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Category — Cloud security
Socks5Systemz Botnet Powers Illegal Proxy Service with 85,000+ Hacked Devices

Socks5Systemz Botnet Powers Illegal Proxy Service with 85,000+ Hacked Devices

Dec 09, 2024 Cloud Security / Botnet
A malicious botnet called Socks5Systemz is powering a proxy service called PROXY.AM, according to new findings from Bitsight. "Proxy malware and services enable other types of criminal activity adding uncontrolled layers of anonymity to the threat actors, so they can perform all kinds of malicious activity using chains of victim systems," the company's security research team said in an analysis published last week. The disclosure comes merely weeks after the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies revealed that systems compromised by another malware known as Ngioweb are being abused as residential proxy servers for NSOCKS. Socks5Systemz, originally advertised in the cybercrime underground as far back as March 2013, was previously documented by BitSight as being deployed as part of cyber attacks targeting distributing PrivateLoader, SmokeLoader, and Amadey. The primary objective of the malware is to turn compromised systems into proxy exit nodes, which are t...
7 PAM Best Practices to Secure Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments

7 PAM Best Practices to Secure Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments

Dec 04, 2024 Risk Management / Zero Trust
Are you using the cloud or thinking about transitioning? Undoubtedly, multi-cloud and hybrid environments offer numerous benefits for organizations. However, the cloud's flexibility, scalability, and efficiency come with significant risk — an expanded attack surface. The decentralization that comes with utilizing multi-cloud environments can also lead to limited visibility into user activity and poor access management.  Privileged accounts with access to your critical systems and sensitive data are among the most vulnerable elements in cloud setups. When mismanaged, these accounts open the doors to unauthorized access, potential malicious activity, and data breaches. That's why strong privileged access management (PAM) is indispensable. PAM plays an essential role in addressing the security challenges of complex infrastructures by enforcing strict access controls and managing the life cycle of privileged accounts. By employing PAM in hybrid and cloud environments, you're not...
Unlocking Google Workspace Security: Are You Doing Enough to Protect Your Data?

Crowdstrike Named A Leader In Endpoint Protection Platforms

Nov 22, 2024Endpoint Security / Threat Detection
CrowdStrike is named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection Platforms for the fifth consecutive time, positioned highest on Ability to Execute and furthest to the right on Completeness of Vision.
Phishing-as-a-Service "Rockstar 2FA" Targets Microsoft 365 Users with AiTM Attacks

Phishing-as-a-Service "Rockstar 2FA" Targets Microsoft 365 Users with AiTM Attacks

Nov 29, 2024 Cybercrime / Cloud Security
Cybersecurity researchers are warning about malicious email campaigns leveraging a phishing-as-a-service ( PhaaS ) toolkit called Rockstar 2FA with an aim to steal Microsoft 365 account credentials. "This campaign employs an AitM [adversary-in-the-middle] attack, allowing attackers to intercept user credentials and session cookies, which means that even users with multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled can still be vulnerable," Trustwave researchers Diana Solomon and John Kevin Adriano said . Rockstar 2FA is assessed to be an updated version of the DadSec (aka Phoenix) phishing kit. Microsoft is tracking the developers and distributors of the Dadsec PhaaS platform under the moniker Storm-1575 . Like its predecessors, the phishing kit is advertised via services like ICQ, Telegram, and Mail.ru under a subscription model for $200 for two weeks (or $350 for a month), allowing cyber criminals with little-to-no technical expertise to mount campaigns at scale. Some of the...
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Breaking Barriers: Strategies to Unite AppSec and R&D for Success

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Microsoft Fixes AI, Cloud, and ERP Security Flaws; One Exploited in Active Attacks

Microsoft Fixes AI, Cloud, and ERP Security Flaws; One Exploited in Active Attacks

Nov 29, 2024 AI Security / Cloud Security
Microsoft has addressed four security flaws impacting its artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, enterprise resource planning, and Partner Center offerings, including one that it said has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability that has been tagged with an "Exploitation Detected" assessment is CVE-2024-49035 (CVSS score: 8.7), a privilege escalation flaw in partner.microsoft[.]com. "An improper access control vulnerability in partner.microsoft[.]com allows an unauthenticated attacker to elevate privileges over a network," the tech giant said in an advisory released this week. Microsoft credited Gautam Peri, Apoorv Wadhwa, and an anonymous researcher for reporting the flaw, but did not reveal any specifics on how it's being exploited in real-world attacks. Fixes for the shortcomings are being rolled out automatically as part of updates to the online version of Microsoft Power Apps. Also addressed by Redmond are three other vulnerabilities, two of which...
The Future of Serverless Security in 2025: From Logs to Runtime Protection

The Future of Serverless Security in 2025: From Logs to Runtime Protection

Nov 28, 2024 Cloud Security / Threat Detection
Serverless environments, leveraging services such as AWS Lambda, offer incredible benefits in terms of scalability, efficiency, and reduced operational overhead. However, securing these environments is extremely challenging. The core of current serverless security practices often revolves around two key components: log monitoring and static analysis of code or system configuration. But here is the issue with that: 1. Logs Only Tell Part of the Story Logs can track external-facing activities, but they don't provide visibility into the internal execution of functions. For example, if an attacker injects malicious code into a serverless function that doesn't interact with external resources (e.g., external APIs or databases), traditional log-based tools will not detect this intrusion. The attacker may execute unauthorized processes, manipulate files, or escalate privileges—all without triggering log events. 2. Static Misconfiguration Detection is Incomplete Static tools that check ...
Matrix Botnet Exploits IoT Devices in Widespread DDoS Botnet Campaign

Matrix Botnet Exploits IoT Devices in Widespread DDoS Botnet Campaign

Nov 27, 2024 IoT Security / Network Security
A threat actor named Matrix has been linked to a widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaign that leverages vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in Internet of Things (IoT) devices to co-opt them into a disruptive botnet. "This operation serves as a comprehensive one-stop shop for scanning, exploiting vulnerabilities, deploying malware, and setting up shop kits, showcasing a do-it-all-yourself approach to cyberattacks," Assaf Morag, director of threat intelligence at cloud security firm Aqua, said . There is evidence to suggest that the operation is the work of a lone wolf actor, a script kiddie of Russian origin. The attacks have primarily targeted IP addresses located in China, Japan, and to a lesser extent Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, India, and the U.S. The absence of Ukraine in the victimology footprint indicates that the attackers are purely driven by financial motivations, the cloud security firm said. The attack chains are characterized by ...
Cybersecurity Blind Spots in IaC and PaC Tools Expose Cloud Platforms to New Attacks

Cybersecurity Blind Spots in IaC and PaC Tools Expose Cloud Platforms to New Attacks

Nov 25, 2024 Cloud Security / Supply Chain Attack
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two new attack techniques against infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and policy-as-code (PaC) tools like HashiCorp's Terraform and Styra's Open Policy Agent (OPA) that leverage dedicated, domain-specific languages (DSLs) to breach cloud platforms and exfiltrate data. "Since these are hardened languages with limited capabilities, they're supposed to be more secure than standard programming languages – and indeed they are," Tenable senior security researcher Shelly Raban said in a technical report published last week. "However, more secure does not mean bulletproof." OPA is a popular, open-source policy engine that allows organizations to enforce policies across cloud-native environments, such as microservices, CI/CD pipelines, and Kubernetes. Policies are defined using a native query language called Rego which are then evaluated by OPA to return a decision. The attack method devised by Tenable targets the supply ...
Google Exposes GLASSBRIDGE: A Pro-China Influence Network of Fake News Sites

Google Exposes GLASSBRIDGE: A Pro-China Influence Network of Fake News Sites

Nov 23, 2024 Cloud Security / Threat Intelligence
Government agencies and non-governmental organizations in the United States have become the target of a nascent China state threat actor known as Storm-2077. The adversary, believed to be active since at least January 2024, has also conducted cyber attacks against the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), aviation, telecommunications, and financial and legal services across the world, Microsoft said . The activity cluster, the company added, overlaps with a threat group that Recorded Future's Insikt Group is tracking as TAG-100 . Attack chains have involved targeting various internet-facing edge devices using publicly available exploits to gain initial access and drop Cobalt Strike as well as open-source malware such as Pantegana and Spark RAT, the cybersecurity company noted back in July. "Over the past decade, following numerous government indictments and the public disclosure of threat actors' activities, tracking and attributing cyber operations originating from China has b...
10 Most Impactful PAM Use Cases for Enhancing Organizational Security

10 Most Impactful PAM Use Cases for Enhancing Organizational Security

Nov 21, 2024 Privileged Access / Password Management
Privileged access management (PAM) plays a pivotal role in building a strong security strategy. PAM empowers you to significantly reduce cybersecurity risks, gain tighter control over privileged access, achieve regulatory compliance, and reduce the burden on your IT team.  As an established provider of a PAM solution , we've witnessed firsthand how PAM transforms organizational security. In this article, we aim to show you how PAM can secure your company in real, impactful ways.  1. Enforcing the principle of least privilege Giving users just enough access to perform their duties is fundamental to maintaining a robust security posture. PAM solutions enable you to grant minimum permissions to employees essential for their work, helping you prevent privilege misuse and potential security incidents. For example, with PAM, you can securely grant access to sensitive payment systems exclusively for your finance department. When you enforce the principle of least privilege at t...
Hackers Hijack Unsecured Jupyter Notebooks to Stream Illegal Sports Broadcasts

Hackers Hijack Unsecured Jupyter Notebooks to Stream Illegal Sports Broadcasts

Nov 19, 2024 Cloud Security / Piracy
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....
Researchers Warn of Privilege Escalation Risks in Google's Vertex AI ML Platform

Researchers Warn of Privilege Escalation Risks in Google's Vertex AI ML Platform

Nov 15, 2024 Artificial Intelligence / Vulnerability
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two security flaws in Google's Vertex machine learning (ML) platform that, if successfully exploited, could allow malicious actors to escalate privileges and exfiltrate models from the cloud. "By exploiting custom job permissions, we were able to escalate our privileges and gain unauthorized access to all data services in the project," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Ofir Balassiano and Ofir Shaty said in an analysis published earlier this week. "Deploying a poisoned model in Vertex AI led to the exfiltration of all other fine-tuned models, posing a serious proprietary and sensitive data exfiltration attack risk." Vertex AI is Google's ML platform for training and deploying custom ML models and artificial intelligence (AI) applications at scale. It was first introduced in May 2021. Crucial to leveraging the privilege escalation flaw is a feature called Vertex AI Pipelines , which allows users to automat...
OvrC Platform Vulnerabilities Expose IoT Devices to Remote Attacks and Code Execution

OvrC Platform Vulnerabilities Expose IoT Devices to Remote Attacks and Code Execution

Nov 13, 2024 Cloud Security / Vulnerability
A security analysis of the OvrC cloud platform has uncovered 10 vulnerabilities that could be chained to allow potential attackers to execute code remotely on connected devices. "Attackers successfully exploiting these vulnerabilities can access, control, and disrupt devices supported by OvrC; some of those include smart electrical power supplies, cameras, routers, home automation systems, and more," Claroty researcher Uri Katz said in a technical report. Snap One's OvrC, pronounced "oversee," is advertised as a "revolutionary support platform" that enables homeowners and businesses to remotely manage, configure, and troubleshoot IoT devices on the network. According to its website, OvrC solutions are deployed at over 500,000 end-user locations. According to a coordinated advisory issued by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), successful exploitation of the identified vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to ...
AndroxGh0st Malware Integrates Mozi Botnet to Target IoT and Cloud Services

AndroxGh0st Malware Integrates Mozi Botnet to Target IoT and Cloud Services

Nov 08, 2024 IoT Security / Vulnerability
The threat actors behind the AndroxGh0st malware are now exploiting a broader set of security flaws impacting various internet-facing applications, while also deploying the Mozi botnet malware. "This botnet utilizes remote code execution and credential-stealing methods to maintain persistent access, leveraging unpatched vulnerabilities to infiltrate critical infrastructures," CloudSEK said in a new report. AndroxGh0st is the name given to a Python-based cloud attack tool that's known for its targeting of Laravel applications with the goal of sensitive data pertaining to services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), SendGrid, and Twilio. Active since at least 2022, it has previously leveraged flaws in the Apache web server ( CVE-2021-41773 ), Laravel Framework ( CVE-2018-15133 ), and PHPUnit ( CVE-2017-9841 ) to gain initial access, escalate privileges, and establish persistent control over compromised systems. Earlier this January, U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence a...
IcePeony and Transparent Tribe Target Indian Entities with Cloud-Based Tools

IcePeony and Transparent Tribe Target Indian Entities with Cloud-Based Tools

Nov 08, 2024 Cyber Espionage / Threat Intelligence
High-profile entities in India have become the target of malicious campaigns orchestrated by the Pakistan-based Transparent Tribe threat actor and a previously unknown China-nexus cyber espionage group dubbed IcePeony. The intrusions linked to Transparent Tribe involve the use of a malware called ElizaRAT and a new stealer payload dubbed ApoloStealer on specific victims of interest, Check Point said in a technical write-up published this week. "ElizaRAT samples indicate a systematic abuse of cloud-based services, including Telegram, Google Drive, and Slack, to facilitate command-and-control communications," the Israeli company said . ElizaRAT is a Windows remote access tool (RAT) that Transparent Tribe was first observed using in July 2023 as part of cyber attacks targeting Indian government sectors. Active since at least 2013, the adversary is also tracked under the names APT36, Datebug, Earth Karkaddan, Mythic Leopard, Operation C-Major, and PROJECTM. Its malware ar...
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