Mysterious Kill Switch Disrupts Mozi IoT Botnet Operations

The unexpected drop in malicious activity connected with the Mozi botnet in August 2023 was due to a kill switch that was distributed to the bots. "First, the drop manifested in India on August 8," ESET said in an analysis published this week. "A week later, on August 16, the same thing happened in China. While the mysterious control payload – aka kill switch – stripped Mozi bots of most

Malicious NuGet Packages Caught Distributing SeroXen RAT Malware

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new set of malicious packages published to the NuGet package manager using a lesser-known method for malware deployment. Software supply chain security firm ReversingLabs described the campaign as coordinated and ongoing since August 1, 2023, while linking it to a host of rogue NuGet packages that were observed delivering a remote access trojan called

N. Korean Lazarus Group Targets Software Vendor Using Known Flaws

The North Korea-aligned Lazarus Group has been attributed as behind a new campaign in which an unnamed software vendor was compromised through the exploitation of known security flaws in another high-profile software. The attack sequences, according to Kaspersky, culminated in the deployment of malware families such as SIGNBT and LPEClient, a known hacking tool used by the threat actor for

Google Expands Its Bug Bounty Program to Tackle Artificial Intelligence Threats

Google has announced that it's expanding its Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP) to compensate researchers for finding attack scenarios tailored to generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems in an effort to bolster AI safety and security. "Generative AI raises new and different concerns than traditional digital security, such as the potential for unfair bias, model manipulation or

Microsoft Warns as Scattered Spider Expands from SIM Swaps to Ransomware

The prolific threat actor known as Scattered Spider has been observed impersonating newly hired employees in targeted firms as a ploy to blend into normal on-hire processes and takeover accounts and breach organizations across the world. Microsoft, which disclosed the activities of the financially motivated hacking crew, described the adversary as "one of the most dangerous financial criminal

Record-Breaking 100 Million RPS DDoS Attack Exploits HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Flaw

Cloudflare on Thursday said it mitigated thousands of hyper-volumetric HTTP distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that exploited a recently disclosed flaw called HTTP/2 Rapid Reset, 89 of which exceeded 100 million requests per second (RPS). "The campaign contributed to an overall increase of 65% in HTTP DDoS attack traffic in Q3 compared to the previous quarter," the web infrastructure

Nation State Hackers Exploiting Zero-Day in Roundcube Webmail Software

The threat actor known as Winter Vivern has been observed exploiting a zero-day flaw in Roundcube webmail software on October 11, 2023, to harvest email messages from victims' accounts. "Winter Vivern has stepped up its operations by using a zero-day vulnerability in Roundcube," ESET security researcher Matthieu Faou said in a new report published today. Previously, it was using known

The Rise of S3 Ransomware: How to Identify and Combat It

In today's digital landscape, around 60% of corporate data now resides in the cloud, with Amazon S3 standing as the backbone of data storage for many major corporations.  Despite S3 being a secure service from a reputable provider, its pivotal role in handling vast amounts of sensitive data (customer personal information, financial data, intellectual property, etc.), provides a juicy target for

34 Cybercriminals Arrested in Spain for Multi-Million Dollar Online Scams

Spanish law enforcement officials have announced the arrest of 34 members of a criminal group that carried out various online scams, netting the gang about €3 million ($3.2 million) in illegal profits. Authorities conducted searches across 16 locations Madrid, Malaga, Huelva, Alicante, and Murcia, seizing two simulated firearms, a katana sword, a baseball bat, €80,000 in cash, four high-end

Who's Experimenting with AI Tools in Your Organization?

With the record-setting growth of consumer-focused AI productivity tools like ChatGPT, artificial intelligence—formerly the realm of data science and engineering teams—has become a resource available to every employee.  From a productivity perspective, that’s fantastic. Unfortunately for IT and security teams, it also means you may have hundreds of people in your organization using a new tool in

Exploring the Realm of Malicious Generative AI: A New Digital Security Challenge

Recently, the cybersecurity landscape has been confronted with a daunting new reality – the rise of malicious Generative AI, like FraudGPT and WormGPT. These rogue creations, lurking in the dark corners of the internet, pose a distinctive threat to the world of digital security. In this article, we will look at the nature of Generative AI fraud, analyze the messaging surrounding these creations,

CERT-UA Reports: 11 Ukrainian Telecom Providers Hit by Cyberattacks

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has revealed that threat actors "interfered" with at least 11 telecommunication service providers in the country between May and September 2023. The agency is tracking the activity under the name UAC-0165, stating the intrusions led to service interruptions for customers. The starting point of the attacks is a reconnaissance phase in

Binance's Smart Chain Exploited in New 'EtherHiding' Malware Campaign

Threat actors have been observed serving malicious code by utilizing Binance's Smart Chain (BSC) contracts in what has been described as the "next level of bulletproof hosting." The campaign, detected two months ago, has been codenamed EtherHiding by Guardio Labs. The novel twist marks the latest iteration in an ongoing malware campaign that leverages compromised WordPress sites to serve

New Magecart Campaign Alters 404 Error Pages to Steal Shoppers' Credit Cards

A sophisticated Magecart campaign has been observed manipulating websites' default 404 error page to conceal malicious code in what's been described as the latest evolution of the attacks. The activity, per Akamai, targets Magento and WooCommerce websites, with some of the victims belonging to large organizations in the food and retail industries. "In this campaign, all the victim websites we

"I Had a Dream" and Generative AI Jailbreaks

"Of course, here's an example of simple code in the Python programming language that can be associated with the keywords "MyHotKeyHandler," "Keylogger," and "macOS," this is a message from ChatGPT followed by a piece of malicious code and a brief remark not to use it for illegal purposes. Initially published by Moonlock Lab, the screenshots of ChatGPT writing code for a keylogger malware is yet

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,

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

Ukrainian Hacker Suspected to be Behind "Free Download Manager" Malware Attack

The maintainers of Free Download Manager (FDM) have acknowledged a security incident dating back to 2020 that led to its website being used to distribute malicious Linux software. "It appears that a specific web page on our site was compromised by a Ukrainian hacker group, exploiting it to distribute malicious software," it said in an alert last week. "Only a small subset of users, specifically

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, @

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

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

Beware: MetaStealer Malware Targets Apple macOS in Recent Attacks

A new information stealer malware called MetaStealer has set its sights on Apple macOS, making the latest in a growing list of stealer families focused on the operating system after MacStealer, Pureland, Atomic Stealer, and Realst. "Threat actors are proactively targeting macOS businesses by posing as fake clients in order to socially engineer victims into launching malicious payloads,"

Mirai Botnet Variant 'Pandora' Hijacks Android TVs for Cyberattacks

A Mirai botnet variant called Pandora has been observed infiltrating inexpensive Android-based TV sets and TV boxes and using them as part of a botnet to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Doctor Web said the compromises are likely to occur either during malicious firmware updates or when applications for viewing pirated video content are installed. "It is likely that this

Ukraine's CERT Thwarts APT28's Cyberattack on Critical Energy Infrastructure

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) on Tuesday said it thwarted a cyber attack against an unnamed critical energy infrastructure facility in the country. The intrusion, per the agency, started with a phishing email containing a link to a malicious ZIP archive that activates the infection chain. “Visiting the link will download a ZIP archive containing three JPG images (

Hackers Can Exploit Windows Container Isolation Framework to Bypass Endpoint Security

New findings show that malicious actors could leverage a sneaky malware detection evasion technique and bypass endpoint security solutions by manipulating the Windows Container Isolation Framework. The findings were presented by Deep Instinct security researcher Daniel Avinoam at the DEF CON security conference held earlier this month. Microsoft's container architecture (and by extension, 

Urgent FBI Warning: Barracuda Email Gateways Vulnerable Despite Recent Patches

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning that Barracuda Networks Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances patched against a recently disclosed critical flaw continue to be at risk of potential compromise from suspected Chinese hacking groups. It also deemed the fixes as "ineffective" and that it "continues to observe active intrusions and considers all affected Barracuda ESG

Carderbee Attacks: Hong Kong Organizations Targeted via Malicious Software Updates

A previously undocumented threat cluster has been linked to a software supply chain attack targeting organizations primarily located in Hong Kong and other regions in Asia. The Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, is tracking the activity under its insect-themed moniker Carderbee. The attacks, per the cybersecurity firm, leverage a trojanized version of a legitimate software called

Experts Uncover Weaknesses in PowerShell Gallery Enabling Supply Chain Attacks

Active flaws in the PowerShell Gallery could be weaponized by threat actors to pull off supply chain attacks against the registry's users. "These flaws make typosquatting attacks inevitable in this registry, while also making it extremely difficult for users to identify the true owner of a package," Aqua security researchers Mor Weinberger, Yakir Kadkoda, and Ilay Goldman said in a report shared

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 SkidMap Linux Malware Variant Targeting Vulnerable Redis Servers

Vulnerable Redis services have been targeted by a "new, improved, dangerous" variant of a malware called SkidMap that's engineered to target a wide range of Linux distributions. "The malicious nature of this malware is to adapt to the system on which it is executed," Trustwave security researcher Radoslaw Zdonczyk said in an analysis published last week. Some of the Linux distribution SkidMap

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

China's APT31 Suspected in Attacks on Air-Gapped Systems in Eastern Europe

A nation-state actor with links to China is suspected of being behind a series of attacks against industrial organizations in Eastern Europe that took place last year to siphon data stored on air-gapped systems. Cybersecurity company Kaspersky attributed the intrusions with medium to high confidence to a hacking crew called APT31, which is also tracked under the monikers Bronze Vinewood,

Hackers Deploy "SUBMARINE" Backdoor in Barracuda Email Security Gateway Attacks

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday disclosed details of a "novel persistent backdoor" called SUBMARINE deployed by threat actors in connection with the hack on Barracuda Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances. "SUBMARINE comprises multiple artifacts — including a SQL trigger, shell scripts, and a loaded library for a Linux daemon — that together enable

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

Decoy Dog: New Breed of Malware Posing Serious Threats to Enterprise Networks

A deeper analysis of a recently discovered malware called Decoy Dog has revealed that it's a significant upgrade over the Pupy RAT, an open-source remote access trojan it's modeled on. "Decoy Dog has a full suite of powerful, previously unknown capabilities – including the ability to move victims to another controller, allowing them to maintain communication with compromised machines and remain

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

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

Zimbra Warns of Critical Zero-Day Flaw in Email Software Amid Active Exploitation

Zimbra has warned of a critical zero-day security flaw in its email software that has come under active exploitation in the wild. "A security vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite Version 8.8.15 that could potentially impact the confidentiality and integrity of your data has surfaced," the company said in an advisory. It also said that the issue has been addressed and that it's expected to

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

Cybercriminals Hijacking Vulnerable SSH Servers in New Proxyjacking Campaign

An active financially motivated campaign is targeting vulnerable SSH servers to covertly ensnare them into a proxy network. "This is an active campaign in which the attacker leverages SSH for remote access, running malicious scripts that stealthily enlist victim servers into a peer-to-peer (P2P) proxy network, such as Peer2Profit or Honeygain," Akamai researcher Allen West said in a Thursday

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

How Generative AI Can Dupe SaaS Authentication Protocols — And Effective Ways To Prevent Other Key AI Risks in SaaS

Security and IT teams are routinely forced to adopt software before fully understanding the security risks. And AI tools are no exception. Employees and business leaders alike are flocking to generative AI software and similar programs, often unaware of the major SaaS security vulnerabilities they're introducing into the enterprise. A February 2023 generative AI survey of 1,000 executives 

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

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

Barracuda Urges Immediate Replacement of Hacked ESG Appliances

Enterprise security company Barracuda is now urging customers who were impacted by a recently disclosed zero-day flaw in its Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances to immediately replace them. "Impacted ESG appliances must be immediately replaced regardless of patch version level," the company said in an update, adding its "remediation recommendation at this time is full replacement of the

Cloud Security Tops Concerns for Cybersecurity Leaders: EC-Council's Certified CISO Hall of Fame Report 2023

A survey of global cybersecurity leaders through the 2023 Certified CISO Hall of Fame Report commissioned by the EC-Council identified 4 primary areas of grave concern: cloud security, data security, security governance, and lack of cybersecurity talent. EC-Council, the global leader in cybersecurity education and training, released its Certified Chief Information Security Officer Hall of Fame

Active Mirai Botnet Variant Exploiting Zyxel Devices for DDoS Attacks

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a recently patched critical security flaw in Zyxel gear to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2023-28771 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue relates to a command injection flaw impacting different firewall models that could enable an unauthenticated attacker

Don't Click That ZIP File! Phishers Weaponizing .ZIP Domains to Trick Victims

A new phishing technique called "file archiver in the browser" can be leveraged to "emulate" a file archiver software in a web browser when a victim visits a .ZIP domain. "With this phishing attack, you simulate a file archiver software (e.g., WinRAR) in the browser and use a .zip domain to make it appear more legitimate," security researcher mr.d0x disclosed last week. Threat actors, in a

Barracuda Warns of Zero-Day Exploited to Breach Email Security Gateway Appliances

Email protection and network security services provider Barracuda is warning users about a zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited to breach the company's Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances. The zero-day is being tracked as CVE-2023-2868 and has been described as a remote code injection vulnerability affecting versions 5.1.3.001 through 9.2.0.006. The California-headquartered firm 

GUAC 0.1 Beta: Google's Breakthrough Framework for Secure Software Supply Chains

Google on Wednesday announced the 0.1 Beta version of GUAC (short for Graph for Understanding Artifact Composition) for organizations to secure their software supply chains. To that end, the search giant is making available the open source framework as an API for developers to integrate their own tools and policy engines. GUAC aims to aggregate software security metadata from different sources

PyPI Repository Under Attack: User Sign-Ups and Package Uploads Temporarily Halted

The maintainers of Python Package Index (PyPI), the official third-party software repository for the Python programming language, have temporarily disabled the ability for users to sign up and upload new packages until further notice. "The volume of malicious users and malicious projects being created on the index in the past week has outpaced our ability to respond to it in a timely fashion,

Developer Alert: NPM Packages for Node.js Hiding Dangerous TurkoRat Malware

Two malicious packages discovered in the npm package repository have been found to conceal an open source information stealer malware called TurkoRat. The packages – named nodejs-encrypt-agent and nodejs-cookie-proxy-agent – were collectively downloaded approximately 1,200 times and were available for more than two months before they were identified and taken down. ReversingLabs, which broke

Searching for AI Tools? Watch Out for Rogue Sites Distributing RedLine Malware

Malicious Google Search ads for generative AI services like OpenAI ChatGPT and Midjourney are being used to direct users to sketchy websites as part of a BATLOADER campaign designed to deliver RedLine Stealer malware. "Both AI services are extremely popular but lack first-party standalone apps (i.e., users interface with ChatGPT via their web interface while Midjourney uses Discord)," eSentire

This Cybercrime Syndicate Pre-Infected Over 8.9 Million Android Phones Worldwide

A cybercrime enterprise known as Lemon Group is leveraging millions of pre-infected Android smartphones worldwide to carry out their malicious operations, posing significant supply chain risks. "The infection turns these devices into mobile proxies, tools for stealing and selling SMS messages, social media and online messaging accounts and monetization via advertisements and click fraud,"

New Phishing-as-a-Service Platform Lets Cybercriminals Generate Convincing Phishing Pages

A new phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS or PaaS) platform named Greatness has been leveraged by cybercriminals to target business users of the Microsoft 365 cloud service since at least mid-2022, effectively lowering the bar to entry for phishing attacks. "Greatness, for now, is only focused on Microsoft 365 phishing pages, providing its affiliates with an attachment and link builder that creates

New APT Group Red Stinger Targets Military and Critical Infrastructure in Eastern Europe

A previously undetected advanced persistent threat (APT) actor dubbed Red Stinger has been linked to attacks targeting Eastern Europe since 2020. "Military, transportation, and critical infrastructure were some of the entities being targeted, as well as some involved in the September East Ukraine referendums," Malwarebytes disclosed in a report published today. "Depending on the campaign,

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

MSI Data Breach: Private Code Signing Keys Leaked on the Dark Web

The threat actors behind the ransomware attack on Taiwanese PC maker MSI last month have leaked the company's private code signing keys on their dark website. "Confirmed, Intel OEM private key leaked, causing an impact on the entire ecosystem," Alex Matrosov, founder and CEO of firmware security firm Binarly, said in a tweet over the weekend. "It appears that Intel Boot Guard may not be

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