Microsoft SQL Server | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Government, financial, and industrial organizations located in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are the target of a new campaign dubbed PassiveNeuron , according to findings from Kaspersky. The cyber espionage activity was first flagged by the Russian cybersecurity vendor in November 2024, when it disclosed a set of attacks aimed at government entities in Latin America and East Asia in June, using never-before-seen malware families tracked as Neursite and NeuralExecutor. It also described the operation as exhibiting a high level of sophistication, with the threat actors leveraging already compromised internal servers as an intermediate command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to fly under the radar. "The threat actor is able to move laterally through the infrastructure and exfiltrate data, optionally creating virtual networks that allow attackers to steal files of interest even from machines isolated from the internet," Kaspersky noted at the time. "A plugin-based ap...

Threat actors are exploiting poorly secured Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers to deliver Cobalt Strike and a ransomware strain called FreeWorld. Cybersecurity firm Securonix, which has dubbed the campaign DB#JAMMER , said it stands out for the way the toolset and infrastructure is employed. "Some of these tools include enumeration software, RAT payloads, exploitation and credential stealing software, and finally ransomware payloads," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a technical breakdown of the activity. "The ransomware payload of choice appears to be a newer variant of Mimic ransomware called FreeWorld." Initial access to the victim host is achieved by brute-forcing the MS SQL server, using it to enumerate the database and leveraging the xp_cmdshell configuration option to run shell commands and conduct reconnaissance. The next stage entails taking steps to impair system firewall and establish persistence by connecting to a remote SMB share...

Cybersecurity researchers claim to have discovered a previously undocumented backdoor specifically designed for Microsoft SQL servers that could allow a remote attacker to control an already compromised system stealthily. Dubbed Skip-2.0 , the backdoor malware is a post-exploitation tool that runs in the memory and lets remote attackers connect to any account on the server running MSSQL version 11 and version 12 by using a "magic password." What's more? The malware manages to remain undetected on the victim's MSSQL Server by disabling the compromised machine's logging functions, event publishing, and audit mechanisms every time the "magic password" is used. With these capabilities, an attacker can stealthily copy, modify, or delete the content stored in a database, the impact of which varies from application to application integrated with targeted servers. "This could be used, for example, to manipulate in-game currencies for financial gai...