Researchers Detail Critical RCE Flaw Reported in Popular vm2 JavaScript Sandbox

A now-patched security flaw in the vm2 JavaScript sandbox module could be abused by a remote adversary to break out of security barriers and perform arbitrary operations on the underlying machine. "A threat actor can bypass the sandbox protections to gain remote code execution rights on the host running the sandbox," GitHub said in an advisory published on September 28, 2022. <!--adsense--> The

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

Fortinet Warns of Active Exploitation of Newly Discovered Critical Auth Bypass Bug

Fortinet on Monday revealed that the newly patched critical security vulnerability impacting its firewall and proxy products is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2022-40684 (CVSS score: 9.6), the flaw relates to an authentication bypass in FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager that could allow a remote attacker to perform unauthorized operations on the administrative

Fortinet Warns of New Auth Bypass Flaw Affecting FortiGate and FortiProxy

Fortinet has privately warned its customers of a security flaw affecting FortiGate firewalls and FortiProxy web proxies that could potentially allow an attacker to perform unauthorized actions on susceptible devices. Tracked as CVE-2022-40684 (CVSS score: 9.6), the critical flaw relates to an authentication bypass vulnerability that may permit an unauthenticated adversary to carry out arbitrary

Facebook Detects 400 Android and iOS Apps Stealing Users Log-in Credentials

Meta Platforms on Friday disclosed that it had identified over 400 malicious apps on Android and iOS that it said targeted online users with the goal of stealing their Facebook login information. "These apps were listed on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store and disguised as photo editors, games, VPN services, business apps, and other utilities to trick people into downloading them," the

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

LofyGang Distributed ~200 Malicious NPM Packages to Steal Credit Card Data

Multiple campaigns that distributed trojanized and typosquatted packages on the NPM open source repository have been identified as the work of a single threat actor dubbed LofyGang. Checkmarx said it discovered 199 rogue packages totaling thousands of installations, with the group operating for over a year with the goal of stealing credit card data as well as user accounts associated with

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

Details Released for Recently Patched new macOS Archive Utility Vulnerability

Security researchers have shared details about a now-addressed security flaw in Apple's macOS operating system that could be potentially exploited to run malicious applications in a manner that can bypass Apple's security measures. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-32910, is rooted in the built-in Archive Utility and "could lead to the execution of an unsigned and unnotarized application

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

FBI, CISA, and NSA Reveal How Hackers Targeted a Defense Industrial Base Organization

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies on Tuesday disclosed that multiple nation-state hacking groups potentially targeted a "Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Sector organization's enterprise network" as part of a cyber espionage campaign. "[Advanced persistent threat] actors used an open-source toolkit called Impacket to gain their foothold within the environment and further compromise the

Researchers Report Supply Chain Vulnerability in Packagist PHP Repository

Researchers have disclosed details about a now-patched high-severity security flaw in Packagist, a PHP software package repository, that could have been exploited to mount software supply chain attacks. "This vulnerability allows gaining control of Packagist," SonarSource researcher Thomas Chauchefoin said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Packagist is used by the PHP package manager

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

Optus Hack Exposes Data of Nearly 2.1 Million Australian Telecom Customers

Australian telecom giant Optus on Monday confirmed that nearly 2.1 million of its current and former customers suffered a leak of their personal information and at least one form of identification number as a result of a data breach late last month. The company also said it has engaged the services of Deloitte to conduct an external forensic assessment of the attack to "understand how it

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

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

State-Sponsored Hackers Likely Exploited MS Exchange 0-Days Against ~10 Organizations

Microsoft on Friday disclosed that a single activity group in August 2022 achieved initial access and breached Exchange servers by chaining the two newly disclosed zero-day flaws in a limited set of attacks aimed at less than 10 organizations globally. "These attacks installed the Chopper web shell to facilitate hands-on-keyboard access, which the attackers used to perform Active Directory

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

New Malware Campaign Targeting Job Seekers with Cobalt Strike Beacons

A social engineering campaign leveraging job-themed lures is weaponizing a years-old remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Office to deploy Cobalt Strike beacons on compromised hosts. "The payload discovered is a leaked version of a Cobalt Strike beacon," Cisco Talos researchers Chetan Raghuprasad and Vanja Svajcer said in a new analysis published Wednesday. "The beacon configuration contains

Microsoft Confirms 2 New Exchange Zero-Day Flaws Being Used in the Wild

Microsoft officially disclosed it investigating two zero-day security vulnerabilities impacting Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019 following reports of in-the-wild exploitation. "The first vulnerability, identified as CVE-2022-41040, is a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability, while the second, identified as CVE-2022-41082, allows remote code execution (RCE) when PowerShell is

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.

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

5 Network Security Threats And How To Protect Yourself

Cybersecurity today matters so much because of everyone's dependence on technology, from collaboration, communication and collecting data to e-commerce and entertainment. Every organisation that needs to deliver services to their customers and employees must protect their IT 'network' - all the apps and connected devices from laptops and desktops to servers and smartphones. While traditionally,

Google to Make Account Login Mandatory for New Fitbit Users in 2023

Wearable technology company Fitbit has announced a new clause that requires users to switch to a Google account "sometime" in 2023. "In 2023, we plan to launch Google accounts on Fitbit, which will enable use of Fitbit with a Google account," the Google-owned fitness devices maker said. <!--adsense--> The switch will not go live for all users in 2023. Rather, support for Fitbit accounts is

Hackers Using Fake CircleCI Notifications to Hack GitHub Accounts

GitHub has put out an advisory detailing what may be an ongoing phishing campaign targeting its users to steal credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes by impersonating the CircleCI DevOps platform. The Microsoft-owned code hosting service said it learned of the attack on September 16, 2022, adding the campaign impacted "many victim organizations." The fraudulent messages claim to

CISA Warns of Hackers Exploiting Recent Zoho ManageEngine Vulnerability

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a recently disclosed security flaw in Zoho ManageEngine to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. "Zoho ManageEngine PAM360, Password Manager Pro, and Access Manager Plus contain an unspecified vulnerability which allows for remote code execution," the agency

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

Researchers Uncover Years-Long Mobile Spyware Campaign Targeting Uyghurs

A new wave of a mobile surveillance campaign has been observed targeting the Uyghur community as part of a long-standing spyware operation active since at least 2015, cybersecurity researchers disclosed Thursday. The intrusions, originally attributed to a threat actor named Scarlet Mimic back in January 2016, is said to have encompassed 20 different variants of the Android malware, which were

Malicious NPM Package Caught Mimicking Material Tailwind CSS Package

A malicious NPM package has been found masquerading as the legitimate software library for Material Tailwind, once again indicating attempts on the part of threat actors to distribute malicious code in open source software repositories. Material Tailwind is a CSS-based framework advertised by its maintainers as an "easy to use components library for Tailwind CSS and Material Design." "The

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,

Hackers Targeting Unpatched Atlassian Confluence Servers to Deploy Crypto Miners

A now-patched critical security flaw affecting Atlassian Confluence Server that came to light a few months ago is being actively exploited for illicit cryptocurrency mining on unpatched installations. "If left unremedied and successfully exploited, this vulnerability could be used for multiple and more malicious attacks, such as a complete domain takeover of the infrastructure and the deployment

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

Microsoft's Latest Security Update Fixes 64 New Flaws, Including a Zero-Day

Tech giant Microsoft on Tuesday shipped fixes to quash 64 new security flaws across its software lineup, including one zero-day flaw that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Of the 64 bugs, five are rated Critical, 57 are rated Important, one is rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. The patches are in addition to 16 vulnerabilities that Microsoft addressed in its

Over 280,000 WordPress Sites Attacked Using WPGateway Plugin Zero-Day Vulnerability

A zero-day flaw in the latest version of a WordPress premium plugin known as WPGateway is being actively exploited in the wild, potentially allowing malicious actors to completely take over affected sites. Tracked as CVE-2022-3180 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue is being weaponized to add a malicious administrator user to sites running the WPGateway plugin, WordPress security company Wordfence

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 

Apple Releases iOS and macOS Updates to Patch Actively Exploited Zero-Day Flaw

Apple has released another round of security updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in iOS and macOS, including a new zero-day flaw that has been used in attacks in the wild. The issue, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-32917, is rooted in the Kernel component and could enable a malicious app to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may

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

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

Hackers Exploit Zero-Day in WordPress BackupBuddy Plugin in ~5 Million Attempts

A zero-day flaw in a WordPress plugin called BackupBuddy is being actively exploited, WordPress security company Wordfence has disclosed. "This vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated users to download arbitrary files from the affected site which can include sensitive information," it said. BackupBuddy allows users to back up their entire WordPress installation from within the

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

Microsoft Warns of Ransomware Attacks by Iranian Phosphorus Hacker Group

Microsoft's threat intelligence division on Wednesday assessed that a subgroup of the Iranian threat actor tracked as Phosphorus is conducting ransomware attacks as a "form of moonlighting" for personal gain. The tech giant, which is monitoring the activity cluster under the moniker DEV-0270 (aka Nemesis Kitten), said it's operated by a company that functions under the public aliases Secnerd and

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 –

Critical RCE Vulnerability Affects Zyxel NAS Devices — Firmware Patch Released

Networking equipment maker Zyxel has released patches for a critical security flaw impacting its network-attached storage (NAS) devices. Tracked as CVE-2022-34747 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue relates to a "format string vulnerability" affecting NAS326, NAS540, and NAS542 models. Zyxel credited researcher Shaposhnikov Ilya for reporting the flaw. "A format string vulnerability was found in a