The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis

Ukrainian law enforcement officials on Wednesday announced the arrest of the  Clop ransomware  gang, adding it disrupted the infrastructure employed in attacks targeting victims worldwide since at least 2019. As part of a joint operation between the National Police of Ukraine and authorities from the Republic of Korea and the U.S., six defendants have been accused of running a double extortion scheme wherein victims refusing to pay a ransom were threatened with the leak of sensitive financial, customer, or personal data stolen from them prior to encrypting the files. The ransomware attacks amount to $500 million in monetary damages, the National Police  said , noting that "law enforcement has managed to shut down the infrastructure from which the virus spreads and block channels for legalizing criminally acquired cryptocurrencies." Law enforcement officers are said to have conducted 21 searches in the Ukrainian capital and Kyiv region, including the homes of the defendan

A malware campaign targeting South Korean entities that came to light earlier this year has been attributed to a North Korean nation-state hacking group called Andariel, once again indicating that  Lazarus  attackers are following the trends and their  arsenal  is in  constant development . "The way Windows commands and their options were used in this campaign is almost identical to previous Andariel activity," Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky  said  in a deep-dive published Tuesday. Victims of the attack are in the manufacturing, home network service, media, and construction sectors. Designated as part of the Lazarus constellation, Andariel is known for unleashing attacks on South Korean organizations and businesses using specifically tailored methods created for maximum effectivity. In September 2019, the sub-group, along with Lazarus and Bluenoroff, was  sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department  for their malicious cyber activity on critical infrastructure. Anda

As ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure skyrocket, new research shows that threat actors behind such disruptions are increasingly shifting from using email messages as an intrusion route to purchasing access from cybercriminal enterprises that have already infiltrated major targets. "Ransomware operators often buy access from independent cybercriminal groups who infiltrate major targets and then sell access to the ransomware actors for a slice of the ill-gotten gains," researchers from Proofpoint said in a write-up shared with The Hacker News. "Cybercriminal threat groups already distributing banking malware or other trojans may also become part of a ransomware affiliate network." Besides angling for a piece of the illegal profits, the email and cloud security firm said it is currently tracking at least 10 different threat actors who play the role of "initial access facilitators" to supply affiliates and other cybercrime groups with an e

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday issued an advisory regarding a critical software supply-chain flaw impacting ThroughTek's software development kit (SDK) that could be abused by an adversary to gain improper access to audio and video streams. "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could permit unauthorized access to sensitive information, such as camera audio/video feeds," CISA  said  in the alert. ThroughTek's point-to-point ( P2P ) SDK is widely used by IoT devices with video surveillance or audio/video transmission capability such as IP cameras, baby and pet monitoring cameras, smart home appliances, and sensors to provide remote access to the media content over the internet. Tracked as CVE-2021-32934 (CVSS score: 9.1), the shortcoming affects ThroughTek P2P products, versions 3.1.5 and before as well as SDK versions with nossl tag, and stems from a lack of sufficient protection when transferring data between

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed "distinctive" tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by operators of Hades ransomware that set it apart from the rest of the pack, attributing it to a financially motivated threat group called  GOLD WINTER . "In many ways, the GOLD WINTER threat group is a typical post-intrusion ransomware threat group that pursues high-value targets to maximize how much money it can extort from its victims," researchers from SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) said in an analysis shared with The Hacker News. "However, GOLD WINTER's operations have quirks that distinguish it from other groups." The findings come from a study of incident response efforts the Atlanta-based cybersecurity firm engaged in the first quarter of 2021. Since first emerging in the threat landscape in December 2020, Hades has been classified as INDRIK SPIDER's successor to  WastedLocker  ransomware with "additional code o

Instagram has patched a new flaw that allowed anyone to view archived posts and stories posted by private accounts without having to follow them. "This bug could have allowed a malicious user to view targeted media on Instagram," Mayur Fartade  said  in a Medium post today. "An attacker could have been able to see details of private/archived posts, stories, reels, IGTV without following the user using Media ID." Fartade disclosed the issue to Facebook's security team on April 16, 2021, following which the shortcoming was patched on June 15. He was also awarded $30,000 as part of the company's bug bounty program. Although the attack requires knowing the media ID associated with an image, video, or album, by brute-forcing the identifiers, Fartade demonstrated that it was possible to craft a POST request to a GraphQL endpoint and retrieve sensitive data. As a consequence of the flaw, details such as like/comment/save count, display_url, and image.uri c

Apple on Monday shipped out-of-band security patches to address two zero-day vulnerabilities in iOS 12.5.3 that it says are being actively exploited in the wild. The latest update, iOS 12.5.4 , comes with fixes for three security bugs, including a memory corruption issue in ASN.1 decoder (CVE-2021-30737) and two flaws concerning its WebKit browser engine that could be abused to achieve remote code execution — CVE-2021-30761  - A memory corruption issue that could be exploited to gain arbitrary code execution when processing maliciously crafted web content. The flaw was addressed with improved state management. CVE-2021-30762  - A use-after-free issue that could be exploited to gain arbitrary code execution when processing maliciously crafted web content. The flaw was resolved with improved memory management. Both CVE-2021-30761 and CVE-2021-30762 were reported to Apple anonymously, with the Cupertino-based company stating in its advisory that it's aware of reports that th