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Fake browser updates are being used to push a previously undocumented Android malware called  Brokewell . "Brokewell is a typical modern banking malware equipped with both data-stealing and remote-control capabilities built into the malware," Dutch security firm ThreatFabric  said  in an analysis published Thursday. The malware is said to be in active development, adding new commands to capture touch events, textual information displayed on screen, and the applications a victim launches. The list of Brokewell apps that masquerade as Google Chrome, ID Austria, and Klarna is as follows - jcwAz.EpLIq.vcAZiUGZpK (Google Chrome) zRFxj.ieubP.lWZzwlluca (ID Austria) com.brkwl.upstracking (Klarna) Like other recent Android malware families of its kind, Brokewell is capable of getting around restrictions imposed by Google that prevent sideloaded apps from requesting  accessibility service permissions . The banking trojan, once installed and launched for the first time, pro

Palo Alto Networks has  shared  remediation guidance for a recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting PAN-OS that has come under active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-3400  (CVSS score: 10.0), could be weaponized to obtain unauthenticated remote shell command execution on susceptible devices. It has been addressed in multiple versions of PAN-OS 10.2.x, 11.0.x, and 11.1.x. There is evidence to suggest that the issue has been exploited as a zero-day since at least March 26, 2024, by a threat cluster tracked as UTA0218. The activity, codenamed  Operation MidnightEclipse , entails the use of the flaw to drop a Python-based backdoor called UPSTYLE that's capable of executing commands transmitted via specially crafted requests. The intrusions have not been linked to a known threat actor or group, but it's suspected to be a state-backed hacking crew given the tradecraft and the victimology observed. The  latest remediation advice  offered by Palo

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The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Lazarus Group employed its time-tested fabricated job lures to deliver a new remote access trojan called Kaolin RAT as part of attacks targeting specific individuals in the Asia region in summer 2023. The malware could, "aside from standard RAT functionality, change the last write timestamp of a selected file and load any received DLL binary from [command-and-control] server," Avast security researcher Luigino Camastra  said  in a report published last week. The RAT acts as a pathway to deliver the FudModule rootkit, which has been recently observed leveraging a now-patched  admin-to-kernel exploit  in the appid.sys driver (CVE-2024-21338, CVSS score: 7.8) to obtain a kernel read/write primitive and ultimately disable security mechanisms. The Lazarus Group's use of job offer lures to infiltrate targets is not new. Dubbed Operation Dream Job, the  long-running campaign  has a  track record  of using various social media and

A new malware campaign leveraged two zero-day flaws in Cisco networking gear to deliver custom malware and facilitate covert data collection on target environments. Cisco Talos, which dubbed the activity  ArcaneDoor , attributed it as the handiwork of a previously undocumented sophisticated state-sponsored actor it tracks under the name UAT4356 (aka Storm-1849 by Microsoft). "UAT4356 deployed two backdoors as components of this campaign, 'Line Runner' and 'Line Dancer,' which were used collectively to conduct malicious actions on-target, which included configuration modification, reconnaissance, network traffic capture/exfiltration and potentially lateral movement," Talos  said . The intrusions, which were first detected and confirmed in early January 2024, entail the exploitation of  two vulnerabilities  - CVE-2024-20353  (CVSS score: 8.6) - Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense Software Web Services Denial-of-Service Vulnerabi

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Monday sanctioned two firms and four individuals for their involvement in malicious cyber activities on behalf of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC) from at least 2016 to April 2021. This includes the front companies Mehrsam Andisheh Saz Nik (MASN) and Dadeh Afzar Arman (DAA), as well as the Iranian nationals Alireza Shafie Nasab, Reza Kazemifar Rahman, Hossein Mohammad Harooni, and Komeil Baradaran Salmani. "These actors targeted more than a dozen U.S. companies and government entities through cyber operations, including spear-phishing and malware attacks," the Treasury Department  said . Concurrent with the sanctions, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  unsealed  an indictment against the four individuals for orchestrating cyber attacks targeting the U.S. government and private entities. Furthermore, a  reward of up to $10 million  has been an

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an ongoing attack campaign that's leveraging phishing emails to deliver a malware called SSLoad . The campaign, codenamed  FROZEN#SHADOW  by Securonix, also involves the deployment of Cobalt Strike and the ConnectWise ScreenConnect remote desktop software. "SSLoad is designed to stealthily infiltrate systems, gather sensitive information and transmit its findings back to its operators," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Once inside the system, SSLoad deploys multiple backdoors and payloads to maintain persistence and avoid detection." Attack chains involve the use of phishing messages to randomly target organizations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, with emails containing links that lead to the retrieval of a JavaScript file that kicks off the infection flow. Earlier this month, Palo Alto Networks uncovered at least two different method

A new malware campaign has been exploiting the updating mechanism of the eScan antivirus software to distribute backdoors and cryptocurrency miners like XMRig through a long-standing threat codenamed GuptiMiner targeting large corporate networks. Cybersecurity firm Avast said the activity is the work of a threat actor with possible connections to a North Korean hacking group dubbed  Kimsuky , which is also known as Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet, and TA427. "GuptiMiner is a highly sophisticated threat that uses an interesting infection chain along with a couple of techniques that include performing DNS requests to the attacker's DNS servers, performing sideloading, extracting payloads from innocent-looking images, signing its payloads with a custom trusted root anchor certification authority, among others," Avast  said . The intricate and elaborate infection chain, at its core, leverages a security shortcoming in the update mechanism of Indian antivirus vendor eScan to

A new ongoing malware campaign has been observed distributing three different stealers, such as  CryptBot ,  LummaC2 , and  Rhadamanthys  hosted on Content Delivery Network (CDN) cache domains since at least February 2024. Cisco Talos has attributed the activity with moderate confidence to a threat actor tracked as  CoralRaider , a suspected Vietnamese-origin group that came to light earlier this month. This assessment is based on "several overlaps in tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of CoralRaider's Rotbot campaign, including the initial attack vector of the Windows Shortcut file, intermediate PowerShell decryptor and payload download scripts, the FoDHelper technique used to bypass User Access Controls (UAC) of the victim machine," the company said. Targets of the campaign span various business verticals across geographies, including the U.S., Nigeria, Pakistan, Ecuador, Germany, Egypt, the U.K., Poland, the Philippines, Norway, Japan, Syria, and Turkey.

The Russia-linked nation-state threat actor tracked as  APT28  weaponized a security flaw in the Microsoft Windows Print Spooler component to deliver a previously unknown custom malware called GooseEgg. The post-compromise tool, which is said to have been used since at least June 2020 and possibly as early as April 2019, leveraged a now-patched flaw that allowed for privilege escalation (CVE-2022-38028, CVSS score: 7.8). It was  addressed  by Microsoft as part of updates released in October 2022, with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) credited for reporting the flaw at the time. According to new findings from the tech giant's threat intelligence team,  APT28  – also called Fancy Bear and Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium) – weaponized the bug in attacks targeting Ukrainian, Western European, and North American government, non-governmental, education, and transportation sector organizations. "Forest Blizzard has used the tool [...] to exploit the CVE-2022-38028 vu

New research has found that the DOS-to-NT path conversion process could be exploited by threat actors to achieve rootkit-like capabilities to conceal and impersonate files, directories, and processes. "When a user executes a function that has a path argument in Windows, the DOS path at which the file or folder exists is converted to an NT path," SafeBreach security researcher Or Yair  said  in an analysis, which was  presented  at the Black Hat Asia conference last week. "During this conversion process, a known issue exists in which the function removes trailing dots from any path element and any trailing spaces from the last path element. This action is completed by most user-space APIs in Windows." These so-called MagicDot paths allow for rootkit-like functionality that's accessible to any unprivileged user, who could then weaponize them to carry out a series of malicious actions without having admin permissions and remain undetected. They include the ab

Microsoft has revealed that North Korea-linked state-sponsored cyber actors have begun to use artificial intelligence (AI) to make their operations more effective and efficient. "They are learning to use tools powered by AI large language models (LLM) to make their operations more efficient and effective," the tech giant  said  in its latest report on East Asia hacking groups. The company specifically highlighted a group named  Emerald Sleet  (aka Kimusky or TA427), which has been observed using LLMs to bolster spear-phishing efforts aimed at Korean Peninsula experts. The adversary is also said to have relied on the latest advancements in AI to research vulnerabilities and conduct reconnaissance on organizations and experts focused on North Korea, joining  hacking crews from China , who have turned to AI-generated content for influence operations. It further employed LLMs to troubleshoot technical issues, conduct basic scripting tasks, and draft content for spear-phishi

A new information stealer has been found leveraging Lua bytecode for added stealth and sophistication, findings from McAfee Labs reveal. The cybersecurity firm has assessed it to be a variant of a known malware called RedLine Stealer owing to the fact that the command-and-control (C2) server  IP address  has been previously identified as associated with the malware. RedLine Stealer,  first documented  in March 2020, is typically delivered via email and malvertising campaigns, either directly or via  exploit kits  and loader malware like  dotRunpeX  and  HijackLoader . The off-the-shelf malware is capable of harvesting information from cryptocurrency wallets, VPN software, and web browsers, such as saved credentials, autocomplete data, credit card information, and geolocations based on the victims' IP addresses. Over the years, RedLine Stealer has been co-opted by several threat actors into their attack chains, making it a prevalent strain spanning North America, South America,

Technology, research, and government sectors in the Asia-Pacific region have been targeted by a threat actor called  BlackTech  as part of a recent cyber attack wave. The intrusions pave the way for an updated version of modular backdoor dubbed Waterbear as well as its enhanced successor referred to as Deuterbear. Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro is tracking the threat actor under the moniker Earth Hundun, which is known to be active since at least 2007. It also goes by other names such as Circuit Panda, HUAPI, Manga Taurus, Palmerworm, Red Djinn, and Temp.Overboard. "Waterbear is known for its complexity, as it uses a number of evasion mechanisms to minimize the chance of detection and analysis," Trend Micro researchers Cyris Tseng and Pierre Lee  said  in an analysis last week. "In 2022, Earth Hundun began using the latest version of Waterbear — also known as Deuterbear — which has several changes, including anti-memory scanning and decryption routines, that make us

Government entities in the Middle East have been targeted as part of a previously undocumented campaign to deliver a new backdoor dubbed CR4T. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it discovered the activity in February 2024, with evidence suggesting that it may have been active since at least a year prior. The campaign has been codenamed  DuneQuixote . "The group behind the campaign took steps to prevent collection and analysis of its implants and implemented practical and well-designed evasion methods both in network communications and in the malware code," Kaspersky  said . The starting point of the attack is a dropper, which comes in two variants -- a regular dropper that's either implemented as an executable or a DLL file and a tampered installer file for a legitimate tool named  Total Commander . Regardless of the method used, the primary function of the dropper is to extract an embedded command-and-control (C2) address that's decrypted using a nove

Select Ukrainian government networks have remained infected with a malware called OfflRouter since 2015. Cisco Talos said its findings are based on an analysis of over 100 confidential documents that were infected with the VBA macro virus and uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform since 2018. More than 20 such documents have been uploaded since 2022. "The documents contained VBA code to drop and run an executable with the name 'ctrlpanel.exe,'" security researcher Vanja Svajcer  said . "The virus is still active in Ukraine and is causing potentially confidential documents to be uploaded to publicly accessible document repositories." A striking aspect of OfflRouter is its inability to spread via email, necessitating that it be propagated via other means, such as sharing documents and removable media, including USB memory sticks containing the infected documents. "It would require manual user intervention to send an infected document as

The infamous cybercrime syndicate known as FIN7 has been linked to a spear-phishing campaign targeting the U.S. automotive industry to deliver a known backdoor called Carbanak (aka Anunak). "FIN7 identified employees at the company who worked in the IT department and had higher levels of administrative rights," the BlackBerry research and intelligence team  said  in a new write-up. "They used the lure of a free IP scanning tool to run their well-known Anunak backdoor and gain an initial foothold utilizing living off the land binaries, scripts, and libraries ( LOLBAS )." FIN7, also known as Carbon Spider, Elbrus, Gold Niagara, ITG14, and Sangria Tempest, is a well-known  financially motivated e-crime group  that has a track record of striking a wide range of industry verticals to deliver malware capable of stealing information from point-of-sale (PoS) systems since 2012. In recent years, the threat actor has  transitioned  to  conducting ransomware operations ,