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The infamous malware loader and initial access broker known as  Bumblebee  has resurfaced after a four-month absence as part of a new phishing campaign observed in February 2024. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said the activity targets organizations in the U.S. with voicemail-themed lures containing links to OneDrive URLs. "The URLs led to a Word file with names such as "ReleaseEvans#96.docm" (the digits before the file extension varied)," the company  said  in a Tuesday report. "The Word document spoofed the consumer electronics company Humane." Opening the document leverages VBA macros to launch a PowerShell command to download and execute another PowerShell script from a remote server that, in turn, retrieves and runs the Bumblebee loader. Bumblebee,  first spotted  in March 2022, is mainly designed to download and execute follow-on payloads such as ransomware. It has been put to use by multiple crimeware threat actors that previously observe

The macOS information stealer known as Atomic is now being delivered to target via a bogus web browser update chain tracked as ClearFake. "This may very well be the first time we see one of the main social engineering campaigns, previously reserved for Windows, branch out not only in terms of geolocation but also operating system," Malwarebytes' Jérôme Segura  said  in a Tuesday analysis. Atomic Stealer (aka AMOS),  first documented  in April 2023, is a commercial stealer malware family that's sold on a subscription basis for $1,000 per month. It comes with capabilities to siphon data from web browsers and cryptocurrency wallets. Then in September 2023, Malwarebytes  detailed  an Atomic Stealer campaign that took advantage of malicious Google ads, tricking macOS users searching for a financial charting platform known as TradingView into downloading the malware. ClearFake, on the other hand, is a nascent malware distribution operation that employs compromised Wor

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

A new  malvertising campaign  has been observed capitalizing on a compromised website to promote spurious versions of PyCharm on Google search results by leveraging Dynamic Search Ads. "Unbeknownst to the site owner, one of their ads was automatically created to promote a popular program for Python developers, and visible to people doing a Google search for it," Jérôme Segura, director of threat intelligence at Malwarebytes,  said  in a report. "Victims who clicked on the ad were taken to a hacked web page with a link to download the application, which turned out to install over a dozen different pieces of malware instead." The infected website in question is an unnamed online portal that specializes in wedding planning, which had been injected with malware to serve bogus links to the PyCharm software. The execution of the PyCharm installer results in the deployment of several stealer and loader families, such as Amadey, PrivateLoader, RedLine, Stealc, and Vid

A ransomware threat called 8Base that has been operating under the radar for over a year has been attributed to a "massive spike in activity" in May and June 2023. "The group utilizes encryption paired with 'name-and-shame' techniques to compel their victims to pay their ransoms," VMware Carbon Black researchers Deborah Snyder and Fae Carlisle  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "8Base has an opportunistic pattern of compromise with recent victims spanning across varied industries." 8Base, according to statistics gathered by  Malwarebytes  and  NCC Group , has been linked to 67 attacks as of May 2023, with about 50% of the victims  operating  in the business services, manufacturing, and construction sectors. A majority of the targeted companies are located in the U.S. and Brazil. With very little known about the operators of the ransomware, its origins remain something of a cipher. What's evident is that it has been active sinc

Cybersecurity researchers have unmasked the identity of one of the individuals who is believed to be associated with the e-crime actor known as  XE Group . According to  Menlo Security , which pieced together the information from different online sources, "Nguyen Huu Tai, who also goes by the names Joe Nguyen and Thanh Nguyen, has the strongest likelihood of being involved with the XE Group." XE Group (aka XeThanh), previously documented by  Malwarebytes  and  Volexity , has a history of carrying out cyber criminal activities since at least 2013. It's suspected to be a threat actor of Vietnamese origin. Some of the entities targeted by the threat actor span government agencies, construction organizations, and healthcare sectors. It's known to compromise internet-exposed servers with known exploits and monetize the intrusions by installing password theft or  credit card skimming code  for online services. "As far back as 2014, the threat actor was seen crea

A previously undetected advanced persistent threat (APT) actor dubbed  Red Stinger  has been linked to attacks targeting Eastern Europe since 2020. "Military, transportation, and critical infrastructure were some of the entities being targeted, as well as some involved in the  September East Ukraine referendums ," Malwarebytes disclosed in a  report  published today. "Depending on the campaign, attackers managed to exfiltrate snapshots, USB drives, keyboard strokes, and microphone recordings." Red Stinger overlaps with a threat cluster Kaspersky revealed under the name  Bad Magic  last month as having targeted government, agriculture, and transportation organizations located in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea last year. While there were indications that the APT group may have been active since at least September 2021, the latest findings from Malwarebytes push the group's origins back by nearly a year, with the first operation taking place in December 2020.

A set of four Android apps released by the same developer has been discovered directing victims to malicious websites as part of an adware and information-stealing campaign. The apps, published by a developer named  Mobile apps Group  and currently available on the Play Store, have been collectively downloaded over one million times. According to  Malwarebytes , the websites are designed to generate revenues through pay-per-click ads, and worse, prompt users to install cleaner apps on their phones with the goal of deploying additional malware. The list of apps is as follows - Bluetooth App Sender (com.bluetooth.share.app) - 50,000+ downloads Bluetooth Auto Connect (com.bluetooth.autoconnect.anybtdevices) - 1,000,000+ downloads Driver: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB (com.driver.finder.bluetooth.wifi.usb) - 10,000+ downloads Mobile transfer: smart switch (com.mobile.faster.transfer.smart.switch) - 1,000+ downloads It's no surprise that malicious apps have  devised new ways  to ge

WhatsApp has released  security updates  to address two flaws in its messaging app for Android and iOS that could lead to remote code execution on vulnerable devices. One of them concerns  CVE-2022-36934  (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical integer overflow vulnerability in WhatsApp that results in the execution of arbitrary code simply by establishing a video call. The issue impacts the WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business for Android and iOS prior to versions 2.22.16.12. Also patched by the Meta-owned messaging platform is an integer underflow bug, which refers to an opposite category of errors that occur when the result of an operation is too small for storing the value within the allocated memory space. The high-severity issue, given the CVE identifier  CVE-2022-27492  (CVSS score: 7.8), affects WhatsApp for Android prior to versions 2.22.16.2 and WhatsApp for iOS version 2.22.15.9, and could be triggered upon receiving a specially crafted video file. Exploiting  integer overflows  and 

Threat actors behind web skimming campaigns are leveraging malicious JavaScript code that mimics Google Analytics and Meta Pixel scripts in an attempt to sidestep detection. "It's a shift from earlier tactics where attackers conspicuously injected malicious scripts into e-commerce platforms and content management systems (CMSs) via vulnerability exploitation, making this threat highly evasive to traditional security solutions," Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  said  in a new report. Skimming attacks, such as those by Magecart, are carried out with the goal of harvesting and exporting users' payment information, such as credit card details, that are entered into online payment forms in e-commerce platforms, typically during the checkout process. This is achieved by taking advantage of security vulnerabilities in third-party plugins and other tools to inject rogue JavaScript code into the online portals without the owners' knowledge. As skimming attacks h

Malwarebytes on Tuesday said it was breached by the same group who broke into SolarWinds to access some of its internal emails, making it the fourth major cybersecurity vendor to be targeted after  FireEye ,  Microsoft , and  CrowdStrike . The company said its intrusion was not the result of a SolarWinds compromise, but rather due to a separate initial access vector that works by "abusing applications with privileged access to Microsoft Office 365 and Azure environments." The discovery was made after Microsoft notified Malwarebytes of suspicious activity from a dormant email protection app within its  Office 365 tenant  on December 15, following which it performed a detailed investigation into the incident. "While Malwarebytes does not use SolarWinds, we, like many other companies were recently targeted by the same threat actor," the company's CEO Marcin Kleczynski  said  in a post. "We found no evidence of unauthorized access or compromise in any of o