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The new Trump administration has terminated all memberships of advisory committees that report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  "In alignment with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security, I am directing the termination of all current memberships on advisory committees within DHS, effective immediately," Acting Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman said in a January 20, 2025, memo. "Future committee activities will be focused solely on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS's strategic priorities." This includes members of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), which last year issued a scathing report excoriating Microsoft for a "cascade" of avoidable errors that led to its infrastructure being abused by a China-based nation-st...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a series of cyber attacks that have targeted Chinese-speaking regions like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China with a known malware called ValleyRAT. The attacks leverage a multi-stage loader dubbed PNGPlug to deliver the ValleyRAT payload, Intezer said in a technical report published last week. The infection chain commences with a phishing page that's designed to encourage victims to download a malicious Microsoft Installer (MSI) package disguised as legitimate software.  Once executed, the installer deploys a benign application to avoid arousing suspicion, while also stealthily extracting an encrypted archive containing the malware payload. "The MSI package uses the Windows Installer's CustomAction feature, enabling it to execute malicious code, including running an embedded malicious DLL that decrypts the archive (all.zip) using a hardcoded password 'hello202411' to extract the core malware components,...

Every week seems to bring news of another data breach, and it's no surprise why: securing sensitive data has become harder than ever. And it's not just because companies are dealing with orders of magnitude more data. Data flows and user roles are constantly shifting, and data is stored across multiple technologies and cloud environments. Not to mention, compliance requirements are only getting stricter and more elaborate.  The problem is that while the data landscape has evolved rapidly, the usual strategies for securing that data are stuck in the past. Gone are the days when data lived in predictable places, with access controlled by a chosen few. Today, practically every department in the business needs to use customer data, and AI adoption means huge datasets, and a constant flux of permissions, use cases, and tools. Security teams are struggling to implement effective strategies for securing sensitive data, and a new crop of tools, called data security platforms, have appear...

The Threat actor known as DoNot Team has been linked to a new Android malware as part of highly targeted cyber attacks. The artifacts in question, named Tanzeem (meaning "organization" in Urdu) and Tanzeem Update, were spotted in October and December 2024 by cybersecurity company Cyfirma. The apps in question have been found to incorporate identical functions, barring minor modifications to the user interface. "Although the app is supposed to function as a chat application, it does not work once installed, shutting down after the necessary permissions are granted," Cyfirma noted in a Friday analysis. "The app's name suggests that it is designed to target specific individuals or groups both inside and outside the country." DoNot Team, also tracked as APT-C-35, Origami Elephant, SECTOR02, and Viceroy Tiger, is a hacking group believed to be of Indian origin, with historical attacks leveraging spear-phishing emails and Android malware families to...

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has imposed sanctions against a Chinese cybersecurity company and a Shanghai-based cyber actor for their alleged links to the Salt Typhoon group and the recent compromise of the federal agency. "People's Republic of China-linked (PRC) malicious cyber actors continue to target U.S. government systems, including the recent targeting of Treasury's information technology (IT) systems, as well as sensitive U.S. critical infrastructure," the Treasury said in a press release. The sanctions target Yin Kecheng, who is assessed to have been a cyber actor for over a decade and affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). Kecheng, per the Treasury, was associated with the breach of its own network that came to light earlier this month. The incident involved a hack of BeyondTrust's systems that allowed the threat actors to infiltrate some of the company's Remote Support SaaS inst...

Mongolia, Taiwan, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Cambodia have been targeted by the China-nexus RedDelta threat actor to deliver a customized version of the PlugX backdoor between July 2023 and December 2024. "The group used lure documents themed around the 2024 Taiwanese presidential candidate Terry Gou, the Vietnamese National Holiday, flood protection in Mongolia, and meeting invitations, including an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting," Recorded Future's Insikt Group said in a new analysis. It's believed that the threat actor compromised the Mongolian Ministry of Defense in August 2024 and the Communist Party of Vietnam in November 2024. It's also said to have targeted various victims in Malaysia, Japan, the United States, Ethiopia, Brazil, Australia, and India from September to December 2024. RedDelta, active since at least 2012, is the moniker assigned to a state-sponsored threat actor from China. It's also tracked by the cybersecurity co...

2024 had its fair share of high-profile cyber attacks, with companies as big as Dell and TicketMaster falling victim to data breaches and other infrastructure compromises. In 2025, this trend will continue. So, to be prepared for any kind of malware attack, every organization needs to know its cyber enemy in advance. Here are 5 common malware families that you can start preparing to counter right now. Lumma Lumma is a widely available malware designed to steal sensitive information. It has been openly sold on the Dark Web since 2022. This malware can effectively collect and exfiltrate data from targeted applications, including login credentials, financial information, and personal details. Lumma is regularly updated to enhance its capabilities. It can log detailed information from compromised systems, such as browsing history and cryptocurrency wallet data. It can be used to install other malicious software on infected devices. In 2024, Lumma was distributed through various methods...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday said there are no indications that the cyber attack targeting the Treasury Department impacted other federal agencies. The agency said it's working closely with the Treasury Department and BeyondTrust to get a better understanding of the breach and mitigate its impacts. "The security of federal systems and the data they protect is of critical importance to our national security," CISA said . "We are working aggressively to safeguard against any further impacts and will provide updates, as appropriate." The latest statement comes a week after the Treasury Department said it was the victim of a "major cybersecurity incident" that allowed Chinese state-sponsored threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents. The cyber attack, which came to light in early December 2024, involved a breach of BeyondTrust's systems that allowed the adversary to in...

Every tap, click, and swipe we make online shapes our digital lives, but it also opens doors—some we never meant to unlock. Extensions we trust, assistants we rely on, and even the codes we scan are turning into tools for attackers. The line between convenience and vulnerability has never been thinner. This week, we dive into the hidden risks, surprising loopholes, and the clever tricks cybercriminals are using to outsmart the systems we depend on. Stay with us as we unpack what's happening behind the screen and how you can stay one step ahead. ⚡ Threat of the Week Dozens of Google Chrome Extensions Caught Stealing Sensitive Data — The challenges with securing the software supply chain reared once again after about three dozen extensions were found surreptitiously siphoning sensitive data from roughly 2.6 million devices for several months as part of two related campaigns. The compromises came to light after data loss prevention service Cyberhaven revealed that its browser extens...

The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting "several dozen users" in 2024. "Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula editor (CVE-2018-0802) to download and execute malware code," Kaspersky researcher Oleg Kupreev said in an analysis published this week. More than 80% of the targets were located in Russia. A lesser number of victims have been reported from Belarus, Canada, Moldova, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Vietnam. Also referred to as Clean Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Red October, Cloud Atlas is an unattributed threat activity cluster that has been active since 2014. In December 2022, the group was linked to cyber attacks aimed at Russia, Belarus, and Transnistria that deployed a PowerShell-based backdoor called PowerShower. Then exactly a year later, Russian cy...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about a spike in malicious activity that involves roping vulnerable D-Link routers into two different botnets, a Mirai variant dubbed FICORA and a Kaiten (aka Tsunami) variant called CAPSAICIN. "These botnets are frequently spread through documented D-Link vulnerabilities that allow remote attackers to execute malicious commands via a GetDeviceSettings action on the HNAP (Home Network Administration Protocol) interface," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Vincent Li said in a Thursday analysis. "This HNAP weakness was first exposed almost a decade ago, with numerous devices affected by a variety of CVE numbers, including CVE-2015-2051 , CVE-2019-10891 , CVE-2022-37056 , and CVE-2024-33112 ." According to the cybersecurity company's telemetry data, attacks involving FICORA have targeted various countries globally, whereas those related to CAPSAICIN primarily singled out East Asian territories like Japan and Taiwan. T...