How to Detect New Threats via Suspicious Activities

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'

Google Reveals Alarming Surge in Russian Cyber Attacks Against Ukraine

Russia's cyber attacks against Ukraine surged by 250% in 2022 when compared to two years ago, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant disclosed in a new joint report. The targeting, which coincided and has since persisted following the country's military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, focused heavily on the Ukrainian government and military entities, alongside critical

Cyber Espionage Group Earth Kitsune Deploys WhiskerSpy Backdoor in Latest Attacks

The cyber espionage threat actor tracked as Earth Kitsune has been observed deploying a new backdoor called WhiskerSpy as part of a social engineering campaign. Earth Kitsune, active since at least 2019, is known to primarily target individuals interested in North Korea with self-developed malware such as dneSpy and agfSpy. Previously documented intrusions have entailed the use of watering holes

Fortinet Issues Patches for 40 Flaws Affecting FortiWeb, FortiOS, FortiNAC, and FortiProxy

Fortinet has released security updates to address 40 vulnerabilities in its software lineup, including FortiWeb, FortiOS, FortiNAC, 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 is a severe bug residing in the FortiNAC network access control solution (CVE-2022-39952, CVSS score: 9.8)

Twitter Limits SMS-Based 2-Factor Authentication to Blue Subscribers Only

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 accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers." <!--

GoDaddy Discloses Multi-Year Security Breach Causing Malware Installations and Source Code Theft

Web hosting services provider GoDaddy on Friday disclosed a multi-year security breach that enabled unknown threat actors to install malware and siphon source code related to some of its services. The company attributed the campaign to a "sophisticated and organized group targeting hosting services." GoDaddy said in December 2022, it received an unspecified number of customer complaints about

Experts Warn of RambleOn Android Malware Targeting South Korean Journalists

Suspected North Korean nation-state actors targeted a journalist in South Korea with a malware-laced Android app as part of a social engineering campaign. The findings come from South Korea-based non-profit Interlab, which coined the new malware RambleOn. The malicious functionalities include the "ability to read and leak target's contact list, SMS, voice call content, location and others from

⚡Top Cybersecurity News Stories This Week — Cybersecurity Newsletter

Hey 👋 there, cyber friends! Welcome to this week's cybersecurity newsletter, where we aim to keep you informed and empowered in the ever-changing world of cyber threats. In today's edition, we will cover some interesting developments in the cybersecurity landscape and share some insightful analysis of each to help you protect yourself against potential attacks. 1. Apple 📱 Devices Hacked with

Armenian Entities Hit by New Version of OxtaRAT Spying Tool

Entities in Armenia have come under a cyber attack using an updated version of a backdoor called OxtaRAT that allows remote access and desktop surveillance. "The tool capabilities include searching for and exfiltrating files from the infected machine, recording the video from the web camera and desktop, remotely controlling the compromised machine with TightVNC, installing a web shell,

New Mirai Botnet Variant 'V3G4' Exploiting 13 Flaws to Target Linux and IoT Devices

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 campaigns likely conducted by the same threat actor. "Once the vulnerable devices are compromised, they

Critical RCE Vulnerability Discovered in ClamAV Open Source Antivirus Software

Cisco has rolled out security updates to address a critical flaw reported in the ClamAV open source antivirus engine that could lead to remote code execution on susceptible devices. Tracked as CVE-2023-20032 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue relates to a case of remote code execution residing in the HFS+ file parser component. The flaw affects versions 1.0.0 and earlier, 0.105.1 and earlier, and

Researchers Hijack Popular NPM Package with Millions of Downloads

A popular npm package with more than 3.5 million weekly downloads has been found vulnerable to an account takeover attack. "The package can be taken over by recovering an expired domain name for one of its maintainers and resetting the password," software supply chain security company Illustria said in a report. While npm's security protections limit users to have only one active email address

Researchers Link SideWinder Group to Dozens of Targeted Attacks in Multiple Countries

The prolific SideWinder group has been attributed as the nation-state actor behind attempted attacks against 61 entities in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka between June and November 2021. Targets included government, military, law enforcement, banks, and other organizations, according to an exhaustive report published by Group-IB, which also found links between the adversary

Hackers Using Google Ads to Spread FatalRAT Malware Disguised as Popular Apps

Chinese-speaking individuals in Southeast and East Asia are the targets of a new rogue Google Ads campaign that delivers remote access trojans such as FatalRAT to compromised machines. The attacks involve purchasing ad slots to appear in Google search results and direct users looking for popular applications to rogue websites hosting trojanized installers, ESET said in a report published today.

Researchers Warn of Critical Security Bugs in Schneider Electric Modicon PLCs

Security researchers have disclosed two new vulnerabilities affecting Schneider Electric Modicon programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that could allow for authentication bypass and remote code execution. The flaws, tracked as CVE-2022-45788 (CVSS score: 7.5) and CVE-2022-45789 (CVSS score: 8.1), are part of a broader collection of security defects tracked by Forescout as OT:ICEFALL. Successful

Breaking the Security "Black Box" in DBs, Data Warehouses and Data Lakes

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 teams have to

New Threat Actor WIP26 Targeting Telecom Service Providers in the Middle East

Telecommunication service providers in the Middle East are being targeted by a previously undocumented threat actor as part of a suspected intelligence gathering mission. Cybersecurity firms SentinelOne and QGroup are tracking the activity cluster under the former's work-in-progress moniker WIP26. "WIP26 relies heavily on public cloud infrastructure in an attempt to evade detection by making

ESXiArgs Ransomware Hits Over 500 New Targets in European Countries

More than 500 hosts have been newly compromised en masse by the ESXiArgs ransomware strain, most of which are located in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., and Ukraine. The findings come from attack surface management firm Censys, which discovered "two hosts with strikingly similar ransom notes dating back to mid-October 2022, just after ESXi versions 6.5 and 6.7 reached end of life."

Webinar — A MythBusting Special: 9 Myths about File-based Threats

Bad actors love to deliver threats in files. Persistent and persuasive messages convince unsuspecting victims to accept and open files from unknown sources, executing the first step in a cyber attack.  This continues to happen whether the file is an EXE or a Microsoft Excel document. Far too often, end users have an illusion of security, masked by good faith efforts of other users and (

Financially Motivated Threat Actor Strikes with New Ransomware and Clipper Malware

A new financially motivated campaign that commenced in December 2022 has seen the unidentified threat actor behind it deploying a novel ransomware strain dubbed MortalKombat and a clipper malware known as Laplas. Cisco Talos said it "observed the actor scanning the internet for victim machines with an exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP) port 3389." The attacks, per the cybersecurity company,

Experts Warn of 'Beep' - A New Evasive Malware That Can Fly Under the Radar

Cybersecurity researchers have unearthed a new piece of evasive malware dubbed Beep that's designed to fly under the radar and drop additional payloads onto a compromised host. "It seemed as if the authors of this malware were trying to implement as many anti-debugging and anti-VM (anti-sandbox) techniques as they could find," Minerva Labs researcher Natalie Zargarov said. "One such technique

Google Rolling Out Privacy Sandbox Beta on Android 13 Devices

Google announced on Tuesday that it's officially rolling out Privacy Sandbox on Android in beta to eligible mobile devices running Android 13. "The Privacy Sandbox Beta provides new APIs that are designed with privacy at the core, and don't use identifiers that can track your activity across apps and websites," the search and advertising giant said. "Apps that choose to participate in the Beta

Update Now: Microsoft Releases Patches for 3 Actively Exploited Windows Vulnerabilities

Microsoft on Tuesday released security updates to address 75 flaws spanning its product portfolio, three of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. The updates are in addition to 22 flaws the Windows maker patched in its Chromium-based Edge browser over the past month. Of the 75 vulnerabilities, nine are rated Critical and 66 are rated Important in severity. 37 out of 75 bugs are

Massive AdSense Fraud Campaign Uncovered - 10,000+ WordPress Sites Infected

The threat actors behind the black hat redirect malware campaign have scaled up their campaign to use more than 70 bogus domains mimicking URL shorteners and infect over 10,800 websites. "The main objective is still ad fraud by artificially increasing traffic to pages which contain the AdSense ID which contain Google ads for revenue generation," Sucuri researcher Ben Martin said in a report

Python Developers Beware: Clipper Malware Found in 450+ PyPI Packages!

Malicious actors have published more than 451 unique Python packages on the official Python Package Index (PyPI) repository in an attempt to infect developer systems with clipper malware. Software supply chain security company Phylum, which spotted the libraries, said the ongoing activity is a follow-up to a campaign that was initially disclosed in November 2022. The initial vector entails using

A CISOs Practical Guide to Storage and Backup Ransomware Resiliency

One thing is clear. The "business value" of data continues to grow, making it an organization's primary piece of intellectual property. From a cyber risk perspective, attacks on data are the most prominent threat to organizations.  Regulators, cyber insurance firms, and auditors are paying much closer attention to the integrity, resilience, and recoverability of organization data – as well as

Chinese Hackers Targeting South American Diplomatic Entities with ShadowPad

Microsoft on Monday attributed a China-based cyber espionage actor to a set of attacks targeting diplomatic entities in South America. The tech giant's Security Intelligence team is tracking the cluster under the emerging moniker DEV-0147, describing the activity as an "expansion of the group's data exfiltration operations that traditionally targeted government agencies and think tanks in Asia

Patch Now: Apple's iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari Under Attack with New Zero-Day Flaw

Apple on Monday rolled out security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari to address a zero-day flaw that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2023-23529, the issue relates to a type confusion bug in the WebKit browser engine that could be activated when processing maliciously crafted web content, culminating in arbitrary code execution. The iPhone maker said the

Hackers Create Malicious Dota 2 Game Modes to Secretly Access Players' Systems

An unknown threat actor created malicious game modes for the Dota 2 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game that could have been exploited to establish backdoor access to players' systems. The modes exploited a high-severity flaw in the V8 JavaScript engine tracked as CVE-2021-38003 (CVSS score: 8.8), which was exploited as a zero-day and addressed by Google in October 2021. "Since V8

Honeypot-Factory: The Use of Deception in ICS/OT Environments

The recently published Security Navigator report of Orange Cyberdefense shows there has been a  rapid increase of attacks on industrial control systems (ICS) in the past few years. Looking a bit closer, most of the attacks seem to have spilt over from traditional IT. That's to be expected, as production systems are commonly connected to ordinary corporate networks at this point. Though the data

Hackers Targeting U.S. and German Firms Monitor Victims' Desktops with Screenshotter

A previously unknown threat actor has been targeting companies in the U.S. and Germany with bespoke malware designed to steal confidential information. Enterprise security company Proofpoint, which is tracking the activity cluster under the name Screentime, said the group, dubbed TA866, is likely financially motivated. "TA866 is an organized actor able to perform well thought-out attacks at

New ESXiArgs Ransomware Variant Emerges After CISA Releases Decryptor Tool

After the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a decryptor for affected victims to recover from ESXiArgs ransomware attacks, the threat actors have bounced back with an updated version that encrypts more data. The emergence of the new variant was reported by a system administrator on an online forum, where another participant stated that files larger than 128MB

Enigma, Vector, and TgToxic: The New Threats to Cryptocurrency Users

Suspected Russian threat actors have been targeting Eastern European users in the crypto industry with fake job opportunities as bait to install information-stealing malware on compromised hosts. The attackers "use several highly obfuscated and under-development custom loaders in order to infect those involved in the cryptocurrency industry with Enigma stealer," Trend Micro researchers Aliakbar

CISA Warns of Active Attacks Exploiting Fortra MFT, TerraMaster NAS, and Intel Driver Flaws

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added three flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active abuse in the wild. Included among the three is CVE-2022-24990, a bug affecting TerraMaster network-attached storage (TNAS) devices that could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution with the highest privileges. Details

Researchers Uncover Obfuscated Malicious Code in PyPI Python Packages

Four different rogue packages in the Python Package Index (PyPI) have been found to carry out a number of malicious actions, including dropping malware, deleting the netstat utility, and manipulating the SSH authorized_keys file. The packages in question are aptx, bingchilling2, httops, and tkint3rs, all of which were collectively downloaded about 450 times before they were taken down. While

North Korean Hackers Targeting Healthcare with Ransomware to Fund its Operations

State-backed hackers from North Korea are conducting ransomware attacks against healthcare and critical infrastructure facilities to fund illicit activities, U.S. and South Korean cybersecurity and intelligence agencies warned in a joint advisory. The attacks, which demand cryptocurrency ransoms in exchange for recovering access to encrypted files, are designed to support North Korea's

3 Overlooked Cybersecurity Breaches

Here are three of the worst breaches, attacker tactics and techniques of 2022, and the security controls that can provide effective, enterprise security protection for them. #1: 2 RaaS Attacks in 13 Months Ransomware as a service is a type of attack in which the ransomware software and infrastructure are leased out to the attackers. These ransomware services can be purchased on the dark web from

U.K. and U.S. Sanction 7 Russians for TrickBot, Ryuk, and Conti Ransomware Attacks

In a first-of-its-kind coordinated action, the U.K. and U.S. governments on Thursday levied sanctions against seven Russian nationals for their affiliation to the TrickBot, Ryuk, and Conti cybercrime operation. The individuals designated under sanctions are Vitaly Kovalev (aka Alex Konor, Bentley, or Bergen), Maksim Mikhailov (aka Baget), Valentin Karyagin (aka Globus), Mikhail Iskritskiy (aka

Reddit Suffers Security Breach Exposing Internal Documents and Source Code

Popular social news aggregation platform Reddit has disclosed that it was the victim of a security incident that enabled unidentified threat actors to gain unauthorized access to internal documents, code, and some unspecified business systems. The company blamed it on a "sophisticated and highly-targeted phishing attack" that took place on February 5, 2023, aimed at its employees. The attack

Critical Infrastructure at Risk from New Vulnerabilities Found in Wireless IIoT Devices

A set of 38 security vulnerabilities has been uncovered in wireless industrial internet of things (IIoT) devices from four different vendors that could pose a significant attack surface for threat actors looking to exploit operational technology (OT) environments. "Threat actors can exploit vulnerabilities in Wireless IIoT devices to gain initial access to internal OT networks," Israeli

Webinar: Learn How to Comply with New Cyber Insurance Identity Security Requirements

Have you ever stopped to think about the potential consequences of a cyberattack on your organization? It's getting more intense and destructive every day, and organizations are feeling the heat. That's why more and more businesses are turning to cyber insurance to find some much-needed peace of mind. Imagine, in the unfortunate event of a successful security breach or ransomware attack, the

NewsPenguin Threat Actor Emerges with Malicious Campaign Targeting Pakistani Entities

A previously unknown threat actor dubbed NewsPenguin has been linked to a phishing campaign targeting Pakistani entities by leveraging the upcoming international maritime expo as a lure. "The attacker sent out targeted phishing emails with a weaponized document attached that purports to be an exhibitor manual for PIMEC-23," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team said. PIMEC, short for

A Hackers Pot of Gold: Your MSP's Data

A single ransomware attack on a New Zealand managed service provider (MSP) disrupted several of its clients' business operations overnight, most belonging to the healthcare sector. According to the country's privacy commissioner, "a cyber security incident involving a ransomware attack" in late November upended the daily operations of New Zealand's health ministry when it prevented the staff

Gootkit Malware Adopts New Tactics to Attack Healthcare and Finance Firms

The Gootkit malware is prominently going after healthcare and finance organizations in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, according to new findings from Cybereason. The cybersecurity firm said it investigated a Gootkit incident in December 2022 that adopted a new method of deployment, with the actors abusing the foothold to deliver Cobalt Strike and SystemBC for post-exploitation. "The threat actor

OpenSSL Fixes Multiple New Security Flaws with Latest Update

The OpenSSL Project has released fixes to address several security flaws, including a high-severity bug in the open source encryption toolkit that could potentially expose users to malicious attacks. Tracked as CVE-2023-0286, the issue relates to a case of type confusion that may permit an adversary to "read memory contents or enact a denial-of-service," the maintainers said in an advisory. The

NIST Standardizes Ascon Cryptographic Algorithm for IoT and Other Lightweight Devices

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced that a family of authenticated encryption and hashing algorithms known as Ascon will be standardized for lightweight cryptography applications. "The chosen algorithms are designed to protect information created and transmitted by the Internet of Things (IoT), including its myriad tiny sensors and actuators," NIST said.

Unpatched Security Flaws Disclosed in Multiple Document Management Systems

Multiple unpatched security flaws have been disclosed in open source and freemium Document Management System (DMS) offerings from four vendors LogicalDOC, Mayan, ONLYOFFICE, and OpenKM. Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 said the eight vulnerabilities offer a mechanism through which "an attacker can convince a human operator to save a malicious document on the platform and, once the document is indexed

Sydney Man Sentenced for Blackmailing Optus Customers After Data Breach

A Sydney man has been sentenced to an 18-month Community Correction Order (CCO) and 100 hours of community service for attempting to take advantage of the Optus data breach last year to blackmail its customers. The unnamed individual, 19 when arrested in October 2022 and now 20, used the leaked records stolen from the security lapse to orchestrate an SMS-based extortion scheme. The suspect

Russian Hackers Using Graphiron Malware to Steal Data from Ukraine

A Russia-linked threat actor has been observed deploying a new information-stealing malware in cyber attacks targeting Ukraine. Dubbed Graphiron by Broadcom-owned Symantec, the malware is the handiwork of an espionage group known as Nodaria, which is tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) as UAC-0056. "The malware is written in Go and is designed to harvest a wide

How to Think Like a Hacker and Stay Ahead of Threats

To succeed as a cybersecurity analyst, you need to understand the traits, values, and thought processes of hackers, along with the tools they use to launch their attacks.  During a webinar called The Hacker Mindset, a Red Team Researcher shared how you can use some of these tools for your own detection and prevention of breaches. He also demonstrated how an attack takes place using the Follina

Russian Hacker Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering Linked to Ryuk Ransomware

A Russian national on February 7, 2023, pleaded guilty in the U.S. to money laundering charges and for attempting to conceal the source of funds obtained in connection with Ryuk ransomware attacks. Denis Mihaqlovic Dubnikov, 30, was arrested in Amsterdam in November 2021 before he was extradited from the Netherlands in August 2022. He is awaiting sentencing on April 11, 2023. "Between at least

CERT-UA Alerts Ukrainian State Authorities of Remcos Software-Fueled Cyber Attacks

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has issued an alert warning of cyber attacks against state authorities in the country that deploy a legitimate remote access software named Remcos. The mass phishing campaign has been attributed to a threat actor it tracks as UAC-0050, with the agency describing the activity as likely motivated by espionage given the toolset employed. The

Encrypted Messaging App Exclu Used by Criminal Groups Cracked by Joint Law Enforcement

A joint law enforcement operation conducted by Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland has cracked yet another encrypted messaging application named Exclu used by organized crime groups. Eurojust, in a press statement, said the February 3 exercise resulted in the arrests of 45 individuals across Belgium and the Netherlands, some of whom include users as well as the administrators and owners of the

Hackers Exploit Vulnerabilities in Sunlogin to Deploy Sliver C2 Framework

Threat actors are leveraging known flaws in Sunlogin software to deploy the Sliver command-and-control (C2) framework for carrying out post-exploitation activities. The findings come from AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC), which found that security vulnerabilities in Sunlogin, a remote desktop program developed in China, are being abused to deploy a wide range of payloads. "Not

Tackling the New Cyber Insurance Requirements: Can Your Organization Comply?

With cyberattacks around the world escalating rapidly, insurance companies are ramping up the requirements to qualify for a cyber insurance policy. Ransomware attacks were up 80% last year, prompting underwriters to put in place a number of new provisions designed to prevent ransomware and stem the record number of claims. Among these are a mandate to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Linux Variant of Clop Ransomware Spotted, But Uses Faulty Encryption Algorithm

The first-ever Linux variant of the Clop ransomware has been detected in the wild, but with a faulty encryption algorithm that has made it possible to reverse engineer the process. "The ELF executable contains a flawed encryption algorithm making it possible to decrypt locked files without paying the ransom," SentinelOne researcher Antonis Terefos said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

VMware Finds No Evidence of 0-Day in Ongoing ESXiArgs Ransomware Spree

VMware on Monday said it found no evidence that threat actors are leveraging an unknown security flaw, i.e., a zero-day, in its software as part of an ongoing ransomware attack spree worldwide. "Most reports state that End of General Support (EoGS) and/or significantly out-of-date products are being targeted with known vulnerabilities which were previously addressed and disclosed in VMware

GuLoader Malware Using Malicious NSIS Executables to Target E-Commerce Industry

E-commerce industries in South Korea and the U.S. are at the receiving end of an ongoing GuLoader malware campaign, cybersecurity firm Trellix disclosed late last month. The malspam activity is notable for transitioning away from malware-laced Microsoft Word documents to NSIS executable files for loading the malware. Other countries targeted as part of the campaign include Germany, Saudi Arabia,

Microsoft: Iranian Nation-State Group Sanctioned by U.S. Behind Charlie Hebdo Hack

An Iranian nation-state group sanctioned by the U.S. government has been attributed to the hack of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in early January 2023. Microsoft, which disclosed details of the incident, is tracking the activity cluster under its chemical element-themed moniker NEPTUNIUM, which is an Iran-based company known as Emennet Pasargad. In January 2022, the U.S. Federal

SaaS in the Real World: Who's Responsible to Secure this Data?

When SaaS applications started growing in popularity, it was unclear who was responsible for securing the data. Today, most security and IT teams understand the shared responsibility model, in which the SaaS vendor is responsible for securing the application, while the organization is responsible for securing their data.  What’s far murkier, however, is where the data responsibility lies on the