Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

This week has been crazy in the world of hacking and online security. From Thailand to London to the US, we've seen arrests, spies at work, and big power moves online. Hackers are getting caught. Spies are getting better at their jobs. Even simple things like browser add-ons and smart home gadgets are being used to attack people. Every day, there's a new story that shows how quickly things are changing in the fight over the internet. Governments are cracking down harder on cybercriminals. Big tech companies are rushing to fix their security. Researchers keep finding weak spots in apps and devices we use every day. We saw fake job recruiters on LinkedIn spying on people, huge crypto money-laundering cases, and brand-new malware made just to beat Apple's Mac protections. All these stories remind us: the same tech that makes life better can very easily be turned into a weapon. Here's a simple look at the biggest cybersecurity news happening right now — from the hidde...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Android banking trojan called Sturnus that enables credential theft and full device takeover to conduct financial fraud. "A key differentiator is its ability to bypass encrypted messaging," ThreatFabric said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "By capturing content directly from the device screen after decryption, Sturnus can monitor communications via WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal." Another notable feature is its ability to stage overlay attacks by serving fake login screens atop banking apps to capture victims' credentials. According to the Dutch mobile security company, Sturnus is privately operated and is currently assessed to be in the evaluation stage. Artifacts distributing the banking malware are listed below - Google Chrome ("com.klivkfbky.izaybebnx") Preemix Box ("com.uvxuthoq.noscjahae") The malware has been designed to specifically single out financial inst...

Threat actors are leveraging bogus installers masquerading as popular software to trick users into installing malware as part of a global malvertising campaign dubbed TamperedChef . The end goal of the attacks is to establish persistence and deliver JavaScript malware that facilitates remote access and control, per a new report from Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU). The campaign , per the Singapore-headquartered company, is still ongoing, with new artifacts being detected and associated infrastructure remaining active. "The operator(s) rely on social engineering by using everyday application names, malvertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and abused digital certificates that aim to increase user trust and evade security detection," researchers Darrel Virtusio and Jozsef Gegeny said. TamperedChef is the name assigned to a long-running campaign that has leveraged seemingly legitimate installers for various utilities to distribute an information stealer malware of...

A newly discovered campaign has compromised tens of thousands of outdated or end-of-life (EoL) ASUS routers worldwide, predominantly in Taiwan, the U.S., and Russia, to rope them into a massive network. The router hijacking activity has been codenamed Operation WrtHug by SecurityScorecard's STRIKE team. Southeast Asia and European countries are some of the other regions where infections have been recorded. Over the past six months, more than 50,000 unique IP addresses belonging to these compromised devices around the globe have been identified. The attacks likely involve the exploitation of six known security flaws in end-of-life ASUS WRT routers to take control of susceptible devices. All the infected routers have been found to share a unique self-signed TLS certificate with an expiration date set for 100 years from April 2022. SecurityScorecard said 99% of the services presenting the certificate are ASUS AiCloud, a proprietary service designed to enable access to local stora...

The threat actor known as PlushDaemon has been observed using a previously undocumented Go-based network backdoor codenamed EdgeStepper to facilitate adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks. EdgeStepper "redirects all DNS queries to an external, malicious hijacking node, effectively rerouting the traffic from legitimate infrastructure used for software updates to attacker-controlled infrastructure," ESET security researcher Facundo Muñoz said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Known to be active since at least 2018, PlushDaemon is assessed to be a China-aligned group that has attacked entities in the U.S., New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and mainland China. It was first documented by the Slovak cybersecurity company earlier this January, detailing a supply chain attack aimed at a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider named IPany to target a semiconductor company and an unidentified software development company in South Korea wi...