The Latest Funding News and What it Means for Cyber Security in 2023

The White House has recently announced a $1 billion cyber security grant program that is designed to help state and local governments improve their cyber defenses, especially about protecting critical infrastructure. The recent executive order stems from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was signed almost a year ago. That bill allocated $1 billion for protecting critical infrastructure

Researchers Warn of New Phishing-as-a-Service Being Used by Cyber Criminals

Cyber criminals are using a previously undocumented phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkit called Caffeine to effectively scale up their attacks and distribute nefarious payloads. "This platform has an intuitive interface and comes at a relatively low cost while providing a multitude of features and tools to its criminal clients to orchestrate and automate core elements of their phishing

Hackers Exploiting Unpatched RCE Flaw in Zimbra Collaboration Suite

A severe remote code execution vulnerability in Zimbra's enterprise collaboration software and email platform is being actively exploited, with no patch currently available to remediate the issue. The shortcoming, assigned CVE-2022-41352, carries a critical-severity rating of CVSS 9.8, providing a pathway for attackers to upload arbitrary files and carry out malicious actions on affected

The essentials of GRC and cybersecurity — How they empower each other

Understanding the connection between GRC and cybersecurity When talking about cybersecurity, Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) is often considered the least exciting part of business protection. However, its importance can't be ignored, and this is why.  While cybersecurity focuses on the technical side of protecting systems, networks, devices, and data, GRC is the tool that will help the

Hackers Can Use 'App Mode' in Chromium Browsers' for Stealth Phishing Attacks

In what's a new phishing technique, it has been demonstrated that the Application Mode feature in Chromium-based web browsers can be abused to create "realistic desktop phishing applications." Application Mode is designed to offer native-like experiences in a manner that causes the website to be launched in a separate browser window, while also displaying the website's favicon and hiding the

Eternity Group Hackers Offering New LilithBot Malware-as-a-Service to Cybercriminals

The threat actor behind the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) known as Eternity Group has been linked to new piece of malware called LilithBot. "It has advanced capabilities to be used as a miner, stealer, and a clipper along with its persistence mechanisms," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Shatak Jain and Aditya Sharma said in a Wednesday report. "The group has been continuously enhancing the malware,

The Ultimate SaaS Security Posture Management Checklist, 2023 Edition

It's been a year since the release of The Ultimate SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) Checklist. If SSPM is on your radar, here's the 2023 checklist edition, which covers the critical features and capabilities when evaluating a solution. The ease with which SaaS apps can be deployed and adopted today is remarkable, but it has become a double-edged sword. On the one hand, apps are quickly

Experts Warn of New RatMilad Android Spyware Targeting Enterprise Devices

A novel Android malware called RatMilad has been observed targeting a Middle Eastern enterprise mobile device by concealing itself as a VPN and phone number spoofing app. The mobile trojan functions as advanced spyware with capabilities that receives and executes commands to collect and exfiltrate a wide variety of data from the infected mobile endpoint, Zimperium said in a report shared with

Want More Secure Software? Start Recognizing Security-Skilled Developers

Professional developers want to do the right thing, but in terms of security, they are rarely set up for success. Organizations must support their upskilling with precision training and incentives if they want secure software from the ground up. The cyber threat landscape grows more complex by the day, with our data widely considered highly desirable “digital gold”. Attackers are constantly

Popular YouTube Channel Caught Distributing Malicious Tor Browser Installer

A popular Chinese-language YouTube channel has emerged as a means to distribute a trojanized version of a Windows installer for the Tor Browser. Kaspersky dubbed the campaign OnionPoison, with all of the victims located in China. The scale of the attack remains unclear, but the Russian cybersecurity company said it detected victims appearing in its telemetry in March 2022. The malicious version

Back to Basics: Cybersecurity's Weakest Link

A big promise with a big appeal. You hear that a lot in the world of cybersecurity, where you're often promised a fast, simple fix that will take care of all your cybersecurity needs, solving your security challenges in one go.  It could be an AI-based tool, a new superior management tool, or something else – and it would probably be quite effective at what it promises to do. But is it a silver

BEC Scammer Gets 25-Year Jail Sentence for Stealing Over $9.5 Million

A 46-year-old man in the U.S. has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of laundering over $9.5 million accrued by carrying out cyber-enabled financial fraud. Elvis Eghosa Ogiekpolor of Norcross, Georgia, operated a money laundering network that opened at least 50 business bank accounts for illicitly receiving funds from unsuspecting individuals and businesses after

ProxyNotShell – the New Proxy Hell?

Nicknamed ProxyNotShell, a new exploit used in the wild takes advantage of the recently published Microsoft Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability CVE-2022-41040 and a second vulnerability, CVE-2022-41082 that allows Remote Code Execution (RCE) when PowerShell is available to unidentified attackers. Based on ProxyShell, this new zero-day abuse risk leverage a chained attack similar to

Researchers Link Cheerscrypt Linux-Based Ransomware to Chinese Hackers

The recently discovered Linux-Based ransomware strain known as Cheerscrypt has been outed as a handiwork of a Chinese cyber espionage group known for operating short-lived ransomware schemes. Cybersecurity firm Sygnia attributed the attacks to a threat actor it tracks under the name Emperor Dragonfly, which is also known as Bronze Starlight (Secureworks) and DEV-0401 (Microsoft). "Emperor

Hackers Exploiting Dell Driver Vulnerability to Deploy Rootkit on Targeted Computers

The North Korea-backed Lazarus Group has been observed deploying a Windows rootkit by taking advantage of an exploit in a Dell firmware driver, highlighting new tactics adopted by the state-sponsored adversary. The Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attack, which took place in the autumn of 2021, is another variant of the threat actor's espionage-oriented activity called Operation In(ter)

Ex-NSA Employee Arrested for Trying to Sell U.S. Secrets to a Foreign Government

A former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) employee has been arrested on charges of attempting to sell classified information to a foreign spy, who was actually an undercover agent working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 30, was employed at the NSA for less than a month from June 6, 2022, to July 1, 2022, serving as an Information Systems Security Designer

Pay What You Want for This Collection of White Hat Hacking Courses

Whether you relish a mental challenge or fancy a six-figure paycheck, there are many good reasons to get into white hat hacking. That said, picking up the necessary knowledge to build a new career can seem like a daunting task. There is a lot to learn, after all. To help you get started, The Hacker News Deals is currently running an eye-catching offer: pay what you want for one video course, and

CISA Warns of Hackers Exploiting Critical Atlassian Bitbucket Server Vulnerability

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added a recently disclosed critical flaw impacting Atlassian's Bitbucket Server and Data Center to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2022-36804, the issue relates to a command injection vulnerability that could allow malicious actors to gain arbitrary

Why Organisations Need Both EDR and NDR for Complete Network Protection

Endpoint devices like desktops, laptops, and mobile phones enable users to connect to enterprise networks and use their resources for their day-to-day work. However, they also expand the attack surface and make the organisation vulnerable to malicious cyberattacks and data breaches. Why Modern Organisations Need EDR According to the 2020 global risk report by Ponemon Institute, smartphones,

WARNING: New Unpatched Microsoft Exchange Zero-Day Under Active Exploitation

Security researchers are warning of previously undisclosed flaws in fully patched Microsoft Exchange servers being exploited by malicious actors in real-world attacks to achieve remote code execution on affected systems. The advisory comes from Vietnamese cybersecurity company GTSC, which discovered the shortcomings as part of its security monitoring and incident response efforts in August 2022.

Researchers Uncover Covert Attack Campaign Targeting Military Contractors

A new covert attack campaign singled out multiple military and weapons contractor companies with spear-phishing emails to trigger a multi-stage infection process designed to deploy an unknown payload on compromised machines. The highly-targeted intrusions, dubbed STEEP#MAVERICK by Securonix, also targeted a strategic supplier to the F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft. "The attack was carried out

Swachh City Platform Suffers Data Breach Leaking 16 Million User Records

A threat actor by the name of LeakBase has shared a database containing personal information allegedly affecting 16 million users of Swachh City, an Indian complaint redressal platform. Leaked details include usernames, email addresses, password hashes, mobile numbers, one-time passwords, last logged-in times, and IP addresses, among others, according to a report shared by security firm CloudSEK

Improve your security posture with Wazuh, a free and open source XDR

Organizations struggle to find ways to keep a good security posture. This is because it is difficult to create secure system policies and find the right tools that help achieve a good posture. In many cases, organizations work with tools that do not integrate with each other and are expensive to purchase and maintain. Security posture management is a term used to describe the process of

Why Continuous Security Testing is a Must for Organizations Today

The global cybersecurity market is flourishing. Experts at Gartner predict that the end-user spending for the information security and risk management market will grow from $172.5 billion in 2022 to $267.3 billion in 2026.  One big area of spending includes the art of putting cybersecurity defenses under pressure, commonly known as security testing. MarketsandMarkets forecasts the global

Chinese Espionage Hackers Target Tibetans Using New LOWZERO Backdoor

A China-aligned advanced persistent threat actor known as TA413 weaponized recently disclosed flaws in Sophos Firewall and Microsoft Office to deploy a never-before-seen backdoor called LOWZERO as part of an espionage campaign aimed at Tibetan entities. Targets primarily consisted of organizations associated with the Tibetan community, including enterprises associated with the Tibetan

Researchers Uncover New Metador APT Targeting Telcos, ISPs, and Universities

A previously undocumented threat actor of unknown origin has been linked to attacks targeting telecom, internet service providers, and universities across multiple countries in the Middle East and Africa. "The operators are highly aware of operations security, managing carefully segmented infrastructure per victim, and quickly deploying intricate countermeasures in the presence of security

Firing Your Entire Cybersecurity Team? Are You Sure?

What on earth were they thinking? That's what we – and other security experts – were wondering when content giant Patreon recently dismissed its entire internal cybersecurity team in exchange for outsourced services. Of course, we don't know the true motivations for this move. But, as outsiders looking in, we can guess the cybersecurity implications of the decision would be inescapable for any

Hackers Using Malicious OAuth Apps to Take Over Email Servers

Microsoft on Thursday warned of a consumer-facing attack that made use of rogue OAuth applications deployed on compromised cloud tenants to ultimately seize control of Exchange servers and spread spam. "The threat actor launched credential stuffing attacks against high-risk accounts that didn't have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled and leveraged the unsecured administrator accounts to

Researchers Disclose Critical Vulnerability in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Researchers have disclosed a new severe Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vulnerability that could be exploited by users to access the virtual disks of other Oracle customers. "Each virtual disk in Oracle's cloud has a unique identifier called OCID," Shir Tamari, head of research at Wiz, said in a series of tweets. "This identifier is not considered secret, and organizations do not treat it as

15-Year-Old Unpatched Python Vulnerability Potentially Affects Over 350,000 Projects

As many as 350,000 open source projects are believed to be potentially vulnerable to exploitation as a result of a security flaw in a Python module that has remained unpatched for 15 years. The open source repositories span a number of industry verticals, such as software development, artificial intelligence/machine learning, web development, media, security, and IT management. The shortcoming,

Over 39,000 Unauthenticated Redis Instances Found Exposed on the Internet

An unknown attacker targeted tens of thousands of unauthenticated Redis servers exposed on the internet in an attempt to install a cryptocurrency miner. It's not immediately known if all of these hosts were successfully compromised. Nonetheless, it was made possible by means of a "lesser-known technique" designed to trick the servers into writing data to arbitrary files – a case of unauthorized

U.S. Adds 2 More Chinese Telecom Firms to National Security Threat List

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has added Pacific Network Corp, along with its subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC, and China Unicom (Americas) Operations Limited, to the list of communications equipment and services that have been deemed a threat to national security. The agency said the companies are subject to the Chinese government's exploitation, influence, and control, and could

Product Review: Stellar Cyber Open XDR Platform

Almost every vendor, from email gateway companies to developers of threat intelligence platforms, is positioning themselves as an XDR player. But unfortunately, the noise around XDR makes it harder for buyers to find solutions that might be right for them or, more importantly, avoid ones that don't meet their needs.  Stellar Cyber delivers an Open XDR solution that allows organizations to use

Record DDoS Attack with 25.3 Billion Requests Abused HTTP/2 Multiplexing

Cybersecurity company Imperva has disclosed that it mitigated a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack with a total of over 25.3 billion requests on June 27, 2022. The "strong attack," which targeted an unnamed Chinese telecommunications company, is said to have lasted for four hours and peaked at 3.9 million requests per second (RPS). "Attackers used HTTP/2 multiplexing, or combining

Critical Remote Hack Flaws Found in Dataprobe's Power Distribution Units

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday released an industrial control systems (ICS) advisory warning of seven security flaws in Dataprobe's iBoot-PDU power distribution unit product, mostly used in industrial environments and data centers. "Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution on the Dataprobe

U.S. Charges 3 Iranian Hackers and Sanctions Several Others Over Ransomware Attacks

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday announced sweeping sanctions against ten individuals and two entities backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their involvement in ransomware attacks at least since October 2020. The agency said the cyber activity mounted by the individuals is partially attributable to intrusion sets tracked

Lorenz Ransomware Exploit Mitel VoIP Systems to Breach Business Networks

The operators behind the Lornenz ransomware operation have been observed exploiting a now-patched critical security flaw in Mitel MiVoice Connect to obtain a foothold into target environments for follow-on malicious activities. "Initial malicious activity originated from a Mitel appliance sitting on the network perimeter," researchers from cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf said in a report

SparklingGoblin APT Hackers Using New Linux Variant of SideWalk Backdoor

A Linux variant of a backdoor known as SideWalk was used to target a Hong Kong university in February 2021, underscoring the cross-platform abilities of the implant.  Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, which detected the malware in the university's network, attributed the backdoor to a nation-state actor dubbed SparklingGoblin. The unnamed university is said to have been already targeted by the

How GRC protects the value of organizations — A simple guide to data quality and integrity

Contemporary organizations understand the importance of data and its impact on improving interactions with customers, offering quality products or services, and building loyalty. Data is fundamental to business success. It allows companies to make the right decisions at the right time and deliver the high-quality, personalized products and services that customers expect. There is a challenge,

Asian Governments and Organizations Targeted in Latest Cyber Espionage Attacks

Government and state-owned organizations in a number of Asian countries have been targeted by a distinct group of espionage hackers as part of an intelligence gathering mission that has been underway since early 2021. "A notable feature of these attacks is that the attackers leveraged a wide range of legitimate software packages in order to load their malware payloads using a technique known as 

China Accuses NSA's TAO Unit of Hacking its Military Research University

China has accused the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) of conducting a string of cyberattacks aimed at aeronautical and military research-oriented Northwestern Polytechnical University in the city of Xi'an in June 2022. The National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre (NCVERC) disclosed its findings last week, and accused the Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), a cyber-warfare

Hacktivist Group GhostSec Compromises 55 Berghof PLCs Across Israel

A hacktivist collective called GhostSec has claimed credit for compromising as many as 55 Berghof programmable logic controllers (PLCs) used by Israeli organizations as part of a "Free Palestine" campaign. Industrial cybersecurity firm OTORIO, which dug deeper into the incident, said the breach was made possible owing to the fact that the PLCs were accessible through the Internet and were

Why Vulnerability Scanning is Critical for SOC 2

SOC 2 may be a voluntary standard, but for today's security-conscious business, it's a minimal requirement when considering a SaaS provider. Compliance can be a long and complicated process, but a scanner like Intruder makes it easy to tick the vulnerability management box. Security is critical for all organisations, including those that outsource key business operations to third parties like

High-Severity Firmware Security Flaws Left Unpatched in HP Enterprise Devices

A number of firmware security flaws uncovered in HP's business-oriented high-end notebooks continue to be left unpatched in some devices even months after public disclosure. Binarly, which first revealed details of the issues at the Black Hat USA conference in mid-August 2022, said the vulnerabilities "can't be detected by firmware integrity monitoring systems due to limitations of the Trusted

Iranian APT42 Launched Over 30 Espionage Attacks Against Activists and Dissidents

A state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actor newly christened APT42 (formerly UNC788) has been attributed to over 30 confirmed espionage attacks against individuals and organizations of strategic interest to the Iranian government at least since 2015. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant said the group operates as the intelligence gathering arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (

U.S. Imposes New Sanctions on Iran Over Cyberattack on Albania

The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday announced sanctions against Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and its Minister of Intelligence, Esmaeil Khatib, for engaging in cyber-enabled activities against the nation and its allies. "Since at least 2007, the MOIS and its cyber actor proxies have conducted malicious cyber operations targeting a range of government and private-sector

6 Top API Security Risks! Favored Targets for Attackers If Left Unmanaged

Security threats are always a concern when it comes to APIs. API security can be compared to driving a car. You must be cautious and review everything closely before releasing it into the world. By failing to do so, you're putting yourself and others at risk. API attacks are more dangerous than other breaches. Facebook had a 50M user account affected by an API breach, and an API data breach on

New Vulnerabilities Reported in Baxter's Internet-Connected Infusion Pumps

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Baxter's internet-connected infusion pumps used by healthcare professionals in clinical environments to dispense medication to patients. "Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could result in access to sensitive data and alteration of system configuration," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in

Chinese Hackers Target Government Officials in Europe, South America, and Middle East

A Chinese hacking group has been attributed to a new campaign aimed at infecting government officials in Europe, the Middle East, and South America with a modular malware known as PlugX. Cybersecurity firm Secureworks said it identified the intrusions in June and July 2022, once again demonstrating the adversary's continued focus on espionage against governments around the world. "PlugX is

Shopify Fails to Prevent Known Breached Passwords

A recent report revealed that ecommerce provider, Shopify uses particularly weak password policies on the customer-facing portion of its Website. According to the report, Shopify's requires its customers to use a password that is at least five characters in length and that does not begin or end with a space.  According to the report, Specops researchers analyzed a list of a billion passwords

4 Key Takeaways from "XDR is the Perfect Solution for SMEs" webinar

Cyberattacks on large organizations dominate news headlines. So, you may be surprised to learn that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are actually more frequent targets of cyberattacks. Many SMEs understand this risk firsthand.  In a recent survey, 58% of CISOs of SMEs said that their risk of attack was higher compared to enterprises. Yet, they don't have the same resources as enterprises –

Worok Hackers Target High-Profile Asian Companies and Governments

High-profile companies and local governments located primarily in Asia are the subjects of targeted attacks by a previously undocumented espionage group dubbed Worok that has been active since late 2020. "Worok's toolset includes a C++ loader CLRLoad, a PowerShell backdoor PowHeartBeat, and a C# loader PNGLoad that uses steganography to extract hidden malicious payloads from PNG files," ESET

TA505 Hackers Using TeslaGun Panel to Manage ServHelper Backdoor Attacks

Cybersecurity researchers have offered fresh insight into a previously undocumented software control panel used by a financially motivated threat group known as TA505. "The group frequently changes its malware attack strategies in response to global cybercrime trends," Swiss cybersecurity firm PRODAFT said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "It opportunistically adopts new technologies in

Integrating Live Patching in SecDevOps Workflows

SecDevOps is, just like DevOps, a transformational change that organizations undergo at some point during their lifetime. Just like many other big changes, SecDevOps is commonly adopted after a reality check of some kind: a big damaging cybersecurity incident, for example. A major security breach or, say, consistent problems in achieving development goals signals to organizations that the

What Is Your Security Team Profile? Prevention, Detection, or Risk Management

Not all security teams are born equal. Each organization has a different objective. In cybersecurity, adopting a proactive approach is not just a buzzword. It actually is what makes the difference between staying behind attackers and getting ahead of them. And the solutions to do that do exist! Most attacks succeed by taking advantage of common failures in their target's systems. Whether new or

Fake Antivirus and Cleaner Apps Caught Installing SharkBot Android Banking Trojan

The notorious Android banking trojan known as SharkBot has once again made an appearance on the Google Play Store by masquerading as antivirus and cleaner apps. "This new dropper doesn't rely on Accessibility permissions to automatically perform the installation of the dropper Sharkbot malware," NCC Group's Fox-IT said in a report. "Instead, this new version asks the victim to install the

Google Releases Urgent Chrome Update to Patch New Zero-Day Vulnerability

Google on Friday shipped emergency fixes to address a security vulnerability in the Chrome web browser that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. The issue, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-3075, concerns a case of insufficient data validation in Mojo, which refers to a collection of runtime libraries that provide a platform-agnostic mechanism for inter-process communication (IPC). An

JuiceLedger Hackers Behind the Recent Phishing Attacks Against PyPI Users

More details have emerged about the operators behind the first-known phishing campaign specifically aimed at the Python Package Index (PyPI), the official third-party software repository for the programming language. Connecting it to a threat actor tracked as JuiceLedger, cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, along with Checkmarx, described the group as a relatively new entity that surfaced in early

The Ultimate Security Blind Spot You Don't Know You Have

How much time do developers spend actually writing code? According to recent studies, developers spend more time maintaining, testing and securing existing code than they do writing or improving code. Security vulnerabilities have a bad habit of popping up during the software development process, only to surface after an application has been deployed. The disappointing part is that many of these

Google Chrome Bug Lets Sites Silently Overwrite System Clipboard Content

A "major" security issue in the Google Chrome web browser, as well as Chromium-based alternatives, could allow malicious web pages to automatically overwrite clipboard content without requiring any user consent or interaction by simply visiting them. The clipboard poisoning attack is said to have been accidentally introduced in Chrome version 104, according to developer Jeff Johnson. While the