AVRecon Botnet Leveraging Compromised Routers to Fuel Illegal Proxy Service

More details have emerged about a botnet called AVRecon, which has been observed making use of compromised small office/home office (SOHO) routers as part of a multi-year campaign active since at least May 2021. AVRecon was first disclosed by Lumen Black Lotus Labs earlier this month as malware capable of executing additional commands and stealing victim's bandwidth for what appears to be an

BlueBravo Deploys GraphicalProton Backdoor Against European Diplomatic Entities

The Russian nation-state actor known as BlueBravo has been observed targeting diplomatic entities throughout Eastern Europe with the goal of delivering a new backdoor called GraphicalProton, exemplifying the continuous evolution of the threat. The phishing campaign is characterized by the use of legitimate internet services (LIS) for command-and-control (C2) obfuscation, Recorded Future said in

Rust-based Realst Infostealer Targeting Apple macOS Users' Cryptocurrency Wallets

A new malware family called Realst has become the latest to target Apple macOS systems, with a third of the samples already designed to infect macOS 14 Sonoma, the upcoming major release of the operating system. Written in the Rust programming language, the malware is distributed in the form of bogus blockchain games and is capable of "emptying crypto wallets and stealing stored password and

Casbaneiro Banking Malware Goes Under the Radar with UAC Bypass Technique

The financially motivated threat actors behind the Casbaneiro banking malware family have been observed making use of a User Account Control (UAC) bypass technique to gain full administrative privileges on a machine, a sign that the threat actor is evolving their tactics to avoid detection and execute malicious code on compromised assets. "They are still heavily focused on Latin American

Turla's New DeliveryCheck Backdoor Breaches Ukrainian Defense Sector

The defense sector in Ukraine and Eastern Europe has been targeted by a novel .NET-based backdoor called DeliveryCheck (aka CAPIBAR or GAMEDAY) that's capable of delivering next-stage payloads. The Microsoft threat intelligence team, in collaboration with the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA), attributed the attacks to a Russian nation-state actor known as Turla, which is

Adobe Rolls Out New Patches for Actively Exploited ColdFusion Vulnerability

Adobe has released a fresh round of updates to address an incomplete fix for a recently disclosed ColdFusion flaw that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The critical shortcoming, tracked as CVE-2023-38205 (CVSS score: 7.5), has been described as an instance of improper access control that could result in a security bypass. It impacts the following versions: ColdFusion 2023 (Update

VirusTotal Data Leak Exposes Some Registered Customers' Details

Data associated with a subset of registered customers of VirusTotal, including their names and email addresses, were exposed after an employee inadvertently uploaded the information to the malware scanning platform. The security incident, which comprises a database of 5,600 names in a 313KB file, was first disclosed by Der Spiegel and Der Standard yesterday. Launched in 2004, VirusTotal is a

Cybercriminals Exploiting WooCommerce Payments Plugin Flaw to Hijack Websites

Threat actors are actively exploiting a recently disclosed critical security flaw in the WooCommerce Payments WordPress plugin as part of a massive targeted campaign. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-28121 (CVSS score: 9.8), is a case of authentication bypass that enables unauthenticated attackers to impersonate arbitrary users and perform some actions as the impersonated user, including an

Malicious USB Drives Targetinging Global Targets with SOGU and SNOWYDRIVE Malware

Cyber attacks using infected USB infection drives as an initial access vector have witnessed a three-fold increase in the first half of 2023,  That's according to new findings from Mandiant, which detailed two such campaigns – SOGU and SNOWYDRIVE – targeting both public and private sector entities across the world. SOGU is the "most prevalent USB-based cyber espionage attack using USB flash

CERT-UA Uncovers Gamaredon's Rapid Data Exfiltration Tactics Following Initial Compromise

The Russia-linked threat actor known as Gamaredon has been observed conducting data exfiltration activities within an hour of the initial compromise. "As a vector of primary compromise, for the most part, emails and messages in messengers (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal) are used, in most cases, using previously compromised accounts," the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) said in

WormGPT: New AI Tool Allows Cybercriminals to Launch Sophisticated Cyber Attacks

With generative artificial intelligence (AI) becoming all the rage these days, it's perhaps not surprising that the technology has been repurposed by malicious actors to their own advantage, enabling avenues for accelerated cybercrime. According to findings from SlashNext, a new generative AI cybercrime tool called WormGPT has been advertised on underground forums as a way for adversaries to

Microsoft Warns of Widescale Credential Stealing Attacks by Russian Hackers

Microsoft has disclosed that it's detected a spike in credential-stealing attacks conducted by the Russian state-affiliated hacker group known as Midnight Blizzard. The intrusions, which make use of residential proxy services to obfuscate the source IP address of the attacks, target governments, IT service providers, NGOs, defense, and critical manufacturing sectors, the tech giant's threat

Researchers Discover New Sophisticated Toolkit Targeting Apple macOS Systems

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a set of malicious artifacts that they say is part of a sophisticated toolkit targeting Apple macOS systems. "As of now, these samples are still largely undetected and very little information is available about any of them," Bitdefender researchers Andrei Lapusneanu and Bogdan Botezatu said in a preliminary report published on Friday. The Romanian firm's

Adversary-in-the-Middle Attack Campaign Hits Dozens of Global Organizations

"Dozens" of organizations across the world have been targeted as part of a broad business email compromise (BEC) campaign that involved the use of adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) techniques to carry out the attacks. "Following a successful phishing attempt, the threat actor gained initial access to one of the victim employee's account and executed an 'adversary-in-the-middle' attack to bypass

Microsoft Uncovers Banking AitM Phishing and BEC Attacks Targeting Financial Giants

Banking and financial services organizations are the targets of a new multi-stage adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attack, Microsoft has revealed. "The attack originated from a compromised trusted vendor and transitioned into a series of AiTM attacks and follow-on BEC activity spanning multiple organizations," the tech giant disclosed in a Thursday

3 Challenges in Building a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) Program and How to Beat Them

If you're a cybersecurity professional, you're likely familiar with the sea of acronyms our industry is obsessed with. From CNAPP, to CWPP, to CIEM and all of the myriad others, there seems to be a new initialism born each day. In this article, we'll look at another trending acronym – CTEM, which stands for Continuous Threat Exposure Management – and the often-surprising challenges that come

Predator Android Spyware: Researchers Uncover New Data Theft Capabilities

Security researchers have detailed the inner workings of the commercial Android spyware called Predator, which is marketed by the Israeli company Intellexa (previously Cytrox). Predator was first documented by Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) in May 2022 as part of attacks leveraging five different zero-day flaws in the Chrome web browser and Android. The spyware, which is delivered by means

N. Korean Lazarus Group Targets Microsoft IIS Servers to Deploy Espionage Malware

The infamous Lazarus Group actor has been targeting vulnerable versions of Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) servers as an initial breach route to deploy malware on targeted systems. The findings come from the AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC), which detailed the advanced persistent threat's (APT) continued abuse of DLL side-loading techniques to run arbitrary payloads

U.S. Offers $10 Million Bounty for Capture of Notorious Russian Ransomware Operator

A Russian national has been charged and indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for launching ransomware attacks against "thousands of victims" in the country and across the world. Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev (aka Wazawaka, m1x, Boriselcin, and Uhodiransomwar), the 30-year-old individual in question, is alleged to be a "central figure" in the development and deployment of LockBit, Babuk,

Cyolo Product Overview: Secure Remote Access to All Environments

Operational technology (OT) cybersecurity is a challenging but critical aspect of protecting organizations' essential systems and resources. Cybercriminals no longer break into systems, but instead log in – making access security more complex and also more important to manage and control than ever before. In an effort to solve the access-related challenges facing OT and critical infrastructure

CopperStealer Malware Crew Resurfaces with New Rootkit and Phishing Kit Modules

The threat actors behind the CopperStealer malware resurfaced with two new campaigns in March and April 2023 that are designed to deliver two novel payloads dubbed CopperStealth and CopperPhish. Trend Micro is tracking the financially motivated group under the name Water Orthrus. The adversary is also assessed to be behind another campaign known as Scranos, which was detailed by Bitdefender in

Former Ubiquiti Employee Gets 6 Years in Jail for $2 Million Crypto Extortion Case

A former employee of Ubiquiti has been sentenced to six years in jail after he pleaded guilty to posing as an anonymous hacker and a whistleblower in an attempt to extort almost $2 million worth of cryptocurrency while working at the company. Nickolas Sharp, 37, was arrested in December 2021 for using his insider access as a senior developer to steal confidential data and sending an anonymous

Twitter Finally Rolling Out Encrypted Direct Messages — Starting with Verified Users

Twitter is officially beginning to roll out support for encrypted direct messages (DMs) on the platform, more than five months after its chief executive Elon Musk confirmed plans for the feature in November 2022. The "Phase 1" of the initiative will appear as separate conversations alongside existing direct messages on users' inboxes. Encrypted chats carry a lock icon badge to visually

Why Honeytokens Are the Future of Intrusion Detection

A few weeks ago, the 32nd edition of RSA, one of the world's largest cybersecurity conferences, wrapped up in San Francisco. Among the highlights, Kevin Mandia, CEO of Mandiant at Google Cloud, presented a retrospective on the state of cybersecurity. During his keynote, Mandia stated: "There are clear steps organizations can take beyond common safeguards and security tools to strengthen their

CERT-UA Warns of SmokeLoader and RoarBAT Malware Attacks Against Ukraine

An ongoing phishing campaign with invoice-themed lures is being used to distribute the SmokeLoader malware in the form of a polyglot file, according to the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA). The emails, per the agency, are sent using compromised accounts and come with a ZIP archive that, in reality, is a polyglot file containing a decoy document and a JavaScript file. The

CISA Issues Advisory on Critical RCE Affecting ME RTU Remote Terminal Units

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday released an Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisory about a critical flaw affecting ME RTU remote terminal units. The security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-2131, has received the highest severity rating of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system for its low attack complexity. "Successful exploitation of this

VMware Releases Critical Patches for Workstation and Fusion Software

VMware has released updates to resolve multiple security flaws impacting its Workstation and Fusion software, the most critical of which could allow a local attacker to achieve code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-20869 (CVSS score: 9.3), is described as a stack-based buffer-overflow vulnerability that resides in the functionality for sharing host Bluetooth devices with the

Russian Hackers Tomiris Targeting Central Asia for Intelligence Gathering

The Russian-speaking threat actor behind a backdoor known as Tomiris is primarily focused on gathering intelligence in Central Asia, fresh findings from Kaspersky reveal. "Tomiris's endgame consistently appears to be the regular theft of internal documents," security researchers Pierre Delcher and Ivan Kwiatkowski said in an analysis published today. "The threat actor targets government and

Lazarus X_TRADER Hack Impacts Critical Infrastructure Beyond 3CX Breach

Lazarus, the prolific North Korean hacking group behind the cascading supply chain attack targeting 3CX, also breached two critical infrastructure organizations in the power and energy sector and two other businesses involved in financial trading using the trojanized X_TRADER application. The new findings, which come courtesy of Symantec's Threat Hunter Team, confirm earlier suspicions that the

NSO Group Used 3 Zero-Click iPhone Exploits Against Human Rights Defenders

Israeli spyware maker NSO Group deployed at least three novel "zero-click" exploits against iPhones in 2022 to infiltrate defenses erected by Apple and deploy Pegasus, according to the latest findings from Citizen Lab. "NSO Group customers widely deployed at least three iOS 15 and iOS 16 zero-click exploit chains against civil society targets around the world," the interdisciplinary laboratory

Google TAG Warns of Russian Hackers Conducting Phishing Attacks in Ukraine

Elite hackers associated with Russia's military intelligence service have been linked to large-volume phishing campaigns aimed at hundreds of users in Ukraine to extract intelligence and influence public discourse related to the war. Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which is monitoring the activities of the actor under the name FROZENLAKE, said the attacks continue the "group's 2022 focus

Russia-Linked Hackers Launches Espionage Attacks on Foreign Diplomatic Entities

The Russia-linked APT29 (aka Cozy Bear) threat actor has been attributed to an ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting foreign ministries and diplomatic entities located in NATO member states, the European Union, and Africa. According to Poland's Military Counterintelligence Service and the CERT Polska team, the observed activity shares tactical overlaps with a cluster tracked by Microsoft as

Lazarus Hacker Group Evolves Tactics, Tools, and Targets in DeathNote Campaign

The North Korean threat actor known as the Lazarus Group has been observed shifting its focus and rapidly evolving its tools and tactics as part of a long-running campaign called DeathNote. While the nation-state adversary is known for persistently singling out the cryptocurrency sector, recent attacks have also targeted automotive, academic, and defense sectors in Eastern Europe and other parts

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

CISA Warns of Critical ICS Flaws in Hitachi, mySCADA, ICL, and Nexx Products

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published eight Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories warning of critical flaws affecting products from Hitachi Energy, mySCADA Technologies, Industrial Control Links, and Nexx. Topping the list is CVE-2022-3682 (CVSS score: 9.9), impacting Hitachi Energy's MicroSCADA System Data Manager SDM600 that could allow an

New Rilide Malware Targeting Chromium-Based Browsers to Steal Cryptocurrency

Chromium-based web browsers are the target of a new malware called Rilide that masquerades itself as a seemingly legitimate extension to harvest sensitive data and siphon cryptocurrency. "Rilide malware is disguised as a legitimate Google Drive extension and enables threat actors to carry out a broad spectrum of malicious activities, including monitoring browsing history, taking screenshots, and

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

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

Lazarus Group Exploits Zero-Day Vulnerability to Hack South Korean Financial Entity

The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group has been observed weaponizing flaws in an undisclosed software to breach a financial business entity in South Korea twice within a span of a year. While the first attack in May 2022 entailed the use of a vulnerable version of a certificate software that's widely used by public institutions and universities, the re-infiltration in October 2022 involved the

New Flaws in TPM 2.0 Library Pose Threat to Billions of IoT and Enterprise Devices

A pair of serious security defects has been disclosed in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 reference library specification that could potentially lead to information disclosure or privilege escalation. One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-1017, concerns an out-of-bounds write, while the other, CVE-2023-1018, is described as an out-of-bounds read. Credited with discovering and reporting the

Lazarus Group Likely Using New WinorDLL64 Backdoor to Exfiltrate Sensitive Data

A new backdoor associated with a malware downloader named Wslink has been discovered, with the tool likely used by the notorious North Korea-aligned Lazarus Group, new findings reveal. The payload, dubbed WinorDLL64 by ESET, is a fully-featured implant that can exfiltrate, overwrite, and delete files; execute PowerShell commands; and obtain comprehensive information about the underlying machine.

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

Norway Seizes $5.84 Million in Cryptocurrency Stolen by Lazarus Hackers

Norwegian police agency Økokrim has announced the seizure of 60 million NOK (about $5.84 million) worth of cryptocurrency stolen by the Lazarus Group in March 2022 following the Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge hack. "This case shows that we also have a great capacity to follow the money on the blockchain, even if the criminals use advanced methods," the Oslo-based crime-fighting unit said in a

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

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

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

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

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

New Russian-Backed Gamaredon's Spyware Variants Targeting Ukrainian Authorities

The State Cyber Protection Centre (SCPC) of Ukraine has called out the Russian state-sponsored threat actor known as Gamaredon for its targeted cyber attacks on public authorities and critical information infrastructure in the country. The advanced persistent threat, also known as Actinium, Armageddon, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, Trident Ursa, and UAC-0010, has a track record of 

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)

Twitter Denies Hacking Claims, Assures Leaked User Data Not from its System

Twitter on Wednesday said that its investigation found "no evidence" that users' data sold online was obtained by exploiting any security vulnerabilities in its systems. "Based on information and intel analyzed to investigate the issue, there is no evidence that the data being sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems," the company said in a statement. "The data

Russian Turla Hackers Hijack Decade-Old Malware Infrastructure to Deploy New Backdoors

The Russian cyberespionage group known as Turla has been observed piggybacking on attack infrastructure used by a decade-old malware to deliver its own reconnaissance and backdoor tools to targets in Ukraine. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the operation under the uncategorized cluster moniker UNC4210, said the hijacked servers correspond to a variant of a commodity malware called 

WhatsApp Introduces Proxy Support to Help Users Bypass Internet Censorship

Popular instant messaging service WhatsApp has launched support for proxy servers in the latest version of its Android and iOS apps, letting users circumvent government-imposed censorship and internet shutdowns. "Choosing a proxy enables you to connect to WhatsApp through servers set up by volunteers and organizations around the world dedicated to helping people communicate freely," the

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

BlueNoroff APT Hackers Using New Ways to Bypass Windows MotW Protection

BlueNoroff, a subcluster of the notorious Lazarus Group, has been observed adopting new techniques into its playbook that enable it to bypass Windows Mark of the Web (MotW) protections. This includes the use of optical disk image (.ISO extension) and virtual hard disk (.VHD extension) file formats as part of a novel infection chain, Kaspersky disclosed in a report published today. "BlueNoroff

Ukraine's DELTA Military System Users Under Attack from Info Stealing Malware

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) this week disclosed that users of the Delta situational awareness program received phishing emails from a compromised email account belonging to the Ministry of Defense. The attacks, which have been attributed to a threat cluster dubbed UAC-0142, aimed to infect systems with two pieces of data-stealing malware referred to as FateGrab and

Russian Hackers Targeted Petroleum Refinery in NATO Country During Ukraine War

The Russia-linked Gamaredon group attempted to unsuccessfully break into a large petroleum refining company within a NATO member state earlier this year amid the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. The attack, which took place on August 30, 2022, is just one of multiple intrusions orchestrated by the advanced persistent threat (APT) that's attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).

New Agenda Ransomware Variant, Written in Rust, Aiming at Critical Infrastructure

A Rust variant of a ransomware strain known as Agenda has been observed in the wild, making it the latest malware to adopt the cross-platform programming language after BlackCat, Hive, Luna, and RansomExx. Agenda, attributed to an operator named Qilin, is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group that has been linked to a spate of attacks primarily targeting manufacturing and IT industries across