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A recently patched security flaw in Google Chrome and other Chromium web browsers was exploited as a zero-day by North Korean actors in a campaign designed to deliver the FudModule rootkit. The development is indicative of the persistent efforts made by the nation-state adversary, which had made a habit of incorporating rafts of Windows zero-day exploits into its arsenal in recent months. Microsoft, which detected the activity on August 19, 2024, attributed it to a threat actor it tracks as Citrine Sleet (formerly DEV-0139 and DEV-1222), which is also known as AppleJeus, Labyrinth Chollima, Nickel Academy, and UNC4736 . It's assessed to be a sub-cluster within the Lazarus Group (aka Diamond Sleet and Hidden Cobra). It's worth mentioning that the use of the AppleJeus malware has been previously also attributed by Kaspersky to another Lazarus subgroup called BlueNoroff (aka APT38, Nickel Gladstone, and Stardust Chollima), indicative of the infrastructure and toolset sharin

Two security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the open-source Traccar GPS tracking system that could be potentially exploited by unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution under certain circumstances. Both the vulnerabilities are path traversal flaws and could be weaponized if guest registration is enabled, which is the default configuration for Traccar 5, Horizon3.ai researcher Naveen Sunkavally said. A brief description of the shortcomings is as follows - CVE-2024-24809 (CVSS score: 8.5) - Path Traversal: 'dir/../../filename' and unrestricted upload of file with dangerous type CVE-2024-31214 (CVSS score: 9.7) - Unrestricted file upload vulnerability in device image upload could lead to remote code execution "The net result of CVE-2024-31214 and CVE-2024-24809 is that an attacker can place files with arbitrary content anywhere on the file system," Sunkavally said . "However an attacker only has partial control over the filename.

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

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen dropper that serves as a conduit to launch next-stage malware with the ultimate goal of infecting Windows systems with information stealers and loaders. "This memory-only dropper decrypts and executes a PowerShell-based downloader," Google-owned Mandiant said . "This PowerShell-based downloader is being tracked as PEAKLIGHT." Some of the malware strains distributed using this technique are Lumma Stealer , Hijack Loader (aka DOILoader, IDAT Loader, or SHADOWLADDER), and CryptBot , all of which are advertised under the malware-as-a-service (SaaS) model. The starting point of the attack chain is a Windows shortcut (LNK) file that's downloaded via drive-by download techniques -- e.g., when users look up a movie on search engines. It's worth pointing out that the LNK files are distributed within ZIP archives that are disguised as pirated movies. The LNK file connects to a content delivery network

A newly patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows was exploited as a zero-day by Lazarus Group , a prolific state-sponsored actor affiliated with North Korea. The security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-38193 (CVSS score: 7.8), has been described as a privilege escalation bug in the Windows Ancillary Function Driver (AFD.sys) for WinSock. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," Microsoft said in an advisory for the flaw last week. It was addressed by the tech giant as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday update. Credited with discovering and reporting the flaw are Gen Digital researchers Luigino Camastra and Milánek. Gen Digital owns a number of security and utility software brands like Norton, Avast, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and CCleaner. "This flaw allowed them to gain unauthorized access to sensitive system areas," the company disclosed last week, adding it discovered the exploitation in early J

A cybercrime group with links to the RansomHub ransomware has been observed using a new tool designed to terminate endpoint detection and response (EDR) software on compromised hosts, joining the likes of other similar programs like AuKill (aka AvNeutralizer) and Terminator . The EDR-killing utility has been dubbed EDRKillShifter by cybersecurity company Sophos, which discovered the tool in connection with a failed ransomware attack in May 2024. "The EDRKillShifter tool is a 'loader' executable – a delivery mechanism for a legitimate driver that is vulnerable to abuse (also known as a 'bring your own vulnerable driver,' or BYOVD , tool)," security researcher Andreas Klopsch said . "Depending on the threat actor's requirements, it can deliver a variety of different driver payloads." RansomHub , a suspected rebrand of the Knight ransomware, surfaced in February 2024, leveraging known security flaws to obtain initial access and drop legitimate rem

As many as 10 security flaws have been uncovered in Google's Quick Share data transfer utility for Android and Windows that could be assembled to trigger remote code execution (RCE) chain on systems that have the software installed. "The Quick Share application implements its own specific application-layer communication protocol to support file transfers between nearby, compatible devices," SafeBreach Labs researchers Or Yair and Shmuel Cohen said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "By investigating how the protocol works, we were able to fuzz and identify logic within the Quick Share application for Windows that we could manipulate or bypass." The result is the discovery of 10 vulnerabilities – nine affecting Quick Share for Windows and one impacting Android – that could be fashioned into an "innovative and unconventional" RCE attack chain to run arbitrary code on Windows hosts. The RCE attack chain has been codenamed QuickShell

Microsoft has disclosed an unpatched zero-day in Office that, if successfully exploited, could result in unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information to malicious actors. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-38200 (CVSS score: 7.5), has been described as a spoofing flaw that affects the following versions of Office - Microsoft Office 2016 for 32-bit edition and 64-bit editions Microsoft Office LTSC 2021 for 32-bit and 64-bit editions Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise for 32-bit and 64-bit Systems Microsoft Office 2019 for 32-bit and 64-bit editions Credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability are researchers Jim Rush and Metin Yunus Kandemir.  "In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a website (or leverage a compromised website that accepts or hosts user-provided content) that contains a specially crafted file that is designed to exploit the vulnerability," Microsoft said in an advisory. "However, an attacker would have no w

Microsoft said it is developing security updates to address two loopholes that it said could be abused to stage downgrade attacks against the Windows update architecture and replace current versions of the operating system files with older versions. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2024-38202 (CVSS score: 7.3) - Windows Update Stack Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2024-21302 (CVSS score: 6.7) - Windows Secure Kernel Mode Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Credited with discovering and reporting the flaws is SafeBreach Labs researcher Alon Leviev, who presented the findings at Black Hat USA 2024 and DEF CON 32 . CVE-2024-38202, which is rooted in the Windows Backup component, allows an "attacker with basic user privileges to reintroduce previously mitigated vulnerabilities or circumvent some features of Virtualization Based Security (VBS)," the tech giant said. It, however, noted that an attacker attempting to leverage the flaw would have to c

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has published its root cause analysis detailing the Falcon Sensor software update crash that crippled millions of Windows devices globally. The "Channel File 291" incident, as originally highlighted in its Preliminary Post Incident Review (PIR), has been traced back to a content validation issue that arose after it introduced a new Template Type to enable visibility into and detection of novel attack techniques that abuse named pipes and other Windows interprocess communication (IPC) mechanisms. Specifically, it's related to a problematic content update deployed over the cloud, with the company describing it as a "confluence" of several shortcomings that led to a crash – the most prominent of them is a mismatch between the 21 inputs passed to the Content Validator via the IPC Template Type as opposed to the 20 supplied to the Content Interpreter. CrowdStrike said the parameter mismatch was not discovered during "multi

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-

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered design weaknesses in Microsoft's Windows Smart App Control and SmartScreen that could enable threat actors to gain initial access to target environments without raising any warnings. Smart App Control ( SAC ) is a cloud-powered security feature introduced by Microsoft in Windows 11 to block malicious, untrusted, and potentially unwanted apps from being run on the system. In cases where the service is unable to make a prediction about the app, it checks if it's signed or has a valid signature so as to be executed. SmartScreen, which was released alongside Windows 10, is a similar security feature that determines whether a site or a downloaded app is potentially malicious. It also leverages a reputation-based approach for URL and app protection. "Microsoft Defender SmartScreen evaluates a website's URLs to determine if they're known to distribute or host unsafe content," Redmond notes in its documentation. "I

The China-linked threat actor known as Evasive Panda compromised an unnamed internet service provider (ISP) to push malicious software updates to target companies in mid-2023, highlighting a new level of sophistication associated with the group. Evasive Panda, also known by the names Bronze Highland, Daggerfly, and StormBamboo, is a cyber espionage group that's been active since at least 2012, leveraging backdoors such as MgBot (aka POCOSTICK) and Nightdoor (aka NetMM and Suzafk) to harvest sensitive information. More recently, the threat actor was formally attributed to the use of a macOS malware strain called MACMA, which has been observed in the wild as far back as 2021. "StormBamboo is a highly skilled and aggressive threat actor who compromises third-parties (in this case, an ISP) to breach intended targets," Volexity said in a report published last week. "The variety of malware employed in various campaigns by this threat actor indicates significant ef

A Russia-linked threat actor has been linked to a new campaign that employed a car for sale as a phishing lure to deliver a modular Windows backdoor called HeadLace . "The campaign likely targeted diplomats and began as early as March 2024," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a report published today, attributing it with medium to high level of confidence to APT28 , which is also referred to as BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Fighting Ursa, Forest Blizzard, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, ITG05, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422. It's worth noting that car-for-sale phishing lure themes have been previously put to use by a different Russian nation-state group called APT29 as far back as May 2023, indicating that APT28 is repurposing successful tactics for its own campaigns. Earlier this May, the threat actor was implicated in a series of campaigns targeting networks across Europe with the HeadLace malware and credential-harvesting web pages. The attacks are characterize

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously undocumented Windows backdoor that leverages a built-in feature called Background Intelligent Transfer Service ( BITS ) as a command-and-control (C2) mechanism. The newly identified malware strain has been codenamed BITSLOTH by Elastic Security Labs, which made the discovery on June 25, 2024, in connection with a cyber attack targeting an unspecified Foreign Ministry of a South American government. The activity cluster is being tracked under the moniker REF8747. "The most current iteration of the backdoor at the time of this publication has 35 handler functions including keylogging and screen capture capabilities," security researchers Seth Goodwin and Daniel Stepanic said . "In addition, BITSLOTH contains many different features for discovery, enumeration, and command-line execution." It's assessed that the tool – in development since December 2021 – is being used by the threat actors for data gatheri

Google has announced that it's adding a new layer of protection to its Chrome browser through what's called app-bound encryption to prevent information-stealing malware from grabbing cookies on Windows systems. "On Windows, Chrome uses the Data Protection API ( DPAPI ) which protects the data at rest from other users on the system or cold boot attacks," Will Harris from the Chrome security team said . "However, the DPAPI does not protect against malicious applications able to execute code as the logged in user – which info-stealers take advantage of." App-bound encryption is an improvement over DPAPI in that it interweaves an app's identity (i.e., Chrome in this case) into encrypted data to prevent another app on the system from accessing it when decryption is attempted. "Because the app-bound service is running with system privileges, attackers need to do more than just coax a user into running a malicious app," Harris said. "Now, th

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which is facing the heat for causing worldwide IT disruptions by pushing out a flawed update to Windows devices, is now warning that threat actors are exploiting the situation to distribute Remcos RAT to its customers in Latin America under the guise of providing a hotfix. The attack chains involve distributing a ZIP archive file named " crowdstrike-hotfix.zip ," which contains a malware loader named Hijack Loader (aka DOILoader or IDAT Loader) that, in turn, launches the Remcos RAT payload. Specifically, the archive file also includes a text file ("instrucciones.txt") with Spanish-language instructions that urges targets to run an executable file ("setup.exe") to recover from the issue. "Notably, Spanish filenames and instructions within the ZIP archive indicate this campaign is likely targeting Latin America-based (LATAM) CrowdStrike customers," the company said , attributing the campaign to a suspected e-

Businesses across the world have been hit by widespread disruptions to their Windows workstations stemming from a faulty update pushed out by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. "CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," the company's CEO George Kurtz said in a statement . "Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyber attack." The company, which acknowledged "reports of [ Blue Screens of Death ] on Windows hosts," further said it has identified the issue and a fix has been deployed for its Falcon Sensor product, urging customers to refer to the support portal for the latest updates. For systems that have been already impacted by the problem, the mitigation instructions are listed below - Boot Windows in Safe Mode or Windows Recovery Environment Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory Find the file named &qu