News

Sep 14, 2023THNSpyware / Malware The iPhone belonging to Galina Timchenko, a prominent Russian journalist and critic of the government, was compromised with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, a new collaborative investigation from Access Now and the Citizen Lab has revealed. The infiltration is said to have happened on or around February 10, 2023. Timchenko is

Sep 13, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Zero Day Microsoft has released software fixes to remediate 59 bugs spanning its product portfolio, including two zero-day flaws that have been actively exploited by malicious cyber actors. Of the 59 vulnerabilities, five are rated Critical, 55 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. The update is

Sep 12, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Data Security A new information stealer malware called MetaStealer has set its sights on Apple macOS, making the latest in a growing list of stealer families focused on the operating system after Stealer, Pureland, Atomic Stealer, and Realst. “Threat actors are proactively targeting macOS businesses by posing as fake clients

Sep 11, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Malware A new cyber attack campaign is leveraging the PowerShell script associated with a legitimate red teaming tool to plunder NTLMv2 hashes from compromised Windows systems primarily located in Australia, Poland, and Belgium. The activity has been codenamed Steal-It by Zscaler ThreatLabz. “In this campaign, the threat actors steal and

Sep 09, 2023THNMalware / Hacking A legitimate Windows tool used for creating software packages called Advanced Installer is being abused by threat actors to drop cryptocurrency-mining malware on infected machines since at least November 2021. “The attacker uses Advanced Installer to package other legitimate software installers, such as Adobe Illustrator, Autodesk 3ds Max, and SketchUp

Sep 09, 2023THNMobile Security / Spyware Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that’s designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. According to Kaspersky security researcher Igor Golovin, the apps come with nefarious features to capture and exfiltrate names, user IDs, contacts, phone numbers, and

Sep 08, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Exploit The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday warned that multiple nation-state actors are exploiting security flaws in Fortinet FortiOS SSL-VPN and Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus to gain unauthorized access and establish persistence on compromised systems. “Nation-state advanced persistent threat (APT) actors exploited CVE-2022-47966 to gain unauthorized

Sep 07, 2023THNCyber Attack / Email Hacking Microsoft on Wednesday revealed that a China-based threat actor known as Storm-0558 acquired the inactive consumer signing key to forging tokens to access Outlook by compromising an engineer’s corporate account. This enabled the adversary to access a debugging environment that contained a crash dump of the consumer signing

Sep 06, 2023THNCyber Attack / Critical Infrastructure The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) on Tuesday said it thwarted a cyber attack against an unnamed critical energy infrastructure facility in the country. The intrusion, per the agency, started with a phishing email containing a link to a malicious ZIP archive that activates the infection

Sep 05, 2023THNSocial Media / Disinformation Meta has disclosed that it disrupted two of the largest known covert influence operations in the world from China and Russia, blocking thousands of accounts and pages across its platform. “It targeted more than 50 apps, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium, Blogspot, LiveJournal,

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a new antivirus evasion technique that involves embedding a malicious Microsoft Word file into a PDF file. The sneaky method, dubbed MalDoc in PDF by JPCERT/CC, is said to have been employed in an in-the-wild attack in July 2023. “A file created with MalDoc in PDF can be opened

Sep 03, 2023THNNetwork Security / Vulnerability Proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code has been made available for a recently disclosed and patched critical flaw impacting VMware Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight). The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-34039, is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 for severity and has been described as a case

Sep 02, 2023THNCyber Attack / Social Engineering Identity services provider Okta on Friday warned of social engineering attacks orchestrated by threat actors to obtain elevated administrator permissions. “In recent weeks, multiple US-based Okta customers have reported a consistent pattern of social engineering attacks against IT service desk personnel, in which the caller’s strategy was to

The Classiscam scam-as-a-service program has reaped the criminal actors $64.5 million in illicit earnings since its emergence in 2019. “Classiscam campaigns initially started out on classified sites, on which scammers placed fake advertisements and used social engineering techniques to convince users to pay for goods by transferring money to bank cards,” Group-IB said in a

Aug 30, 2023THNMalware / Endpoint Security New findings show that malicious actors could leverage a sneaky malware detection evasion technique and bypass endpoint security solutions by manipulating the Windows Container Isolation Framework. The findings were presented by Deep Instinct security researcher Daniel Avinoam at the DEF CON security conference held earlier this month. Microsoft’s container

Aug 30, 2023THNVulnerability / Network Security VMware has released software updates to correct two security vulnerabilities in Aria Operations for Networks that could be potentially exploited to bypass authentication and gain remote code execution. The most severe of the flaws is CVE-2023-34039 (CVSS score: 9.8), which relates to a case of authentication bypass arising as

Aug 29, 2023THNOnline Security / Cyber Threat Microsoft is warning of an increase in adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing techniques, which are being propagated as part of the phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) cybercrime model. In addition to an uptick in AiTM-capable PhaaS platforms, the tech giant noted that existing phishing services like PerSwaysion are incorporating AiTM capabilities. “This development

Aug 28, 2023THNInternet of Things / Malware An updated version of a botnet malware called KmsdBot is now targeting Internet of Things (IoT) devices, simultaneously branching out its capabilities and the attack surface. “The binary now includes support for Telnet scanning and support for more CPU architectures,” Akamai security researcher Larry W. Cashdollar said in

The leak of the LockBit 3.0 ransomware builder last year has led to threat actors abusing the tool to spawn new variants. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it detected a ransomware intrusion that deployed a version of LockBit but with a markedly different ransom demand procedure. “The attacker behind this incident decided to use a

Aug 26, 2023THNData Breach / SIM Swapping Risk and financial advisory solutions provider Kroll on Friday disclosed that one of its employees fell victim to a “highly sophisticated” SIM swapping attack. The incident, which took place on August 19, 2023, targeted the employee’s T-Mobile account, the company said. “Specifically, T-Mobile, without any authority from or

Aug 24, 2023THNCyber Attack / Hacking The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Lazarus Group has been observed exploiting a now-patched critical security flaw impacting Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus to distribute a remote access trojan called such as QuiteRAT. Targets include internet backbone infrastructure and healthcare entities in Europe and the U.S., cybersecurity company Cisco

Aug 23, 2023THNCryptocurrency / Cyber Attack The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Tuesday warned that threat actors affiliated with North Korea may attempt to cash out stolen cryptocurrency worth more than $40 million. The law enforcement agency attributed the blockchain activity to an adversary the U.S. government tracks as TraderTraitor, which is also

Aug 23, 2023THNSoftware Security / Malware More than a dozen malicious packages have been discovered on the npm package repository since the start of August 2023 with capabilities to deploy an open-source information stealer called Luna Token Grabber on systems belonging to Roblox developers. The ongoing campaign, first detected on August 1 by ReversingLabs, employs

Aug 22, 2023THNMalware / Endpoint Security A new variant of an Apple macOS malware called XLoader has surfaced in the wild, masquerading its malicious features under the guise of an office productivity app called “OfficeNote.” “The new version of XLoader is bundled inside a standard Apple disk image with the name OfficeNote.dmg,” SentinelOne security researchers

Aug 21, 2023THNCyber Threat / Malware The threat actors behind the HiatusRAT malware have returned from their hiatus with a new wave of reconnaissance and targeting activity aimed at Taiwan-based organizations and a U.S. military procurement system. Besides recompiling malware samples for different architectures, the artifacts are said to have been hosted on new virtual

Aug 19, 2023THNMalvertising / Website Security Cybersecurity researchers have detailed an updated version of an advanced fingerprinting and redirection toolkit called WoofLocker that’s engineered to conduct tech support scams. The sophisticated traffic redirection scheme was first documented by Malwarebytes in January 2020, leveraging JavaScript embedded in compromised websites to perform anti-bot and web traffic filtering

Aug 18, 2023THNCyber 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

Aug 17, 2023THNEndpoint 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

Aug 17, 2023THNVulnerability / 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

Aug 16, 2023THNVulnerability / 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