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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has given a November 17, 2023, deadline for federal agencies and organizations to apply mitigations to secure against a number of security flaws in Juniper Junos OS that came to light in August. The agency on Monday  added  five vulnerabilities to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation - CVE-2023-36844  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Juniper Junos OS EX Series PHP External Variable Modification Vulnerability CVE-2023-36845  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Juniper Junos OS EX Series and SRX Series PHP External Variable Modification Vulnerability CVE-2023-36846  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Juniper Junos OS SRX Series Missing Authentication for Critical Function Vulnerability CVE-2023-36847  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Juniper Junos OS EX Series Missing Authentication for Critical Function Vulnerability CVE-2023-36851  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Juniper Junos OS SRX Series Missing Authentication for Critical

Malaysian law enforcement authorities have  announced  the takedown of a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) operation called  BulletProofLink . The Royal Malaysia Police said the effort, which was carried out with assistance from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on November 6, 2023, was based on information that the threat actors behind the platform were based out of the country. To that end, eight individuals aged between 29 and 56, including the syndicate's mastermind, have been arrested across different locations in Sabah, Selangor, Perak, and Kuala Lumpur, New Straits Times  reported . Along with the arrests, authorities confiscated servers, computers, jewelry, vehicles, and cryptocurrency wallets containing approximately $213,000. BulletProofLink , also called BulletProftLink, is known for offering ready-to-use phishing templates on a subscription basis to other actors for conducting credential harvesting campaigns. These

Ambitious Employees Tout New AI Tools, Ignore Serious SaaS Security Risks Like the  SaaS shadow IT  of the past, AI is placing CISOs and cybersecurity teams in a tough but familiar spot.  Employees are covertly using AI  with little regard for established IT and cybersecurity review procedures. Considering  ChatGPT's meteoric rise to 100 million users within 60 days of launch , especially with little sales and marketing fanfare, employee-driven demand for AI tools will only escalate.  As new studies show  some workers boost productivity by 40% using generative AI , the pressure for CISOs and their teams to fast-track AI adoption — and turn a blind eye to unsanctioned AI tool usage — is intensifying.  But succumbing to these pressures can introduce serious SaaS data leakage and breach risks, particularly as employees flock to AI tools developed by small businesses, solopreneurs, and indie developers. AI Security Guide Download AppOmni's CISO Guide to AI Security - Part 1 AI evoke

A threat actor known as  Prolific Puma  has been maintaining a low profile and operating an underground link shortening service that's offered to other threat actors for at least over the past four years. Prolific Puma creates "domain names with an  RDGA  [registered domain generation algorithm] and use these domains to provide a link shortening service to other malicious actors, helping them evade detection while they distribute phishing, scams, and malware," Infoblox  said  in a new analysis pieced together from Domain Name System ( DNS)  analytics. With malicious actors known to use link shorteners for phishing attacks, the adversary plays an important role in the cybercrime supply chain, registering between 35,000 to 75,000 unique domain names since April 2022. Prolific Puma is also a  DNS threat actor  for leveraging DNS infrastructure for nefarious purposes. A notable aspect of the threat actor's operations is the use of an American domain registrar and web

The North Korea-aligned  Lazarus Group  has been attributed as behind a new campaign in which an unnamed software vendor was compromised through the exploitation of known security flaws in another high-profile software. The attack sequences, according to Kaspersky, culminated in the deployment of malware families such as SIGNBT and  LPEClient , a known hacking tool used by the threat actor for victim profiling and payload delivery. "The adversary demonstrated a high level of sophistication, employing advanced evasion techniques and introducing SIGNBT malware for victim control," security researcher Seongsu Park  said . "The SIGNBT malware used in this attack employed a diverse infection chain and sophisticated techniques." The Russian cybersecurity vendor said the company that developed the exploited software had been a victim of a Lazarus attack several times, indicating an attempt to steal source code or poison the software supply chain, as in the case of the 

The Iranian threat actor known as  Tortoiseshell  has been attributed to a new wave of watering hole attacks that are designed to deploy a malware dubbed IMAPLoader. "IMAPLoader is a .NET malware that has the ability to fingerprint victim systems using native Windows utilities and acts as a downloader for further payloads," the PwC Threat Intelligence team  said  in a Wednesday analysis. "It uses email as a [command-and-control] channel and is able to execute payloads extracted from email attachments and is executed via new service deployments." Active since at least 2018, Tortoiseshell has a history of using strategic website compromises as a ploy to facilitate the distribution of malware. Earlier this May, ClearSky  linked the group  to the breach of eight websites associated with shipping, logistics, and financial services companies in Israel. The threat actor is  aligned  with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ( IRGC ) and is also tracked by the broade

As much as $7 billion in cryptocurrency has been illicitly laundered through cross-chain crime, with the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group linked to the theft of roughly $900 million of those proceeds between July 2022 and July of this year. "As traditional entities such as  mixers  continue to be subject to seizures and sanctions scrutiny, the crypto crime displacement to chain- or asset-hopping typologies is also on the rise," blockchain analytics firm Elliptic  said  in a new report published this week. Cross-chain crime refers to the conversion of crypto assets from one token or blockchain to another, often in rapid succession, in an attempt to obfuscate their origin, making it a lucrative method for money laundering for crypto thefts and an alternative to traditional approaches like mixers. According to data gathered by Elliptic, the Lazarus Group's use of cross-chain bridges contributed to a majority of the 111% increase in the proportion of funds sent via such s

The Classiscam scam-as-a-service program has reaped the criminal actors $64.5 million in illicit earnings since its emergence in 2019. "Classiscam campaigns initially started out on classified sites, on which scammers placed fake advertisements and used social engineering techniques to convince users to pay for goods by transferring money to bank cards," Group-IB  said  in a new report. "Since then, Classiscam campaigns have become highly automated, and can be run on a host of other services, such as online marketplaces and carpooling sites." A majority of victims are based in Europe (62.2%), followed by the Middle East and Africa (18.2%), and the Asia-Pacific (13%). Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, and Romania accounted for the highest number of fraudulent transactions registered in Classiscam chats.  First discovered in 2019, Classiscam is an  umbrella term  for an operation that encompasses 1,366 distinct groups on Telegram. The activities first targeted Russi

A coordinated law enforcement effort codenamed  Operation Duck Hunt  has felled  QakBot , a notorious Windows malware family that's estimated to have compromised over 700,000 computers globally and facilitated financial fraud as well as ransomware. To that end, the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ)  said  the malware is "being deleted from victim computers, preventing it from doing any more harm," adding it seized more than $8.6 million in cryptocurrency in illicit profits. The cross-border exercise involved the participation of France, Germany, Latvia, Romania, the Netherlands, the U.K., and the U.S., alongside technical assistance from cybersecurity company Zscaler. The dismantling has been hailed as "the largest U.S.-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure leveraged by cybercriminals." No arrests were announced. QakBot, also known as QBot and Pinkslipbot, started its life as a banking trojan in 2007 before morphing into a general-pu

Two U.K. teenagers have been convicted by a jury in London for being part of the notorious LAPSUS$ (aka Slippy Spider) transnational gang and for orchestrating a series of brazen, high-profile hacks against major tech firms and demanding a ransom in exchange for not leaking the stolen information. This includes Arion Kurtaj (aka White, Breachbase, WhiteDoxbin, and TeaPotUberHacker), an 18-year-old from Oxford, and an unnamed minor, who began collaborating in July 2021 after having met online, BBC  reported  this week. Both the defendants were initially arrested and released under investigation in January 2022, only to be  re-arrested and charged  by the City of London Police in April 2022. Kurtaj was subsequently granted bail and moved to a hotel in Bicester after he was doxxed in an online cybercrime forum. He, however, continued his hacking spree, targeting companies like  Uber ,  Revolut , and  Rockstar Games , as a result of which he was  arrested again  in September. Another a

The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) on Wednesday  unsealed an indictment  against two founders of the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer service, charging them with laundering more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds. Both the individuals, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Storm, 34, is said to have been arrested in the U.S. state of Washington. Semenov, 35, remains at large in Dubai. They are alleged to have "made millions of dollars in profits" from promoting and operating the service. Tornado Cash is estimated to have processed upwards of $7 billion worth of crypto assets over a period of three years. In a related move, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned  Semenov and  eight cryptocurrency addresses  connected to him, days after a U.S. cou

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Tuesday warned that threat actors affiliated with North Korea may attempt to cash out stolen cryptocurrency worth more than $40 million. The law enforcement agency  attributed  the blockchain activity to an adversary the U.S. government tracks as TraderTraitor, which is also known by the name Jade Sleet. An investigation undertaken by the FBI found that the group moved approximately 1,580 bitcoin from several cryptocurrency heists over the past 24 hours and are currently said to be holding those funds in six different wallets. North Korea is known to blur the lines among cyber warfare, espionage, and financial crime.  TraderTraitor , in particular, has been linked to a string of attacks targeting blockchain and cryptocurrency exchanges with the goal of plundering digital assets to generate illicit revenue for the sanctions-hit nation. This includes the $60 million theft of virtual currency from Alphapo on June 22, 2023; the $37 m

A Syrian threat actor named  EVLF  has been outed as the creator of malware families CypherRAT and CraxsRAT. "These RATs are designed to allow an attacker to remotely perform real-time actions and control the victim device's camera, location, and microphone," Cybersecurity firm Cyfirma  said  in a report published last week. CypherRAT and CraxsRAT are said to be offered to other cybercriminals as part of a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) scheme. As many as 100 unique threat actors are estimated to have purchased the twin tools on a lifetime license over the past three years. EVLF is said to be operating a web shop to advertise their warez since at least September 2022. CraxsRAT is billed as an Android trojan that enables a threat actor to remote control an infected device from a Windows computer, with the developer consistently releasing new updates based on feedback from the customers. The malicious package is generated using a builder, which comes with options to cus

A coordinated law enforcement operation across 25 African countries has led to the arrest of 14 suspected cybercriminals, INTERPOL  announced  Friday. The exercise, conducted in partnership with AFRIPOL, enabled investigators to identify 20,674 cyber networks that were linked to financial losses of more than $40 million. "The four-month Africa Cyber Surge II operation was launched in April 2023 and focused on identifying cybercriminals and compromised infrastructure," the agency said. As part of the operation, three suspects were arrested in Cameroon in connection with an online scam involving the fraudulent sale of works of art worth $850,000. Another suspect was arrested in Nigeria for defrauding a Gambian victim. Also arrested were two money mules linked to scams initiated through messaging platforms. The cyber networks comprised 3,786 command-and-control (C2) servers, 14,134 victim IP addresses tied to data stealer infections, 1,415 phishing links and domains, 939

Threat actors are increasingly using a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkit dubbed EvilProxy to pull off account takeover attacks aimed at high-ranking executives at prominent companies. According to Proofpoint, an ongoing hybrid campaign has leveraged the service to target thousands of Microsoft 365 user accounts, sending approximately 120,000 phishing emails to hundreds of organizations worldwide between March and June 2023. Nearly 39% of the hundreds of compromised users are said to be C-level executives, including CEOs (9%) and CFOs (17%). The attacks have also singled out personnel with access to financial assets or sensitive information. At least 35% of all compromised users had additional account protections enabled. The campaigns are seen as a response to the increased adoption of multi-factor authentication (MFA) in enterprises, prompting threat actors to evolve their tactics to bypass new security layers by incorporating adversary-in-the-middle ( AitM ) phishing kits to

In recent years the rise of illicit activities conducted within online messaging platforms has become a growing concern for countless industries. One of the most notable platforms that has been host to many malicious actors and nefarious activities has been Telegram. Thanks to its accessibility, popularity, and user anonymity, Telegram has attracted a large number of threat actors driven by criminal purposes.  Many of the cybercriminals that have moved operations into  illicit telegram channels  in order to expand their reach and exploits to wider audiences. As a result, many of these illicit Telegram networks have negatively impacted many industries in relation to the increase of cyberattacks and data leaks that have occurred across the globe.  While any industry can be affected by the cybercriminals operating on Telegram, there are several industries that are more significantly impacted by these illicit activities. In this post, we'll cover several of the common illicit activi