News

Jan 14, 2023Ravie LakshmananDevOps / Data Security DevOps platform CircleCI on Friday disclosed that unidentified threat actors compromised an employee’s laptop and leveraged malware to steal their two-factor authentication-backed credentials to breach the company’s systems and data last month. The CI/CD service CircleCI said the “sophisticated attack” took place on December 16, 2022, and that

Jan 14, 2023Ravie LakshmananPrivacy / Online Safety Popular short-form video hosting service TikTok has been fined €5 million (about $5.4 million) by the French data protection watchdog for breaking cookie consent rules, making it the latest platform to face similar penalties after Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft since 2020. “Users of ‘tiktok[.]com’ could not refuse

Jan 12, 2023Ravie LakshmananActive Directory / Malware A recent IcedID malware attack enabled the threat actor to compromise the Active Directory domain of an unnamed target less than 24 hours after gaining initial access, while also borrowing techniques from other groups like Conti to meet its goals. “Throughout the attack, the attacker followed a routine

Jan 12, 2023Ravie LakshmananServer Security / Linux Malicious actors are actively attempting to exploit a recently patched critical vulnerability in Control Web Panel (CWP) that enables elevated privileges and unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on susceptible servers. Tracked as CVE-2022-44877 (CVSS score: 9.8), the bug impacts all versions of the software before 0.9.8.1147 and was

The first Patch Tuesday fixes shipped by Microsoft for 2023 have addressed a total of 98 security flaws, including one bug that the company said is being actively exploited in the wild. 11 of the 98 issues are rated Critical and 87 are rated Important in severity, with one of the vulnerabilities also listed as

Jan 09, 2023Ravie LakshmananKubernetes / Cryptojacking The threat actors behind the Kinsing cryptojacking operation have been spotted exploiting misconfigured and exposed PostgreSQL servers to obtain initial access to Kubernetes environments. A second initial access vector technique entails the use of vulnerable images, Sunders Bruskin, security researcher at Microsoft Defender for Cloud, said in a report

Jan 09, 2023Ravie LakshmananSupply Chain / CodeSec A new attack vector targeting the Visual Studio Code extensions marketplace could be leveraged to upload rogue extensions masquerading as their legitimate counterparts with the goal of mounting supply chain attacks. The technique “could act as an entry point for an attack on many organizations,” Aqua security researcher

Jan 08, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyberespionage / Threat Analysis The Russian cyberespionage group known as Turla has been observed piggybacking on attack infrastructure used by a decade-old malware to deliver its own reconnaissance and backdoor tools to targets in Ukraine. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the operation under the uncategorized cluster moniker UNC4210, said the hijacked servers

Jan 06, 2023Ravie LakshmananCryptocurrency / GitHub A South Africa-based threat actor known as Automated Libra has been observed employing CAPTCHA bypass techniques to create GitHub accounts in a programmatic fashion as part of a freejacking campaign dubbed PURPLEURCHIN. The group “primarily targets cloud platforms offering limited-time trials of cloud resources in order to perform their

Jan 05, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Malware A financially motivated threat actor tracked as Blind Eagle has resurfaced with a refined toolset and an elaborate infection chain as part of its attacks targeting organizations in Colombia and Ecuador. Check Point’s latest research offers new insights into the Spanish-speaking group’s tactics and techniques, including the use

Jan 05, 2023Ravie LakshmananPrivacy / Data Protection The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta Platforms €390 million (roughly $414 million) over its handling of user data for serving personalized ads in what could be a major blow to its ad-fueled business model. To that end, the privacy regulator has ordered Meta Ireland to

Jan 04, 2023Ravie LakshmananVPN / Server Security Synology has released security updates to address a critical flaw impacting VPN Plus Server that could be exploited to take over affected systems. Tracked as CVE-2022-43931, the vulnerability carries a maximum severity rating of 10 on the CVSS scale and has been described as an out-of-bounds write bug

Jan 02, 2023Ravie LakshmananOnline Scam / Cybersecurity Chinese international students in the U.K. have been targeted by persistent Chinese-speaking scammers for over a year as part of an activity dubbed RedZei (aka RedThief). “The RedZei fraudsters have chosen their targets carefully, researched them and realized it was a rich victim group that is ripe for

Jan 02, 2023Ravie LakshmananPrivacy / Location Tracking Google has agreed to pay a total of $29.5 million to settle two different lawsuits brought by Indiana and Washington, D.C., over its “deceptive” location tracking practices. The search and advertising giant is required to pay $9.5 million to D.C. and $20 million to Indiana after the states

Dec 29, 2022Ravie LakshmananServer Security / Citrix Thousands of Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway endpoints remain vulnerable to two critical security flaws disclosed by the company over the last few months. The issues in question are CVE-2022-27510 and CVE-2022-27518 (CVSS scores: 9.8), which were addressed by the virtualization services provider on November 8

Dec 30, 2022Ravie LakshmananBug Bounty / Privacy A security researcher was awarded a bug bounty of $107,500 for identifying security issues in Google Home smart speakers that could be exploited to install backdoors and turn them into wiretapping devices. The flaws “allowed an attacker within wireless proximity to install a ‘backdoor’ account on the device,

Dec 30, 2022Ravie LakshmananPatch Management The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added two-years-old security flaws impacting TIBCO Software’s JasperReports product to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The flaws, tracked as CVE-2018-5430 (CVSS score: 7.7) and CVE-2018-18809 (CVSS score: 9.9), were addressed by TIBCO in April 2018

Dec 28, 2022Ravie LakshmananBlockchain / Android Malware Decentralized multi-chain crypto wallet BitKeep on Wednesday confirmed a cyberattack that allowed threat actors to distribute fraudulent versions of its Android app with the goal of stealing users’ digital currencies. “With maliciously implanted code, the altered APK led to the leak of user’s private keys and enabled the

Dec 27, 2022Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Windows Security BlueNoroff, a subcluster of the notorious Lazarus Group, has been observed adopting new techniques into its playbook that enable it to bypass Windows Mark of the Web (MotW) protections. This includes the use of optical disk image (.ISO extension) and virtual hard disk (.VHD extension) file formats

Dec 26, 2022Ravie LakshmananReverse Engineering Cybersecurity researchers have exposed a wide variety of techniques adopted by an advanced malware downloader called GuLoader to evade security software. “New shellcode anti-analysis technique attempts to thwart researchers and hostile environments by scanning entire process memory for any virtual machine (VM)-related strings,” CrowdStrike researchers Sarang Sonawane and Donato Onofri

Dec 23, 2022Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Pakistani Hackers A new targeted phishing campaign has zoomed in on a two-factor authentication solution called Kavach that’s used by Indian government officials. Cybersecurity firm Securonix dubbed the activity STEPPY#KAVACH, attributing it to a threat actor known as SideCopy based on tactical overlaps with prior attacks. “.LNK files are

Dec 24, 2022Ravie LakshmananSoftware Security / Supply Chain Threat actors have published yet another round of malicious packages to Python Package Index (PyPI) with the goal of delivering information-stealing malware on compromised developer machines. Interestingly, while the malware goes by a variety of names like ANGEL Stealer, Celestial Stealer, Fade Stealer, Leaf $tealer, PURE Stealer,

Dec 23, 2022Ravie LakshmananEncryption / Privacy / Browser The developers behind the Brave open-source web browser have revealed a new privacy-preserving data querying and retrieval system called FrodoPIR. The idea, the company said, is to use the technology to build out a wide range of use cases such as safe browsing, scanning passwords against breached

Dec 23, 2022Ravie LakshmananPassword Management / Data Breach The August 2022 security breach of LastPass may have been more severe than previously disclosed by the company. The popular password management service on Thursday revealed that malicious actors obtained a trove of personal information belonging to its customers that include their encrypted password vaults using data

Dec 22, 2022Ravie LakshmananSoftware Security / Data Breach Okta, a company that provides identity and access management services, disclosed on Wednesday that some of its source code repositories were accessed in an unauthorized manner earlier this month. “There is no impact to any customers, including any HIPAA, FedRAMP or DoD customers,” the company said in

Dec 20, 2022Ravie LakshmananBanking Malware / Mobile Security The threat actors behind the Windows banking malware known as Casbaneiro has been attributed as behind a novel Android trojan called BrasDex that has been observed targeting Brazilian users as part of an ongoing multi-platform campaign. BrasDex features a “complex keylogging system designed to abuse Accessibility Services

Dec 19, 2022Ravie LakshmananSoftware Security / Supply Chain Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that impersonates a software development kit (SDK) for SentinelOne, a major cybersecurity company, as part of a campaign dubbed SentinelSneak. The package, named SentinelOne and now taken down, is said to have

Dec 17, 2022Ravie LakshmananServer Security / Network Security Samba has released software updates to remediate multiple vulnerabilities that, if successfully exploited, could allow an attacker to take control of affected systems. The high-severity flaws, tracked as CVE-2022-38023, CVE-2022-37966, CVE-2022-37967, and CVE-2022-45141, have been patched in versions 4.17.4, 4.16.8 and 4.15.13 released on December 15, 2022.

Dec 18, 2022Ravie Lakshmanan Google on Friday announced that its client-side encryption for Gmail is in beta to its Workspace and education customers to secure emails sent using the web version of the platform. This development comes at a time when concerns about online privacy and data security are at an all-time high, and it

Government entities in Ukraine have been breached as part of a new campaign that leveraged trojanized versions of Windows 10 installer files to conduct post-exploitation activities. Mandiant, which discovered the supply chain attack around mid-July 2022, said the malicious ISO files were distributed via Ukrainian- and Russian-language Torrent websites. It’s tracking the threat cluster as