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A previously unknown threat actor has been attributed to a spate of attacks targeting Azerbaijan and Israel with an aim to steal sensitive data. The attack campaign, detected by NSFOCUS on July 1, 2024, leveraged spear-phishing emails to single out Azerbaijani and Israeli diplomats. The activity is being tracked under the moniker Actor240524 . "Actor240524 possesses the ability to steal secrets and modify file data, using a variety of countermeasures to avoid overexposure of attack tactics and techniques," the cybersecurity company said in an analysis published last week. The attack chains commence with the use of phishing emails bearing Microsoft Word documents that, upon opening, urge the recipients to " Enable Content " and run a malicious macro responsible for executing an intermediate loader payload codenamed ABCloader ("MicrosoftWordUpdater.log"). In the next step, ABCloader acts as a conduit to decrypt and load a DLL malware called ABCsync (&

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new variant of the Gafgyt botnet that's targeting machines with weak SSH passwords to ultimately mine cryptocurrency on compromised instances using their GPU computational power. This indicates that the "IoT botnet is targeting more robust servers running on cloud native environments," Aqua Security researcher Assaf Morag said in a Wednesday analysis. Gafgyt (aka BASHLITE, Lizkebab, and Torlus), known to be active in the wild since 2014, has a history of exploiting weak or default credentials to gain control of devices such as routers, cameras, and digital video recorders (DVRs). It's also capable of leveraging known security flaws in Dasan, Huawei, Realtek, SonicWall, and Zyxel devices. The infected devices are corralled into a botnet capable of launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against targets of interest. There is evidence to suggest that Gafgyt and Necro are operated by a threat group calle

Want to know what's the latest and greatest in SecOps for 2024? Gartner's recently released Hype Cycle for Security Operations report takes important steps to organize and mature the domain of Continuous Threat Exposure Management, aka CTEM. Three categories within this domain are included in this year's report: Threat Exposure Management, Exposure Assessment Platforms (EAP), and Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV). These category definitions are aimed at providing some structure to the evolving landscape of exposure management technologies. Pentera, listed as a sample vendor in the newly defined AEV category, is playing a pivotal role in increasing the adoption of CTEM, with a focus on security validation. Following is our take on the CTEM related product categories and what they mean for enterprise security leaders. The Industry is Maturing CTEM, coined by Gartner in 2022, presents a structural approach for continuously assessing, prioritizing, validating, and remediating expo

An ongoing social engineering campaign with alleged links to the Black Basta ransomware group has been linked to "multiple intrusion attempts" with the goal of conducting credential theft and deploying a malware dropper called SystemBC. "The initial lure being utilized by the threat actors remains the same: an email bomb followed by an attempt to call impacted users and offer a fake solution," Rapid7 said , adding "external calls were typically made to the impacted users via Microsoft Teams." The attack chain then convinces the user to download and install a legitimate remote access software named AnyDesk, which acts as a channel for deploying follow-on payloads and exfiltrate sensitive data. This includes the use of an executable called "AntiSpam.exe" that purports to download email spam filters and urges users to enter their Windows credentials to complete the update. The step is followed by the execution of several binaries, DLL files,

A coalition of law enforcement agencies coordinated by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) has led to the arrest and extradition of a Belarussian and Ukrainian dual-national believed to be associated with Russian-speaking cybercrime groups. Maksim Silnikau (aka Maksym Silnikov), 38, went by the online monikers J.P. Morgan, xxx, and lansky. He was extradited to the U.S. from Poland on August 9, 2024, to face charges related to international computer hacking and wire fraud schemes. "J.P. Morgan and his associates are elite cyber criminals who practiced extreme operational and online security in an effort to avoid law enforcement detection," the NCA said in a statement. These individuals, the agency said, were responsible for the development and distribution of ransomware strains such as Reveton and Ransom Cartel , as well as exploit kits like Angler . Reveton, introduced in 2011, has been described as the "first ever ransomware-as-a-service business model." V

The China-backed threat actor known as Earth Baku has diversified its targeting footprint beyond the Indo-Pacific region to include Europe, the Middle East, and Africa starting in late 2022. Newly targeted countries as part of the activity include Italy, Germany, the U.A.E., and Qatar, with suspected attacks also detected in Georgia and Romania. Governments, media and communications, telecoms, technology, healthcare, and education are some of the sectors singled out as part of the intrusion set. "The group has updated its tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) in more recent campaigns, making use of public-facing applications such as IIS servers as entry points for attacks, after which they deploy sophisticated malware toolsets on the victim's environment," Trend Micro researchers Ted Lee and Theo Chen said in an analysis published last week. The findings build upon recent reports from Zscaler and Google-owned Mandiant , which also detailed the threat actor's u

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Monday announced the disruption of online infrastructure associated with a nascent ransomware group called Radar/Dispossessor. The effort saw the dismantling of three U.S. servers, three United Kingdom servers, 18 German servers, eight U.S.-based criminal domains, and one German-based criminal domain. Dispossessor is said to be led by individual(s) who go by the online moniker "Brain." "Since its inception in August 2023, Radar/Dispossessor has quickly developed into an internationally impactful ransomware group, targeting and attacking small-to-mid-sized businesses and organizations from the production, development, education, healthcare, financial services, and transportation sectors," the FBI said in a statement. As many as 43 companies have been identified as victims of Dispossessor attacks, including those located in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Honduras, India, Peru, Pol

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new phishing campaign that masquerades as the Security Service of Ukraine to distribute malware capable of remote desktop access. The agency is tracking the activity under the name UAC-0198. More than 100 computers are estimated to have been infected since July 2024, including those related to government bodies in the country. The attack chains involve the mass distribution of emails to deliver a ZIP archive file containing an MSI installer file, the opening of which leads to the deployment of malware called ANONVNC. ANONVNC, which is based on an open-source remote management tool called MeshAgent , allows for stealthy unauthorized access to the infected hosts. The development comes as CERT-UA attributed the hacking group UAC-0102 to phishing attacks propagating HTML attachments that mimic the login page of UKR.NET to steal users' credentials. Over the past few weeks, the agency has also warned of a

In 2023, no fewer than 94 percent of businesses were impacted by phishing attacks, a 40 percent increase compared to the previous year, according to research from Egress . What's behind the surge in phishing? One popular answer is AI – particularly generative AI, which has made it trivially easier for threat actors to craft content that they can use in phishing campaigns, like malicious emails and, in more sophisticated cases, deepfake videos . In addition, AI can help write the malware that threat actors often plant on their victims' computers and servers as part of phishing campaigns. Phishing as a Service , or PhaaS, is another development sometimes cited to explain why phishing threats are at an all-time high. By allowing malicious parties to hire skilled attackers to carry out phishing campaigns for them, PhaaS makes it easy for anyone with a grudge – or a desire to exfiltrate some money from unsuspecting victims – to launch phishing attacks. Phishing has become agil

The Russian government and IT organizations are the target of a new campaign that delivers a number of backdoors and trojans as part of a spear-phishing campaign codenamed EastWind . The attack chains are characterized by the use of RAR archive attachments containing a Windows shortcut (LNK) file that, upon opening, activates the infection sequence, culminating in the deployment of malware such as GrewApacha, an updated version of the CloudSorcerer backdoor, and a previously undocumented implant dubbed PlugY. PlugY is "downloaded through the CloudSorcerer backdoor, has an extensive set of commands and supports three different protocols for communicating with the command-and-control server," Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said . The initial infection vector relies on a booby-trapped LNK file, which employs DLL side-loading techniques to launch a malicious DLL file that uses Dropbox as a communications mechanism to execute reconnaissance commands and download add

An ongoing, widespread malware campaign has been observed installing rogue Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge extensions via a trojan distributed via fake websites masquerading as popular software. "The trojan malware contains different deliverables ranging from simple adware extensions that hijack searches to more sophisticated malicious scripts that deliver local extensions to steal private data and execute various commands," the ReasonLabs research team said in an analysis. "This trojan malware, existing since 2021, originates from imitations of download websites with add-ons to online games and videos." The malware and the extensions have a combined reach of at least 300,000 users of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, indicating that the activity has a broad impact. At the heart of the campaign is the use of malvertising to push lookalike websites promoting known software like Roblox FPS Unlocker, YouTube, VLC media player, Steam, or KeePass to trick users s

The ransomware strain known as BlackSuit has demanded as much as $500 million in ransoms to date, with one individual ransom demand hitting $60 million. That's according to an updated advisory from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). "BlackSuit actors have exhibited a willingness to negotiate payment amounts," the agencies said . "Ransom amounts are not part of the initial ransom note, but require direct interaction with the threat actor via a .onion URL (reachable through the Tor browser) provided after encryption." Attacks involving ransomware have targeted several critical infrastructure sectors spanning commercial facilities, healthcare and public health, government facilities, and critical manufacturing. An evolution of the Royal ransomware , it leverages the initial access obtained via phishing emails to disarm antivirus software and exfiltrate sensitive data before ultimately

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of security flaws in the Roundcube webmail software that could be exploited to execute malicious JavaScript in a victim's web browser and steal sensitive information from their account under specific circumstances. "When a victim views a malicious email in Roundcube sent by an attacker, the attacker can execute arbitrary JavaScript in the victim's browser," cybersecurity company Sonar said in an analysis published this week. "Attackers can abuse the vulnerability to steal emails, contacts, and the victim's email password as well as send emails from the victim's account." Following responsible disclosure on June 18, 2024, the three vulnerabilities have been addressed in Roundcube versions 1.6.8 and 1.5.8 released on August 4, 2024. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2024-42008 - A cross-site scripting flaw via a malicious email attachment served with a dangerous Content-Type head

An unnamed media organization in South Asia was targeted in November 20233 using a previously undocumented Go-based backdoor called GoGra. "GoGra is written in Go and uses the Microsoft Graph API to interact with a command-and-control (C&C) server hosted on Microsoft mail services," Symantec, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. It's currently not clear how it's delivered to target environments. However, GoGra is specifically configured to read messages from an Outlook username "FNU LNU" whose subject line starts with the word "Input." The message contents are then decrypted using the AES-256 algorithm in Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode using a key, following which it executes the commands via cmd.exe. The results of the operation are then encrypted and sent to the same user with the subject "Output." GoGra is said to be the work of a nation-state hacking group known as Harvester owing to its simila

Apple on Tuesday announced an update to its next-generation macOS version that makes it a little more difficult for users to override Gatekeeper protections. Gatekeeper is a crucial line of defense built into macOS designed to ensure that only trusted apps run on the operating system. When an app is downloaded from outside of the App Store and opened for the first time, it verifies that the software is from an identified developer. It also runs checks to ensure that the app is notarized and has not been tampered with to install malware on macOS systems. Furthermore, it requires user approval before allowing any such third-party app to be run. It's this user approval mechanism that Apple has now tightened further with macOS Sequoia, the next iteration of the Mac operating system that's expected to be released next month. "In macOS Sequoia, users will no longer be able to Control-click to override Gatekeeper when opening software that isn't signed correctly or no

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Moonstone Sleet has continued to push malicious npm packages to the JavaScript package registry with the aim of infecting Windows systems, underscoring the persistent nature of their campaigns. The packages in question, harthat-api and harthat-hash , were published on July 7, 2024, according to Datadog Security Labs. Both the libraries did not attract any downloads and were shortly pulled after a brief period of time. The security arm of the cloud monitoring firm is tracking the threat actor under the name Stressed Pungsan, which exhibits overlaps with a newly discovered North Korean malicious activity cluster dubbed Moonstone Sleet. "While the name resembles the Hardhat npm package (an Ethereum development utility), its content does not indicate any intention to typosquat it," Datadog researchers Sebastian Obregoso and Zack Allen said . "The malicious package reuses code from a well-known GitHub repository called node-

Users in Russia have been the target of a previously undocumented Android post-compromise spyware called LianSpy since at least 2021. Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky, which discovered the malware in March 2024, noted its use of Yandex Cloud, a Russian cloud service, for command-and-control (C2) communications as a way to avoid having a dedicated infrastructure and evade detection. "This threat is equipped to capture screencasts, exfiltrate user files, and harvest call logs and app lists," security researcher Dmitry Kalinin said in a new technical report published Monday. It's currently not clear how the spyware is distributed, but the Russian company said it's likely deployed through either an unknown security flaw or direct physical access to the target phone. The malware-laced apps are disguised as Alipay or an Android system service. LianSpy, once activated, determines if it's running as a system app to operate in the background using administrator privi

Organizations in Kazakhstan are the target of a threat activity cluster dubbed Bloody Wolf that delivers a commodity malware called STRRAT (aka Strigoi Master). "The program selling for as little as $80 on underground resources allows the adversaries to take control of corporate computers and hijack restricted data," cybersecurity vendor BI.ZONE said in a new analysis. The cyber attacks employ phishing emails as an initial access vector, impersonating the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan and other agencies to trick recipients into opening PDF attachments. The file purports to be a non-compliance notice and contains links to a malicious Java archive (JAR) file as well as an installation guide for the Java interpreter necessary for the malware to function. In an attempt to lend legitimacy to the attack, the second link points to a web page associated with the country's government website that urges visitors to install Java in order to ensure that th