Ransomware Attacks Double: Are Companies Prepared for 2024's Cyber Threats?

Ransomware attacks have only increased in sophistication and capabilities over the past year. From new evasion and anti-analysis techniques to stealthier variants coded in new languages, ransomware groups have adapted their tactics to effectively bypass common defense strategies.  Cyble, a renowned cyber threat intelligence company recognized for its research and findings, recently released its 

DarkGate Malware Spreading via Messaging Services Posing as PDF Files

A piece of malware known as DarkGate has been observed being spread via instant messaging platforms such as Skype and Microsoft Teams. In these attacks, the messaging apps are used to deliver a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) loader script that masquerades as a PDF document, which, when opened, triggers the download and execution of an AutoIt script designed to launch the malware. "It's

Microsoft Releases October 2023 Patches for 103 Flaws, Including 2 Active Exploits

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for October 2023, addressing a total of 103 flaws in its software, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 103 flaws, 13 are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. This is apart from 18 security vulnerabilities addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the second Tuesday of September. The two

Microsoft Warns of Nation-State Hackers Exploiting Critical Atlassian Confluence Vulnerability

Microsoft has linked the exploitation of a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server to a nation-state actor it tracks as Storm-0062 (aka DarkShadow or Oro0lxy). The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the vulnerability since September 14, 2023. "CVE-2023-22515 is a critical privilege escalation vulnerability in

HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Zero-Day Vulnerability Exploited to Launch Record DDoS Attacks

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloudflare, and Google on Tuesday said they took steps to mitigate record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that relied on a novel technique called HTTP/2 Rapid Reset. The layer 7 attacks were detected in late August 2023, the companies said in a coordinated disclosure. The cumulative susceptibility to this attack is being tracked as CVE-2023-44487,

Google Adopts Passkeys as Default Sign-in Method for All Users

Google on Tuesday announced the ability for all users to set up passkeys by default, five months after it rolled out support for the FIDO Alliance-backed passwordless standard for Google Accounts on all platforms. "This means the next time you sign in to your account, you'll start seeing prompts to create and use passkeys, simplifying your future sign-ins," Google's Sriram Karra and Christiaan

New Report: Child Sexual Abuse Content and Online Risks to Children on the Rise

Certain online risks to children are on the rise, according to a recent report from Thorn, a technology nonprofit whose mission is to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Research shared in the Emerging Online Trends in Child Sexual Abuse 2023 report, indicates that minors are increasingly taking and sharing sexual images of themselves. This activity may occur consensually or

libcue Library Flaw Opens GNOME Linux Systems Vulnerable to RCE Attacks

A new security flaw has been disclosed in the libcue library impacting GNOME Linux systems that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on affected hosts. Tracked as CVE-2023-43641 (CVSS score: 8.8), the issue is described as a case of memory corruption in libcue, a library designed for parsing cue sheet files. It impacts versions 2.2.1 and prior. libcue is incorporated into

Citrix Devices Under Attack: NetScaler Flaw Exploited to Capture User Credentials

A recently disclosed critical flaw in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway devices is being exploited by threat actors to conduct a credential harvesting campaign. IBM X-Force, which uncovered the activity last month, said adversaries exploited "CVE-2023-3519 to attack unpatched NetScaler Gateways to insert a malicious script into the HTML content of the authentication web page to capture user

Cybercriminals Using EvilProxy Phishing Kit to Target Senior Executives in U.S. Firms

Senior executives working in U.S.-based organizations are being targeted by a new phishing campaign that leverages a popular adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing toolkit named EvilProxy to conduct credential harvesting and account takeover attacks. Menlo Security said the activity started in July 2023, primarily singling out banking and financial services, insurance, property management and

High-Severity Flaws in ConnectedIO's 3G/4G Routers Raise Concerns for IoT Security

Multiple high-severity security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in ConnectedIO's ER2000 edge routers and the cloud-based management platform that could be exploited by malicious actors to execute malicious code and access sensitive data. "An attacker could have leveraged these flaws to fully compromise the cloud infrastructure, remotely execute code, and leak all customer and device

Security Patch for Two New Flaws in Curl Library Arriving on October 11

The maintainers of the Curl library have released an advisory warning of two security vulnerabilities that are expected to be addressed as part of an forthcoming update set for release on October 11, 2023. This includes a high-severity and a low-severity flaw tracked under the identifiers CVE-2023-38545 and CVE-2023-38546, respectively. Additional details about the issues and the exact version

Chinese Hackers Target Semiconductor Firms in East Asia with Cobalt Strike

Threat actors have been observed targeting semiconductor companies in East Asia with lures masquerading as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) that are designed to deliver Cobalt Strike beacons. The intrusion set, per EclecticIQ, leverages a backdoor called HyperBro, which is then used as a conduit to deploy the commercial attack simulation software and post-exploitation toolkit.

New OS Tool Tells You Who Has Access to What Data

Ensuring sensitive data remains confidential, protected from unauthorized access, and compliant with data privacy regulations is paramount. Data breaches result in financial and reputational damage but also lead to legal consequences. Therefore, robust data access security measures are essential to safeguard an organization’s assets, maintain customer trust, and meet regulatory requirements.  A

GitHub's Secret Scanning Feature Now Covers AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Slack

GitHub has announced an improvement to its secret scanning feature that extends validity checks to popular services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Slack. Validity checks, introduced by the Microsoft subsidiary earlier this year, alert users whether exposed tokens found by secret scanning are active, thereby allowing for effective remediation measures. It was first

Cisco Releases Urgent Patch to Fix Critical Flaw in Emergency Responder Systems

Cisco has released updates to address a critical security flaw impacting Emergency Responder that allows unauthenticated, remote attackers to sign into susceptible systems using hard-coded credentials. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-20101 (CVSS score: 9.8), is due to the presence of static user credentials for the root account that the company said is usually reserved for use during

CISA Warns of Active Exploitation of JetBrains and Windows Vulnerabilities

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added two security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog due to active exploitation, while removing five bugs from the list due to lack of adequate evidence. The vulnerabilities newly added are below - CVE-2023-42793 (CVSS score: 9.8) - JetBrains TeamCity Authentication Bypass Vulnerability CVE-

Apple Rolls Out Security Patches for Actively Exploited iOS Zero-Day Flaw

Apple on Wednesday rolled out security patches to address a new zero-day flaw in iOS and iPadOS that it said has come under active exploitation in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2023-42824, the kernel vulnerability could be abused by a local attacker to elevate their privileges. The iPhone maker said it addressed the problem with improved checks. "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have

Atlassian Confluence Hit by New Actively Exploited Zero-Day – Patch Now

Atlassian has released fixes to contain an actively exploited critical zero-day flaw impacting publicly accessible Confluence Data Center and Server instances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-22515, is remotely exploitable and allows external attackers to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and access Confluence servers. It does not impact Confluence versions prior to

Wing Disrupts the Market by Introducing Affordable SaaS Security

Today, mid-sized companies and their CISOs are struggling to handle the growing threat of SaaS security with limited manpower and tight budgets. Now, this may be changing. By focusing on the critical SaaS security needs of these companies, a new approach has emerged that can be launched for $1,500 a year. If the name Wing Security (Wing) rings a bell, it is probably because earlier this year,

Rogue npm Package Deploys Open-Source Rootkit in New Supply Chain Attack

A new deceptive package hidden within the npm package registry has been uncovered deploying an open-source rootkit called r77, marking the first time a rogue package has delivered rootkit functionality. The package in question is node-hide-console-windows, which mimics the legitimate npm package node-hide-console-window in what's an instance of a typosquatting campaign. It was downloaded 704

Looney Tunables: New Linux Flaw Enables Privilege Escalation on Major Distributions

A new Linux security vulnerability dubbed Looney Tunables has been discovered in the GNU C library's ld.so dynamic loader that, if successfully exploited, could lead to a local privilege escalation and allow a threat actor to gain root privileges. Tracked as CVE-2023-4911 (CVSS score: 7.8), the issue is a buffer overflow that resides in the dynamic loader's processing of the GLIBC_TUNABLES

Warning: PyTorch Models Vulnerable to Remote Code Execution via ShellTorch

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple critical security flaws in the TorchServe tool for serving and scaling PyTorch models that could be chained to achieve remote code execution on affected systems. Israel-based runtime application security company Oligo, which made the discovery, has coined the vulnerabilities ShellTorch. "These vulnerabilities [...] can lead to a full chain Remote

API Security Trends 2023 – Have Organizations Improved their Security Posture?

APIs, also known as application programming interfaces, serve as the backbone of modern software applications, enabling seamless communication and data exchange between different systems and platforms. They provide developers with an interface to interact with external services, allowing them to integrate various functionalities into their own applications. However, this increased reliance on

Protecting your IT infrastructure with Security Configuration Assessment (SCA)

Security Configuration Assessment (SCA) is critical to an organization's cybersecurity strategy. SCA aims to discover vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that malicious actors exploit to gain unauthorized access to systems and data. Regular security configuration assessments are essential in maintaining a secure and compliant environment, as this minimizes the risk of cyber attacks. The

Arm Issues Patch for Mali GPU Kernel Driver Vulnerability Amidst Ongoing Exploitation

Arm has released security patches to contain a security flaw in the Mali GPU Kernel Driver that has come under active exploitation in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2023-4211, the shortcoming impacts the following driver versions - Midgard GPU Kernel Driver: All versions from r12p0 - r32p0 Bifrost GPU Kernel Driver: All versions from r0p0 - r42p0 Valhall GPU Kernel Driver: All versions from r19p0 -

Essential Guide to Cybersecurity Compliance

SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, Cyber Essentials – all the security frameworks and certifications today are an acronym soup that can make even a compliance expert’s head spin. If you’re embarking on your compliance journey, read on to discover the differences between standards, which is best for your business, and how vulnerability management can aid compliance. What is cybersecurity compliance?

Xenomorph Banking Trojan: A New Variant Targeting 35+ U.S. Financial Institutions

An updated version of an Android banking trojan called Xenomorph has set its sights on more than 35 financial institutions in the U.S. The campaign, according to Dutch security firm ThreatFabric, leverages phishing web pages that are designed to entice victims into installing malicious Android apps that target a broader list of apps than its predecessors. Some of the other targeted prominent

Threat Report: The High Tech Industry Targeted the Most with 46% of NLX-Tagged Attack Traffic

How To Use This Report Enhance situational awareness of techniques used by threat actors Identify potential attacks targeting your industry Gain insights to help improve and accelerate your organization’s threat response Summary of Findings The Network Effect Threat Report offers insights based on unique data from Fastly’s Next-Gen WAF from Q2 2023 (April 1, 2023 to June 30, 2023). This report

Critical JetBrains TeamCity Flaw Could Expose Source Code and Build Pipelines to Attackers

A critical security vulnerability in the JetBrains TeamCity continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) software could be exploited by unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution on affected systems. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-42793, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 and has been addressed in TeamCity version 2023.05.4 following responsible disclosure on September 6,

Webinar — AI vs. AI: Harnessing AI Defenses Against AI-Powered Risks

Generative AI is a double-edged sword, if there ever was one. There is broad agreement that tools like ChatGPT are unleashing waves of productivity across the business, from IT, to customer experience, to engineering. That's on the one hand.  On the other end of this fencing match: risk. From IP leakage and data privacy risks to the empowering of cybercriminals with AI tools, generative AI

Are You Willing to Pay the High Cost of Compromised Credentials?

Weak password policies leave organizations vulnerable to attacks. But are the standard password complexity requirements enough to secure them? 83% of compromised passwords would satisfy the password complexity and length requirements of compliance standards. That’s because bad actors already have access to billions of stolen credentials that can be used to compromise additional accounts by

From Watering Hole to Spyware: EvilBamboo Targets Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Taiwanese

Tibetan, Uyghur, and Taiwanese individuals and organizations are the targets of a persistent campaign orchestrated by a threat actor codenamed EvilBamboo to gather sensitive information. "The attacker has created fake Tibetan websites, along with social media profiles, likely used to deploy browser-based exploits against targeted users," Volexity security researchers Callum Roxan, Paul

New Apple Zero-Days Exploited to Target Egyptian ex-MP with Predator Spyware

The three zero-day flaws addressed by Apple on September 21, 2023, were leveraged as part of an iPhone exploit chain in an attempt to deliver a spyware strain called Predator targeting former Egyptian member of parliament Ahmed Eltantawy between May and September 2023. "The targeting took place after Eltantawy publicly stated his plans to run for President in the 2024 Egyptian elections," the

How to Interpret the 2023 MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation Results

Thorough, independent tests are a vital resource for analyzing provider’s capabilities to guard against increasingly sophisticated threats to their organization. And perhaps no assessment is more widely trusted than the annual MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluation.  This testing is critical for evaluating vendors because it’s virtually impossible to evaluate cybersecurity vendors based on their own

High-Severity Flaws Uncovered in Atlassian Products and ISC BIND Server

Atlassian and the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) have disclosed several security flaws impacting their products that could be exploited to achieve denial-of-service (DoS) and remote code execution. The Australian software services provider said that the four high-severity flaws were fixed in new versions shipped last month. This includes - CVE-2022-25647 (CVSS score: 7.5) - A deserialization

Apple Rushes to Patch 3 New Zero-Day Flaws: iOS, macOS, Safari, and More Vulnerable

Apple has released yet another round of security patches to address three actively exploited zero-day flaws impacting iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and Safari, taking the total tally of zero-day bugs discovered in its software this year to 16. The list of security vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2023-41991 - A certificate validation issue in the Security framework that could allow a

Researchers Raise Red Flag on P2PInfect Malware with 600x Activity Surge

The peer-to-peer (P2) worm known as P2PInfect has witnessed a surge in activity since late August 2023, witnessing a 600x jump between September 12 and 19, 2023. "This increase in P2PInfect traffic has coincided with a growing number of variants seen in the wild, suggesting that the malware's developers are operating at an extremely high development cadence," Cado Security researcher Matt Muir

The Rise of the Malicious App

Security teams are familiar with threats emanating from third-party applications that employees add to improve their productivity. These apps are inherently designed to deliver functionality to users by connecting to a “hub” app, such as Salesforce, Google Workspace, or Microsoft 365. Security concerns center on the permission scopes that are granted to the third party apps, and the potential

Cyber Group 'Gold Melody' Selling Compromised Access to Ransomware Attackers

A financially motivated threat actor has been outed as an initial access broker (IAB) that sells access to compromised organizations for other adversaries to conduct follow-on attacks such as ransomware. SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) has dubbed the e-crime group Gold Melody, which is also known by the names Prophet Spider (CrowdStrike) and UNC961 (Mandiant). "This financially motivated

Beware: Fake Exploit for WinRAR Vulnerability on GitHub Infects Users with Venom RAT

A malicious actor released a fake proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a recently disclosed WinRAR vulnerability on GitHub with an aim to infect users who downloaded the code with Venom RAT malware. "The fake PoC meant to exploit this WinRAR vulnerability was based on a publicly available PoC script that exploited a SQL injection vulnerability in an application called GeoServer, which is tracked

Critical Security Flaws Exposed in Nagios XI Network Monitoring Software

Multiple security flaws have been disclosed in the Nagios XI network monitoring software that could result in privilege escalation and information disclosure. The four security vulnerabilities, tracked from CVE-2023-40931 through CVE-2023-40934, impact Nagios XI versions 5.11.1 and lower. Following responsible disclosure on August 4, 2023, They have been patched as of September 11, 2023, with

Do You Really Trust Your Web Application Supply Chain?

Well, you shouldn’t. It may already be hiding vulnerabilities. It's the modular nature of modern web applications that has made them so effective. They can call on dozens of third-party web components, JS frameworks, and open-source tools to deliver all the different functionalities that keep their customers happy, but this chain of dependencies is also what makes them so vulnerable. Many of

Fresh Wave of Malicious npm Packages Threaten Kubernetes Configs and SSH Keys

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a fresh batch of malicious packages in the npm package registry that are designed to exfiltrate Kubernetes configurations and SSH keys from compromised machines to a remote server. Sonatype said it has discovered 14 different npm packages so far: @am-fe/hooks, @am-fe/provider, @am-fe/request, @am-fe/utils, @am-fe/watermark, @am-fe/watermark-core, @

Sophisticated Phishing Campaign Targeting Chinese Users with ValleyRAT and Gh0st RAT

Chinese-language speakers have been increasingly targeted as part of multiple email phishing campaigns that aim to distribute various malware families such as Sainbox RAT, Purple Fox, and a new trojan called ValleyRAT. "Campaigns include Chinese-language lures and malware typically associated with Chinese cybercrime activity," enterprise security firm Proofpoint said in a report shared with The

GitLab Releases Urgent Security Patches for Critical Vulnerability

GitLab has shipped security patches to resolve a critical flaw that allows an attacker to run pipelines as another user. The issue, tracked as CVE-2023-5009 (CVSS score: 9.6), impacts all versions of GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) starting from 13.12 and prior to 16.2.7 as well as from 16.3 and before 16.3.4. "It was possible for an attacker to run pipelines as an arbitrary user via scheduled

Trend Micro Releases Urgent Fix for Actively Exploited Critical Security Vulnerability

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro has released patches and hotfixes to address a critical security flaw in Apex One and Worry-Free Business Security solutions for Windows that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Tracked as CVE-2023-41179 (CVSS score: 9.1), it relates to a third-party antivirus uninstaller module that's bundled along with the software. The complete list of impacted

ShroudedSnooper's HTTPSnoop Backdoor Targets Middle East Telecom Companies

Telecommunication service providers in the Middle East are the target of a new intrusion set dubbed ShroudedSnooper that employs a stealthy backdoor called HTTPSnoop. "HTTPSnoop is a simple, yet effective, backdoor that consists of novel techniques to interface with Windows HTTP kernel drivers and devices to listen to incoming requests for specific HTTP(S) URLs and execute that content on the

Live Webinar: Overcoming Generative AI Data Leakage Risks

As the adoption of generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, continues to surge, so does the risk of data exposure. According to Gartner’s "Emerging Tech: Top 4 Security Risks of GenAI" report, privacy and data security is one of the four major emerging risks within generative AI. A new webinar featuring a multi-time Fortune 100 CISO and the CEO of LayerX, a browser extension solution, delves into this

Microsoft AI Researchers Accidentally Expose 38 Terabytes of Confidential Data

Microsoft on Monday said it took steps to correct a glaring security gaffe that led to the exposure of 38 terabytes of private data. The leak was discovered on the company's AI GitHub repository and is said to have been inadvertently made public when publishing a bucket of open-source training data, Wiz said. It also included a disk backup of two former employees' workstations containing secrets

New AMBERSQUID Cryptojacking Operation Targets Uncommon AWS Services

A novel cloud-native cryptojacking operation has set its eyes on uncommon Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings such as AWS Amplify, AWS Fargate, and Amazon SageMaker to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. The malicious cyber activity has been codenamed AMBERSQUID by cloud and container security firm Sysdig. "The AMBERSQUID operation was able to exploit cloud services without triggering the AWS

Think Your MFA and PAM Solutions Protect You? Think Again

When you roll out a security product, you assume it will fulfill its purpose. Unfortunately, however, this often turns out not to be the case. A new report, produced by Osterman Research and commissioned by Silverfort, reveals that MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) and PAM (Privileged Access Management) solutions are almost never deployed comprehensively enough to provide resilience to identity

DDoS 2.0: IoT Sparks New DDoS Alert

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming efficiency in various sectors like healthcare and logistics but has also introduced new security risks, particularly IoT-driven DDoS attacks. This article explores how these attacks work, why they’re uniquely problematic, and how to mitigate them. What Is IoT? IoT (Internet of Things) refers to online, interconnected devices that collect and exchange

Cybercriminals Combine Phishing and EV Certificates to Deliver Ransomware Payloads

The threat actors behind RedLine and Vidar information stealers have been observed pivoting to ransomware through phishing campaigns that spread initial payloads signed with Extended Validation (EV) code signing certificates. "This suggests that the threat actors are streamlining operations by making their techniques multipurpose," Trend Micro researchers said in a new analysis published this

Microsoft Uncovers Flaws in ncurses Library Affecting Linux and macOS Systems

A set of memory corruption flaws have been discovered in the ncurses (short for new curses) programming library that could be exploited by threat actors to run malicious code on vulnerable Linux and macOS systems. "Using environment variable poisoning, attackers could chain these vulnerabilities to elevate privileges and run code in the targeted program's context or perform other malicious

Avoid These 5 IT Offboarding Pitfalls

Employee offboarding is no one’s favorite task, yet it is a critical IT process that needs to be executed diligently and efficiently. That’s easier said than done, especially considering that IT organizations have less visibility and control over employees’ IT use than ever. Today, employees can easily adopt new cloud and SaaS applications whenever and wherever they want, and the old IT

N-Able's Take Control Agent Vulnerability Exposes Windows Systems to Privilege Escalation

A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in N-Able's Take Control Agent that could be exploited by a local unprivileged attacker to gain SYSTEM privileges. Tracked as CVE-2023-27470 (CVSS score: 8.8), the issue relates to a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition vulnerability, which, when successfully exploited, could be leveraged to delete arbitrary files on a Windows

Alert: New Kubernetes Vulnerabilities Enable Remote Attacks on Windows Endpoints

Three interrelated high-severity security flaws discovered in Kubernetes could be exploited to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges on Windows endpoints within a cluster. The issues, tracked as CVE-2023-3676, CVE-2023-3893, and CVE-2023-3955, carry CVSS scores of 8.8 and impact all Kubernetes environments with Windows nodes. Fixes for the vulnerabilities were released on August

Researchers Detail 8 Vulnerabilities in Azure HDInsight Analytics Service

More details have emerged about a set of now-patched cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws in the Microsoft Azure HDInsight open-source analytics service that could be weaponized by a threat actor to carry out malicious activities. "The identified vulnerabilities consisted of six stored XSS and two reflected XSS vulnerabilities, each of which could be exploited to perform unauthorized actions,

Webinar: Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) – Rips in Your Identity Fabric

In today's digital age, SaaS applications have become the backbone of modern businesses. They streamline operations, enhance productivity, and foster innovation. But with great power comes great responsibility. As organizations integrate more SaaS applications into their workflows, they inadvertently open the door to a new era of security threats. The stakes? Your invaluable data and the trust