Microsoft on Wednesday acknowledged that a newly disclosed critical security flaw in Exchange Server has been actively exploited in the wild, a day after it released fixes for the vulnerability as part of its Patch Tuesday updates.
Tracked as CVE-2024-21410 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a case of privilege escalation impacting the Exchange Server.
"An attacker
Nation-state actors associated with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China are experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) to complement their ongoing cyber attack operations.
The findings come from a report published by Microsoft in collaboration with OpenAI, both of which said they disrupted efforts made by five state-affiliated actors that used its
The infamous malware loader and initial access broker known as Bumblebee has resurfaced after a four-month absence as part of a new phishing campaign observed in February 2024.
Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said the activity targets organizations in the U.S. with voicemail-themed lures containing links to OneDrive URLs.
"The URLs led to a Word file with names such as "
A newly disclosed security flaw in the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen has been exploited as a zero-day by an advanced persistent threat actor called Water Hydra (aka DarkCasino) targeting financial market traders.
Trend Micro, which began tracking the campaign in late December 2023, said it entails the exploitation of CVE-2024-21412, a security bypass vulnerability related to Internet
Microsoft has released patches to address 73 security flaws spanning its software lineup as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for February 2024, including two zero-days that have come under active exploitation.
Of the 73 vulnerabilities, 5 are rated Critical, 65 are rated Important, and three and rated Moderate in severity. This is in addition to 24 flaws that have been fixed
Three new security vulnerabilities have been discovered in Azure HDInsight's Apache Hadoop, Kafka, and Spark services that could be exploited to achieve privilege escalation and a regular expression denial-of-service (ReDoS) condition.
"The new vulnerabilities affect any authenticated user of Azure HDInsight services such as Apache Ambari and Apache Oozie," Orca security
Russian state-sponsored actors have staged NT LAN Manager (NTLM) v2 hash relay attacks through various methods from April 2022 to November 2023, targeting high-value targets worldwide.
The attacks, attributed to an "aggressive" hacking crew called APT28, have set their eyes on organizations dealing with foreign affairs, energy, defense, and transportation, as well as those involved with
A now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Outlook could be exploited by threat actors to access NT LAN Manager (NTLM) v2 hashed passwords when opening a specially crafted file.
The issue, tracked as CVE-2023-35636 (CVSS score: 6.5), was addressed by the tech giant as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for December 2023.
"In an email attack scenario, an attacker could exploit the
Microsoft on Thursday said the Russian state-sponsored threat actors responsible for a cyber attack on its systems in late November 2023 have been targeting other organizations and that it's currently beginning to notify them.
The development comes a day after Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) revealed that it had been the victim of an attack perpetrated by a hacking crew
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered an updated version of a backdoor called LODEINFO that's distributed via spear-phishing attacks.
The findings come from Japanese company ITOCHU Cyber & Intelligence, which said the malware "has been updated with new features, as well as changes to the anti-analysis (analysis avoidance) techniques."
LODEINFO (versions 0.6.6 and 0.6.7
A new Go-based malware loader called CherryLoader has been discovered by threat hunters in the wild to deliver additional payloads onto compromised hosts for follow-on exploitation.
Arctic Wolf Labs, which discovered the new attack tool in two recent intrusions, said the loader's icon and name masquerades as the legitimate CherryTree note-taking application to dupe potential victims
Hackers with links to the Kremlin are suspected to have infiltrated information technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) cloud email environment to exfiltrate mailbox data.
"The threat actor accessed and exfiltrated data beginning in May 2023 from a small percentage of HPE mailboxes belonging to individuals in our cybersecurity, go-to-market, business segments, and other functions,"
Microsoft on Friday revealed that it was the target of a nation-state attack on its corporate systems that resulted in the theft of emails and attachments from senior executives and other individuals in the company's cybersecurity and legal departments.
The Windows maker attributed the attack to a Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group it tracks as Midnight Blizzard (formerly
Threat actors have been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows to deploy an open-source information stealer called Phemedrone Stealer.
“Phemedrone targets web browsers and data from cryptocurrency wallets and messaging apps such as Telegram, Steam, and Discord,” Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Simon Zuckerbraun said.
“It also
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a critical security vulnerability impacting Microsoft SharePoint Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation.
The issue, tracked as CVE-2023-29357 (CVSS score: 9.8), is a privilege escalation flaw that could be exploited by an attacker to gain
The ubiquity of GitHub in information technology (IT) environments has made it a lucrative choice for threat actors to host and deliver malicious payloads and act as dead drop resolvers, command-and-control, and data exfiltration points.
“Using GitHub services for malicious infrastructure allows adversaries to blend in with legitimate network traffic, often bypassing traditional security
Microsoft has addressed a total of 48 security flaws spanning its software as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for January 2024.
Of the 48 bugs, two are rated Critical and 46 are rated Important in severity. There is no evidence that any of the issues are publicly known or under active attack at the time of release, making it the second consecutive Patch Tuesday with no zero-days.
The
Security researchers have detailed a new variant of a dynamic link library (DLL) search order hijacking technique that could be used by threat actors to bypass security mechanisms and achieve execution of malicious code on systems running Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The approach "leverages executables commonly found in the trusted WinSxS folder and exploits them via the classic DLL
Microsoft on Thursday said it’s once again disabling the ms-appinstaller protocol handler by default following its abuse by multiple threat actors to distribute malware.
“The observed threat actor activity abuses the current implementation of the ms-appinstaller protocol handler as an access vector for malware that may lead to ransomware distribution,” the Microsoft Threat Intelligence
Organizations in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) sector are in the crosshairs of an Iranian threat actor as part of a campaign designed to deliver a never-before-seen backdoor called FalseFont.
The findings come from Microsoft, which is tracking the activity under its weather-themed moniker Peach Sandstorm (formerly Holmium), which is also known as APT33, Elfin, and Refined Kitten.
"
Attackers are weaponizing an old Microsoft Office vulnerability as part of phishing campaigns to distribute a strain of malware called Agent Tesla.
The infection chains leverage decoy Excel documents attached in invoice-themed messages to trick potential targets into opening them and activate the exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 (CVSS score: 7.8), a memory corruption vulnerability in Office's
The threat actors behind the Play ransomware are estimated to have impacted approximately 300 entities as of October 2023, according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory from Australia and the U.S.
"Play ransomware actors employ a double-extortion model, encrypting systems after exfiltrating data and have impacted a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure organizations in North
Technical details have emerged about two now-patched security flaws in Microsoft Windows that could be chained by threat actors to achieve remote code execution on the Outlook email service sans any user interaction.
"An attacker on the internet can chain the vulnerabilities together to create a full, zero-click remote code execution (RCE) exploit against Outlook clients," Akamai security
A new wave of phishing messages distributing the QakBot malware has been observed, more than three months after a law enforcement effort saw its infrastructure dismantled by infiltrating its command-and-control (C2) network.
Microsoft, which made the discovery, described it as a low-volume campaign that began on December 11, 2023, and targeted the hospitality industry.
"Targets
Microsoft is warning of an uptick in malicious activity from an emerging threat cluster it's tracking as Storm-0539 for orchestrating gift card fraud and theft via highly sophisticated email and SMS phishing attacks against retail entities during the holiday shopping season.
The goal of the attacks is to propagate booby-trapped links that direct victims to adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM
A new botnet consisting of firewalls and routers from Cisco, DrayTek, Fortinet, and NETGEAR is being used as a covert data transfer network for advanced persistent threat actors, including the China-linked threat actor called Volt Typhoon.
Dubbed KV-botnet by the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies, the malicious network is an amalgamation of two complementary activity
Multiple security vulnerabilities have been discovered in the open-source Netgate pfSense firewall solution called pfSense that could be chained by an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on susceptible appliances.
The issues relate to two reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) bugs and one command injection flaw, according to new findings from Sonar.
"Security inside a local network is often
The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor known as OilRig deployed three different downloader malware throughout 2022 to maintain persistent access to victim organizations located in Israel.
The three new downloaders have been named ODAgent, OilCheck, and OilBooster by Slovak cybersecurity company ESET. The attacks also involved the use of an updated version of a known OilRig downloader
Threat actors affiliated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) have targeted unpatched JetBrains TeamCity servers in widespread attacks since September 2023.
The activity has been tied to a nation-state group known as APT29, which is also tracked as BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, Midnight Blizzard (formerly Nobelium), and The Dukes. It's notable for the supply chain
Microsoft on Wednesday said it obtained a court order to seize infrastructure set up by a group called Storm-1152 that peddled roughly 750 million fraudulent Microsoft accounts and tools through a network of bogus websites and social media pages to other criminal actors, netting the operators millions of dollars in illicit revenue.
"Fraudulent online accounts act as the gateway to a host of
Microsoft released its final set of Patch Tuesday updates for 2023, closing out 33 flaws in its software, making it one of the lightest releases in recent years.
Of the 33 shortcomings, four are rated Critical and 29 are rated Important in severity. The fixes are in addition to 18 flaws Microsoft addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of Patch
The Russian nation-state threat actor known as APT28 has been observed making use of lures related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war to facilitate the delivery of a custom backdoor called HeadLace.
IBM X-Force is tracking the adversary under the name ITG05, which is also known as BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium), FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, Sednit, Sofacy, and
The threat actor known as COLDRIVER has continued to engage in credential theft activities against entities that are of strategic interests to Russia while simultaneously improving its detection evasion capabilities.
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team is tracking under the cluster as Star Blizzard (formerly SEABORGIUM). It's also called Blue Callisto, BlueCharlie (or TAG-53),
Microsoft Copilot has been called one of the most powerful productivity tools on the planet.
Copilot is an AI assistant that lives inside each of your Microsoft 365 apps — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, and so on. Microsoft's dream is to take the drudgery out of daily work and let humans focus on being creative problem-solvers.
What makes Copilot a different beast than ChatGPT and
Microsoft on Monday said it detected Kremlin-backed nation-state activity exploiting a now-patched critical security flaw in its Outlook email service to gain unauthorized access to victims' accounts within Exchange servers.
The tech giant attributed the intrusions to a threat actor it called Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium), which is also widely tracked under the
Microsoft has warned of a new wave of CACTUS ransomware attacks that leverage malvertising lures to deploy DanaBot as an initial access vector.
The DanaBot infections led to "hands-on-keyboard activity by ransomware operator Storm-0216 (Twisted Spider, UNC2198), culminating in the deployment of CACTUS ransomware," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a series of posts on X (
Apple has released software updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari web browser to address two security flaws that it said have come under active exploitation in the wild on older versions of its software.
The vulnerabilities, both of which reside in the WebKit web browser engine, are described below -
CVE-2023-42916 - An out-of-bounds read issue that could be exploited to
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a case of "forced authentication" that could be exploited to leak a Windows user's NT LAN Manager (NTLM) tokens by tricking a victim into opening a specially crafted Microsoft Access file.
The attack takes advantage of a legitimate feature in the database management system solution that allows users to link to external data sources, such as a remote
Intel has released fixes to close out a high-severity flaw codenamed Reptar that impacts its desktop, mobile, and server CPUs.
Tracked as CVE-2023-23583 (CVSS score: 8.8), the issue has the potential to "allow escalation of privilege and/or information disclosure and/or denial of service via local access."
Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could also permit a bypass of the CPU's
Microsoft has released fixes to address 63 security bugs in its software for the month of November 2023, including three vulnerabilities that have come under active exploitation in the wild.
Of the 63 flaws, three are rated Critical, 56 are rated Important, and four are rated Moderate in severity. Two of them have been listed as publicly known at the time of the release.
The updates are in
A sub-cluster within the infamous Lazarus Group has established new infrastructure that impersonates skills assessment portals as part of its social engineering campaigns.
Microsoft attributed the activity to a threat actor it calls Sapphire Sleet, describing it as a "shift in the persistent actor's tactics."
Sapphire Sleet, also called APT38, BlueNoroff, CageyChameleon, and CryptoCore, has a
The threat actor known as Lace Tempest has been linked to the exploitation of a zero-day flaw in SysAid IT support software in limited attacks, according to new findings from Microsoft.
Lace Tempest, which is known for distributing the Cl0p ransomware, has in the past leveraged zero-day flaws in MOVEit Transfer and PaperCut servers.
The issue, tracked as CVE-2023-47246, concerns a path traversal
North Korean threat actors are actively exploiting a critical security flaw in JetBrains TeamCity to opportunistically breach vulnerable servers, according to Microsoft.
The attacks, which entail the exploitation of CVE-2023-42793 (CVSS score: 9.8), have been attributed to Diamond Sleet (aka Labyrinth Chollima) and Onyx Sleet (aka Andariel or Silent Chollima).
It's worth noting that both the
Microsoft has announced that it plans to eliminate NT LAN Manager (NTLM) in Windows 11 in the future, as it pivots to alternative methods for authentication and bolster security.
"The focus is on strengthening the Kerberos authentication protocol, which has been the default since 2000, and reducing reliance on NT LAN Manager (NTLM)," the tech giant said. "New features for Windows 11 include
European Union military personnel and political leaders working on gender equality initiatives have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an updated version of RomCom RAT called PEAPOD.
Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro attributed the attacks to a threat actor it tracks under the name Void Rabisu, which is also known as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, and UNC2596, and is also
The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as ToddyCat has been linked to a new set of malicious tools that are designed for data exfiltration, offering a deeper insight into the hacking crew's tactics and capabilities.
The findings come from Kaspersky, which first shed light on the adversary last year, linking it to attacks against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia for nearly three
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 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 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
A Gaza-based threat actor has been linked to a series of cyber attacks aimed at Israeli private-sector energy, defense, and telecommunications organizations.
Microsoft, which revealed details of the activity in its fourth annual Digital Defense Report, is tracking the campaign under the name Storm-1133.
"We assess this group works to further the interests of Hamas, a Sunni militant group that is
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
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-
Microsoft has detailed a new campaign in which attackers unsuccessfully attempted to move laterally to a cloud environment through an SQL Server instance.
"The attackers initially exploited a SQL injection vulnerability in an application within the target's environment," security researchers Sunders Bruskin, Hagai Ran Kestenberg, and Fady Nasereldeen said in a Tuesday report.
"This allowed the
Microsoft is officially rolling out support for passkeys in Windows 11 today as part of a major update to the desktop operating system.
The feature allows users to login to websites and applications without having to provide a username and password, instead relying on their device PIN or biometric information to complete the step.
Based on FIDO standards, Passkeys were first announced in May
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
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
The China-linked threat actor known as Earth Lusca has been observed targeting government entities using a never-before-seen Linux backdoor called SprySOCKS.
Earth Lusca was first documented by Trend Micro in January 2022, detailing the adversary's attacks against public and private sector entities across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America.
Active since 2021, the group has relied on
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
Iranian nation-state actors have been conducting password spray attacks against thousands of organizations globally between February and July 2023, new findings from Microsoft reveal.
The tech giant, which is tracking the activity under the name Peach Sandstorm (formerly Holmium), said the adversary pursued organizations in the satellite, defense, and pharmaceutical sectors to likely facilitate
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
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