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The threat actor known as APT-C-60 has been linked to a cyber attack targeting an unnamed organization in Japan that used a job application-themed lure to deliver the SpyGlace backdoor. That's according to findings from JPCERT/CC, which said the intrusion leveraged legitimate services like Google Drive, Bitbucket, and StatCounter. The attack was carried out around August 2024. "In this attack, an email purporting to be from a prospective employee was sent to the organization's recruiting contact, infecting the contact with malware," the agency said . APT-C-60 is the moniker assigned to a South Korea-aligned cyber espionage group that's known to target East Asian countries. In August 2024, it was observed exploiting a remote code execution vulnerability in WPS Office for Windows (CVE-2024-7262) to drop a custom backdoor called SpyGlace. The attack chain discovered by JPCERT/CC involves the use of a phishing email that contains a link to a file hosted on Goo...

A threat actor named Matrix has been linked to a widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaign that leverages vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in Internet of Things (IoT) devices to co-opt them into a disruptive botnet. "This operation serves as a comprehensive one-stop shop for scanning, exploiting vulnerabilities, deploying malware, and setting up shop kits, showcasing a do-it-all-yourself approach to cyberattacks," Assaf Morag, director of threat intelligence at cloud security firm Aqua, said . There is evidence to suggest that the operation is the work of a lone wolf actor, a script kiddie of Russian origin. The attacks have primarily targeted IP addresses located in China, Japan, and to a lesser extent Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, India, and the U.S. The absence of Ukraine in the victimology footprint indicates that the attackers are purely driven by financial motivations, the cloud security firm said. The attack chains are characterized by ...

It's time once again to pay our respects to the once-famous cybersecurity solutions whose usefulness died in the past year. The cybercriminal world collectively mourns the loss of these solutions and the easy access they provide to victim organizations. These solutions, though celebrated in their prime, succumbed to the twin forces of time and advancing threats. Much like a tribute to celebrities lost in the past year, this article will look back at a few of cybersecurity's brightest stars that went dark in the past year.  1. Legacy Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Cause of Death: Compromised by sophisticated phishing, man-in-the-middle (MitM), SIM-swapping, and MFA prompt bombing attacks. The superstar of access security for more than twenty years, legacy MFA solutions enjoyed broad adoption followed by almost-universal responsibility for cybersecurity failures leading to successful ransomware attacks. These outdated solutions relied heavily on SMS or email-based codes o...

The Russia-aligned threat actor known as RomCom has been linked to the zero-day exploitation of two security flaws, one in Mozilla Firefox and the other in Microsoft Windows, as part of attacks designed to deliver the eponymous backdoor on victim systems. "In a successful attack, if a victim browses a web page containing the exploit, an adversary can run arbitrary code – without any user interaction required (zero click) – which in this case led to the installation of RomCom's backdoor on the victim's computer," ESET said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below - CVE-2024-9680 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A use-after-free vulnerability in Firefox's Animation component (Patched by Mozilla in October 2024)  CVE-2024-49039 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows Task Scheduler (Patched by Microsoft in November 2024) RomCom , also known as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, UAC-0180, UNC2596, and...

The China-linked threat actor known as Earth Estries has been observed using a previously undocumented backdoor called GHOSTSPIDER as part of its attacks targeting Southeast Asian telecommunications companies.  Trend Micro, which described the hacking group as an aggressive advanced persistent threat (APT), said the intrusions also involved the use of another cross-platform backdoor dubbed MASOL RAT (aka Backdr-NQ) on Linux systems belonging to Southeast Asian government networks. In all, Earth Estries is estimated to have successfully compromised more than 20 entities spanning telecommunications, technology, consulting, chemical, and transportation industries, government agencies, and non-profit organization (NGO) sectors. Victims have been identified across over a dozen countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, Eswatini, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.S., and Vietnam. Earth Estries shares overlap with clusters t...

The administrators of the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository have quarantined the package " aiocpa " following a new update that included malicious code to exfiltrate private keys via Telegram. The package in question is described as a synchronous and asynchronous Crypto Pay API client. The package, originally released in September 2024, has been downloaded 12,100 times to date. By putting the Python library in quarantine, it prevents further installation by clients and cannot be modified by its maintainers.  Cybersecurity outfit Phylum, which shared details of the software supply chain attack last week, said the author of the package published the malicious update to PyPI, while keeping the library's GitHub repository clean in an attempt to evade detection. It's currently not clear if the original developer was behind the rogue update or if their credentials were compromised by a different threat actor. Signs of malicious activity were first spotted i...

We hear terms like "state-sponsored attacks" and "critical vulnerabilities" all the time, but what's really going on behind those words? This week's cybersecurity news isn't just about hackers and headlines—it's about how digital risks shape our lives in ways we might not even realize. For instance, telecom networks being breached isn't just about stolen data—it's about power. Hackers are positioning themselves to control the networks we rely on for everything, from making calls to running businesses. And those techy-sounding CVEs? They're not just random numbers; they're like ticking time bombs in the software you use every day, from your phone to your work tools. These stories aren't just for the experts—they're for all of us. They show how easily the digital world we trust can be turned against us. But they also show us the power of staying informed and prepared. Dive into this week's recap, and let's uncover the risks, the solutions, and the small steps we can all take to stay a...

Dive into the evolution of phishing and malware evasion techniques and understand how attackers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to bypass security measures. The Evolution of Phishing Attacks "I really like the saying that 'This is out of scope' said no hacker ever. Whether it's tricks, techniques or technologies, hackers will do anything to evade detection and make sure their attack is successful," says Etay Maor, Chief Security Strategist at Cato Networks and member of Cato CTRL . Phishing attacks have transformed significantly over the years. 15-20 years ago, simple phishing sites were sufficient for capturing the crown jewels of the time - credit card details. Today, attacks and defense methods have become much more sophisticated, as we'll detail below. "This is also the time where the "cat-and-mouse" attack-defense game began," says Tal Darsan, Security Manager and member of Cato CTRL. At the time, a major defense technique against credit card phishing sites inv...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new malicious campaign that leverages a technique called Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver ( BYOVD ) to disarm security protections and ultimately gain access to the infected system. "This malware takes a more sinister route: it drops a legitimate Avast Anti-Rootkit driver (aswArPot.sys) and manipulates it to carry out its destructive agenda," Trellix security researcher Trishaan Kalra said in an analysis published last week. "The malware exploits the deep access provided by the driver to terminate security processes, disable protective software, and seize control of the infected system." The starting point of the attack is an executable file (kill-floor.exe) that drops the legitimate Avast Anti-Rootkit driver, which is subsequently registered as a service using Service Control (sc.exe) to perform its malicious actions. Once the driver is up and running, the malware gains kernel-level access to the system, allowing it...

Government agencies and non-governmental organizations in the United States have become the target of a nascent China state threat actor known as Storm-2077. The adversary, believed to be active since at least January 2024, has also conducted cyber attacks against the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), aviation, telecommunications, and financial and legal services across the world, Microsoft said . The activity cluster, the company added, overlaps with a threat group that Recorded Future's Insikt Group is tracking as TAG-100 . Attack chains have involved targeting various internet-facing edge devices using publicly available exploits to gain initial access and drop Cobalt Strike as well as open-source malware such as Pantegana and Spark RAT, the cybersecurity company noted back in July. "Over the past decade, following numerous government indictments and the public disclosure of threat actors' activities, tracking and attributing cyber operations originating from China has b...

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Sapphire Sleet is estimated to have stolen more than $10 million worth of cryptocurrency as part of social engineering campaigns orchestrated over a six-month period. These findings come from Microsoft, which said that multiple threat activity clusters with ties to the country have been observed creating fake profiles on LinkedIn, posing as both recruiters and job seekers to generate illicit revenue for the sanction-hit nation. Sapphire Sleet, which is known to be active since at least 2020, overlaps with hacking groups tracked as APT38 and BlueNoroff. In November 2023, the tech giant revealed that the threat actor had established infrastructure that impersonated skills assessment portals to carry out its social engineering campaigns. One of the main methods adopted by the group for over a year is to pose as a venture capitalist, deceptively claiming an interest in a target user's company in order to set up an online meeting. Targ...

The threat actor known as Mysterious Elephant has been observed using an advanced version of malware called Asyncshell. The attack campaign is said to have used Hajj -themed lures to trick victims into executing a malicious payload under the guise of a Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) file, the Knownsec 404 team said in an analysis published today. Mysterious Elephant, which is also known as APT-K-47, is a threat actor of South Asian origin that has been active since at least 2022, primarily targeting Pakistani entities. The group's tactics and tooling have been found to share similarities with those of other threat actors operating in the regions, such as SideWinder, Confucius, and Bitter. In October 2023, the group was linked to a spear-phishing campaign that delivered a backdoor called ORPCBackdoor as part of attacks directed against Pakistan and other countries. The exact initial access vector employed by Mysterious Elephant in the latest campaign is not known, but ...

Threat actors with ties to Russia have been linked to a cyber espionage campaign aimed at organizations in Central Asia, East Asia, and Europe. Recorded Future's Insikt Group, which has assigned the activity cluster the name TAG-110, said it overlaps with a threat group tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) as UAC-0063, which, in turn, overlaps with APT28 . The hacking crew has been active since at least 2021. "Using custom malware tools HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY, TAG-110 primarily attacks government entities, human rights groups, and educational institutions," the cybersecurity company said in a Thursday report. "HATVIBE functions as a loader to deploy CHERRYSPY, a Python backdoor used for data exfiltration and espionage." TAG-110's use of HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY was first documented by CERT-UA back in late May 2023 in connection with a cyber attack targeting state agencies in Ukraine. Both the malware families were again spo...