Malicious Python Package Uses Unicode Trickery to Evade Detection and Steal Data

A malicious Python package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository has been found to use Unicode as a trick to evade detection and deploy an info-stealing malware. The package in question, named onyxproxy, was uploaded to PyPI on March 15, 2023, and comes with capabilities to harvest and exfiltrate credentials and other valuable data. It has since been taken down, but not before attracting

GitHub Swiftly Replaces Exposed RSA SSH Key to Protect Git Operations

Cloud-based repository hosting service GitHub said it took the step of replacing its RSA SSH host key used to secure Git operations "out of an abundance of caution" after it was briefly exposed in a public repository. The activity, which was carried out at 05:00 UTC on March 24, 2023, is said to have been undertaken as a measure to prevent any bad actor from impersonating the service or

Critical WooCommerce Payments Plugin Flaw Patched for 500,000+ WordPress Sites

Patches have been released for a critical security flaw impacting the WooCommerce Payments plugin for WordPress, which is installed on over 500,000 websites. The flaw, if left unresolved, could enable a bad actor to gain unauthorized admin access to impacted stores, the company said in an advisory on March 23, 2023. It impacts versions 4.8.0 through 5.6.1. Put differently, the issue could permit

CISA Alerts on Critical Security Vulnerabilities in Industrial Control Systems

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released eight Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on Tuesday, warning of critical flaws affecting equipment from Delta Electronics and Rockwell Automation. This includes 13 security vulnerabilities in Delta Electronics' InfraSuite Device Master, a real-time device monitoring software. All versions prior to 1.0.5 are

Preventing Insider Threats in Your Active Directory

Active Directory (AD) is a powerful authentication and directory service used by organizations worldwide. With this ubiquity and power comes the potential for abuse. Insider threats offer some of the most potentials for destruction. Many internal users have over-provisioned access and visibility into the internal network. Insiders' level of access and trust in a network leads to unique

Hackers Steal Over $1.6 Million in Crypto from General Bytes Bitcoin ATMs Using Zero-Day Flaw

Bitcoin ATM maker General Bytes disclosed that unidentified threat actors stole cryptocurrency from hot wallets by exploiting a zero-day security flaw in its software. "The attacker was able to upload his own java application remotely via the master service interface used by terminals to upload videos and run it using 'batm' user privileges," the company said in an advisory published over the

Chinese and Russian Hackers Using SILKLOADER Malware to Evade Detection

Threat activity clusters affiliated with the Chinese and Russian cybercriminal ecosystems have been observed using a new piece of malware that's designed to load Cobalt Strike onto infected machines. Dubbed SILKLOADER by Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure, the malware leverages DLL side-loading techniques to deliver the commercial adversary simulation software. The development comes as 

Authorities Shut Down ChipMixer Platform Tied to Crypto Laundering Scheme

A coalition of law enforcement agencies across Europe and the U.S. announced the takedown of ChipMixer, an unlicensed cryptocurrency mixer that began its operations in August 2017. "The ChipMixer software blocked the blockchain trail of the funds, making it attractive for cybercriminals looking to launder illegal proceeds from criminal activities such as drug trafficking, weapons trafficking,

CISA Issues Urgent Warning: Adobe ColdFusion Vulnerability Exploited in the Wild

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on March 15 added a security vulnerability impacting Adobe ColdFusion to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The critical flaw in question is CVE-2023-26360 (CVSS score: 8.6), which could be exploited by a threat actor to achieve arbitrary code execution. "Adobe ColdFusion

YoroTrooper Stealing Credentials and Information from Government and Energy Organizations

A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed YoroTrooper has been targeting government, energy, and international organizations across Europe as part of a cyber espionage campaign that has been active since at least June 2022. "Information stolen from successful compromises include credentials from multiple applications, browser histories and cookies, system information and screenshots," Cisco

Does Your Help Desk Know Who's Calling?

Phishing, the theft of users' credentials or sensitive data using social engineering, has been a significant threat since the early days of the internet – and continues to plague organizations today, accounting for more than 30% of all known breaches. And with the mass migration to remote working during the pandemic, hackers have ramped up their efforts to steal login credentials as they take

Experts Reveal Google Cloud Platform's Blind Spot for Data Exfiltration Attacks

Malicious actors can take advantage of "insufficient" forensic visibility into Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to exfiltrate sensitive data, a new research has found. "Unfortunately, GCP does not provide the level of visibility in its storage logs that is needed to allow any effective forensic investigation, making organizations blind to potential data exfiltration attacks," cloud incident response

Experts Discover Flaw in U.S. Govt's Chosen Quantum-Resistant Encryption Algorithm

A group of researchers has revealed what it says is a vulnerability in a specific implementation of CRYSTALS-Kyber, one of the encryption algorithms chosen by the U.S. government as quantum-resistant last year. The exploit relates to "side-channel attacks on up to the fifth-order masked implementations of CRYSTALS-Kyber in ARM Cortex-M4 CPU," Elena Dubrova, Kalle Ngo, and Joel Gärtner of KTH

Hackers Exploit Containerized Environments to Steal Proprietary Data and Software

A sophisticated attack campaign dubbed SCARLETEEL is targeting containerized environments to perpetrate theft of proprietary data and software. "The attacker exploited a containerized workload and then leveraged it to perform privilege escalation into an AWS account in order to steal proprietary software and credentials," Sysdig said in a new report. The advanced cloud attack also entailed the

Hackers Using Trojanized macOS Apps to Deploy Evasive Cryptocurrency Mining Malware

Trojanized versions of legitimate applications are being used to deploy evasive cryptocurrency mining malware on macOS systems. Jamf Threat Labs, which made the discovery, said the XMRig coin miner was executed by means of an unauthorized modification in Final Cut Pro, a video editing software from Apple. "This malware makes use of the Invisible Internet Project (i2p) [...] to download malicious

Apple Warns of 3 New Vulnerabilities Affecting iPhone, iPad, and Mac Devices

Apple has revised the security advisories it released last month to include three new vulnerabilities impacting iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The first flaw is a race condition in the Crash Reporter component (CVE-2023-23520) that could enable a malicious actor to read arbitrary files as root. The iPhone maker said it addressed the issue with additional validation. The two other vulnerabilities,

Threat Actors Adopt Havoc Framework for Post-Exploitation in Targeted Attacks

An open source command-and-control (C2) framework known as Havoc is being adopted by threat actors as an alternative to other well-known legitimate toolkits like Cobalt Strike, Sliver, and Brute Ratel. Cybersecurity firm Zscaler said it observed a new campaign in the beginning of January 2023 targeting an unnamed government organization that utilized Havoc. "While C2 frameworks are prolific, the

Coinbase Employee Falls for SMS Scam in Cyber Attack, Limited Data Exposed

Popular cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase disclosed that it experienced a cybersecurity attack that targeted its employees. The company said its "cyber controls prevented the attacker from gaining direct system access and prevented any loss of funds or compromise of customer information." The incident, which took place on February 5, 2023, resulted in the exposure of a "limited amount of

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

Regular Pen Testing Is Key to Resolving Conflict Between SecOps and DevOps

In an ideal world, security and development teams would be working together in perfect harmony. But we live in a world of competing priorities, where DevOps and security departments often butt heads with each other. Agility and security are often at odds with each other— if a new feature is delivered quickly but contains security vulnerabilities, the SecOps team will need to scramble the release

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

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

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

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

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

Atlassian's Jira Service Management Found Vulnerable to Critical Vulnerability

Atlassian has released fixes to resolve a critical security flaw in Jira Service Management Server and Data Center that could be abused by an attacker to pass off as another user and gain unauthorized access to susceptible instances. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-22501 (CVSS score: 9.4) and has been described as a case of broken authentication with low attack complexity. "An

Auditing Kubernetes with Open Source SIEM and XDR

Container technology has gained traction among businesses due to the increased efficiency it provides. In this regard, organizations widely use Kubernetes for deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications. Organizations should audit Kubernetes to ensure compliance with regulations, find anomalies, and identify security risks. The Wazuh open source platform plays a critical role in

Researchers Uncover Packer Used by Several Malware to Evade Detection for 6 Years

A shellcode-based packer dubbed TrickGate has been successfully operating without attracting notice for over six years, while enabling threat actors to deploy a wide range of malware such as TrickBot, Emotet, AZORult, Agent Tesla, FormBook, Cerber, Maze, and REvil over the years. "TrickGate managed to stay under the radar for years because it is transformative – it undergoes changes periodically

GitHub Breach: Hackers Stole Code-Signing Certificates for GitHub Desktop and Atom

GitHub on Monday disclosed that unknown threat actors managed to exfiltrate encrypted code signing certificates pertaining to some versions of GitHub Desktop for Mac and Atom apps. As a result, the company is taking the step of revoking the exposed certificates out of abundance of caution. The following versions of GitHub Desktop for Mac have been invalidated: 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.0.4, 3.0.5, 3.0.6,

Gootkit Malware Continues to Evolve with New Components and Obfuscations

The threat actors associated with the Gootkit malware have made "notable changes" to their toolset, adding new components and obfuscations to their infection chains. Google-owned Mandiant is monitoring the activity cluster under the moniker UNC2565, noting that the usage of the malware is "exclusive to this group." Gootkit, also called Gootloader, is spread through compromised websites that

VMware Releases Patches for Critical vRealize Log Insight Software Vulnerabilities

VMware on Tuesday released software to remediate four security vulnerabilities affecting vRealize Log Insight (aka Aria Operations for Logs) that could expose users to remote code execution attacks. Two of the flaws are critical, carrying a severity rating of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10, the virtualization services provider noted in its first security bulletin for 2023. Tracked as CVE-2022-31706

Threat Actors Turn to Sliver as Open Source Alternative to Popular C2 Frameworks

The legitimate command-and-control (C2) framework known as Sliver is gaining more traction from threat actors as it emerges as an open source alternative to Cobalt Strike and Metasploit. The findings come from Cybereason, which detailed its inner workings in an exhaustive analysis last week. Sliver, developed by cybersecurity company BishopFox, is a Golang-based cross-platform post-exploitation

Critical Security Vulnerabilities Discovered in Netcomm and TP-Link Routers

Security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Netcomm and TP-Link routers, some of which could be weaponized to achieve remote code execution. The flaws, tracked as CVE-2022-4873 and CVE-2022-4874, concern a case of stack-based buffer overflow and authentication bypass and impact Netcomm router models NF20MESH, NF20, and NL1902 running firmware versions earlier than R6B035. "The two

Git Users Urged to Update Software to Prevent Remote Code Execution Attacks

The maintainers of the Git source code version control system have released updates to remediate two critical vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a malicious actor to achieve remote code execution. The flaws, tracked as CVE-2022-23521 and CVE-2022-41903, impacts the following versions of Git: v2.30.6, v2.31.5, v2.32.4, v2.33.5, v2.34.5, v2.35.5, v2.36.3, v2.37.4, v2.38.2, and v2.39.0. <!-

CISA Warns of Flaws in Siemens, GE Digital, and Contec Industrial Control Systems

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published four Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories, calling out several security flaws affecting products from Siemens, GE Digital, and Contec. The most critical of the issues have been identified in Siemens SINEC INS that could lead to remote code execution via a path traversal flaw (CVE-2022-45092, CVSS score: 9.9)

Hackers Can Abuse Legitimate GitHub Codespaces Feature to Deliver Malware

New research has found that it is possible for threat actors to abuse a legitimate feature in GitHub Codespaces to deliver malware to victim systems. GitHub Codespaces is a cloud-based configurable development environment that allows users to debug, maintain, and commit changes to a given codebase from a web browser or via an integration in Visual Studio Code. It also comes with a port

4 Places to Supercharge Your SOC with Automation

It's no secret that the job of SOC teams continues to become increasingly difficult. Increased volume and sophistication of attacks are plaguing under-resourced teams with false positives and analyst burnout. However, like many other industries, cybersecurity is now beginning to lean on and benefit from advancements in automation to not only maintain the status quo, but to attain better security

TikTok Fined $5.4 Million by French Regulator for Violating Cookie Laws

Popular short-form video hosting service TikTok has been fined €5 million (about $5.4 million) by the French data protection watchdog for breaking cookie consent rules, making it the latest platform to face similar penalties after Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft since 2020. "Users of 'tiktok[.]com' could not refuse cookies as easily as accepting them and they were not informed in a

Cisco Issues Warning for Unpatched Vulnerabilities in EoL Business Routers

Cisco has warned of two security vulnerabilities affecting end-of-life (EoL) Small Business RV016, RV042, RV042G, and RV082 routers that it said will not be fixed, even as it acknowledged the public availability of proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit. The issues are rooted in the router's web-based management interface, enabling a remote adversary to sidestep authentication or execute malicious

Alert: Hackers Actively Exploiting Critical "Control Web Panel" RCE Vulnerability

Malicious actors are actively attempting to exploit a recently patched critical vulnerability in Control Web Panel (CWP) that enables elevated privileges and unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on susceptible servers. Tracked as CVE-2022-44877 (CVSS score: 9.8), the bug impacts all versions of the software before 0.9.8.1147 and was patched by its maintainers on October 25, 2022. Control

Severe Security Flaw Found in "jsonwebtoken" Library Used by 22,000+ Projects

A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in the open source jsonwebtoken (JWT) library that, if successfully exploited, could lead to remote code execution on a target server. "By exploiting this vulnerability, attackers could achieve remote code execution (RCE) on a server verifying a maliciously crafted JSON web token (JWT) request," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Artur Oleyarsh

Hackers Can Abuse Visual Studio Marketplace to Target Developers with Malicious Extensions

A new attack vector targeting the Visual Studio Code extensions marketplace could be leveraged to upload rogue extensions masquerading as their legitimate counterparts with the goal of mounting supply chain attacks. The technique "could act as an entry point for an attack on many organizations," Aqua security researcher Ilay Goldman said in a report published last week. VS Code extensions,

Bluebottle Cybercrime Group Preys on Financial Sector in French-Speaking African Nations

A cybercrime group dubbed Bluebottle has been linked to a set of targeted attacks against the financial sector in Francophone countries located in Africa from at least July 2022 to September 2022. "The group makes extensive use of living-off-the-land, dual use tools, and commodity malware, with no custom malware deployed in this campaign," Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, said in a

Qualcomm Chipsets and Lenovo BIOS Get Security Updates to Fix Multiple Flaws

Qualcomm on Tuesday released patches to address multiple security flaws in its chipsets, some of which could be exploited to cause information disclosure and memory corruption. The five vulnerabilities -- tracked from CVE-2022-40516 through CVE-2022-40520 -- also impact Lenovo ThinkPad X13s laptops, prompting the Chinese PC maker to issue BIOS updates to plug the security holes. The list of

PyTorch Machine Learning Framework Compromised with Malicious Dependency

The maintainers of the PyTorch package have warned users who have installed the nightly builds of the library between December 25, 2022, and December 30, 2022, to uninstall and download the latest versions following a dependency confusion attack. "PyTorch-nightly Linux packages installed via pip during that time installed a dependency, torchtriton, which was compromised on the Python Package

New Malvertising Campaign via Google Ads Targets Users Searching for Popular Software

Users searching for popular software are being targeted by a new malvertising campaign that abuses Google Ads to serve trojanized variants that deploy malware, such as Raccoon Stealer and Vidar. The activity makes use of seemingly credible websites with typosquatted domain names that are surfaced on top of Google search results in the form of malicious ads by hijacking searches for specific

Vice Society Ransomware Attackers Adopt Robust Encryption Methods

The Vice Society ransomware actors have switched to yet another custom ransomware payload in their recent attacks aimed at a variety of sectors. "This ransomware variant, dubbed 'PolyVice,' implements a robust encryption scheme, using NTRUEncrypt and ChaCha20-Poly1305 algorithms," SentinelOne researcher Antonio Cocomazzi said in an analysis. Vice Society, which is tracked by Microsoft under the

Hackers Breach Okta's GitHub Repositories, Steal Source Code

Okta, a company that provides identity and access management services, disclosed on Wednesday that some of its source code repositories were accessed in an unauthorized manner earlier this month. "There is no impact to any customers, including any HIPAA, FedRAMP, or DoD customers," the company said in a public statement. "No action is required by customers." The security event, which was first

Ransomware Hackers Using New Way to Bypass MS Exchange ProxyNotShell Mitigations

Threat actors affiliated with a ransomware strain known as Play are leveraging a never-before-seen exploit chain that bypasses blocking rules for ProxyNotShell flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server to achieve remote code execution (RCE) through Outlook Web Access (OWA). "The new exploit method bypasses URL rewrite mitigations for the Autodiscover endpoint," CrowdStrike researchers Brian Pitchford,

Microsoft Details Gatekeeper Bypass Vulnerability in Apple macOS Systems

Microsoft has disclosed details of a now-patched security flaw in Apple macOS that could be exploited by an attacker to get around security protections imposed to prevent the execution of malicious applications. The shortcoming, dubbed Achilles (CVE-2022-42821, CVSS score: 5.5), was addressed by the iPhone maker in macOS Ventura 13, Monterey 12.6.2, and Big Sur 11.7.2, describing it as a logic

Cybercrime (and Security) Predictions for 2023

Threat actors continue to adapt to the latest technologies, practices, and even data privacy laws—and it's up to organizations to stay one step ahead by implementing strong cybersecurity measures and programs.  Here's a look at how cybercrime will evolve in 2023 and what you can do to secure and protect your organization in the year ahead.  Increase in digital supply chain attacks  With the

GitHub Announces Free Secret Scanning for All Public Repositories

GitHub on Thursday said it is making available its secret scanning service to all public repositories on the code hosting platform for free. "Secret scanning alerts notify you directly about leaked secrets in your code," the company said, adding it's expected to complete the rollout by the end of January 2023.  Secret scanning is designed to examine repositories for access tokens, private keys,

Goodbye SHA-1: NIST Retires 27-Year-Old Widely Used Cryptographic Algorithm

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency within the Department of Commerce, announced Thursday that it's formally retiring the SHA-1 cryptographic algorithm. SHA-1, short for Secure Hash Algorithm 1, is a 27-year-old hash function used in cryptography and has since been deemed broken owing to the risk of collision attacks. While hashes are designed to be

New GoTrim Botnet Attempting to Break into WordPress Sites' Admin Accounts

A new Go-based botnet has been spotted scanning and brute-forcing self-hosted websites using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to seize control of targeted systems. "This new brute forcer is part of a new campaign we have named GoTrim because it was written in Go and uses ':::trim:::' to split data communicated to and from the C2 server," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researchers Eduardo

Why PCI DSS 4.0 Should Be on Your Radar in 2023

Protecting customer data is critical for any business accepting online payment information. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), created by leading credit card companies, establishes best practices for protecting consumers' information. By adhering to these standards, businesses can ensure that their customer's personal and financial information is secure.  The PCI DSS

New Actively Exploited Zero-Day Vulnerability Discovered in Apple Products

Apple on Tuesday rolled out security updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and Safari web browser to address a new zero-day vulnerability that could result in the execution of malicious code. Tracked as CVE-2022-42856, the issue has been described by the tech giant as a type confusion issue in the WebKit browser engine that could be triggered when processing specially crafted content, leading to

Cisco Warns of High-Severity Unpatched Flaw Affecting IP Phones Firmware

Cisco has released a new security advisory warning of a high-severity flaw affecting IP Phone 7800 and 8800 Series firmware that could be potentially exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to cause remote code execution or a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. The networking equipment major said it's working on a patch to address the vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2022-20968 (CVSS score

COVID-bit: New COVert Channel to Exfiltrate Data from Air-Gapped Computers

An unconventional data exfiltration method leverages a previously undocumented covert channel to leak sensitive information from air-gapped systems. "The information emanates from the air-gapped computer over the air to a distance of 2 m and more and can be picked up by a nearby insider or spy with a mobile phone or laptop," Dr. Mordechai Guri, the head of R&D in the Cyber Security Research