Bl00dy Ransomware Gang Strikes Education Sector with Critical PaperCut Vulnerability

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have warned of attacks carried out by a threat actor known as the Bl00dy Ransomware Gang that attempt to exploit vulnerable PaperCut servers against the education facilities sector in the country. The attacks took place in early May 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a

Microsoft Warns of State-Sponsored Attacks Exploiting Critical PaperCut Vulnerability

Iranian nation-state groups have now joined financially motivated actors in actively exploiting a critical flaw in PaperCut print management software, Microsoft disclosed over the weekend. The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed both Mango Sandstorm (Mercury) and Mint Sandstorm (Phosphorus) weaponizing CVE-2023-27350 in their operations to achieve initial access. "This

Researchers Uncover New Exploit for PaperCut Vulnerability That Can Bypass Detection

Cybersecurity researchers have found a way to exploit a recently disclosed critical flaw in PaperCut servers in a manner that bypasses all current detections. Tracked as CVE-2023-27350 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue affects PaperCut MF and NG installations that could be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. While the flaw was patched by the

Operation SpecTor: $53.4 Million Seized, 288 Vendors Arrested in Dark Web Drug Bust

An international law enforcement operation has resulted in the arrest of 288 vendors who are believed to be involved in drug trafficking on the dark web, adding to a long list of criminal enterprises that have been shuttered in recent years. The effort, codenamed Operation SpecTor, also saw the authorities confiscating more than $53.4 million in cash and virtual currencies, 850 kg of drugs, and

New All-in-One "EvilExtractor" Stealer for Windows Systems Surfaces on the Dark Web

A new "all-in-one" stealer malware named EvilExtractor (also spelled Evil Extractor) is being marketed for sale for other threat actors to steal data and files from Windows systems. "It includes several modules that all work via an FTP service," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin said. "It also contains environment checking and Anti-VM functions. Its primary purpose seems to be to

Hackers Flood NPM with Bogus Packages Causing a DoS Attack

Threat actors flooded the npm open source package repository for Node.js with bogus packages that briefly even resulted in a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. "The threat actors create malicious websites and publish empty packages with links to those malicious websites, taking advantage of open-source ecosystems' good reputation on search engines," Checkmarx's Jossef Harush Kadouri said in a

Are Source Code Leaks the New Threat Software vendors Should Care About?

Less than a month ago, Twitter indirectly acknowledged that some of its source code had been leaked on the code-sharing platform GitHub by sending a copyright infringement notice to take down the incriminated repository. The latter is now inaccessible, but according to the media, it was accessible to the public for several months. A user going by the name FreeSpeechEnthousiast committed

FBI Cracks Down on Genesis Market: 119 Arrested in Cybercrime Operation

A joint international law enforcement operation has dismantled Genesis Market, an illegal online marketplace that specialized in the sale of stolen credentials associated with email, bank accounts, and social media platforms. Coinciding with the infrastructure seizure, the major crackdown, which involved authorities from 17 countries, culminated in 119 arrests and 208 property searches in 13

Hackers Using Self-Extracting Archives Exploit for Stealthy Backdoor Attacks

An unknown threat actor used a malicious self-extracting archive (SFX) file in an attempt to establish persistent backdoor access to a victim's environment, new findings from CrowdStrike show. SFX files are capable of extracting the data contained within them without the need for dedicated software to display the file contents. It achieves this by including a decompressor stub, a piece of code

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

Core Members of DoppelPaymer Ransomware Gang Targeted in Germany and Ukraine

Law enforcement authorities from Germany and Ukraine have targeted suspected core members of a cybercrime group that has been behind large-scale attacks using DoppelPaymer ransomware. The operation, which took place on February 28, 2023, was carried out with support from the Dutch National Police (Politie) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to Europol. This encompassed

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

Attackers Flood NPM Repository with Over 15,000 Spam Packages Containing Phishing Links

In what's a continuing assault on the open source ecosystem, over 15,000 spam packages have flooded the npm repository in an attempt to distribute phishing links. "The packages were created using automated processes, with project descriptions and auto-generated names that closely resembled one another," Checkmarx researcher Yehuda Gelb said in a Tuesday report. "The attackers referred to retail

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

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

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. <!-

Malware Attack on CircleCI Engineer's Laptop Leads to Recent Security Incident

DevOps platform CircleCI on Friday disclosed that unidentified threat actors compromised an employee's laptop and leveraged malware to steal their two-factor authentication-backed credentials to breach the company's systems and data last month. The CI/CD service CircleCI said the "sophisticated attack" took place on December 16, 2022, and that the malware went undetected by its antivirus

Cacti Servers Under Attack as Majority Fail to Patch Critical Vulnerability

A majority of internet-exposed Cacti servers have not been patched against a recently patched critical security vulnerability that has come under active exploitation in the wild. That's according to attack surface management platform Censys, which found only 26 out of a total of 6,427 servers to be running a patched version of Cacti (1.2.23 and 1.3.0). The issue in question relates to CVE-2022-

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

CircleCI Urges Customers to Rotate Secrets Following Security Incident

DevOps platform CircleCI on Wednesday urged its customers to rotate all their secrets following an unspecified security incident. The company said an investigation is currently ongoing, but emphasized that "there are no unauthorized actors active in our systems." Additional details are expected to be shared in the coming days. "Immediately rotate any and all secrets stored in CircleCI,"

Enforcement vs. Enrollment-based Security: How to Balance Security and Employee Trust

Challenges with an enforcement-based approach An enforcement-based approach to security begins with a security policy backed by security controls, often heavy-handed and designed to prevent employees from engaging in risky behavior or inadvertently expanding the potential attack surface of an organization.  Most organizations exclusively use enforcement-based security controls, usually carried

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

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,

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

Google Launches OSV-Scanner Tool to Identify Open Source Vulnerabilities

Google on Tuesday announced the open source availability of OSV-Scanner, a scanner that aims to offer easy access to vulnerability information about various projects. The Go-based tool, powered by the Open Source Vulnerabilities (OSV) database, is designed to connect "a project's list of dependencies with the vulnerabilities that affect them," Google software engineer Rex Pan in a post shared

Vice Society Ransomware Attackers Targeted Dozens of Schools in 2022

The Vice Society cybercrime group has disproportionately targeted educational institutions, accounting for 33 victims in 2022 and surpassing other ransomware families like LockBit, BlackCat, BianLian, and Hive. Other prominent industry verticals targeted include healthcare, governments, manufacturing, retail, and legal services, according to an analysis of leak site data by Palo Alto Networks

Open Source Ransomware Toolkit Cryptonite Turns Into Accidental Wiper Malware

A version of an open source ransomware toolkit called Cryptonite has been observed in the wild with wiper capabilities due to its "weak architecture and programming." Cryptonite, unlike other ransomware strains, is not available for sale on the cybercriminal underground, and was instead offered for free by an actor named CYBERDEVILZ until recently through a GitHub repository. The source code and

What the CISA Reporting Rule Means for Your IT Security Protocol

The new Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA) requires CISA to create rules regarding cyber incident reporting by critical infrastructure organizations. The RFI and hearings precede a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that CISA must publish sooner than 24 months from the enactment of CIRCIA, which the President signed into law in March. The sessions and

Interpol Seized $130 Million from Cybercriminals in Global "HAECHI-III" Crackdown Operation

Interpol on Thursday announced the seizure of $130 million worth of virtual assets in connection with a global crackdown on cyber-enabled financial crimes and money laundering. The international police operation, dubbed HAECHI-III, transpired between June 28 and November 23, 2022, resulting in the arrests of 975 individuals and the closure of more than 1,600 cases. This comprised two fugitives

Top Cyber Threats Facing E-Commerce Sites This Holiday Season

Delivering a superior customer experience is essential for any e-commerce business. For those companies, there's a lot at stake this holiday season. According to Digital Commerce 360, nearly $1.00 of every $4.00 spent on retail purchases during the 2022 holiday season will be spent online, resulting in $224 billion in e-commerce sales. To ensure your e-commerce site is ready for the holiday rush

Researchers Warn of Cyber Criminals Using Go-based Aurora Stealer Malware

A nascent Go-based malware known as Aurora Stealer is being increasingly deployed as part of multiple campaigns designed to steal sensitive information from compromised hosts. "These infection chains leveraged phishing pages impersonating download pages of legitimate software, including cryptocurrency wallets or remote access tools, and the 911 method making use of YouTube videos and SEO-poised

Vice Society Hackers Are Behind Several Ransomware Attacks Against Education Sector

A cybercrime group known as Vice Society has been linked to multiple ransomware strains in its malicious campaigns aimed at the education, government, and retail sectors. The Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence team, which is tracking the threat cluster under the moniker DEV-0832, said the group avoids deploying ransomware in some cases and rather likely carries out extortion using

Intel Confirms Leak of Alder Lake BIOS Source Code

Chipmaker Intel has confirmed that proprietary source code related to its Alder Lake CPUs has been leaked, following its release by an unknown third-party on 4chan and GitHub last week. The published content contains Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) code for Alder Lake, the company's 12th generation processors that was originally launched in November 2021. In a statement shared with

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

Ransomware Attackers Abuse Genshin Impact Anti-Cheat System to Disable Antivirus

A vulnerable anti-cheat driver for the Genshin Impact video game has been leveraged by a cybercrime actor to disable antivirus programs to facilitate the deployment of ransomware, according to findings from Trend Micro. The ransomware infection, which was triggered in the last week of July 2022, banked on the fact that the driver in question ("mhyprot2.sys") is signed with a valid certificate,

Microsoft Uncovers Austrian Company Exploiting Windows and Adobe Zero-Day Exploits

A cyber mercenary that "ostensibly sells general security and information analysis services to commercial customers" used several Windows and Adobe zero-day exploits in limited and highly-targeted attacks against European and Central American entities. The company, which Microsoft describes as a private-sector offensive actor (PSOA), is an Austria-based outfit called DSIRF that's linked to the

Microsoft Adds Default Protection Against RDP Brute-Force Attacks in Windows 11

Microsoft is now taking steps to prevent Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) brute-force attacks as part of the latest builds for the Windows 11 operating system in an attempt to raise the security baseline to meet the evolving threat landscape. To that end, the default policy for Windows 11 builds – particularly, Insider Preview builds 22528.1000 and newer – will automatically lock accounts for 10