ENISA Threat Landscape for DoS Attacks report. It claimed that two-thirds (66%) were motivated by political reasons or activist agendas, with half (50%)
Dec 09, 2023NewsroomCyber Threat / Hardware Security Researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam have disclosed a new side-channel attack called SLAM that could be exploited to leak sensitive information from kernel memory on current and upcoming CPUs from Intel, AMD, and Arm. The attack is an end-to-end exploit for Spectre based on a new feature