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Threat hunters have discovered a rogue WordPress plugin that's capable of creating bogus administrator users and injecting malicious JavaScript code to steal credit card information. The skimming activity is part of a  Magecart campaign  targeting e-commerce websites, according to Sucuri. "As with many other malicious or fake WordPress plugins it contains some deceptive information at the top of the file to give it a veneer of legitimacy," security researcher Ben Martin  said . "In this case, comments claim the code to be 'WordPress Cache Addons.'" Malicious plugins typically find their way to WordPress sites via either a  compromised admin user  or the  exploitation of security flaws  in another plugin already installed on the site. Post installation, the plugin replicates itself to the  mu-plugins  (or must-use plugins) directory so that it's automatically enabled and conceals its presence from the admin panel. "Since the only way to re

German law enforcement has announced the disruption of a dark web platform called  Kingdom Market  that specialized in the sales of narcotics and malware to "tens of thousands of users." The  exercise , which involved collaboration from authorities from the U.S., Switzerland, Moldova, and Ukraine, began on December 16, 2023, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said. Kingdom Market is said to have been accessible over the TOR and Invisible Internet Project (I2P) anonymization networks since at least March 2021, trafficking in illegal narcotics as well as advertising malware, criminal services, and forged documents. As many as 42,000 products have been sold via several hundred seller accounts on the English language platform prior to its takedown, with 3,600 of them originating from Germany.  Transactions on the Kingdom Market were facilitated through cryptocurrency payments in the form of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, and Zcash, with the website operators receiving a 3

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.

The Chinese-speaking threat actors behind  Smishing Triad  have been observed masquerading as the United Arab Emirates Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship to send malicious SMS messages with the ultimate goal of gathering sensitive information from residents and foreigners in the country. "These criminals send malicious links to their victims' mobile devices through SMS or iMessage and use URL-shortening services like Bit.ly to randomize the links they send," Resecurity  said  in a report published this week. "This helps them protect the fake website's domain and hosting location." Smishing Triad was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company in September 2023, highlighting the group's use of compromised Apple iCloud accounts to send smishing messages for carrying out identity theft and financial fraud.  The threat actor is also known to offer ready-to-use smishing kits for sale to other cybercriminals for $200 a month, alongside eng

The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) has officially  announced  the disruption of the BlackCat ransomware operation and released a decryption tool that more than 500 affected victims can use to regain access to files locked by the malware. Court documents show that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) enlisted the help of a confidential human source (CHS) to act as an affiliate for the BlackCat group and gain access to a web panel used for managing the gang's victims, in what's a case of hacking the hackers. The confiscation effort involved collaboration and assistance from multiple law enforcement agencies from the U.S., Germany, Denmark, Australia, the U.K., Spain, Switzerland, and Austria. BlackCat , also called ALPHV, GOLD BLAZER, and Noberus,  first emerged  in December 2021 and has since gone on to be the second most prolific ransomware-as-a-service variant in the world after LockBit. It's also the first Rust-language-based ransomware strain spotted in the

Four U.S. nationals have been charged for participating in an illicit scheme that earned them more than $80 million via cryptocurrency investment scams. The defendants – Lu Zhang, 36, of Alhambra, California; Justin Walker, 31, of Cypress, California; Joseph Wong, 32, Rosemead, California; and Hailong Zhu, 40, Naperville, Illinois – have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, concealment money laundering, and international money laundering. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), which announced the arrests of both Zhang and Walker in connection with the fraudulent operation, said the quartet opened shell companies and bank accounts to carry out  pig butchering scams , transferring the ill-gotten funds to domestic and international financial entities. If convicted, Zhang and Walker face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Their alleged co-conspirators remain at large. "The overall fraud scheme in the related pig-butchering syndicate involved at least 284

Microsoft is warning of an uptick in malicious activity from an emerging threat cluster it's tracking as  Storm-0539  for orchestrating gift card fraud and theft via highly sophisticated email and SMS phishing attacks against retail entities during the holiday shopping season. The goal of the attacks is to propagate booby-trapped links that direct victims to adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing pages that are capable of harvesting their credentials and session tokens. "After gaining access to an initial session and token, Storm-0539 registers their own device for subsequent secondary authentication prompts, bypassing MFA protections and persisting in the environment using the fully compromised identity," the tech giant  said  in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). The foothold obtained in this manner further acts as a conduit for escalating privileges, moving laterally across the network, and accessing cloud resources in order to grab sensitive information,

Microsoft on Wednesday said it obtained a court order to seize infrastructure set up by a group called Storm-1152 that peddled roughly 750 million fraudulent Microsoft accounts and tools through a network of bogus websites and social media pages to other criminal actors, netting the operators millions of dollars in illicit revenue. "Fraudulent online accounts act as the gateway to a host of cybercrime, including mass phishing, identity theft and fraud, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks," Amy Hogan-Burney, the company's associate general counsel for cybersecurity policy and protection,  said . These cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) offerings, per Redmond, are designed to get around identity verification software across various technology platforms and help minimize the efforts needed to conduct malicious activities online, including phishing, spamming, ransomware, and fraud, effectively lowering the barriers to entry for attackers. Multiple threat actors,

Unauthorized websites distributing trojanized versions of cracked software have been found to infect Apple macOS users with a new  Trojan-Proxy  malware. "Attackers can use this type of malware to gain money by building a proxy server network or to perform criminal acts on behalf of the victim: to launch attacks on websites, companies and individuals, buy guns, drugs, and other illicit goods," Kaspersky security researcher Sergey Puzan  said . The Russian cybersecurity firm said it found evidence indicating that the malware is a cross-platform threat, owing to artifacts unearthed for Windows and Android that piggybacked on pirated tools. The macOS variants propagate under the guise of legitimate multimedia, image editing, data recovery, and productivity tools. This suggests that users searching for pirated software are the targets of the campaign. Unlike their genuine, unaltered counterparts, which are offered as disk image (.DMG) files, the rogue versions are delivered

A  CACTUS ransomware campaign  has been observed exploiting recently disclosed security flaws in a cloud analytics and business intelligence platform called Qlik Sense to obtain a foothold into targeted environments. "This campaign marks the first documented instance [...] where threat actors deploying CACTUS ransomware have exploited vulnerabilities in Qlik Sense for initial access," Arctic Wolf researchers Stefan Hostetler, Markus Neis, and Kyle Pagelow  said . The cybersecurity company, which said it's responding to "several instances" of exploitation of the software, noted that the attacks are likely taking advantage of three flaws that have been disclosed over the past three months - CVE-2023-41265  (CVSS score: 9.9) - An HTTP Request Tunneling vulnerability that allows a remote attacker to elevate their privilege and send requests that get executed by the backend server hosting the repository application. CVE-2023-41266  (CVSS score: 6.5) - A path tr

Identity services provider Okta has disclosed that it detected "additional threat actor activity" in connection with the  October 2023 breach  of its support case management system. "The threat actor downloaded the names and email addresses of all Okta customer support system users," the company said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "All Okta Workforce Identity Cloud (WIC) and Customer Identity Solution (CIS) customers are impacted except customers in our FedRamp High and DoD IL4 environments (these environments use a separate support system NOT accessed by the threat actor). The Auth0/CIC support case management system was not impacted by this incident." On top of that, the adversary is believed to have accessed reports containing contact information of all Okta certified users, some Okta Customer Identity Cloud (CIC) customers, and unspecified Okta employee information. However, it emphasized that the data does not include user credenti

Account credentials, a popular initial access vector, have become a valuable commodity in cybercrime. As a result, a single set of stolen credentials can put your organization's entire network at risk. According to the  2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report , external parties were responsible for  83 percent  of breaches that occurred between November 2021 and October 2022.  Forty-nine percent  of those breaches involved stolen credentials. How are threat actors compromising credentials? Social engineering is one of the  top five cybersecurity threats  in 2023. Phishing, which accounts for %of social engineering attempts, is the go-to method for stealing credentials. It's a relatively cheap tactic that yields results. As phishing and social engineering techniques become more sophisticated and the tools become more readily available, credential theft should become a top security concern for all organizations if it already isn't one. Phishing has evolved With phishing and s

A coordinated law enforcement operation has led to the arrest of key individuals in Ukraine who are alleged to be a part of several ransomware schemes. "On 21 November, 30 properties were searched in the regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, Rivne, and Vinnytsia, resulting in the arrest of the 32-year-old ringleader," Europol  said  in a statement today. "Four of the ringleader's most active accomplices were also detained." The  development  comes more than two years after  12 people were apprehended  in connection with the same operation. The individuals are primarily linked to LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Dharma ransomware families. The suspects are estimated to have targeted over 1,800 victims across 71 countries since 2019. They have also been accused of deploying the now-defunct  Hive ransomware  against high-profile organizations. Some of the co-conspirators are believed to be involved in penetrating IT networks by orchestrating brute-force attacks, SQL injectio

The ransomware strain known as  Play  is now being offered to other threat actors "as a service," new evidence unearthed by Adlumin has revealed. "The unusual lack of even small variations between attacks suggests that they are being carried out by affiliates who have purchased the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) and are following step-by-step instructions from playbooks delivered with it," the cybersecurity company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The findings are based on various Play ransomware attacks tracked by Adlumin spanning different sectors that incorporated almost identical tactics and in the same sequence. This includes the use of the public music folder (C:\...\public\music) to hide the malicious file, the same password to create high-privilege accounts, and both attacks, and the same commands. Play , also called Balloonfly and PlayCrypt, first came to light in June 2022, leveraging security flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server – i.e., 

Phishing attacks are steadily becoming more sophisticated, with cybercriminals investing in new ways of deceiving victims into revealing sensitive information or installing malicious software. One of the latest trends in phishing is the use of QR codes, CAPTCHAs, and steganography. See how they are carried out and learn to detect them. Quishing Quishing, a phishing technique resulting from the combination of "QR" and "phishing," has become a popular weapon for cybercriminals in 2023. By concealing malicious links within QR codes, attackers can evade traditional spam filters, which are primarily geared towards identifying text-based phishing attempts. The inability of many security tools to decipher the content of QR codes further makes this method a go-to choice for cybercriminals. An email containing a QR code with a malicious link Analyzing a QR code with an embedded malicious link in a safe environment is easy with  ANY.RUN : Simply open  this task  in th

An unknown threat actor has been observed publishing typosquat packages to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository for nearly six months with an aim to deliver malware capable of gaining persistence, stealing sensitive data, and accessing cryptocurrency wallets for financial gain. The 27 packages, which masqueraded as popular legitimate Python libraries, attracted thousands of downloads, Checkmarx said in a new report. A majority of the downloads originated from the U.S., China, France, Hong Kong, Germany, Russia, Ireland, Singapore, the U.K., and Japan. "A defining characteristic of this attack was the utilization of steganography to hide a malicious payload within an innocent-looking image file, which increased the stealthiness of the attack," the software supply chain security firm  said . Some of the packages are pyefflorer, pyminor, pyowler, pystallerer, pystob, and pywool, the last of which was planted on May 13, 2023. A common denominator to these packages is t

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have released a joint advisory about a cybercriminal group known as  Scattered Spider  that's known to employ sophisticated phishing tactics to infiltrate targets. "Scattered Spider threat actors typically engage in data theft for extortion using multiple social engineering techniques and have recently leveraged BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware alongside their usual TTPs," the agencies  said . The threat actor, also tracked under the monikers Muddled Libra, Octo Tempest, 0ktapus, Scatter Swine, Star Fraud, and UNC3944, was the subject of an  extensive profile  from Microsoft last month, with the tech giant calling it "one of the most dangerous financial criminal groups." Considered as experts in social engineering, Scattered Spider is known to rely on phishing, prompt bombing, and SIM swapping attacks to obtain credentials, install remote access tools, and bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA). Scattered Spider, li