Cron Job | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat actors are increasingly using HTTP cookies as a control channel for PHP-based web shells on Linux servers and to achieve remote code execution, according to findings from the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team. "Instead of exposing command execution through URL parameters or request bodies, these web shells rely on threat actor-supplied cookie values to gate execution, pass instructions, and activate malicious functionality," the tech giant said . The approach offers added stealth as it allows malicious code to stay dormant during normal application execution and activate the web shell logic only when specific cookie values are present. This behavior, Microsoft noted, extends to web requests, scheduled tasks, and trusted background workers. The malicious activity takes advantage of the fact that cookie values are available at runtime through the $_COOKIE superglobal variable, allowing attacker-supplied inputs to be consumed with...

Researchers have unearthed a new remote access trojan (RAT) for Linux that employs a never-before-seen stealth technique that involves masking its malicious actions by scheduling them for execution on February 31st, a non-existent calendar day. Dubbed CronRAT, the sneaky malware "enables  server-side Magecart data theft  which bypasses browser-based security solutions," Sansec Threat Research said. The Dutch cybersecurity firm said it found samples of the RAT on several online stores, including an unnamed country's largest outlet. CronRAT's standout feature is its ability to leverage the  cron  job-scheduler utility for Unix to hide malicious payloads using task names programmed to execute on February 31st. Not only does this allow the malware to evade detection from security software, but it also enables it to launch an array of attack commands that could put Linux eCommerce servers at risk. "The CronRAT adds a number of tasks to crontab with a curious date...