Tornado Cash Founders Charged in Billion-Dollar Crypto Laundering Scandal

The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) on Wednesday unsealed an indictment against two founders of the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer service, charging them with laundering more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds. Both the individuals, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and

North Korean Affiliates Suspected in $40M Cryptocurrency Heist, FBI Warns

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Tuesday warned that threat actors affiliated with North Korea may attempt to cash out stolen cryptocurrency worth more than $40 million. The law enforcement agency attributed the blockchain activity to an adversary the U.S. government tracks as TraderTraitor, which is also known by the name Jade Sleet. An investigation undertaken by the FBI found

Meta Set to Enable Default End-to-End Encryption on Messenger by Year End

Meta has once again reaffirmed its plans to roll out support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default for one-to-one friends and family chats on Messenger by the end of the year. As part of that effort, the social media giant said it's upgrading "millions more people's chats" effective August 22, 2023, exactly seven months after it started gradually expanding the feature to more users in

Agile Approach to Mass Cloud Credential Harvesting and Crypto Mining Sprints Ahead

Developers are not the only people who have adopted the agile methodology for their development processes. From 2023-06-15 to 2023-07-11, Permiso Security’s p0 Labs team identified and tracked an attacker developing and deploying eight (8) incremental iterations of their credential harvesting malware while continuing to develop infrastructure for an upcoming (spoiler: now launched) campaign

Thousands of Android Malware Apps Using Stealthy APK Compression to Evade Detection

Threat actors are using Android Package (APK) files with unknown or unsupported compression methods to elude malware analysis. That's according to findings from Zimperium, which found 3,300 artifacts leveraging such compression algorithms in the wild. 71 of the identified samples can be loaded on the operating system without any problems. There is no evidence that the apps were available on the

What's the State of Credential theft in 2023?

At a little overt halfway through 2023, credential theft is still a major thorn in the side of IT teams. The heart of the problem is the value of data to cybercriminals and the evolution of the techniques they use to get hold of it. The 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) revealed that 83% of breaches involved external actors, with almost all attacks being financially motivated

Ongoing Xurum Attacks on E-commerce Sites Exploiting Critical Magento 2 Vulnerability

E-commerce sites using Adobe's Magento 2 software are the target of an ongoing campaign that has been active since at least January 2023. The attacks, dubbed Xurum by Akamai, leverage a now-patched critical security flaw (CVE-2022-24086, CVSS score: 9.8) in Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source that, if successfully exploited, could lead to arbitrary code execution. "The attacker seems to be

New Statc Stealer Malware Emerges: Your Sensitive Data at Risk

A new information malware strain called Statc Stealer has been found infecting devices running Microsoft Windows to siphon sensitive personal and payment information. "Statc Stealer exhibits a broad range of stealing capabilities, making it a significant threat," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Shivam Sharma and Amandeep Kumar said in a technical report published this week. "It can steal

New Android 14 Security Feature: IT Admins Can Now Disable 2G Networks

Google has introduced a new security feature in Android 14 that allows IT administrators to disable support for 2G cellular networks in their managed device fleet. The search giant said it's introducing a second user setting to turn off support, at the model level, for null-ciphered cellular connections. "The Android Security Model assumes that all networks are hostile to keep users safe from

Understanding Active Directory Attack Paths to Improve Security

Introduced in 1999, Microsoft Active Directory is the default identity and access management service in Windows networks, responsible for assigning and enforcing security policies for all network endpoints. With it, users can access various resources across networks. As things tend to do, times, they are a'changin' – and a few years back, Microsoft introduced Azure Active Directory, the

FBI Alert: Crypto Scammers are Masquerading as NFT Developers

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning about cyber crooks masquerading as legitimate non-fungible token (NFT) developers to steal cryptocurrency and other digital assets from unsuspecting users. In these fraudulent schemes, criminals either obtain direct access to NFT developer social media accounts or create look-alike accounts to promote "exclusive" new NFT releases, often

NYC Couple Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering in $3.6 Billion Bitfinex Hack

A married couple from New York City has pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in connection with the 2016 hack of cryptocurrency stock exchange Bitfinex, resulting in the theft of about 120,000 bitcoin. The development comes more than a year after Ilya Lichtenstein, 35, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 33, were arrested in February 2022, following the seizure of roughly 95,000 of the stolen

Malicious npm Packages Found Exfiltrating Sensitive Data from Developers

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new bunch of malicious packages on the npm package registry that are designed to exfiltrate sensitive developer information. Software supply chain firm Phylum, which first identified the "test" packages on July 31, 2023, said they "demonstrated increasing functionality and refinement," hours after which they were removed and re-uploaded under different

Malicious Apps Use Sneaky Versioning Technique to Bypass Google Play Store Scanners

Threat actors are leveraging a technique called versioning to evade Google Play Store's malware detections and target Android users. "Campaigns using versioning commonly target users' credentials, data, and finances," Google Cybersecurity Action Team (GCAT) said in its August 2023 Threat Horizons Report shared with The Hacker News. While versioning is not a new phenomenon, it's sneaky and hard

Phishers Exploit Salesforce's Email Services Zero-Day in Targeted Facebook Campaign

A sophisticated Facebook phishing campaign has been observed exploiting a zero-day flaw in Salesforce's email services, allowing threat actors to craft targeted phishing messages using the company's domain and infrastructure. "Those phishing campaigns cleverly evade conventional detection methods by chaining the Salesforce vulnerability and legacy quirks in Facebook's Web Games platform,"

Iranian Company Cloudzy Accused of Aiding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Hackers

Services offered by an obscure Iranian company known as Cloudzy are being leveraged by multiple threat actors, including cybercrime groups and nation-state crews. "Although Cloudzy is incorporated in the United States, it almost certainly operates out of Tehran, Iran – in possible violation of U.S. sanctions – under the direction of someone going by the name Hassan Nozari," Halcyon said in a new

New P2PInfect Worm Targets Redis Servers with Undocumented Breach Methods

The P2PInfect peer-to-peer (P2) worm has been observed employing previously undocumented initial access methods to breach susceptible Redis servers and rope them into a botnet. "The malware compromises exposed instances of the Redis data store by exploiting the replication feature," Cado Security researchers Nate Bill and Matt Muir said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "A common attack

IcedID Malware Adapts and Expands Threat with Updated BackConnect Module

The threat actors linked to the malware loader known as IcedID have made updates to the BackConnect (BC) module that's used for post-compromise activity on hacked systems, new findings from Team Cymru reveal. IcedID, also called BokBot, is a strain of malware similar to Emotet and QakBot that started off as a banking trojan in 2017, before switching to the role of an initial access facilitator

Hackers Target Apache Tomcat Servers for Mirai Botnet and Crypto Mining

Misconfigured and poorly secured Apache Tomcat servers are being targeted as part of a new campaign designed to deliver the Mirai botnet malware and cryptocurrency miners. The findings come courtesy of Aqua, which detected more than 800 attacks against its Tomcat server honeypots over a two-year time period, with 96% of the attacks linked to the Mirai botnet. Of these attack attempts, 20% (or

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

Google Messages Getting Cross-Platform End-to-End Encryption with MLS Protocol

Google has announced that it intends to add support for Message Layer Security (MLS) to its Messages service for Android and open source an implementation of the specification. "Most modern consumer messaging platforms (including Google Messages) support end-to-end encryption, but users today are limited to communicating with contacts who use the same platform," Giles Hogben, privacy engineering

Apple Threatens to Pull iMessage and FaceTime from U.K. Amid Surveillance Demands

Apple has warned that it would rather stop offering iMessage and FaceTime services in the U.K. than bowing down to government pressure in response to new proposals that seek to expand digital surveillance powers available to state intelligence agencies. The development, first reported by BBC News, makes the iPhone maker the latest to join the chorus of voices protesting against forthcoming

Azure AD Token Forging Technique in Microsoft Attack Extends Beyond Outlook, Wiz Reports

The recent attack against Microsoft's email infrastructure by a Chinese nation-state actor referred to as Storm-0558 is said to have a broader scope than previously thought. According to cloud security company Wiz, the inactive Microsoft account (MSA) consumer signing key used to forge Azure Active Directory (Azure AD or AAD) tokens to gain illicit access to Outlook Web Access (OWA) and

North Korean State-Sponsored Hackers Suspected in JumpCloud Supply Chain Attack

An analysis of the indicators of compromise (IoCs) associated with the JumpCloud hack has uncovered evidence pointing to the involvement of North Korean state-sponsored groups, in a style that's reminiscent of the supply chain attack targeting 3CX. The findings come from SentinelOne, which mapped out the infrastructure pertaining to the intrusion to uncover underlying patterns. It's worth noting

A Few More Reasons Why RDP is Insecure (Surprise!)

If it seems like Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) has been around forever, it's because it has (at least compared to the many technologies that rise and fall within just a few years.) The initial version, known as "Remote Desktop Protocol 4.0," was released in 1996 as part of the Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition and allowed users to remotely access and control Windows-based computers over a

New P2PInfect Worm Targeting Redis Servers on Linux and Windows Systems

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new cloud targeting, peer-to-peer (P2P) worm called P2PInfect that targets vulnerable Redis instances for follow-on exploitation. "P2PInfect exploits Redis servers running on both Linux and Windows Operating Systems making it more scalable and potent than other worms," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers William Gamazo and Nathaniel Quist said. "This

Exploring the Dark Side: OSINT Tools and Techniques for Unmasking Dark Web Operations

On April 5, 2023, the FBI and Dutch National Police announced the takedown of Genesis Market, one of the largest dark web marketplaces. The operation, dubbed "Operation Cookie Monster," resulted in the arrest of 119 people and the seizure of over $1M in cryptocurrency. You can read the FBI's warrant here for details specific to this case. In light of these events, I'd like to discuss how OSINT

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

Microsoft Bug Allowed Hackers to Breach Over Two Dozen Organizations via Forged Azure AD Tokens

Microsoft on Friday said a validation error in its source code allowed for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tokens to be forged by a malicious actor known as Storm-0558 using a Microsoft account (MSA) consumer signing key to breach two dozen organizations. "Storm-0558 acquired an inactive MSA consumer signing key and used it to forge authentication tokens for Azure AD enterprise and MSA

TeamTNT's Silentbob Botnet Infecting 196 Hosts in Cloud Attack Campaign

As many as 196 hosts have been infected as part of an aggressive cloud campaign mounted by the TeamTNT group called Silentbob. "The botnet run by TeamTNT has set its sights on Docker and Kubernetes environments, Redis servers, Postgres databases, Hadoop clusters, Tomcat and Nginx servers, Weave Scope, SSH, and Jupyter applications," Aqua security researchers Ofek Itach and Assaf Morag said in a

Ransomware Extortion Skyrockets in 2023, Reaching $449.1 Million and Counting

Ransomware has emerged as the only cryptocurrency-based crime to grow in 2023, with cybercriminals extorting nearly $175.8 million more than they did a year ago, according to findings from Chainalysis. "Ransomware attackers are on pace for their second-biggest year ever, having extorted at least $449.1 million through June," the blockchain analytics firm said in a midyear crypto crime report

Python-Based PyLoose Fileless Attack Targets Cloud Workloads for Cryptocurrency Mining

A new fileless attack dubbed PyLoose has been observed striking cloud workloads with the goal of delivering a cryptocurrency miner, new findings from Wiz reveal. "The attack consists of Python code that loads an XMRig Miner directly into memory using memfd, a known Linux fileless technique," security researchers Avigayil Mechtinger, Oren Ofer, and Itamar Gilad said. "This is the first publicly

How to Apply MITRE ATT&CK to Your Organization

Discover all the ways MITRE ATT&CK can help you defend your organization. Build your security strategy and policies by making the most of this important framework. What is the MITRE ATT&CK Framework? MITRE ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) is a widely adopted framework and knowledge base that outlines and categorizes the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)

RomCom RAT Targeting NATO and Ukraine Support Groups

The threat actors behind the RomCom RAT have been suspected of phishing attacks targeting the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius as well as an identified organization supporting Ukraine abroad. The findings come from the BlackBerry Threat Research and Intelligence team, which found two malicious documents submitted from a Hungarian IP address on July 4, 2023. RomCom, also tracked under the names

Two Spyware Apps on Google Play with 1.5 Million Users Sending Data to China

Two file management apps on the Google Play Store have been discovered to be spyware, putting the privacy and security of up to 1.5 million Android users at risk. These apps engage in deceptive behaviour and secretly send sensitive user data to malicious servers in China. Pradeo, a leading mobile security company, has uncovered this alarming infiltration. The report shows that both spyware apps,

Cybersecurity Agencies Sound Alarm on Rising TrueBot Malware Attacks

Cybersecurity agencies have warned about the emergence of new variants of the TrueBot malware. This enhanced threat is now targeting companies in the U.S. and Canada with the intention of extracting confidential data from infiltrated systems. These sophisticated attacks exploit a critical vulnerability (CVE-2022-31199) in the widely used Netwrix Auditor server and its associated agents. This

Critical SQL Injection Flaws Expose Gentoo Soko to Remote Code Execution

Multiple SQL injection vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Gentoo Soko that could lead to remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable systems. "These SQL injections happened despite the use of an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) library and prepared statements," SonarSource researcher Thomas Chauchefoin said, adding they could result in RCE on Soko because of a "misconfiguration of the database.

New Ongoing Campaign Targets npm Ecosystem with Unique Execution Chain

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new ongoing campaign aimed at the npm ecosystem that leverages a unique execution chain to deliver an unknown payload to targeted systems. "The packages in question seem to be published in pairs, each pair working in unison to fetch additional resources which are subsequently decoded and/or executed," software supply chain security firm Phylum said in

Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchange Falls Victim to JokerSpy macOS Backdoor Attack

An unknown cryptocurrency exchange located in Japan was the target of a new attack earlier this month to deploy an Apple macOS backdoor called JokerSpy. Elastic Security Labs, which is monitoring the intrusion set under the name REF9134, said the attack led to the installation of Swiftbelt, a Swift-based enumeration tool inspired by an open-source utility called SeatBelt. JokerSky was first

Twitter Hacker Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for $120,000 Crypto Scam

A U.K. citizen who took part in the massive July 2020 hack of Twitter has been sentenced to five years in prison in the U.S. Joseph James O'Connor (aka PlugwalkJoe), 24, was awarded the sentence on Friday in the Southern District of New York, a little over a month after he pleaded guilty to the criminal schemes. He was arrested in Spain in July 2021. The infamous Twitter breach allowed the

Cybercrime Group 'Muddled Libra' Targets BPO Sector with Advanced Social Engineering

A threat actor known as Muddled Libra is targeting the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry with persistent attacks that leverage advanced social engineering ploys to gain initial access. "The attack style defining Muddled Libra appeared on the cybersecurity radar in late 2022 with the release of the 0ktapus phishing kit, which offered a prebuilt hosting framework and bundled templates,"

New Cryptocurrency Mining Campaign Targets Linux Systems and IoT Devices

Internet-facing Linux systems and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are being targeted as part of a new campaign designed to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. "The threat actors behind the attack use a backdoor that deploys a wide array of tools and components such as rootkits and an IRC bot to steal device resources for mining operations," Microsoft threat intelligence researcher Rotem Sde-Or said.

Critical 'nOAuth' Flaw in Microsoft Azure AD Enabled Complete Account Takeover

A security shortcoming in Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) Open Authorization (OAuth) process could have been exploited to achieve full account takeover, researchers said. California-based identity and access management service Descope, which discovered and reported the issue in April 2023, dubbed it nOAuth. "nOAuth is an authentication implementation flaw that can affect Microsoft Azure AD

Zyxel Releases Urgent Security Updates for Critical Vulnerability in NAS Devices

Zyxel has rolled out security updates to address a critical security flaw in its network-attached storage (NAS) devices that could result in the execution of arbitrary commands on affected systems. Tracked as CVE-2023-27992 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a pre-authentication command injection vulnerability. "The pre-authentication command injection vulnerability in some Zyxel

Over 100,000 Stolen ChatGPT Account Credentials Sold on Dark Web Marketplaces

Over 101,100 compromised OpenAI ChatGPT account credentials have found their way on illicit dark web marketplaces between June 2022 and May 2023, with India alone accounting for 12,632 stolen credentials. The credentials were discovered within information stealer logs made available for sale on the cybercrime underground, Group-IB said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The number of

Rogue Android Apps Target Pakistani Individuals in Sophisticated Espionage Campaign

Individuals in the Pakistan region have been targeted using two rogue Android apps available on the Google Play Store as part of a new targeted campaign. Cybersecurity firm Cyfirma attributed the campaign with moderate confidence to a threat actor known as DoNot Team, which is also tracked as APT-C-35 and Viceroy Tiger. The espionage activity involves duping Android smartphone owners into

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

State-Backed Hackers Employ Advanced Methods to Target Middle Eastern and African Governments

Governmental entities in the Middle East and Africa have been at the receiving end of sustained cyber-espionage attacks that leverage never-before-seen and rare credential theft and Exchange email exfiltration techniques. "The main goal of the attacks was to obtain highly confidential and sensitive information, specifically related to politicians, military activities, and ministries of foreign

Beware: New DoubleFinger Loader Targets Cryptocurrency Wallets with Stealer

A novel multi-stage loader called DoubleFinger has been observed delivering a cryptocurrency stealer dubbed GreetingGhoul in what's an advanced attack targeting users in Europe, the U.S., and Latin America. "DoubleFinger is deployed on the target machine, when the victim opens a malicious PIF attachment in an email message, ultimately executing the first of DoubleFinger's loader stages,"

Two Russian Nationals Charged for Masterminding Mt. Gox Crypto Exchange Hack

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged two Russian nationals in connection with masterminding the 2014 digital heist of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox. According to unsealed indictments released last week, Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Aleksandr Verner, 29, have been accused of conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoins stolen from September 2011 through at

Beware: 1,000+ Fake Cryptocurrency Sites Trap Users in Bogus Rewards Scheme

A previously undetected cryptocurrency scam has leveraged a constellation of over 1,000 fraudulent websites to ensnare users into a bogus rewards scheme since at least January 2021. "This massive campaign has likely resulted in thousands of people being scammed worldwide," Trend Micro researchers said in a report published last week, linking it to a Russian-speaking threat actor named "Impulse

New Malware Campaign Leveraging Satacom Downloader to Steal Cryptocurrency

A recent malware campaign has been found to leverage Satacom downloader as a conduit to deploy stealthy malware capable of siphoning cryptocurrency using a rogue extension for Chromium-based browsers. "The main purpose of the malware that is dropped by the Satacom downloader is to steal BTC from the victim's account by performing web injections into targeted cryptocurrency websites," Kaspersky

Malicious PyPI Packages Using Compiled Python Code to Bypass Detection

Researchers have discovered a novel attack on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that employs compiled Python code to sidestep detection by application security tools. "It may be the first supply chain attack to take advantage of the fact that Python bytecode (PYC) files can be directly executed," ReversingLabs analyst Karlo Zanki said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The package

Cybercriminals Targeting Apache NiFi Instances for Cryptocurrency Mining

A financially motivated threat actor is actively scouring the internet for unprotected Apache NiFi instances to covertly install a cryptocurrency miner and facilitate lateral movement. The findings come from the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC), which detected a spike in HTTP requests for “/nifi” on May 19, 2023. “Persistence is achieved via timed processors or entries to cron,” said Dr.

6 Steps to Effectively Threat Hunting: Safeguard Critical Assets and Fight Cybercrime

Finding threat actors before they find you is key to beefing up your cyber defenses. How to do that efficiently and effectively is no small task – but with a small investment of time, you can master threat hunting and save your organization millions of dollars. Consider this staggering statistic. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that cybercrime will take a $10.5 trillion toll on the global

AceCryptor: Cybercriminals' Powerful Weapon, Detected in 240K+ Attacks

A crypter (alternatively spelled cryptor) malware dubbed AceCryptor has been used to pack numerous strains of malware since 2016. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET said it identified over 240,000 detections of the crypter in its telemetry in 2021 and 2022. This amounts to more than 10,000 hits per month. Some of the prominent malware families contained within AceCryptor are SmokeLoader, RedLine

PyPI Implements Mandatory Two-Factor Authentication for Project Owners

The Python Package Index (PyPI) announced last week that every account that maintains a project on the official third-party software repository will be required to turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) by the end of the year. "Between now and the end of the year, PyPI will begin gating access to certain site functionality based on 2FA usage," PyPI administrator Donald Stufft said. "In addition

New Stealthy Bandit Stealer Targeting Web Browsers and Cryptocurrency Wallets

A new stealthy information stealer malware called Bandit Stealer has caught the attention of cybersecurity researchers for its ability to target numerous web browsers and cryptocurrency wallets.  "It has the potential to expand to other platforms as Bandit Stealer was developed using the Go programming language, possibly allowing cross-platform compatibility," Trend Micro said in a Friday report

Indonesian Cybercriminals Exploit AWS for Profitable Crypto Mining Operations

A financially motivated threat actor of Indonesian origin has been observed leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances to carry out illicit crypto mining operations. Cloud security company's Permiso P0 Labs, which first detected the group in November 2021, has assigned it the moniker GUI-vil (pronounced Goo-ee-vil). "The group displays a preference for Graphical

Dr. Active Directory vs. Mr. Exposed Attack Surface: Who'll Win This Fight?

Active Directory (AD) is among the oldest pieces of software still used in the production environment and can be found in most organizations today. This is despite the fact that its historical security gaps have never been amended. For example, because of its inability to apply any security measures beyond checking for a password and username match, AD (as well the resources it manages) is