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CrowdStrike is alerting about an unfamiliar threat actor attempting to capitalize on the Falcon Sensor update fiasco to distribute dubious installers targeting German customers as part of a highly targeted campaign. The cybersecurity company said it identified what it described as an unattributed spear-phishing attempt on July 24, 2024, distributing an inauthentic CrowdStrike Crash Reporter installer via a website impersonating an unnamed German entity. The imposter website is said to have been created on July 20, a day after the botched update crashed nearly 9 million Windows devices, causing extensive IT disruptions across the world. "After the user clicks the Download button, the website leverages JavaScript (JS) that masquerades as JQuery v3.7.1 to download and deobfuscate the installer," CrowdStrike's Counter Adversary Operations team said . "The installer contains CrowdStrike branding, German localization, and a password [is] required to continue install

A now-patched security flaw in the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen has been exploited as part of a new campaign designed to deliver information stealers such as ACR Stealer, Lumma , and Meduza . Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said it detected the stealer campaign targeting Spain, Thailand, and the U.S. using booby-trapped files that exploit CVE-2024-21412 (CVSS score: 8.1). The high-severity vulnerability allows an attacker to sidestep SmartScreen protection and drop malicious payloads. Microsoft addressed this issue as part of its monthly security updates released in February 2024. "Initially, attackers lure victims into clicking a crafted link to a URL file designed to download an LNK file," security researcher Cara Lin said . "The LNK file then downloads an executable file containing an [HTML Application] script." The HTA file serves as a conduit to decode and decrypt PowerShell code responsible for fetching a decoy PDF file and a shellcode injector that, in tur

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered what they say is the ninth Industrial Control Systems (ICS)-focused malware that has been used in a disruptive cyber attack targeting an energy company in the Ukrainian city of Lviv earlier this January. Industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos has dubbed the malware FrostyGoop , describing it as the first malware strain to directly use Modbus TCP communications to sabotage operational technology (OT) networks. It was discovered by the company in April 2024. "FrostyGoop is an ICS-specific malware written in Golang that can interact directly with Industrial Control Systems (ICS) using Modbus TCP over port 502," researchers Kyle O'Meara, Magpie (Mark) Graham, and Carolyn Ahlers said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. It's believed that the malware, mainly designed to target Windows systems, has been used to target ENCO controllers with TCP port 502 exposed to the internet. It has not been tied to any previously

Threat actors have been observed using swap files in compromised websites to conceal a persistent credit card skimmer and harvest payment information. The sneaky technique, observed by Sucuri on a Magento e-commerce site's checkout page, allowed the malware to survive multiple cleanup attempts, the company said. The skimmer is designed to capture all the data into the credit card form on the website and exfiltrate the details to an attacker-controlled domain named "amazon-analytic[.]com," which was registered in February 2024. "Note the use of the brand name; this tactic of leveraging popular products and services in domain names is often used by bad actors in an attempt to evade detection," security researcher Matt Morrow said . This is just one of many defense evasion methods employed by the threat actor, which also includes the use of swap files ("bootstrap.php-swapme") to load the malicious code while keeping the original file ("bootstra

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which is facing the heat for causing worldwide IT disruptions by pushing out a flawed update to Windows devices, is now warning that threat actors are exploiting the situation to distribute Remcos RAT to its customers in Latin America under the guise of providing a hotfix. The attack chains involve distributing a ZIP archive file named " crowdstrike-hotfix.zip ," which contains a malware loader named Hijack Loader (aka DOILoader or IDAT Loader) that, in turn, launches the Remcos RAT payload. Specifically, the archive file also includes a text file ("instrucciones.txt") with Spanish-language instructions that urges targets to run an executable file ("setup.exe") to recover from the issue. "Notably, Spanish filenames and instructions within the ZIP archive indicate this campaign is likely targeting Latin America-based (LATAM) CrowdStrike customers," the company said , attributing the campaign to a suspected e-

Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has confirmed that it was the target of a security breach that led to the theft of $230 million in cryptocurrency assets. "A cyber attack occurred in one of our [multi-signature] wallets involving a loss of funds exceeding $230 million," the company said in a statement. "This wallet was operated utilizing the services of Liminal's digital asset custody and wallet infrastructure from February 2023." The Mumbai-based company said the attack stemmed from a mismatch between the information that was displayed on Liminal's interface and what was actually signed. It said the payload was replaced to transfer wallet control to an attacker. Crypto custody firm Liminal is one of the six signatories on the wallet and is responsible for transaction verifications. "Our preliminary investigations show that one of the self custody multi-sig smart contract wallets created outside of the Liminal ecosystem has been compromised

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a short-lived DarkGate malware campaign that leveraged Samba file shares to initiate the infections. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said the activity spanned the months of March and April 2024, with the infection chains using servers running public-facing Samba file shares hosting Visual Basic Script (VBS) and JavaScript files. Targets included North America, Europe, and parts of Asia. "This was a relatively short-lived campaign that illustrates how threat actors can creatively abuse legitimate tools and services to distribute their malware," security researchers Vishwa Thothathri, Yijie Sui, Anmol Maurya, Uday Pratap Singh, and Brad Duncan said . DarkGate, which first emerged in 2018, has evolved into a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) offering used by a tightly controlled number of customers. It comes with capabilities to remotely control compromised hosts, execute code, mine cryptocurrency, launch reverse shells, and drop addit

Multiple threat actors have been observed exploiting a recently disclosed security flaw in PHP to deliver remote access trojans, cryptocurrency miners, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnets. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-4577 (CVSS score: 9.8), which allows an attacker to remotely execute malicious commands on Windows systems using Chinese and Japanese language locales. It was publicly disclosed in early June 2024. "CVE-2024-4577 is a flaw that allows an attacker to escape the command line and pass arguments to be interpreted directly by PHP," Akamai researchers Kyle Lefton, Allen West, and Sam Tinklenberg said in a Wednesday analysis. "The vulnerability itself lies in how Unicode characters are converted into ASCII." The web infrastructure company said it began observing exploit attempts against its honeypot servers targeting the PHP flaw within 24 hours of it being public knowledge. This included exploits designed to deliver a remote

The Problem The "2024 Attack Intelligence Report" from the staff at Rapid7 [1] is a well-researched, well-written report that is worthy of careful study. Some key takeaways are:  53% of the over 30 new vulnerabilities that were widely exploited in 2023 and at the start of 2024 were zero-days . More mass compromise events arose from zero-day vulnerabilities than from n-day vulnerabilities. Nearly a quarter of widespread attacks were zero-day attacks where a single adversary compromised dozens to hundreds of organizations simultaneously. Attackers are moving from initial access to exploitation in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. So the conventional patch and put strategy is as effective as a firetruck showing up after a building has burned to the ground! Of course, patch and put could prevent future attacks, but taking into account that patch development takes from days to weeks [2] and that the average time to apply critical patches is 16 days [3], devices are vulner

The sophisticated malware known as ViperSoftX has been observed being distributed as eBooks over torrents. "A notable aspect of the current variant of ViperSoftX is that it uses the Common Language Runtime ( CLR ) to dynamically load and run PowerShell commands, thereby creating a PowerShell environment within AutoIt for operations," Trellix security researchers Mathanraj Thangaraju and Sijo Jacob said . "By utilizing CLR, ViperSoftX can seamlessly integrate PowerShell functionality, allowing it to execute malicious functions while evading detection mechanisms that might otherwise flag standalone PowerShell activity." Initially detected by Fortinet in 2020, ViperSoftX is known for its ability to exfiltrate sensitive information from compromised Windows hosts. Over the years, the malware has become a relevant example of threat actors continuously innovating their tactics in an attempt to stay stealthy and circumvent defenses. This is exemplified by the increas

Cybersecurity researchers have found that it's possible for attackers to weaponize improperly configured Jenkins Script Console instances to further criminal activities such as cryptocurrency mining. "Misconfigurations such as improperly set up authentication mechanisms expose the '/script' endpoint to attackers," Trend Micro's Shubham Singh and Sunil Bharti said in a technical write-up published last week. "This can lead to remote code execution (RCE) and misuse by malicious actors." Jenkins, a popular continuous integration and continuous delivery ( CI/CD ) platform, features a Groovy script console that allows users to run arbitrary Groovy scripts within the Jenkins controller runtime. The project maintainers, in the official documentation, explicitly note that the web-based Groovy shell can be used to read files containing sensitive data (e.g., "/etc/passwd"), decrypt credentials configured within Jenkins, and even reconfigure sec

An emerging ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation called Eldorado comes with locker variants to encrypt files on Windows and Linux systems. Eldorado first appeared on March 16, 2024, when an advertisement for the affiliate program was posted on the ransomware forum RAMP, Singapore-headquartered Group-IB said. The cybersecurity firm, which infiltrated the ransomware group, noted that its representative is a Russian speaker and that the malware does not overlap with previously leaked strains such as LockBit or Babuk. "The Eldorado ransomware uses Golang for cross-platform capabilities, employing Chacha20 for file encryption and Rivest Shamir Adleman-Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding (RSA-OAEP) for key encryption," researchers Nikolay Kichatov and Sharmine Low said . "It can encrypt files on shared networks using Server Message Block (SMB) protocol." The encryptor for Eldorado comes in four formats, namely esxi, esxi_64, win, and win_64, with its data leak

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French cloud computing firm OVHcloud said it mitigated a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in April 2024 that reached a packet rate of 840 million packets per second (Mpps). This is just above the previous record of 809 million Mpps reported by Akamai as targeting a large European bank in June 2020. The 840 Mpps DDoS attack is said to have been a combination of a TCP ACK flood that originated from 5,000 source IPs and a DNS reflection attack leveraging about 15,000 DNS servers to amplify the traffic. "While the attack was distributed worldwide, 2/3 of total packets entered from only four [points of presence], all located in the U.S. with 3 of them being on the west coast," OVHcloud noted . "This highlights the capability of the adversary to send a huge packet rate through only a few peerings, which can prove very problematic." The company said it has observed a significant uptick in DDoS attacks in terms of both frequency and intensi

The malware known as GootLoader continues to be in active use by threat actors looking to deliver additional payloads to compromised hosts. "Updates to the GootLoader payload have resulted in several versions of GootLoader, with GootLoader 3 currently in active use," cybersecurity firm Cybereason said in an analysis published last week. "While some of the particulars of GootLoader payloads have changed over time, infection strategies and overall functionality remain similar to the malware's resurgence in 2020." GootLoader, a malware loader part of the Gootkit banking trojan, is linked to a threat actor named Hive0127 (aka UNC2565). It abuses JavaScript to download post-exploitation tools and is distributed via search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning tactics. It typically serves as a conduit for delivering various payloads such as Cobalt Strike, Gootkit, IcedID, Kronos, REvil, and SystemBC. In recent months, the threat actors behind GootLoader have

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new botnet called Zergeca that's capable of conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Written in Golang, the botnet is so named for its reference to a string named "ootheca" present in the command-and-control (C2) servers ("ootheca[.]pw" and "ootheca[.]top"). "Functionally, Zergeca is not just a typical DDoS botnet; besides supporting six different attack methods, it also has capabilities for proxying, scanning, self-upgrading, persistence, file transfer, reverse shell, and collecting sensitive device information," the QiAnXin XLab team said in a report. Zergeca is also notable for using DNS-over-HTTPS ( DoH ) to perform Domain Name System (DNS) resolution of the C2 server and using a lesser-known library known as Smux for C2 communications. There is evidence to suggest that the attackers behind the botnet are actively developing and updating the malware to support new commands

A coordinated law enforcement operation codenamed MORPHEUS has felled close to 600 servers that were used by cybercriminal groups and were part of an attack infrastructure associated with the Cobalt Strike tool.  The crackdown targeted older, unlicensed versions of the Cobalt Strike red teaming framework between June 24 and 28, according to Europol. Of the 690 IP addresses that were flagged to online service providers in 27 countries as associated with criminal activity, 590 are no longer accessible. The joint operation, which commenced in 2021, was led by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) and involved authorities from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the U.S. Officials from Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Japan, and South Korea provided additional support. Cobalt Strike is a popular adversary simulation and penetration testing tool developed by Fortra (formerly Help Systems), offering IT security experts a way to identify weaknesses in security

Unknown threat actors have been observed exploiting a now-patched security flaw in Microsoft MSHTML to deliver a surveillance tool called MerkSpy as part of a campaign primarily targeting users in Canada, India, Poland, and the U.S. "MerkSpy is designed to clandestinely monitor user activities, capture sensitive information, and establish persistence on compromised systems," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin said in a report published last week. The starting point of the attack chain is a Microsoft Word document that ostensibly contains a job description for a software engineer role. But opening the file triggers the exploitation of CVE-2021-40444 , a high-severity flaw in MSHTML that could result in remote code execution without requiring any user interaction. It was addressed by Microsoft as part of Patch Tuesday updates released in September 2021. In this case, it paves the way for the download of an HTML file ("olerender.html") from a remote s