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The threat actor known as COLDRIVER has continued to engage in credential theft activities against entities that are of strategic interests to Russia while simultaneously improving its detection evasion capabilities. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team is tracking under the cluster as  Star Blizzard  (formerly SEABORGIUM). It's also called Blue Callisto, BlueCharlie (or TAG-53), Calisto (alternately spelled Callisto), Gossamer Bear, and TA446. The adversary "continues to prolifically target individuals and organizations involved in international affairs, defense, and logistics support to Ukraine, as well as academia, information security companies, and other entities aligning with Russian state interests," Redmond  said . Star Blizzard , linked to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), has a  track record  of setting up lookalike domains that impersonate the login pages of targeted companies. It's known to be active since at least 2017. In August 2023,

Microsoft on Monday said it detected Kremlin-backed nation-state activity exploiting a now-patched critical security flaw in its Outlook email service to gain unauthorized access to victims' accounts within Exchange servers. The tech giant  attributed  the intrusions to a threat actor it called  Forest Blizzard  (formerly Strontium), which is also widely tracked under the monikers APT28, BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422. The security vulnerability in question is  CVE-2023-23397  (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical privilege escalation bug that could allow an adversary to access a user's Net-NTLMv2 hash that could then be used to conduct a relay attack against another service to authenticate as the user. It was patched by Microsoft in March 2023. The goal, according to the Polish Cyber Command (DKWOC), is to obtain unauthorized access to mailboxes belonging to public and private entities in the country. "In the next stage of malici

Compromising the browser is a high-return target for adversaries. Browser extensions, which are small software modules that are added to the browser and can enhance browsing experiences, have become a popular browser attack vector. This is because they are widely adopted among users and can easily turn malicious through developer actions or attacks on legitimate extensions. Recent incidents like  DataSpii  and the  Nigelthorn  malware attack have exposed the extent of damage that malicious extensions can inflict. In both cases, users innocently installed extensions that compromised their privacy and security. The underlying issue lies in the permissions granted to extensions. These permissions, often excessive and lacking granularity, allow attackers to exploit them. What can organizations do to protect themselves from the risks of browser extensions without barring them from use altogether (an act that would be nearly impossible to enforce)?  A new report by LayerX, "Unveiling the

Microsoft has warned of a new wave of CACTUS ransomware attacks that leverage malvertising lures to deploy DanaBot as an initial access vector. The DanaBot infections led to "hands-on-keyboard activity by ransomware operator Storm-0216 (Twisted Spider, UNC2198), culminating in the deployment of CACTUS ransomware," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team  said  in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). DanaBot , tracked by the tech giant as Storm-1044, is a multi-functional tool along the lines of Emotet, TrickBot, QakBot, and IcedID that's capable of acting as a stealer and a point of entry for next-stage payloads. UNC2198, for its part, has been previously observed infecting endpoints with IcedID to deploy ransomware families such as Maze and Egregor, as  detailed  by Google-owned Mandiant in February 2021. Per Microsoft, the threat actor has also taken advantage of initial access provided by QakBot infections. The shift to DanaBot, therefore, is likely the resu

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a case of "forced authentication" that could be exploited to leak a Windows user's NT LAN Manager (NTLM) tokens by tricking a victim into opening a specially crafted Microsoft Access file. The attack takes advantage of a legitimate feature in the database management system solution that allows users to  link to external data sources , such as a remote SQL Server table. "This feature can be abused by attackers to automatically leak the Windows user's NTLM tokens to any attacker-controlled server, via any TCP port, such as port 80," Check Point security researcher Haifei Li  said . "The attack can be launched as long as the victim opens an .accdb or .mdb file. In fact, any more-common Office file type (such as a .rtf ) can work as well." NTLM, an authentication protocol introduced by Microsoft in 1993, is a challenge-response protocol that's used to authenticate users during sign-in. Over the years,

Microsoft has released fixes to address  63 security bugs  in its software for the month of November 2023, including three vulnerabilities that have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 63 flaws, three are rated Critical, 56 are rated Important, and four are rated Moderate in severity. Two of them have been listed as publicly known at the time of the release. The updates are in addition to  more than 35 security shortcomings  addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of Patch Tuesday updates for October 2023. The five zero-days that are of note are as follows - CVE-2023-36025  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-36033  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2023-36036  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2023-36038  (CVSS score: 8.2) - ASP.NET Core Denial of Service Vulnerability CV

A sub-cluster within the infamous Lazarus Group has established new infrastructure that impersonates skills assessment portals as part of its social engineering campaigns. Microsoft attributed the activity to a threat actor it calls  Sapphire Sleet , describing it as a "shift in the persistent actor's tactics." Sapphire Sleet, also called APT38, BlueNoroff, CageyChameleon, and CryptoCore, has a track record of orchestrating cryptocurrency theft via social engineering. Earlier this week, Jamf Threat Labs implicated the threat actor to a new macOS malware family called  ObjCShellz  that's assessed to be a late-stage payload delivered in connection with another macOS malware known as RustBucket. "Sapphire Sleet typically finds targets on platforms like LinkedIn and uses lures related to skills assessment," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team  said  in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). "The threat actor then moves successful communication

The threat actor known as Lace Tempest has been linked to the exploitation of a zero-day flaw in SysAid IT support software in limited attacks, according to new findings from Microsoft. Lace Tempest, which is known for distributing the Cl0p ransomware, has in the past leveraged zero-day flaws in  MOVEit Transfer  and  PaperCut servers . The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-47246 , concerns a path traversal flaw that could result in code execution within on-premise installations. It has been patched by SysAid in version 23.3.36 of the software. "After exploiting the vulnerability, Lace Tempest issued commands via the SysAid software to deliver a malware loader for the Gracewire malware," Microsoft  said . "This is typically followed by human-operated activity, including lateral movement, data theft, and ransomware deployment." According to SysAid, the threat actor has been  observed  uploading a WAR archive containing a web shell and other payloads into the webroot

North Korean threat actors are actively exploiting a critical security flaw in JetBrains TeamCity to opportunistically breach vulnerable servers, according to Microsoft. The attacks, which entail the exploitation of  CVE-2023-42793  (CVSS score: 9.8), have been  attributed  to Diamond Sleet (aka Labyrinth Chollima) and Onyx Sleet (aka Andariel or Silent Chollima). It's worth noting that both the threat activity clusters are part of the infamous North Korean nation-state actor known as  Lazarus Group . In one of the two attack paths employed by Diamond Sleet, a successful compromise of TeamCity servers is followed by the deployment of a known implant called  ForestTiger  from legitimate infrastructure previously compromised by the threat actor. A second variant of the attacks leverages the initial foothold to retrieve a malicious DLL (DSROLE.dll aka RollSling or Version.dll or FeedLoad) that's loaded by means of a technique referred to as DLL search-order hijacking to eithe

Microsoft has announced that it  plans  to eliminate NT LAN Manager ( NTLM ) in Windows 11 in the future, as it pivots to alternative methods for authentication and bolster security. "The focus is on strengthening the Kerberos authentication protocol, which has been the default since 2000, and reducing reliance on NT LAN Manager (NTLM)," the tech giant said. "New features for Windows 11 include Initial and Pass Through Authentication Using Kerberos (IAKerb) and a local Key Distribution Center ( KDC ) for Kerberos." IAKerb enables clients to authenticate with Kerberos across a diverse range of network topologies. The second feature, a local Key Distribution Center (KDC) for Kerberos, extends Kerberos support to local accounts. First introduced in the 1990s, NTLM is a  suite of security protocols  intended to provide authentication, integrity, and confidentiality to users. It is a single sign-on (SSO) tool that relies on a challenge-response protocol that proves

The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as  ToddyCat  has been linked to a new set of malicious tools that are designed for data exfiltration, offering a deeper insight into the hacking crew's tactics and capabilities. The  findings  come from Kaspersky, which  first shed light  on the adversary last year, linking it to attacks against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia for nearly three years. While the group's arsenal prominently features Ninja Trojan and a backdoor called Samurai, further investigation has uncovered a whole new set of malicious software developed and maintained by the actor to achieve persistence, conduct file operations, and load additional payloads at runtime. This comprises a collection of loaders that comes with capabilities to launch the Ninja Trojan as a second stage, a tool called LoFiSe to find and collect files of interest, a DropBox uploader to save stolen data to Dropbox, and Pcexter to exfiltrate archive files to Microsoft OneDr

Microsoft on Wednesday said that a user containment feature in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint helped thwart a "large-scale remote encryption attempt" made by  Akira ransomware actors  targeting an unknown industrial organization in early June 2023. The tech giant's threat intelligence team is tracking the operator as Storm-1567. The attack leveraged devices that were not onboarded to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint as a defense evasion tactic, while also conducting a series of reconnaissance and lateral movement activities prior to encrypting the devices using a compromised user account. But the new  automatic attack disruption capability  meant that the breached accounts are prevented from "accessing endpoints and other resources in the network, limiting attackers' ability to move laterally regardless of the account's Active Directory state or privilege level." In other words, the idea is to cut off all inbound and outbound communication and proh

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for October 2023, addressing a total of  103 flaws  in its software, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 103 flaws, 13 are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. This is apart from  18 security vulnerabilities  addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the second Tuesday of September. The two vulnerabilities that have been weaponized as zero-days are as follows - CVE-2023-36563  (CVSS score: 6.5) - An information disclosure vulnerability in Microsoft WordPad that could result in the leak of NTLM hashes CVE-2023-41763  (CVSS score: 5.3) - A privilege escalation vulnerability in Skype for Business that could lead to exposure of sensitive information such as IP addresses or port numbers (or both), enabling threat actors to gain access to internal networks "To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would first have to log on to the system. An attacker could then run a sp

Microsoft has linked the exploitation of a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server to a nation-state actor it tracks as  Storm-0062  (aka DarkShadow or Oro0lxy). The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the vulnerability since September 14, 2023. "CVE-2023-22515 is a critical privilege escalation vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server," the company  noted  in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). "Any device with a network connection to a vulnerable application can exploit CVE-2023-22515 to create a Confluence administrator account within the application." CVE-2023-22515 , rated 10.0 on the CVSS severity rating system, allows  remote attackers  to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and access Confluence servers. The flaw has been addressed in the following versions - 8.3.3 or later 8.4.3 or later, and 8.5.2 (Long Term Support rel

A Gaza-based threat actor has been linked to a series of cyber attacks aimed at Israeli private-sector energy, defense, and telecommunications organizations. Microsoft, which revealed details of the activity in its fourth annual  Digital Defense Report , is tracking the campaign under the name  Storm-1133 . "We assess this group works to further the interests of Hamas, a Sunni militant group that is the de facto governing authority in the Gaza Strip, as activity attributed to it has largely affected organizations perceived as hostile to Hamas," the company said. Targets of the campaign included organizations in the Israeli energy and defense sectors and entities loyal to Fatah, a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party headquartered in the West Bank region. Attack chains entail a mix of social engineering and fake profiles on LinkedIn that masquerade as Israeli human resources managers, project coordinators, and software developers to contact and s

GitHub has  announced  an improvement to its secret scanning feature that extends validity checks to popular services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Slack. Validity checks,  introduced  by the Microsoft subsidiary earlier this year, alert users whether exposed tokens found by  secret scanning  are active, thereby allowing for effective remediation measures. It was first enabled for GitHub tokens. The cloud-based code hosting and version control service said it intends to support more tokens in the future. To toggle the setting, enterprise or organization owners and repository administrators can head to Settings > Code security and analysis > Secret scanning and check the option "Automatically verify if a secret is valid by sending it to the relevant partner." Earlier this year, GitHub also  expanded  secret scanning alerts for all public repositories and announced the  availability of push protection  to help developers and maintainers pr

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday  added  two security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog due to active exploitation, while removing five bugs from the list due to lack of adequate evidence. The vulnerabilities newly added are below - CVE-2023-42793  (CVSS score: 9.8) - JetBrains TeamCity Authentication Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-28229  (CVSS score: 7.0) - Microsoft Windows CNG Key Isolation Service Privilege Escalation Vulnerability CVE-2023-42793 relates to a  critical authentication bypass vulnerability  that allows for remote code execution on TeamCity Server. Data gathered by GreyNoise has revealed exploitation attempts targeting the flaw from  74 unique IP addresses  to date. On the other hand, CVE-2023-28229 is a  high-severity flaw  in the Microsoft Windows Cryptographic Next Generation (CNG) Key Isolation Service that allows an attacker to gain specific limited SYSTEM privileges. There are curren