News

Threat activity clusters affiliated with the Chinese and Russian cybercriminal ecosystems have been observed using a new piece of malware that’s designed to load Cobalt Strike onto infected machines. Dubbed SILKLOADER by Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure, the malware leverages DLL side-loading techniques to deliver commercial adversary simulation software. The development comes as improved detection capabilities

Mar 15, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Data Security A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed YoroTrooper has been targeting government, energy, and international organizations across Europe as part of a cyber espionage campaign that has been active since at least June 2022. “Information stolen from successful compromises include credentials from multiple applications, browser histories and cookies,

Mar 14, 2023Ravie 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

Mar 13, 2023Ravie 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

Mar 10, 2023Ravie 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

Mar 11, 2023Ravie 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.

Mar 10, 2023Ravie 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

Mar 09, 2023Ravie 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

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

Mar 07, 2023Ravie 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

Mar 06, 2023Ravie 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

Mar 04, 2023Ravie 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

Mar 04, 2023The Hacker NewsSaaS Security / Cyber Security This past January, a SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) company named Wing Security (Wing) made waves with the launch of its free SaaS-Shadow IT discovery solution. Cloud-based companies were invited to gain insight into their employees’ SaaS usage through a completely free, self-service product that operates

Mar 03, 2023Ravie LakshmananEnterprise Security / IoT A pair of serious security defects has been disclosed in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 reference library specification that could potentially lead to information disclosure or privilege escalation. One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-1017, concerns an out-of-bounds write, while the other, CVE-2023-1018, is described as an out-of-bounds read.

Mar 02, 2023Ravie LakshmananContainer Security / Cyber Threat A sophisticated attack campaign dubbed SCARLETEEL is targeting containerized environments to perpetrate theft of proprietary data and software. “The attacker exploited a containerized workload and then leveraged it to perform privilege escalation into an AWS account in order to steal proprietary software and credentials,” Sysdig said in

Mar 02, 2023Ravie LakshmananData Security / Cryptojacking Misconfigured Redis database servers are the target of a novel cryptojacking campaign that leverages a legitimate and open source command-line file transfer service to implement its attack. “Underpinning this campaign was the use of transfer[.]sh,” Cado Security said in a report shared with The Hacker News. “It’s possible

Mar 02, 2023The Hacker NewsBrowser Security As a primary working interface, the browser plays a significant role in today’s corporate environment. The browser is constantly used by employees to access websites, SaaS applications and internal applications, from both managed and unmanaged devices. A new report published by LayerX, a browser security vendor, finds that attackers

Feb 27, 2023Ravie LakshmananBrowser Security / Malware A new ChromeLoader malware campaign has been observed being distributed via virtual hard disk (VHD) files, marking a deviation from the ISO optical disc image format. “These VHD files are being distributed with filenames that make them appear like either hacks or cracks for Nintendo and Steam games,”

Feb 24, 2023The Hacker NewsCybersecurity Webinar / SaaS Security Are you prepared to tackle the top SaaS challenges of 2023? With high-profile data breaches affecting major companies like Nissan and Slack, it’s clear that SaaS apps are a prime target for cyberattacks. The vast amounts of valuable information stored in these apps make them a

Feb 24, 2023Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Firmware Google said it’s working with ecosystem partners to harden the security of firmware that interacts with Android. While the Android operating system runs on what’s called the application processor (AP), it’s just one of the many processors of a system-on-chip (SoC) that cater to various tasks like cellular

Feb 24, 2023Ravie LakshmananPrivacy / Data Safety An investigation into data safety labels for Android apps available on the Google Play Store has uncovered “serious loopholes” that allow apps to provide misleading or outright false information. The study, conducted by the Mozilla Foundation as part of its *Privacy Not Included initiative, compared the privacy policies

Feb 23, 2023Ravie LakshmananMalware / Threat Intel Materials research organizations in Asia have been targeted by a previously unknown threat actor using a distinct set of tools. Symantec, by Broadcom Software, is tracking the cluster under the moniker Clasiopa. The origins of the hacking group and its affiliations are currently unknown, but there are hints

Feb 22, 2023Ravie LakshmananOpen Source / Supply Chain Attack In what’s a continuing assault on the open source ecosystem, over 15,000 spam packages have flooded the npm repository in an attempt to distribute phishing links. “The packages were created using automated processes, with project descriptions and auto-generated names that closely resembled one another,” Checkmarx researcher

Feb 21, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat Intelligence A new information stealer called Stealc that’s being advertised on the dark web could emerge as a worthy competitor to other malware of its ilk. “The threat actor presents Stealc as a fully featured and ready-to-use stealer, whose development relied on Vidar, Raccoon, Mars, and RedLine stealers,” SEKOIA said

Unknown malware presents a significant cybersecurity threat and can cause serious damage to organizations and individuals alike. When left undetected, malicious code can gain access to confidential information, corrupt data, and allow attackers to gain control of systems. Find out how to avoid these circumstances and detect unknown malicious behavior efficiently. Challenges of new threats’

Feb 19, 2023Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Firewall Fortinet has released security updates to address 40 vulnerabilities in its software lineup, including FortiWeb, FortiOS, FortiNAS, and FortiProxy, among others. Two of the 40 flaws are rated Critical, 15 are rated High, 22 are rated Medium, and one is rated Low in severity. Top of the list

Feb 18, 2023Ravie LakshmananAuthentication / Online Security Twitter has announced that it’s limiting the use of SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) to its Blue subscribers. “While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors,” the company said. “We will no longer allow

Feb 17, 2023Ravie LakshmananIoT Security / Cyber Attack A new variant of the notorious Mirai botnet has been found leveraging several security vulnerabilities to propagate itself to Linux and IoT devices. Observed during the second half of 2022, the new version has been dubbed V3G4 by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which identified three different

Security teams typically have great visibility over most areas, for example, the corporate network, endpoints, servers, and cloud infrastructure. They use this visibility to enforce the necessary security and compliance requirements. However, this is not the case when it comes to sensitive data sitting in production or analytic databases, data warehouses or data lakes. Security

Feb 15, 2023The Hacker NewsSecOps / DevOps In an ideal world, security and development teams would be working together in perfect harmony. But we live in a world of competing priorities, where DevOps and security departments often butt heads with each other. Agility and security are often at odds with each other— if a new