A CACTUS ransomware campaign has been observed exploiting recently disclosed security flaws in a cloud analytics and business intelligence platform called Qlik Sense to obtain a foothold into targeted environments.
"This campaign marks the first documented instance [...] where threat actors deploying CACTUS ransomware have exploited vulnerabilities in Qlik Sense for initial access,"
A variant of a ransomware strain known as DJVU has been observed to be distributed in the form of cracked software.
"While this attack pattern is not new, incidents involving a DJVU variant that appends the .xaro extension to affected files and demanding ransom for a decryptor have been observed infecting systems alongside a host of various commodity loaders and infostealers," Cybereason
A coordinated law enforcement operation has led to the arrest of key individuals in Ukraine who are alleged to be a part of several ransomware schemes.
"On 21 November, 30 properties were searched in the regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, Rivne, and Vinnytsia, resulting in the arrest of the 32-year-old ringleader," Europol said in a statement today. "Four of the ringleader's most active
Multiple threat actors, including LockBit ransomware affiliates, are actively exploiting a recently disclosed critical security flaw in Citrix NetScaler application delivery control (ADC) and Gateway appliances to obtain initial access to target environments.
The joint advisory comes from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
The ransomware strain known as Play is now being offered to other threat actors "as a service," new evidence unearthed by Adlumin has revealed.
"The unusual lack of even small variations between attacks suggests that they are being carried out by affiliates who have purchased the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) and are following step-by-step instructions from playbooks delivered with it," the
In this article, we will provide a brief overview of Silverfort's platform, the first (and currently only) unified identity protection platform on the market. Silverfort’s patented technology aims to protect organizations from identity-based attacks by integrating with existing identity and access management solutions, such as AD (Active Directory) and cloud-based services, and extending secure
The threat actors behind the 8Base ransomware are leveraging a variant of the Phobos ransomware to conduct their financially motivated attacks.
The findings come from Cisco Talos, which has recorded an increase in activity carried out by the cybercriminals.
“Most of the group’s Phobos variants are distributed by SmokeLoader, a backdoor trojan," security researcher Guilherme Venere said in an
U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have released a joint advisory about a cybercriminal group known as Scattered Spider that's known to employ sophisticated phishing tactics to infiltrate targets.
"Scattered Spider threat actors typically engage in data theft for extortion using multiple social engineering techniques and have recently leveraged BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware alongside their
The threat actors behind the Rhysida ransomware engage in opportunistic attacks targeting organizations spanning various industry sectors.
The advisory comes courtesy of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC).
"Observed as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS)
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has given a November 17, 2023, deadline for federal agencies and organizations to apply mitigations to secure against a number of security flaws in Juniper Junos OS that came to light in August.
The agency on Monday added five vulnerabilities to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active
The threat actors behind a new ransomware group called Hunters International have acquired the source code and infrastructure from the now-dismantled Hive operation to kick-start its own efforts in the threat landscape.
"It appears that the leadership of the Hive group made the strategic decision to cease their operations and transfer their remaining assets to another group, Hunters
The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions against a 37-year-old Russian woman for taking part in the laundering of virtual currency for the country's elites and cybercriminal crews, including the Ryuk ransomware group.
Ekaterina Zhdanova, per the department, is said to have facilitated large cross border transactions to assist Russian individuals to gain access to Western financial
The threat actors linked to Kinsing have been observed attempting to exploit the recently disclosed Linux privilege escalation flaw called Looney Tunables as part of a "new experimental campaign" designed to breach cloud environments.
"Intriguingly, the attacker is also broadening the horizons of their cloud-native attacks by extracting credentials from the Cloud Service Provider (CSP)," cloud
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
Europol on Friday announced the takedown of the infrastructure associated with Ragnar Locker ransomware, alongside the arrest of a "key target" in France.
"In an action carried out between 16 and 20 October, searches were conducted in Czechia, Spain, and Latvia," the agency said. "The main perpetrator, suspected of being a developer of the Ragnar group, has been brought in front of the examining
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
The AvosLocker ransomware gang has been linked to attacks against critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S., with some of them detected as recently as May 2023.
That's according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory released by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detailing the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation's
Despite the disruption to its infrastructure, the threat actors behind the QakBot malware have been linked to an ongoing phishing campaign since early August 2023 that led to the delivery of Ransom Knight (aka Cyclops) ransomware and Remcos RAT.
This indicates that “the law enforcement operation may not have impacted Qakbot operators’ spam delivery infrastructure but rather only their
Cybersecurity experts have shed light on a new cybercrime group known as ShadowSyndicate (formerly Infra Storm) that may have leveraged as many as seven different ransomware families over the past year.
"ShadowSyndicate is a threat actor that works with various ransomware groups and affiliates of ransomware programs," Group-IB and Bridewell said in a new joint report.
The actor, active since
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
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
A new ransomware family called 3AM has emerged in the wild after it was detected in a single incident in which an unidentified affiliate deployed the strain following an unsuccessful attempt to deliver LockBit (attributed to Bitwise Spider or Syrphid) in the target network.
"3AM is written in Rust and appears to be a completely new malware family," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of
Threat actors are exploiting poorly secured Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers to deliver Cobalt Strike and a ransomware strain called FreeWorld.
Cybersecurity firm Securonix, which has dubbed the campaign DB#JAMMER, said it stands out for the way the toolset and infrastructure is employed.
“Some of these tools include enumeration software, RAT payloads, exploitation and credential stealing software
An open-source .NET-based information stealer malware dubbed SapphireStealer is being used by multiple entities to enhance its capabilities and spawn their own bespoke variants.
“Information-stealing malware like SapphireStealer can be used to obtain sensitive information, including corporate credentials, which are often resold to other threat actors who leverage the access for additional
Recently disclosed security flaws impacting Juniper firewalls, Openfire, and Apache RocketMQ servers have come under active exploitation in the wild, according to multiple reports.
The Shadowserver Foundation said that it's "seeing exploitation attempts from multiple IPs for Juniper J-Web CVE-2023-36844 (& friends) targeting /webauth_operation.php endpoint," the same day a proof-of-concept (PoC)
The leak of the LockBit 3.0 ransomware builder last year has led to threat actors abusing the tool to spawn new variants.
Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it detected a ransomware intrusion that deployed a version of LockBit but with a markedly different ransom demand procedure.
"The attacker behind this incident decided to use a different ransom note with a headline related to a
A malicious toolset dubbed Spacecolon is being deployed as part of an ongoing campaign to spread variants of the Scarab ransomware across victim organizations globally.
"It probably finds its way into victim organizations by its operators compromising vulnerable web servers or via brute forcing RDP credentials," ESET security researcher Jakub Souček said in a detailed technical write-up
The threat actors behind the Monti ransomware have resurfaced after a two-month break with a new Linux version of the encryptor in its attacks targeting government and legal sectors.
Monti emerged in June 2022, weeks after the Conti ransomware group shut down its operations, deliberately imitating the tactics and tools associated with the latter, including its leaked source code. Not anymore.
An unknown threat actor has been linked to a cyber attack on a power generation company in southern Africa with a new variant of the SystemBC malware called DroxiDat as a precursor to a suspected ransomware attack.
"The proxy-capable backdoor was deployed alongside Cobalt Strike Beacons in a south African nation's critical infrastructure," Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher at
An unknown threat actor is using a variant of the Yashma ransomware to target various entities in English-speaking countries, Bulgaria, China, and Vietnam at least since June 4, 2023.
Cisco Talos, in a new write-up, attributed the operation with moderate confidence to an adversary of likely Vietnamese origin.
"The threat actor uses an uncommon technique to deliver the ransom note," security
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
Mallox ransomware activities in 2023 have witnessed a 174% increase when compared to the previous year, new findings from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 reveal.
"Mallox ransomware, like many other ransomware threat actors, follows the double extortion trend: stealing data before encrypting an organization's files, and then threatening to publish the stolen data on a leak site as leverage to convince
The financially motivated threat actor known as FIN8 has been observed using a "revamped" version of a backdoor called Sardonic to deliver the BlackCat ransomware.
According to the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, the development is an attempt on the part of the e-crime group to diversify its focus and maximize profits from infected entities. The intrusion attempt took place in
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
A developing piece of ransomware called Big Head is being distributed as part of a malvertising campaign that takes the form of bogus Microsoft Windows updates and Word installers.
Big Head was first documented by Fortinet FortiGuard Labs last month, when it discovered multiple variants of the ransomware that are designed to encrypt files on victims' machines in exchange for a cryptocurrency
Threat actors associated with the BlackCat ransomware have been observed employing malvertising tricks to distribute rogue installers of the WinSCP file transfer application.
"Malicious actors used malvertising to distribute a piece of malware via cloned webpages of legitimate organizations," Trend Micro researchers said in an analysis published last week. "In this case, the distribution
A ransomware threat called 8Base that has been operating under the radar for over a year has been attributed to a "massive spike in activity" in May and June 2023.
"The group utilizes encryption paired with 'name-and-shame' techniques to compel their victims to pay their ransoms," VMware Carbon Black researchers Deborah Snyder and Fae Carlisle said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "8Base
The threat actors behind the LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme have extorted $91 million following hundreds of attacks against numerous U.S. organizations since 2020.
That's according to a joint bulletin published by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have published a joint advisory regarding the active exploitation of a recently disclosed critical flaw in Progress Software's MOVEit Transfer application to drop ransomware.
"The Cl0p Ransomware Gang, also known as TA505, reportedly began exploiting a previously unknown SQL injection
Get exclusive insights from a real ransomware negotiator who shares authentic stories from network hostage situations and how he managed them.
The Ransomware Industry
Ransomware is an industry. As such, it has its own business logic: organizations pay money, in crypto-currency, in order to regain control over their systems and data.
This industry's landscape is made up of approximately 10-20
Thousands of adware apps for Android have been found to masquerade as cracks or modded versions of popular applications to serve unwanted ads to users as part of a campaign ongoing since October 2022.
"The campaign is designed to aggressively push adware to Android devices with the purpose to drive revenue," Bitdefender said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "However, the threat
Threat actors associated with the Cyclops ransomware have been observed offering an information stealer malware that's designed to capture sensitive data from infected hosts.
"The threat actor behind this [ransomware-as-a-service] promotes its offering on forums," Uptycs said in a new report. "There it requests a share of profits from those engaging in malicious activities using its malware."
Microsoft has officially linked the ongoing active exploitation of a critical flaw in the Progress Software MOVEit Transfer application to a threat actor it tracks as Lace Tempest.
"Exploitation is often followed by deployment of a web shell with data exfiltration capabilities," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a series of tweets today. "CVE-2023-34362 allows attackers to
An analysis of the Linux variant of a new ransomware strain called BlackSuit has covered significant similarities with another ransomware family called Royal.
Trend Micro, which examined an x64 VMware ESXi version targeting Linux machines, said it identified an "extremely high degree of similarity" between Royal and BlackSuit.
"In fact, they're nearly identical, with 98% similarities in
The threat actors behind BlackCat ransomware have come up with an improved variant that prioritizes speed and stealth in an attempt to bypass security guardrails and achieve their goals.
The new version, dubbed Sphynx and announced in February 2023, packs a "number of updated capabilities that strengthen the group's efforts to evade detection," IBM Security X-Force said in a new analysis.
The "
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
The threat actors behind the nascent Buhti ransomware have eschewed their custom payload in favor of leaked LockBit and Babuk ransomware families to strike Windows and Linux systems.
"While the group doesn't develop its own ransomware, it does utilize what appears to be one custom-developed tool, an information stealer designed to search for and archive specified file types," Symantec said in a
The Iranian threat actor known as Agrius is leveraging a new ransomware strain called Moneybird in its attacks targeting Israeli organizations.
Agrius, also known as Pink Sandstorm (formerly Americium), has a track record of staging destructive data-wiping attacks aimed at Israel under the guise of ransomware infections.
Microsoft has attributed the threat actor to Iran's Ministry of
The identity of the second threat actor behind the Golden Chickens malware has been uncovered courtesy of a "fatal" operational security blunder, cybersecurity firm eSentire said.
The individual in question, who lives in Bucharest, Romania, has been given the codename Jack. He is one of the two criminals operating an account on the Russian-language Exploit.in forum under the name "badbullzvenom
The notorious cybercrime group known as FIN7 has been observed deploying Cl0p (aka Clop) ransomware, marking the threat actor's first ransomware campaign since late 2021.
Microsoft, which detected the activity in April 2023, is tracking the financially motivated actor under its new taxonomy Sangria Tempest.
"In these recent attacks, Sangria Tempest uses the PowerShell script POWERTRASH to load
Digitalization initiatives are connecting once-isolated Operational Technology (OT) environments with their Information Technology (IT) counterparts. This digital transformation of the factory floor has accelerated the connection of machinery to digital systems and data. Computer systems for managing and monitoring digital systems and data have been added to the hardware and software used for
Ransomware affiliates associated with the Qilin ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme earn anywhere between 80% to 85% of each ransom payment, according to new findings from Group-IB.
The cybersecurity firm said it was able to infiltrate the group in March 2023, uncovering details about the affiliates' payment structure and the inner workings of the RaaS program following a private conversation
A new ransomware-as-service (RaaS) operation called MichaelKors has become the latest file-encrypting malware to target Linux and VMware ESXi systems as of April 2023.
The development points to cybercriminal actors increasingly setting their eyes on the ESXi, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
"This trend is especially noteworthy given the fact that ESXi
Poorly managed Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers are the target of a new campaign that's designed to propagate a category of malware called CLR SqlShell that ultimately facilitates the deployment of cryptocurrency miners and ransomware.
"Similar to web shell, which can be installed on web servers, SqlShell is a malware strain that supports various features after being installed on an MS SQL server,
U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have warned of attacks carried out by a threat actor known as the Bl00dy Ransomware Gang that attempt to exploit vulnerable PaperCut servers against the education facilities sector in the country.
The attacks took place in early May 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a
Multiple threat actors have capitalized on the leak of Babuk (aka Babak or Babyk) ransomware code in September 2021 to build as many as nine different ransomware families capable of targeting VMware ESXi systems.
"These variants emerged through H2 2022 and H1 2023, which shows an increasing trend of Babuk source code adoption," SentinelOne security researcher Alex Delamotte said in a report
Iranian nation-state groups have now joined financially motivated actors in actively exploiting a critical flaw in PaperCut print management software, Microsoft disclosed over the weekend.
The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed both Mango Sandstorm (Mercury) and Mint Sandstorm (Phosphorus) weaponizing CVE-2023-27350 in their operations to achieve initial access.
"This
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new ransomware strain called CACTUS that has been found to leverage known flaws in VPN appliances to obtain initial access to targeted networks.
"Once inside the network, CACTUS actors attempt to enumerate local and network user accounts in addition to reachable endpoints before creating new user accounts and leveraging custom scripts to automate
Are you concerned about ransomware attacks? You're not alone. In recent years, these attacks have become increasingly common and can cause significant damage to organizations of all sizes. But there's good news - with the right security measures in place, such as real-time MFA and service account protection, you can effectively protect yourself against these types of attacks.
That's why we're
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
Login
FreshRSS