Living-Off-The-Land | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An unnamed Islamic non-profit organization in Saudi Arabia has been targeted as part of a stealthy cyber espionage campaign designed to drop a previously undocumented backdoor called  Zardoor . Cisco Talos, which discovered the activity in May 2023, said the campaign has likely persisted since at least March 2021, adding it has identified only one compromised target to date, although it's suspected that there could be other victims. "Throughout the campaign, the adversary used living-off-the-land binaries (LoLBins) to deploy backdoors, establish command-and-control (C2), and maintain persistence," security researchers Jungsoo An, Wayne Lee, and Vanja Svajcer  said , calling out the threat actor's ability to maintain long-term access to victim environments without attracting attention. The intrusion targeting the Islamic charitable organization involved the periodic exfiltration of data roughly twice a month. The exact initial access vector used to infiltrate the ...

The threat actors associated with the  Medusa ransomware  have ramped up their activities following the debut of a dedicated data leak site on the dark web in February 2023 to publish sensitive data of victims who are unwilling to agree to their demands. "As part of their multi-extortion strategy, this group will provide victims with multiple options when their data is posted on their leak site, such as time extension, data deletion or download of all the data," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Anthony Galiette and Doel Santos  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "All of these options have a price tag depending on the organization impacted by this group." Medusa (not to be confused with Medusa Locker) refers to a ransomware family that appeared in late 2022 before coming into prominence in 2023. It's known for opportunistically targeting a wide range of industries such as high technology, education, manufacturing, healthcare, and retail. As many...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

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...

The threat actors behind the  Rhysida ransomware  engage in opportunistic attacks targeting organizations spanning various industry sectors. The advisory comes courtesy of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). "Observed as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, Rhysida actors have compromised organizations in education, manufacturing, information technology, and government sectors and any ransom paid is split between the group and affiliates," the agencies  said . " Rhysida actors leverage external-facing remote services, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), Zerologon vulnerability (CVE-2020-1472), and phishing campaigns to gain initial access and persistence within a network." First detected in May 2023,  Rhysida  makes use of the time-tested tactic of double extortion, demanding a ransom payment to decrypt vic...

A nation-state activity group originating from China has been linked to cyber attacks on dozens of organizations in Taiwan as part of a suspected espionage campaign. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team is tracking the activity under the name  Flax Typhoon , which is also known as Ethereal Panda. "Flax Typhoon gains and maintains long-term access to Taiwanese organizations' networks with minimal use of malware, relying on tools built into the operating system, along with some normally benign software to quietly remain in these networks," the company  said . It further said it hasn't observed the group weaponize the access to conduct data-collection and exfiltration. A majority of the targets include government agencies, educational institutions, critical manufacturing, and information technology organizations in Taiwan. A smaller number of victims have also been detected in Southeast Asia, North America, and Africa. The group is suspected to have been active si...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of 11 living-off-the-land binaries-and-scripts ( LOLBAS ) that could be maliciously abused by threat actors to conduct post-exploitation activities.  "LOLBAS is an attack method that uses binaries and scripts that are already part of the system for malicious purposes," Pentera security researcher Nir Chako  said . "This makes it hard for security teams to distinguish between legitimate and malicious activities, since they are all performed by trusted system utilities." To that end, the Israeli cybersecurity company said it uncovered nine LOLBAS downloaders and three executors that could enable adversaries to download and execute "more robust malware" on infected hosts. This includes: MsoHtmEd.exe, Mspub.exe, ProtocolHandler.exe, ConfigSecurityPolicy.exe, InstallUtil.exe, Mshta.exe, Presentationhost.exe, Outlook.exe, MSAccess.exe, scp.exe, and sftp.exe.  "In a complete attack chain, a hacker will us...