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Threat actors are increasingly banking on a new technique that leverages near-field communication (NFC) to cash out victim's funds at scale. The technique, codenamed Ghost Tap by ThreatFabric, enables cybercriminals to cash-out money from stolen credit cards linked to mobile payment services such as Google Pay or Apple Pay and relaying NFC traffic. "Criminals can now misuse Google Pay and Apple Pay to transmit your tap-to-pay information globally within seconds," the Dutch security company told The Hacker News in a statement. "This means that even without your physical card or phone, they can make payments from your account anywhere in the world." These attacks typically work by tricking victims into downloading mobile banking malware that can capture their banking credentials and one-time passwords using an overlay attack or a keylogger. Alternatively, it can involve a voice phishing component. Once in possession of the card details, the threat actors m

The frequency and sophistication of modern cyberattacks are surging, making it increasingly challenging for organizations to protect sensitive data and critical infrastructure. When attackers compromise a non-human identity (NHI), they can swiftly exploit it to move laterally across systems, identifying vulnerabilities and compromising additional NHIs in minutes. While organizations often take months to detect and contain such breaches, rapid detection and response can stop an attack in its tracks. The Rise of Non-Human Identities in Cybersecurity By 2025, non-human identities will rise to be the primary attack vector in cybersecurity. As businesses increasingly automate processes and adopt AI and IoT technologies, the number of NHIs grows exponentially. While these systems drive efficiency, they also create an expanded attack surface for cybercriminals. NHIs differ fundamentally from human users, making traditional security tools like multi-factor authentication and user behavior

Multiple decade-old security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the needrestart package installed by default in Ubuntu Server (since version 21.04) that could allow a local attacker to gain root privileges without requiring user interaction. The Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU), which identified and reported the flaws early last month, said they are trivial to exploit, necessitating that users move quickly to apply the fixes. The vulnerabilities are believed to have existed since the introduction of interpreter support in needrestart 0.8 , which was released on April 27, 2014. "These needrestart exploits allow Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) which means that a local attacker is able to gain root privileges," Ubuntu said in an advisory, noting they have been addressed in version 3.8. "The vulnerabilities affect Debian, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions." Needrestart is a utility that scans a system to determine the services that need to be restarted a

Microsoft has announced a new Windows Resiliency Initiative as a way to improve security and reliability, as well as ensure that system integrity is not compromised. The idea, the tech giant said, is to avoid incidents like that of CrowdStrike's earlier this July, enable more apps and users to be run without admin privileges, add controls surrounding the use of unsafe apps and drivers, and offer options to encrypt personal data. One of the most important features is Quick Machine Recovery that's expected to be available to the Windows Insider Program community in early 2025. "This feature will enable IT administrators to execute targeted fixes from Windows Update on PCs, even when machines are unable to boot, without needing physical access to the PC," David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, said . "This remote recovery will unblock your employees from broad issues much faster than what has been possible in the past."

A new China-linked cyber espionage group has been attributed as behind a series of targeted cyber attacks targeting telecommunications entities in South Asia and Africa since at least 2020 with the goal of enabling intelligence collection. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike is tracking the adversary under the name Liminal Panda , describing it as possessing deep knowledge about telecommunications networks, the protocols that undergird telecommunications, and the various interconnections between providers. The threat actor's malware portfolio includes bespoke tools that facilitate clandestine access, command-and-control (C2), and data exfiltration. "Liminal Panda has used compromised telecom servers to initiate intrusions into further providers in other geographic regions," the company's Counter Adversary Operations team said in a Tuesday analysis. "The adversary conducts elements of their intrusion activity using protocols that support mobile telecommunicati

Apple has released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, and its Safari web browser to address two zero-day flaws that have come under active exploitation in the wild. The flaws are listed below - CVE-2024-44308 - A vulnerability in JavaScriptCore that could lead to arbitrary code execution when processing malicious web content CVE-2024-44309 - A cookie management vulnerability in WebKit that could lead to a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack when processing malicious web content The iPhone maker said it addressed CVE-2024-44308 and CVE-2024-44309 with improved checks and improved state management, respectively.  Not much is known about the exact nature of the exploitation, but Apple has acknowledged that the pair of vulnerabilities "may have been actively exploited on Intel-based Mac systems." Clément Lecigne and Benoît Sevens of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) have been credited with discovering and reporting the two flaws, indicating that t

The rise of SaaS and cloud-based work environments has fundamentally altered the cyber risk landscape. With more than 90% of organizational network traffic flowing through browsers and web applications, companies are facing new and serious cybersecurity threats. These include phishing attacks, data leakage, and malicious extensions. As a result, the browser also becomes a vulnerability that needs to be protected. LayerX has released a comprehensive guide titled "Kickstarting Your Browser Security Program" This in-depth guide serves as a roadmap for CISOs and security teams looking to secure browser activities within their organization; including step-by-step instructions, frameworks, and use cases. Below, we bring its main highlights. Prioritizing Browser Security Browsers now serve as the primary interface for SaaS applications, creating new malicious opportunities for cyber adversaries. The risks include: Data leakage - Browsers can expose sensitive data by allowing empl

Oracle is warning that a high-severity security flaw impacting the Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Framework has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-21287 (CVSS score: 7.5), could be exploited sans authentication to leak sensitive information. "This vulnerability is remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., it may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password," it said in an advisory. "If successfully exploited, this vulnerability may result in file disclosure." CrowdStrike security researchers Joel Snape and Lutz Wolf have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. There is currently no information available on who is exploiting the vulnerability, the targets of the malicious activity, and how widespread these attacks are. "If successfully exploited, an unauthenticated perpetrator could download, from the targeted system, files accessible under the privileges used

The malware known as Ngioweb has been used to fuel a notorious residential proxy service called NSOCKS, as well as by other services such as VN5Socks and Shopsocks5, new findings from Lumen Technologies reveal. "At least 80% of NSOCKS bots in our telemetry originate from the Ngioweb botnet, mainly utilizing small office/home office (SOHO) routers and IoT devices," the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Two-thirds of these proxies are based in the U.S." "The network maintains a daily average of roughly 35,000 working bots, with 40% remaining active for a month or longer." Ngioweb, first documented by Check Point way back in August 2018 in connection with a Ramnit trojan campaign that distributed the malware, has been the subject of extensive analyses in recent weeks by LevelBlue and Trend Micro , the latter of which is tracking the financially motivated threat actor behind the operation as Wate

Malicious actors are exploiting misconfigured JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebooks to conduct stream ripping and enable sports piracy using live streaming capture tools. The attacks involve the hijack of unauthenticated Jupyter Notebooks to establish initial access, and perform a series of actions designed to facilitate illegal live streaming of sports events, Aqua said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The covert piracy campaign within interactive environments widely used for data science applications was discovered by the cloud security firm following an attack against its honeypots. "First, the attacker updated the server, then downloaded the tool FFmpeg ," said Assaf Morag, director of threat intelligence at cloud security firm Aqua. "This action alone is not a strong enough indicator for security tools to flag malicious activity." "Next, the attacker executed FFmpeg to capture live streams of sports events and redirected them to their server.&quo

Privileged accounts are well-known gateways for potential security threats. However, many organizations focus solely on managing privileged access—rather than securing the accounts and users entrusted with it. This emphasis is perhaps due to the persistent challenges of Privileged Access Management (PAM) deployments. Yet, as the threat landscape evolves, so must organizational priorities. To prevent trust from becoming a liability, the next step in securing privileged access must become a critical focus. In this blog, we explore why managing privileged access alone is insufficient and provide actionable insights to help you craft a security-first strategy for privileged access. The Evolution of PAM Privileged Access Management (PAM) has long been a cornerstone of securing an organization's privileged users and critical resources. PAM's primary goal is to control, monitor, and safeguard privileged accounts, which often have elevated access to critical systems and data. These accou