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Microsoft said it teamed up with Fortra and Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC) to tackle the abuse of Cobalt Strike by cybercriminals to distribute malware, including ransomware. To that end, the tech giant's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) revealed that it secured a  court order  in the U.S. to "remove illegal, legacy copies of Cobalt Strike so they can no longer be used by cybercriminals." While Cobalt Strike, developed and maintained by Fortra (formerly HelpSystems), is a legitimate post-exploitation tool used for adversary simulation, illegal cracked versions of the software have been weaponized by threat actors over the years. Ransomware groups, in particular, have leveraged Cobalt Strike after obtaining initial access to a target environment to escalate privileges, lateral move across the network, and deploy file-encrypting malware. "The ransomware families associated with or deployed by cracked copies of Cobalt Strike have been link

Google Cloud last week disclosed that it identified 34 different hacked release versions of the Cobalt Strike tool in the wild, the earliest of which  shipped  in November 2012. The versions, spanning 1.44 to 4.7, add up to a total of 275 unique JAR files, according to findings from the Google Cloud Threat Intelligence (GCTI) team. The  latest version  of Cobalt Strike is version 4.7.2. Cobalt Strike, developed by  Fortra  (née HelpSystems), is a popular adversarial framework used by red teams to simulate attack scenarios and test the resilience of their cyber defenses. It comprises a Team Server that acts as the command-and-control (C2) hub to remotely commandeer infected devices and a stager that's designed to deliver a next-stage payload called the Beacon, a fully-featured implant that reports back to the C2 server. Given its wide-ranging suite of features, unauthorized versions of the software have been  increasingly   weaponized  by  many  a  threat   actor  to  advance

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

HelpSystems, the company behind the Cobalt Strike software platform, has released an out-of-band security update to address a remote code execution vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of targeted systems. Cobalt Strike is a commercial red-team framework that's mainly used for adversary simulation, but cracked versions of the software have been  actively   abused  by ransomware operators and espionage-focused advanced persistent threat (APT) groups alike. The  post-exploitation tool  consists of a team server, which functions as a command-and-control (C2) component, and a beacon, the default malware used to create a connection to the team server and drop next-stage payloads. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2022-42948 , affects Cobalt Strike version 4.7.1, and stems from an incomplete patch released on September 20, 2022, to rectify a cross-site scripting ( XSS ) vulnerability ( CVE-2022-39197 ) that could lead to remote code execution. "The XSS vulnerabi