by Paul Ducklin Linux has never suffered from the infamous BSoD, short for blue screen of death, the name given to the dreaded “something went terribly wrong” message associated with a Windows system crash. Microsoft has tried many things over the years to shake that nickname “BSoD”, including changing the background colour used when crash
Month: March 2023
Here’s how to know you have fallen victim to a scam – and what to do in order to undo or mitigate the damage. Online fraud can be thought of as a price we pay for the ubiquity of digital services. These services make our lives easier, healthier, safer and more entertaining. But there are
Mar 14, 2023Ravie 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
A total of 13 vulnerabilities have been found in the E11 smart intercom devices made by Chinese manufacturer Akuvox, allowing remote code execution (RCE), network access and more. Writing in an advisory published last week, Vera Mens, a security researcher at Claroty’s Team82, said the flaws could be exploited via three different attack vectors: RCE
Mar 13, 2023Ravie 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
New Linux versions of the IceFire ransomware were deployed in February, against enterprise networks of several media and entertainment sector organizations worldwide. According to security researchers at SentinelOne, the campaign leveraged the exploitation of CVE-2022-47986, a recently patched deserialization vulnerability in IBM Aspera Faspex file-sharing software. “The operators of the IceFire malware, who previously focused only
Here’s a roundup of some of the most common tricks that fraudsters use to dupe their victims on WhatsApp – and what you can do to protect yourself against them. With more than two billion users, WhatsApp offers a vast pool of potential targets for scammers. To make things more complicated, fraudsters aren’t known for
Mar 10, 2023Ravie 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
A new variant of the Xenomorph Android banking trojan has been spotted by ThreatFabric security researchers and classified as Xenomorph.C. The variant, developed by the threat actor known as Hadoken Security Group, represents a substantial upgrade from the malware previously observed by ThreatFabric, according to an advisory published by the company earlier today. “This new
by Paul Ducklin Chinese “fast fashion” brand SHEIN is no stranger to controversy, not least because of a 2018 data breach that its then-parent company Zoetop failed to spot, let alone to stop, and then handled dishonestly. As Letitia James, Attorney General of the State of New York, said in a statement at the end
A request to move an online conversation to a supposedly more secure platform may not be as well-meaning as it sounds Have you ever been asked to move an online conversation to another – and supposedly more secure – platform? This technique, often used by romance scammers, was recently used against a number of Indian
Mar 11, 2023Ravie 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.
The White House has allocated a total of $3.1bn to cybersecurity infrastructure in its latest budget report. Published on Thursday, the document shows $145m of this figure will go toward making the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “more resilient and defensible.” Of the remaining funds, $98m will be invested in implementing the Cyber Incident Reporting
by Paul Ducklin YOU MUST HAVE THIS CHIP! EVEN IF IT HAS BUGS! Memories of Michelangelo (the virus, not the artist). Data leakage bugs in TPM 2.0. Ransomware bust, ransomware warning, and anti-ransomware advice. No audio player below? Listen directly on Soundcloud. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge.
Mar 10, 2023Ravie 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
The threat actor known as “8220 Gang” has been associated with a new payload targeting an exploitable Oracle Weblogic Server in a specific Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). The payload, analyzed by Fortinet security researchers, is characterized by the extraction of ScrubCrypt, a type of malware designed to obfuscate and encrypt applications with the goal of
An astrobiologist, analog astronaut, author and speaker, Dr. Michaela Musilova shares her experience as a woman at the forefront of space exploration and from her quest for scientific and personal excellence When we talk about space adventures, our minds are likely to wander to famed astronauts. However, we often forget that there is a lot
Mar 09, 2023Ravie 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
The North Korean threat actor known as Lazarus Group has been spotted exploiting flaws in unnamed software to gain access to a South Korean finance firm twice last year. The news comes from security researchers at Asec, who published an advisory about the attacks on Tuesday. The company recorded the first of the attacks in
by Paul Ducklin Even if you’re not entirely sure what a TPM is, you’ll probably know that if you want to run Windows 11, you need one. More precisely, you need a TPM 2.0 (although there’s an official Microsoft workaround to get by with TPM 1.2, the previous, incompatible version of the technology). TPM is
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
A ransomware cyber-attack has targeted one of Barcelona’s leading hospitals, shutting down its computer system and forcing the cancellation of 150 non-urgent operations and up to 3000 patient checkups. Reported Monday on Twitter, the attack against Hospital Clinic de Barcelona occurred on Sunday. At the time, the institution said it was working to determine the
Mar 07, 2023Ravie 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
by Naked Security writer You’ve almost certainly heard of the ransomware family known as DoppelPaymer, if only because the name itself is a reminder of the double-barrelled blackmail technique used by many contemporary ransomware gangs. To increase the pressure on you to pay up, so-called double-extortionists not only scramble all your data files so your
ESET researchers analyze a cyberespionage campaign that distributes CapraRAT backdoors through trojanized and supposedly secure Android messaging apps – but also exfiltrates sensitive information ESET researchers have identified an active Transparent Tribe campaign, targeting mostly Indian and Pakistani Android users – presumably with a military or political orientation. Victims were probably targeted through a honey-trap
German and Ukrainian police forces have apprehended suspected key members of the DoppelPaymer ransomware gang, Europol announced today. The operation, carried out on February 28, was supported by Europol, the Dutch Police and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and resulted in the capture of a suspect in Germany and one in Ukraine.
Mar 06, 2023Ravie 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
Two separate vulnerabilities have been found in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 that could lead to information disclosure or escalation of privilege. At a basic level, TPM is a hardware-based technology providing secure cryptographic functions to the operating systems on modern computers, making them resistant to tampering. Affecting Revisions 1.59, 1.38 and 1.16 of the
The first in-the-wild UEFI bootkit bypassing UEFI Secure Boot on fully updated UEFI systems is now a reality The number of UEFI vulnerabilities discovered in recent years and the failures in patching them or revoking vulnerable binaries within a reasonable time window hasn’t gone unnoticed by threat actors. As a result, the first publicly known
Mar 04, 2023Ravie 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