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Amid renewed tensions between the U.S. and Russia over  Ukraine  and  Kazakhstan , American cybersecurity and intelligence agencies on Tuesday released a joint advisory on how to detect, respond to, and mitigate cyberattacks orchestrated by Russian state-sponsored actors. To that end, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security Agency (NSA) have laid bare the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the adversaries, including spear-phishing, brute-force, and  exploiting known vulnerabilities  to gain initial access to target networks. The list of flaws exploited by Russian hacking groups to gain an initial foothold, which the agencies said are "common but effective," are below — CVE-2018-13379  (FortiGate VPNs) CVE-2019-1653  (Cisco router) CVE-2019-2725  (Oracle WebLogic Server) CVE-2019-7609  (Kibana) CVE-2019-9670  (Zimbra software) CVE-2019-10149  (Exim Simple Mail Transf

Microsoft is warning of continuing attempts by nation-state adversaries and commodity attackers to take advantage of  security vulnerabilities  uncovered in the Log4j open-source logging framework to deploy malware on vulnerable systems. "Exploitation attempts and testing have remained high during the last weeks of December," Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  said  in revised guidance published earlier this week. "We have observed many existing attackers adding exploits of these vulnerabilities in their existing malware kits and tactics, from coin miners to hands-on-keyboard attacks." Publicly disclosed by the Apache Software Foundation on December 10, 2021, the remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Apache Log4j 2, aka  Log4Shell , has emerged as a new attack vector for  widespread exploitation  by a variety of threat actors. In the subsequent weeks, four more weaknesses in the utility have come to light —  CVE-2021-45046 ,  CVE-2021-45105 , 

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

A never-before-seen China-based targeted intrusion adversary dubbed Aquatic Panda has been observed leveraging  critical flaws  in the Apache Log4j logging library as an access vector to perform various post-exploitation operations, including reconnaissance and credential harvesting on targeted systems. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the infiltration, which was ultimately foiled, was aimed at an unnamed "large academic institution." The state-sponsored group is believed to have been operating since mid-2020 in pursuit of intelligence collection and industrial espionage, with its attacks primarily directed against companies in the telecommunications, technology, and government sectors. The attempted intrusion exploited the newly discovered  Log4Shell  flaw (CVE-2021-44228, CVSS score: 10.0) to gain access to a vulnerable instance of the  VMware Horizon  desktop and app virtualization product, followed by running a series of malicious commands orchestrated to fetch thr

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an evasive malware campaign that makes use of valid code signing certificates to sneak past security defenses and stay under the radar with the goal of deploying Cobalt Strike and BitRAT payloads on compromised systems. The binary, a loader, has been dubbed "Blister" by researchers from Elastic Security, with the malware samples having  negligible  to  zero  detections on VirusTotal. As of writing, the infection vector used to stage the attack, as well as the ultimate objectives of the intrusion, remains unknown. A notable aspect of the attacks is that they leverage a valid code signing certificate issued by  Sectigo . The malware has been observed signed with the certificate in question dating back to September 15, 2021. Elastic said it reached out to the company to ensure that the abused certificates are revoked. "Executables with valid code signing certificates are often scrutinized to a lesser degree than unsig

The last several years have seen an ever-increasing number of cyber-attacks, and while the frequency of such attacks has increased, so too has the resulting damage. One needs only to look at  CISA's list of significant cyber incidents  to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. In May of 2021, for example, a ransomware attack brought down the Colonial Pipeline, causing a serious fuel disruption for much of the United States. Just last month, a hacking group gained access to call logs and text messages from telecommunications carriers all over the world. These are just two of dozens of cyber-attacks occurring this year. Because of these and other cyber security incidents, the Department of Homeland Security issues a  compulsory directive  to federal agencies to better protect federal information systems and the data that they contain against cyber-attack. This directive is based around  CISA's catalog of vulnerabilities  that are known to pose a significant risk. The directi

A U.S. federal government commission associated with international rights has been targeted by a backdoor that reportedly compromised its internal network in what the researchers described as a "classic APT-type operation."  "This attack could have given total visibility of the network and complete control of a system and thus could be used as the first step in a multi-stage attack to penetrate this, or other networks more deeply," Czech security company Avast  said  in a report published last week. The name of the federal entity was not disclosed, but reports from  Ars Technica  and  The Record  tied it to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom ( USCIRF ). Avast said it was making its findings public after unsuccessful attempts to directly notify the agency about the intrusion and through other channels put in place by the U.S. government. At this stage, only "parts of the attack puzzle" have been uncovered, leaving the door open for

The issues with Log4j continued to stack up as the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) on Friday rolled out yet another patch — version 2.17.0 — for the widely used logging library that could be exploited by malicious actors to stage a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. Tracked as  CVE-2021-45105  (CVSS score: 7.5), the new vulnerability affects all versions of the tool from 2.0-beta9 to 2.16.0, which the open-source nonprofit shipped earlier this week to remediate a second flaw that could result in remote code execution ( CVE-2021-45046 ), which, in turn, stemmed from an "incomplete" fix for  CVE-2021-44228 , otherwise called the Log4Shell vulnerability. "Apache Log4j2 versions 2.0-alpha1 through 2.16.0 did not protect from uncontrolled recursion from self-referential lookups," the ASF  explained  in a revised advisory. "When the logging configuration uses a non-default Pattern Layout with a Context Lookup (for example, $${ctx:loginId}), attackers with control o

Industrial and government organizations, including enterprises in the military-industrial complex and research laboratories, are the targets of a new malware botnet dubbed  PseudoManyscrypt  that has infected roughly 35,000 Windows computers this year alone. The name comes from its similarities to the  Manuscrypt   malware , which is part of the  Lazarus  APT group's attack toolset, Kaspersky researchers said, characterizing the operation as a "mass-scale spyware attack campaign." The Russian cybersecurity company said it first detected the series of intrusions in June 2021. At least 7.2% of all computers attacked by the malware are part of industrial control systems (ICS) used by organizations in engineering, building automation, energy, manufacturing, construction, utilities, and water management sectors that are located mainly in India, Vietnam, and Russia. Approximately a third (29.4%) of non-ICS computers are situated in Russia (10.1%), India (10%), and Brazil (9.

Malicious actors are deploying a previously undiscovered binary, an Internet Information Services ( IIS ) webserver module dubbed " Owowa ," on Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Access servers with the goal of stealing credentials and enabling remote command execution. "Owowa is a C#-developed .NET v4.0 assembly that is intended to be loaded as a module within an IIS web server that also exposes Exchange's Outlook Web Access (OWA)," Kaspersky researchers Paul Rascagneres and Pierre Delcher  said . "When loaded this way, Owowa will steal credentials that are entered by any user in the OWA login page, and will allow a remote operator to run commands on the underlying server." The idea that a rogue IIS module can be fashioned as a backdoor is not new. In August 2021, an exhaustive study of the IIS threat landscape by Slovak cybersecurity company ESET revealed  as many as 14 malware families that were developed as native IIS modules in an attempt to interc

As a CISO, one of the most challenging questions to answer is "How well are we protected right now?" Between the acceleration of hackers' offensive capabilities and the dynamic nature of information networks, a drift in the security posture is unavoidable and needs to be continuously compensated. Therefore, answering that question implies continuously validating the security posture and being in a position to check it including, against the latest emerging threats. Yet, the bulk of cybersecurity is focused on defensive tools. The combination of the rapid evolution of technology and the multiplication of technology layers, combined with the professionalization of the threat landscape, has led to a profusion of cybersecurity tools tackling different security aspects. Checking the cybersecurity solution stack efficiency is typically done through pen-testing or, more recently, through red teaming – an exercise aimed to map possible loopholes that would lead to a data breac

Infection chains associated with the multi-purpose Qakbot malware have been broken down into "distinct building blocks," an effort that Microsoft said will help to proactively detect and block the threat in an effective manner. The Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team  dubbed   Qakbot a "customizable chameleon that adapts to suit the needs of the multiple threat actor groups that utilize it." Qakbot  is believed to be the creation of a financially motivated cybercriminal threat group known as  Gold Lagoon . It is a prevalent information-stealing malware that, in recent years, has become a precursor to many critical and widespread ransomware attacks, offering a malware installation-as-a-service that enables many campaigns. First discovered in 2007, the modular malware — like  TrickBot  — has  evolved  from its early roots as a banking trojan to become a Swiss Army knife capable of data exfiltration and acting as a delivery mechanism for the second st

Threat actors are actively weaponizing unpatched servers affected by the newly identified " Log4Shell " vulnerability in Log4j to install cryptocurrency miners, Cobalt Strike, and recruit the devices into a botnet, even as telemetry signs point to exploitation of the flaw nine days before it even came to light. Netlab, the networking security division of Chinese tech giant Qihoo 360,  disclosed  threats such as  Mirai  and  Muhstik  (aka Tsunami) are setting their sights on vulnerable systems to spread the infection and grow its computing power to orchestrate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks with the goal of overwhelming a target and rendering it unusable. Muhstik was previously spotted exploiting a critical security flaw in Atlassian Confluence ( CVE-2021-26084 , CVSS score: 9.8) earlier this September. The latest development comes as it has emerged that the vulnerability has been under attack for at least more than a week prior to its public disclosure on D

As many as 1.6 million WordPress sites have been targeted by an active large-scale attack campaign originating from 16,000 IP addresses by exploiting weaknesses in four plugins and 15 Epsilon Framework themes. WordPress security company Wordfence, which  disclosed  details of the attacks, said Thursday it had detected and blocked more than 13.7 million attacks aimed at the plugins and themes in a period of 36 hours with the goal of taking over the websites and carrying out malicious actions. The plugins in question are Kiwi Social Share (<= 2.0.10), WordPress Automatic (<= 3.53.2), Pinterest Automatic (<= 4.14.3), and PublishPress Capabilities (<= 2.3), some of which have been patched dating all the way back to November 2018. The impacted Epsilon Framework themes and their corresponding versions are as follows — Activello (<=1.4.1) Affluent (<1.1.0) Allegiant (<=1.2.5) Antreas (<=1.0.6) Bonkers (<=1.0.5) Brilliance (<=1.2.9) Illdy (<=2.1.6) M

Microsoft on Monday announced the seizure of 42 domains used by a China-based cyber espionage group that set its sights on organizations in the U.S. and 28 other countries pursuant to a legal warrant issued by a federal court in the U.S. state of Virginia. The Redmond company attributed the malicious activities to a group it pursues as Nickel , and by the wider cybersecurity industry under the monikers APT15, Bronze Palace, Ke3Chang, Mirage, Playful Dragon, and Vixen Panda. The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor is believed to have been active since at least 2012. "Nickel has targeted organizations in both the private and public sectors, including diplomatic organizations and ministries of foreign affairs in North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa," Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for Customer Security and Trust, Tom Burt, said . "There is often a correlation between Nickel's targets and China's geopolitical int

Socially engineered SMS messages are being used to install malware on Android devices as part of a widespread phishing campaign that impersonates the Iranian government and social security services to make away with credit card details and steal funds from victims' bank accounts. Unlike other variants of  banking malware  that bank of overlay attacks to capture sensitive data without the knowledge of the victim, the financially motivated operation uncovered by Check Point Research is designed to trick the targets into handing over their credit card information by sending them a legitimate-looking SMS message that contains a link, which, when clicked, downloads a malware-laced app onto their devices. "The malicious application not only collects the victim's credit card numbers, but also gains access to their 2FA authentication SMS, and turn[s] the victim's device into a bot capable of spreading similar phishing SMS to other potential victims," Check Point resear

Government, diplomatic entities, military organizations, law firms, and financial institutions primarily located in the Middle East have been targeted as part of a stealthy malware campaign as early as 2019 by making use of malicious Microsoft Excel and Word documents. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky attributed the attacks with high confidence to a threat actor named WIRTE, adding the intrusions involved "MS Excel droppers that use hidden spreadsheets and VBA macros to drop their first stage implant," which is a Visual Basic Script (VBS) with functionality to amass system information and execute arbitrary code sent by the attackers on the infected machine. An analysis of the campaign as well as the toolset and methods employed by the adversary has also led the researchers to conclude with low confidence that the  WIRTE group  has connections to another politically motivated collective called the  Gaza Cybergang . The affected entities are spread across Armenia, Cyp

North Korean defectors, journalists who cover North Korea-related news, and entities in South Korea are being zeroed in on by a nation-state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) as part of a new wave of highly-targeted surveillance attacks. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky attributed the infiltrations to a North Korean hacker group tracked as  ScarCruft , also known as  APT37 , Reaper Group, InkySquid, and Ricochet Chollima. "The actor utilized three types of malware with similar functionalities: versions implemented in PowerShell, Windows executables and Android applications," the company's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT)  said  in a new report published today. "Although intended for different platforms, they share a similar command and control scheme based on HTTP communication. Therefore, the malware operators can control the whole malware family through one set of command and control scripts." Likely active since at least 2012, ScarC