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Category — Microsoft Defender
Microsoft Defender Flaw Exploited to Deliver ACR, Lumma, and Meduza Stealers

Microsoft Defender Flaw Exploited to Deliver ACR, Lumma, and Meduza Stealers

Jul 24, 2024 Malvertising / Threat Intelligence
A now-patched security flaw in the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen has been exploited as part of a new campaign designed to deliver information stealers such as ACR Stealer, Lumma , and Meduza . Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said it detected the stealer campaign targeting Spain, Thailand, and the U.S. using booby-trapped files that exploit CVE-2024-21412 (CVSS score: 8.1). The high-severity vulnerability allows an attacker to sidestep SmartScreen protection and drop malicious payloads. Microsoft addressed this issue as part of its monthly security updates released in February 2024. "Initially, attackers lure victims into clicking a crafted link to a URL file designed to download an LNK file," security researcher Cara Lin said . "The LNK file then downloads an executable file containing an [HTML Application] script." The HTA file serves as a conduit to decode and decrypt PowerShell code responsible for fetching a decoy PDF file and a shellcode injector that, in tur...
GHOSTENGINE Exploits Vulnerable Drivers to Disable EDRs in Cryptojacking Attack

GHOSTENGINE Exploits Vulnerable Drivers to Disable EDRs in Cryptojacking Attack

May 22, 2024 Cryptojacking / Malware
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new cryptojacking campaign that employs vulnerable drivers to disable known security solutions (EDRs) and thwart detection in what's called a Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver ( BYOVD ) attack. Elastic Security Labs is tracking the campaign under the name REF4578 and the primary payload as GHOSTENGINE. Previous research from Chinese cybersecurity firm Antiy Labs has codenamed the activity as HIDDEN SHOVEL. "GHOSTENGINE leverages vulnerable drivers to terminate and delete known EDR agents that would likely interfere with the deployed and well-known coin miner," Elastic researchers Salim Bitam, Samir Bousseaden, Terrance DeJesus, and Andrew Pease said . "This campaign involved an uncommon amount of complexity to ensure both the installation and persistence of the XMRig miner." It all starts with an executable file ("Tiworker.exe"), which is used to run a PowerShell script that retrieves an obfuscated Power...
How AI Is Transforming IAM and Identity Security

How AI Is Transforming IAM and Identity Security

Nov 15, 2024Machine Learning / Identity Security
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun revolutionizing Identity Access Management (IAM), reshaping how cybersecurity is approached in this crucial field. Leveraging AI in IAM is about tapping into its analytical capabilities to monitor access patterns and identify anomalies that could signal a potential security breach. The focus has expanded beyond merely managing human identities — now, autonomous systems, APIs, and connected devices also fall within the realm of AI-driven IAM, creating a dynamic security ecosystem that adapts and evolves in response to sophisticated cyber threats. The Role of AI and Machine Learning in IAM AI and machine learning (ML) are creating a more robust, proactive IAM system that continuously learns from the environment to enhance security. Let's explore how AI impacts key IAM components: Intelligent Monitoring and Anomaly Detection AI enables continuous monitoring of both human and non-human identities , including APIs, service acc...
Raspberry Robin Returns: New Malware Campaign Spreading Through WSF Files

Raspberry Robin Returns: New Malware Campaign Spreading Through WSF Files

Apr 10, 2024 Cyber Crime / Malvertising
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Raspberry Robin campaign wave that has been propagating the malware through malicious Windows Script Files ( WSFs ) since March 2024. "Historically, Raspberry Robin was known to spread through removable media like USB drives, but over time its distributors have experimented with other initial infection vectors," HP Wolf Security researcher Patrick Schläpfer  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Raspberry Robin, also called QNAP worm, was  first spotted  in September 2021 that has since  evolved into a downloader  for various other payloads in recent years, such as SocGholish, Cobalt Strike, IcedID, BumbleBee, and TrueBot, and also serving as a precursor for ransomware. While the malware was initially distributed by means of USB devices containing LNK files that retrieved the payload from a compromised QNAP device, it has since  adopted other methods  such as social engineering and malv...
cyber security

Creating, Managing and Securing Non-Human Identities

websitePermisoCybersecurity / Identity Security
A new class of identities has emerged alongside traditional human users: non-human identities (NHIs). Permiso Security's new eBook details everything you need to know about managing and securing non-human identities, and strategies to unify identity security without compromising agility.
Russia Hackers Using TinyTurla-NG to Breach European NGO's Systems

Russia Hackers Using TinyTurla-NG to Breach European NGO's Systems

Mar 21, 2024 Threat Intelligence / Malware
The Russia-linked threat actor known as Turla infected several systems belonging to an unnamed European non-governmental organization (NGO) in order to deploy a backdoor called TinyTurla-NG (TTNG) . "The attackers compromised the first system, established persistence and added exclusions to antivirus products running on these endpoints as part of their preliminary post-compromise actions," Cisco Talos  said  in a new report published today. "Turla then opened additional channels of communication via Chisel for data exfiltration and to pivot to additional accessible systems in the network." There is evidence indicating that the infected systems were breached as early as October 2023, with Chisel deployed in December 2023 and data exfiltration taking place via the tool a month later, around January 12, 2024. TinyTurla-NG was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company last month after it was found to be used in connection with a cyber attack targeting a Poli...
DarkMe Malware Targets Traders Using Microsoft SmartScreen Zero-Day Vulnerability

DarkMe Malware Targets Traders Using Microsoft SmartScreen Zero-Day Vulnerability

Feb 14, 2024 Zero-Day / Financial Sector Security
A newly disclosed security flaw in the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen has been exploited as a zero-day by an advanced persistent threat actor called  Water Hydra  (aka DarkCasino) targeting financial market traders. Trend Micro, which began tracking the campaign in late December 2023, said it entails the exploitation of CVE-2024-21412, a security bypass vulnerability related to Internet Shortcut Files (.URL).  "In this attack chain, the threat actor leveraged CVE-2024-21412 to bypass Microsoft Defender SmartScreen and infect victims with the DarkMe malware," the cybersecurity firm  said  in a Tuesday report. Microsoft, which  addressed  the flaw in its February Patch Tuesday update, said an unauthenticated attacker could exploit the flaw by sending the targeted user a specially crafted file in order to bypass displayed security checks. However, successful exploitation banks on the prerequisite that the threat actor convinces the victim to click o...
New CherryLoader Malware Mimics CherryTree to Deploy PrivEsc Exploits

New CherryLoader Malware Mimics CherryTree to Deploy PrivEsc Exploits

Jan 25, 2024 Threat Intelligence / Malware Research
A new Go-based malware loader called  CherryLoader  has been discovered by threat hunters in the wild to deliver additional payloads onto compromised hosts for follow-on exploitation. Arctic Wolf Labs, which discovered the new attack tool in two recent intrusions, said the loader's icon and name masquerades as the legitimate CherryTree note-taking application to dupe potential victims into installing it. "CherryLoader was used to drop one of two privilege escalation tools,  PrintSpoofer  or  JuicyPotatoNG , which would then run a batch file to establish persistence on the victim device," researchers Hady Azzam, Christopher Prest, and Steven Campbell  said . In another novel twist, CherryLoader also packs modularized features that allow the threat actor to swap exploits without recompiling code. It's currently not known how the loader is distributed, but the attack chains examined by the cybersecurity firm show that CherryLoader ("cherrytree.exe") and ...
Researchers Demonstrate How EDR and Antivirus Can Be Weaponized Against Users

Researchers Demonstrate How EDR and Antivirus Can Be Weaponized Against Users

Dec 12, 2022 Endpoint Detection / Data Security
High-severity security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in different endpoint detection and response (EDR) and antivirus (AV) products that could be exploited to turn them into data wipers. "This wiper runs with the permissions of an unprivileged user yet has the ability to wipe almost any file on a system, including system files, and make a computer completely unbootable," SafeBreach Labs researcher Or Yair  said . "It does all that without implementing code that touches the target files, making it fully undetectable." EDR software, by design, are capable of continually scanning a machine for potentially suspicious and malicious files, and taking appropriate action, such as deleting or quarantining them. The idea, in a nutshell, is to trick vulnerable security products into deleting legitimate files and directories on the system and render the machine inoperable by making use of specially crafted paths. This is achieved by taking advantage of what's ca...
Microsoft Discover Severe ‘One-Click’ Exploit for TikTok Android App

Microsoft Discover Severe 'One-Click' Exploit for TikTok Android App

Sep 01, 2022
Microsoft on Wednesday disclosed details of a now-patched "high severity vulnerability" in the TikTok app for Android that could let attackers take over accounts when victims clicked on a malicious link. "Attackers could have leveraged the vulnerability to hijack an account without users' awareness if a targeted user simply clicked a specially crafted link," Dimitrios Valsamaras of the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  said  in a write-up. Successful exploitation of the flaw could have permitted malicious actors to access and modify users' TikTok profiles and sensitive information, leading to the unauthorized exposure of private videos. Attackers could also have abused the bug to send messages and upload videos on behalf of users. The issue, addressed in version 23.7.3, impacts two flavors of its Android app com.ss.android.ugc.trill (for East and Southeast Asian users) and com.zhiliaoapp.musically (for users in other countries except for India, wher...
Microsoft Mitigates RCE Vulnerability Affecting Azure Synapse and Data Factory

Microsoft Mitigates RCE Vulnerability Affecting Azure Synapse and Data Factory

May 10, 2022
Microsoft on Monday disclosed that it mitigated a security flaw affecting Azure Synapse and Azure Data Factory that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2022-29972 , has been codenamed " SynLapse " by researchers from Orca Security, who reported the flaw to Microsoft in January 2022. "The vulnerability was specific to the third-party Open Database Connectivity ( ODBC ) driver used to connect to Amazon Redshift in Azure Synapse pipelines and Azure Data Factory Integration Runtime ( IR ) and did not impact Azure Synapse as a whole," the company  said . "The vulnerability could have allowed an attacker to perform remote command execution across IR infrastructure not limited to a single tenant." In other words, a malicious actor can weaponize the bug to acquire the Azure Data Factory service certificate and access another tenant's Integration Runtimes to gain access to sensitive informa...
TrickBot Malware Abusing MikroTik Routers as Proxies for Command-and-Control

TrickBot Malware Abusing MikroTik Routers as Proxies for Command-and-Control

Mar 17, 2022
Microsoft on Wednesday detailed a previously undiscovered technique put to use by the TrickBot malware that involves using compromised Internet of Things (IoT) devices as a go-between for establishing communications with the command-and-control (C2) servers. "By using MikroTik routers as proxy servers for its C2 servers and redirecting the traffic through non-standard ports, TrickBot adds another persistence layer that helps malicious IPs evade detection by standard security systems," Microsoft's Defender for IoT Research Team and Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  said . TrickBot, which emerged as a banking trojan in 2016, has evolved into a sophisticated and persistent threat, with its modular architecture enabling it to adapt its tactics to suit different networks, environments, and devices as well as offer access-as-a-service for next-stage payloads like Conti ransomware. The expansion to TrickBot's capabilities comes amid reports of its  infrastructure goin...
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