Aug 18, 2023THNCyber Crime / Hacking News A coordinated law enforcement operation across 25 African countries has led to the arrest of 14 suspected cybercriminals, INTERPOL announced Friday. The exercise, conducted in partnership with AFRIPOL, enabled investigators to identify 20,674 cyber networks that were linked to financial losses of more than $40 million. “The four-month
Month: August 2023
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has unveiled its Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Cyber Defense Plan. Created in collaboration with industry and government stakeholders through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), the plan is a decisive step in countering the escalating risks associated with exploiting RMM software. RMM tools, designed for continuous
by Paul Ducklin CELEBRATING THE TRUE CRYPTO BROS 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 and anywhere that good podcasts are found. Or just drop the URL of our
Aug 17, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Vulnerability A previously undetected attack method called NoFilter has been found to abuse the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) to achieve privilege escalation in the Windows operating system. “If an attacker has the ability to execute code with admin privilege and the target is to perform LSASS Shtinkering, these privileges are
Cleaning product manufacturer Clorox has confirmed significant operational disruption caused by a recent cyber-attack. According to a notice published on the company’s website, the attack was detected on August 14, prompting Clorox’s IT team to take immediate action by halting suspicious activity and shutting down affected systems. As a precautionary measure, the compromised systems have remained
by Paul Ducklin The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has just published an official public service announcement headlined with with a very specific warning: Cybercriminals Targeting Victims through Mobile Beta-Testing Applications. The Feds didn’t go as far as naming any specific vendors or services here, but one of the main reasons that crooks go
Aug 17, 2023THNVulnerability / Enterprise Security The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a critical security flaw in Citrix ShareFile storage zones controller to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active in-the-wild exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2023-24489 (CVSS score: 9.8), the shortcoming has been described as an improper access
Discord.io has shut down operations after suffering a major data breach exposing the personal details of its 760,000 members. A statement on the Discord.io website confirmed that a preview of the Discord.io’s users database on cybercrime marketplace BreachForums at 12.51am CET on Monday, August 14 (18.51 ET Sunday, August 13, with the rest of the
by Paul Ducklin It’s taken nearly ten years, but the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has just announced the court-approved seizure of a web domain called LolekHosted.net that was allegedly connected to a wide range of crimeware-as-a-service activities. The DOJ also charged a 36-year-old Polish man named Artur Karol Grabowski in connection with running the
Aug 16, 2023THNVulnerability / Enterprise Security Nearly 2,000 Citrix NetScaler instances have been compromised with a backdoor by weaponizing a recently disclosed critical security vulnerability as part of a large-scale attack. “An adversary appears to have exploited CVE-2023-3519 in an automated fashion, placing web shells on vulnerable NetScalers to gain persistent access,” NCC Group said
Alberta Dental Service Corporation (ADSC) has revealed that nearly 1.47 million individuals have been affected by a data breach that occurred between May 7 and July 9 2023. ADSC, a partner of the Government of Alberta, US, administers dental benefits through various programs, and the incident has raised concerns over compromised personal information. The breach was
by Paul Ducklin It’s been a while since we’ve written about card skimmers, which used to play a big part in global cybercrime. These days, many if not most cyber-breach and cybercrime stories revolve around ransomware, the darkweb and the cloud, or some unholy combination of the three. In ransomware attacks, the criminals don’t actually
Aug 14, 2023THNCyber Threat / Malware A new remote access trojan (RAT) called QwixxRAT is being advertised for sale by its threat actor through Telegram and Discord platforms. “Once installed on the victim’s Windows platform machines, the RAT stealthily collects sensitive data, which is then sent to the attacker’s Telegram bot, providing them with unauthorized
The US Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) has issued a comprehensive report shedding light on the operations of the notorious extortion-focused hacker collective, Lapsus$. The findings reveal that Lapsus$ exploited basic strategies to sidestep conventional security measures, prompting the CSRB to propose ten concrete recommendations for both governmental bodies and industries. The report, delivered to
The Indian President Droupadi Murmu on Friday granted assent to the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDPB) after it was unanimously passed by both houses of the parliament last week, marking a significant step towards securing people’s information. “The Bill provides for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognizes both the
A new variant of the SystemBC malware, paired with Cobalt Strike beacons, has been identified in a recent cyber-attack targeting a critical infrastructure power generator in a southern African nation. Echoing the high-profile Darkside Colonial Pipeline breach of 2021, the incident occurred during the third and fourth weeks of March 2023, according to a new
Aug 12, 2023THNServer Security / Cyber Threat Multiple security vulnerabilities impacting CyberPower’s PowerPanel Enterprise Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) platform and Dataprobe’s iBoot Power Distribution Unit (PDU) could be potentially exploited to gain unauthenticated access to these systems and inflict catastrophic damage in target environments. The nine vulnerabilities, from CVE-2023-3259 through CVE-2023-3267, carry severity scores
Multiple vulnerabilities have been identified in the widely used Avada theme and its accompanying Avada Builder plugin. These security flaws, uncovered by Patchstack’s security researcher Rafie Muhammad, expose a significant number of WordPress websites to potential breaches. Within these vulnerabilities, the Avada Builder plugin exhibits two weaknesses. The first is an Authenticated SQL Injection (CVE-2023-39309).
A hitherto undocumented threat actor operating for nearly a decade and codenamed MoustachedBouncer has been attributed to cyber espionage attacks aimed at foreign embassies in Belarus. “Since 2020, MoustachedBouncer has most likely been able to perform adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks at the ISP level, within Belarus, in order to compromise its targets,” ESET security researcher Matthieu
“When I worked on a report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board about the Log4j vulnerability, I was stunned to find out that the developer community isn’t necessarily trained on security by design.” These words come from the Acting National Cyber Director of the US Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), Kemba Walden
by Paul Ducklin SNOOPING ON MEMORY, KEYSTROKES AND CRYPTOCOINS 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 and anywhere that good podcasts are found. Or just drop the URL of
Aug 11, 2023THNOperational Technology / Vulnerability A set of 15 high-severity security flaws have been disclosed in the CODESYS V3 software development kit (SDK) that could result in remote code execution and denial-of-service under specific conditions, posing risks to operational technology (OT) environments. The flaws, tracked from CVE-2022-47379 through CVE-2022-47393 and dubbed CoDe16, carry a
Multiple zero-day vulnerabilities have been discovered in some of the most used cryptographic multi-party computation (MPC) protocols, putting consumers’ cryptocurrency funds at risk of theft. In findings presented during Black Hat USA on Wednesday, August 9, the Fireblocks Cryptography Research Team said that the vulnerabilities, if left unpatched, would enable attackers to drain funds from
by Paul Ducklin The August 2023 Microsoft security updates are out (the first day of the month was a Tuesday, making this month’s Patch Tuesday as early as ever it can be), with 74 CVE-numbered bugs fixed. Intriguingly, if not confusingly, Microsoft’s offical bug listing page is topped by two special items dubbed Exploitation Detected.
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a trio of side-channel attacks that could be exploited to leak sensitive data from modern CPUs. Called Collide+Power (CVE-2023-20583), Downfall (CVE-2022-40982), and Inception (CVE-2023-20569), the novel methods follow the disclosure of another newly discovered security vulnerability affecting AMD’s Zen 2 architecture-based processors known as Zenbleed (CVE-2023-20593). “Downfall attacks target
Law firm Morgan & Morgan has lodged a class-action lawsuit against Tampa General Hospital on behalf of three victims affected by a significant data breach. Between May 12 and May 30, 2023, cyber-criminals infiltrated Tampa General Hospital’s computer system, pilfering data belonging to approximately 1.2 million patients. The exposed information encompasses sensitive details like names, addresses,
by Paul Ducklin Audio recordings are dangerously easy to make these days, whether by accident or by design. You could end up with your own permanent copy of something you thought you were discussing privately, preserved indefinitely in an uninterestingly-named file on your phone or laptop, thanks to hitting “Record” by mistake. Someone else could
Aug 09, 2023THNSoftware Security / Vulnerability Microsoft has patched a total of 74 flaws in its software as part of the company’s Patch Tuesday updates for August 2023, down from the voluminous 132 vulnerabilities the company fixed last month. This comprises six Critical and 67 Important security vulnerabilities. Also released by the tech giant are
A widespread cyber-attack on hospital computer systems has caused significant disruptions across the United States, leading to the closure of emergency rooms in multiple states and the diversion of ambulances. The incident began last Thursday, 3 August, and targeted facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, a California-based company with hospitals and clinics in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode
Aug 07, 2023THNCyber Crime / Malware A new malware campaign has been observed making use of malicious OpenBullet configuration files to target inexperienced cyber criminals with the goal of delivering a remote access trojan (RAT) capable of stealing sensitive information. Bot mitigation company Kasada said the activity is designed to “exploit trusted criminal networks,” describing