News

Jul 12, 2023THNRansomware / Cyber Threat Ransomware has emerged as the only cryptocurrency-based crime to grow in 2023, with cybercriminals extorting nearly $175.8 million more than they did a year ago, according to findings from Chainalysis. “Ransomware attackers are on pace for their second-biggest year ever, having extorted at least $449.1 million through June,” the

A Microsoft Windows policy loophole has been observed being exploited primarily by native Chinese-speaking threat actors to forge signatures on kernel-mode drivers. “Actors are leveraging multiple open-source tools that alter the signing date of kernel mode drivers to load malicious and unverified drivers signed with expired certificates,” Cisco Talos said in an exhaustive two-part report

Jul 11, 2023THNZero-Day / Endpoint Security Apple has released Rapid Security Response updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari web browser to address a zero-day flaw that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. The WebKit bug, cataloged as CVE-2023-37450, could allow threat actors to achieve arbitrary code execution when processing specially crafted

Jul 03, 2023The Hacker NewsWebsite Security Tool Every website owner or webmaster grapples with the issue of spam on their website forms. The volume of spam can be so overwhelming that finding useful information within it becomes quite challenging. What exacerbates this issue is that spam can populate your public pages, appearing in comments and

Jul 08, 2023Swati KhandelwalMobile Security / Spyware Two file management apps on the Google Play Store have been discovered to be spyware, putting the privacy and security of up to 1.5 million Android users at risk. These apps engage in deceptive behaviour and secretly send sensitive user data to malicious servers in China. Pradeo, a

Jul 07, 2023Swati KhandelwalMobile Security / Malware Researchers have issued a warning about an emerging and advanced form of voice phishing (vishing) known as “Letscall.” This technique is currently targeting individuals in South Korea. The criminals behind “Letscall” employ a multi-step attack to deceive victims into downloading malicious apps from a counterfeit Google Play Store

Jul 06, 2023Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Malware The Iranian nation-state actor known as TA453 has been linked to a new set of spear-phishing attacks that infect both Windows and macOS operating systems with malware. “TA453 eventually used a variety of cloud hosting providers to deliver a novel infection chain that deploys the newly identified PowerShell

Jul 05, 2023Ravie LakshmananCritical Infrastructure Security A sophisticated stealer-as-a-ransomware threat dubbed RedEnergy has been spotted in the wild targeting energy utilities, oil, gas, telecom, and machinery sectors in Brazil and the Philippines through their LinkedIn pages. The malware “possesses the ability to steal information from various browsers, enabling the exfiltration of sensitive data, while also

Jul 04, 2023Ravie LakshmananPrivacy / Online Security The Swedish data protection watchdog has warned companies against using Google Analytics due to risks posed by U.S. government surveillance, following similar moves by Austria, France, and Italy last year. The development comes in the aftermath of an audit initiated by the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY)

Jul 03, 2023Ravie LakshmananMalware Attack / Cyberespionage A Chinese nation-state group has been observed targeting Foreign Affairs ministries and embassies in Europe using HTML smuggling techniques to deliver the PlugX remote access trojan on compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Check Point said the activity, dubbed SmugX, has been ongoing since at least December 2022. “The campaign

Jul 01, 2023Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Malware Researchers have pulled back the curtain on an updated version of an Apple macOS malware called Rustbucket that comes with improved capabilities to establish persistence and avoid detection by security software. “This variant of Rustbucket, a malware family that targets macOS systems, adds persistence capabilities not previously observed,”

Jul 01, 2023Ravie LakshmananWebsite Security / Cyber Threat As many as 200,000 WordPress websites are at risk of ongoing attacks exploiting a critical unpatched security vulnerability in the Ultimate Member plugin. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-3460 (CVSS score: 9.8), impacts all versions of the Ultimate Member plugin, including the latest version (2.6.6) that was released

Jun 30, 2023The Hacker NewsCyber Espionage/ Malware Charming Kitten, the nation-state actor affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been attributed to a bespoke spear-phishing campaign that delivers an updated version of a fully-featured PowerShell backdoor called POWERSTAR. “There have been improved operational security measures placed in the malware to make it more

Jun 29, 2023Ravie Lakshmanan The Iranian state-sponsored group dubbed MuddyWater has been attributed to a previously unseen command-and-control (C2) framework called PhonyC2 that’s been put to use by the actor since 2021. Evidence shows that the custom made, actively developed framework has been leveraged in the February 2023 attack on Technion, an Israeli research institute,

Jun 28, 2023Ravie LakshmananFirmware Security / Tech Drones that don’t have any known security weaknesses could be the target of electromagnetic fault injection (EMFI) attacks, potentially enabling a threat actor to achieve arbitrary code execution and compromise their functionality and safety. The research comes from IOActive, which found that it is “feasible to compromise the

Jun 27, 2023Ravie LakshmananMalware / Cyber Threat A new process injection technique dubbed Mockingjay could be exploited by threat actors to bypass security solutions to execute malicious code on compromised systems. “The injection is executed without space allocation, setting permissions or even starting a thread,” Security Joes researchers Thiago Peixoto, Felipe Duarte, and Ido Naor

Jun 26, 2023Ravie LakshmananCryptography / Cybersecurity In what’s an ingenious side-channel attack, a group of academics has found that it’s possible to recover secret keys from a device by analyzing video footage of its power LED. “Cryptographic computations performed by the CPU change the power consumption of the device which affects the brightness of the

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 LakshmananMalware / Cyber Threat The threat actors behind the Vidar malware have made changes to their backend infrastructure, indicating attempts to retool and conceal their online trail in response to public disclosures about their modus operandi. “Vidar threat actors continue to rotate their backend IP infrastructure, favoring providers in Moldova and Russia,”

Jun 14, 2023Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Vulnerability Two “dangerous” security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Microsoft Azure Bastion and Azure Container Registry that could have been exploited to carry out cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. “The vulnerabilities allowed unauthorized access to the victim’s session within the compromised Azure service iframe, which can lead to severe consequences,

Jun 13, 2023Ravie LakshmananPhishing Attacks / BEC “Dozens” of organizations across the world have been targeted as part of a broad business email compromise (BEC) campaign that involved the use of adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) techniques to carry out the attacks. “Following a successful phishing attempt, the threat actor gained initial access to one of the victim