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Details have been made public about a now-patched high-severity flaw in Kubernetes that could allow a malicious attacker to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges under specific circumstances. "The vulnerability allows remote code execution with SYSTEM privileges on all Windows endpoints within a Kubernetes cluster," Akamai security researcher Tomer Peled  said . "To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker needs to apply malicious YAML files on the cluster." Tracked as CVE-2023-5528 (CVSS score: 7.2), the shortcoming impacts all versions of kubelet, including and after version 1.8.0. It was addressed as part of updates released on November 14, 2023, in the following versions - kubelet v1.28.4 kubelet v1.27.8 kubelet v1.26.11, and kubelet v1.25.16 "A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user that can create pods and persistent volumes on Windows nodes may be able to escalate to admin privileges on those nodes," Kubernetes maintainers  said  in a

The threat actor behind a peer-to-peer (P2P) botnet known as  FritzFrog  has made a return with a new variant that leverages the  Log4Shell vulnerability  to propagate internally within an already compromised network. "The vulnerability is exploited in a brute-force manner that attempts to target as many vulnerable Java applications as possible," web infrastructure and security company Akamai said in a report shared with The Hacker News. FritzFrog,  first documented  by Guardicore (now part of Akamai) in August 2020, is a Golang-based malware that primarily targets internet-facing servers with weak SSH credentials. It's known to be active since January 2020. It has  since evolved  to strike healthcare, education, and government sectors as well as improved its capabilities to ultimately deploy cryptocurrency miners on infected hosts, claiming more than 1,500 victims over the years. What's novel about the latest version is the use of the Log4Shell vulnerability a

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

A new Mirai-based botnet called  NoaBot  is being used by threat actors as part of a crypto mining campaign since the beginning of 2023. "The capabilities of the new botnet, NoaBot, include a wormable self-spreader and an SSH key backdoor to download and execute additional binaries or spread itself to new victims," Akamai security researcher Stiv Kupchik said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Mirai , which had its source code leaked in 2016, has been the progenitor of a number of botnets, the most recent being  InfectedSlurs , which is capable of mounting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. There are indications that NoaBot could be linked to another botnet campaign involving a Rust-based malware family known as  P2PInfect , which recently received an update to target routers and IoT devices. This is based on the fact that threat actors have also experimented with dropping P2PInfect in place of NoaBot in recent attacks targeting SSH servers, indicating likely at

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 researcher Ben Barnea, who discovered the vulnerabilities, said in a  two-part   report  shared with The Hacker News. The security issues, which were addressed by Microsoft in  August  and  October 2023 , respectively, are listed below - CVE-2023-35384  (CVSS score: 5.4) - Windows HTML Platforms Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-36710  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Media Foundation Core Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2023-35384 has been described by Akamai as a bypass for a critical security flaw that Microsoft patched in March 2023. Tracked as  CVE-2023-23397  (C

Microsoft released its final set of Patch Tuesday updates for 2023, closing out 34 flaws in its software, making it one of the lightest releases in recent years. Of the 34 shortcomings, four are rated Critical and 30 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 Tuesday updates for November 2023 . According to data from the  Zero Day Initiative , the software giant has patched more than 900 flaws this year, making it one of the busiest years for Microsoft patches. For comparison, Redmond resolved 917 CVEs in 2022. While none of the vulnerabilities are listed as publicly known or under active attack at the time of release, some of the notable ones are listed below - CVE-2023-35628  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Windows MSHTML Platform Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2023-35630  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2

A sophisticated  Magecart  campaign has been observed manipulating websites' default 404 error page to conceal malicious code in what's been described as the latest evolution of the attacks. The activity, per Akamai, targets Magento and WooCommerce websites, with some of the victims belonging to large organizations in the food and retail industries. "In this campaign, all the victim websites we detected were directly exploited, as the malicious code snippet was injected into one of their first-party resources," Akamai security researcher Roman Lvovsky  said  in a Monday analysis. This involves inserting the code directly into the HTML pages or within one of the first-party scripts that were loaded as part of the website. The attacks are realized through a multi-stage chain, in which the loader code retrieves the main payload during runtime in order to capture the sensitive information entered by visitors on checkout pages and exfiltrate it to a remote server. &

E-commerce sites using Adobe's Magento 2 software are the target of an ongoing campaign that has been active since at least January 2023. The attacks, dubbed  Xurum  by Akamai, leverage a now-patched critical security flaw ( CVE-2022-24086 , CVSS score: 9.8) in Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source that, if successfully exploited, could lead to arbitrary code execution. "The attacker seems to be interested in payment stats from the orders in the victim's Magento store placed in the past 10 days," Akamai researchers  said  in an analysis published last week, attributing the campaign to actors of Russian origin. Some of the websites have also been observed to be infected with simple JavaScript-based skimmers that's designed to collect credit card information and transmit it to a remote server. The exact scale of the campaign remains unclear. In the attack chains observed by the company, CVE-2022-24086 is weaponized for initial access, subsequently exploiting

Vulnerable  Redis services  have been targeted by a "new, improved, dangerous" variant of a malware called SkidMap that's engineered to target a wide range of Linux distributions. "The malicious nature of this malware is to adapt to the system on which it is executed," Trustwave security researcher Radoslaw Zdonczyk  said  in an analysis published last week. Some of the Linux distribution SkidMap sets its eyes on include Alibaba, Anolis, openEuler, EulerOS, Stream, CentOS, RedHat, and Rocky. SkidMap was  first disclosed  by Trend Micro in September 2019 as a cryptocurrency mining botnet with capabilities to load malicious kernel modules that can obfuscate its activities as well as monitor the miner process. The operators of the malware have also been found camouflaging their backup command-and-control (C2) IP address on the Bitcoin blockchain, evocative of another botnet malware known as  Glupteba . "The technique of fetching real-time data from a de

An active financially motivated campaign is targeting vulnerable SSH servers to covertly ensnare them into a proxy network. "This is an active campaign in which the attacker leverages SSH for remote access, running malicious scripts that stealthily enlist victim servers into a peer-to-peer (P2P) proxy network, such as Peer2Profit or Honeygain," Akamai researcher Allen West said in a Thursday report. Unlike cryptojacking, in which a compromised system's resources are used to illicitly mine cryptocurrency, proxyjacking offers the ability for threat actors to leverage the victim's unused bandwidth to clandestinely run different services as a P2P node. This offers two-fold benefits: It not only enables the attacker to monetize the extra bandwidth with a significantly reduced resource load that would be necessary to carry out cryptojacking, it also reduces the chances of discovery. "It is a stealthier alternative to cryptojacking and has serious implications th

An ongoing analysis into an up-and-coming cryptocurrency mining botnet known as KmsdBot has led to it being accidentally taken down by the threat actors themselves. KmsdBot, as christened by the Akamai Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT), came to light mid-November 2022 for its ability to  brute-force systems  with weak SSH credentials. The botnet strikes both Windows and Linux devices spanning a wide range of microarchitectures with the primary goal of deploying mining software and corralling the compromised hosts into a DDoS bot. Some of the major targets included gaming firms, technology companies, and luxury car manufacturers. Akamai researcher Larry W. Cashdollar, in a new update, explained how commands sent by the malware operators to carry out a DDoS attack against the bitcoin[.]com website inadvertently neutralized the malware. "Interestingly, after one single improperly formatted command, the bot stopped sending commands," Cashdollar  said . "It&#

A newly discovered evasive malware leverages the Secure Shell ( SSH ) cryptographic protocol to gain entry into targeted systems with the goal of mining cryptocurrency and carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Dubbed  KmsdBot  by the Akamai Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT), the Golang-based malware has been found targeting a variety of companies ranging from gaming to luxury car brands to security firms. "The botnet infects systems via an SSH connection that uses weak login credentials," Akamai researcher Larry W. Cashdollar  said . "The malware does not stay persistent on the infected system as a way of evading detection." The malware gets its name from an executable named "kmsd.exe" that's downloaded from a remote server following a successful compromise. It's also designed to support multiple architectures, such as Winx86, Arm64, mips64, and x86_64. KmsdBot comes with capabilities to perform scanning operatio

A peer-to-peer Golang botnet has resurfaced after more than a year to compromise servers belonging to entities in the healthcare, education, and government sectors within a span of a month, infecting a total of 1,500 hosts. Dubbed FritzFrog , "the decentralized botnet targets any device that exposes an SSH server — cloud instances, data center servers, routers, etc. — and is capable of running any malicious payload on infected nodes," Akamai researchers said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The new wave of attacks commenced in early December 2021, only to pick up pace and register a 10x growth in its infection rate in a month's time, while peaking at 500 incidents per day in January 2022. The cybersecurity firm said it detected infected machines in a European television channel network, a Russian manufacturer of healthcare equipment, and multiple universities in East Asia. FritzFrog was  first documented  by Guardicore in August 2020, elaborating the botnet&