Microsoft Teams | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new type of credential phishing scheme that ensures that the stolen information is associated with valid online accounts. The technique has been codenamed precision-validating phishing by Cofense, which it said employs real-time email validation so that only a select set of high-value targets are served the fake login screens. "This tactic not only gives the threat actors a higher success rate on obtaining usable credentials as they only engage with a specific pre-harvested list of valid email accounts," the company said . Unlike "spray-and-pray" credential harvesting campaigns that typically involve the bulk distribution of spam emails to obtain victims' login information in an indiscriminate fashion, the latest attack tactic takes spear-phishing to the next level by only engaging with email addresses that attackers have verified as active, legitimate, and high-value. In this scenario, the email address...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new BackConnect (BC) malware that has been developed by threat actors linked to the infamous QakBot loader. "BackConnect is a common feature or module utilized by threat actors to maintain persistence and perform tasks," Walmart's Cyber Intelligence team told The Hacker News. "The BackConnect(s) in use were 'DarkVNC' alongside the IcedID BackConnect ( KeyHole )." The company noted that the BC module was found on the same infrastructure that was observed distributing another malware loader called ZLoader, which was recently updated to incorporate a Domain Name System (DNS) tunnel for command-and-control (C2) communications. QakBot, also called QBot and Pinkslipbot, suffered a major operational setback in 2023 after its infrastructure was seized as part of a coordinated law enforcement effort named Duck Hunt. Since then, sporadic campaigns have been uncovered propagating the malware. Origina...

Everybody knows browser extensions are embedded into nearly every user's daily workflow, from spell checkers to GenAI tools. What most IT and security people don't know is that browser extensions' excessive permissions are a growing risk to organizations. LayerX today announced the release of the Enterprise Browser Extension Security Report 2025 , This report is the first and only report to merge public extension marketplace statistics with real-world enterprise usage telemetry. By doing so, it sheds light on one of the most underestimated threat surfaces in modern cybersecurity: browser extensions. The report reveals several findings that IT and security leaders will find interesting, as they build their plans for H2 2025. This includes information and analysis on how many extensions have risky permissions, which kinds of permissions are given, if extension developers are to be trusted, and more. Below, we bring key statistics from the report. Highlights from the Enterprise Browse...

A new social engineering campaign has leveraged Microsoft Teams as a way to facilitate the deployment of a known malware called DarkGate . "An attacker used social engineering via a Microsoft Teams call to impersonate a user's client and gain remote access to their system," Trend Micro researchers Catherine Loveria, Jovit Samaniego, and Gabriel Nicoleta said . "The attacker failed to install a Microsoft Remote Support application but successfully instructed the victim to download AnyDesk, a tool commonly used for remote access." As recently documented by cybersecurity firm Rapid7, the attack involved bombarding a target's email inbox with "thousands of emails," after which the threat actors approached them via Microsoft Teams by masquerading as an employee of an external supplier. The attacker then went on to instruct the victim to install AnyDesk on their system, with the remote access subsequently abused to deliver multiple payloads, includ...

The threat actors linked to the Black Basta ransomware have been observed switching up their social engineering tactics , distributing a different set of payloads such as Zbot and DarkGate since early October 2024. "Users within the target environment will be email bombed by the threat actor, which is often achieved by signing up the user's email to numerous mailing lists simultaneously," Rapid7 said . "After the email bomb, the threat actor will reach out to the impacted users." As observed back in August, the attackers make initial contact with prospective targets on Microsoft Teams, pretending to be support personnel or IT staff of the organization. In some instances, they have also been observed impersonating IT staff members within the targeted organization. Users who end up interacting with the threat actors are urged to install legitimate remote access software such as AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, TeamViewer, and Microsoft's Quick Assist. The Window...

Microsoft is warning of a new phishing campaign undertaken by an initial access broker that involves using Teams messages as lures to infiltrate corporate networks. The tech giant's Threat Intelligence team is tracking the cluster under the name  Storm-0324 , which is also known by the monikers TA543 and Sagrid. "Beginning in July 2023, Storm-0324 was observed distributing payloads using an open-source tool to send phishing lures through Microsoft Teams chats," the company  said , adding the development marks a shift from using email-based initial infection vectors for initial access. Storm-0324 operates in the cybercriminal economy as a payload distributor, offering a service that allows for the propagation of  various   payloads  using evasive infection chains. This includes a mix of downloaders, banking trojans, ransomware, and modular toolkits such as Nymaim, Gozi, TrickBot, IcedID, Gootkit, Dridex, Sage, GandCrab, and JSSLoader. Attack sequences mounte...

Microsoft said it won't be fixing or is pushing patches to a later date for three of the four security flaws uncovered in its Teams business communication platform earlier this March. The disclosure comes from Berlin-based cybersecurity firm Positive Security, which  found  that the implementation of the link preview feature was susceptible to a number of issues that could "allow accessing internal Microsoft services, spoofing the link preview, and, for Android users, leaking their IP address, and DoS'ing their Teams app/channels." Of the four vulnerabilities, Microsoft is said to have addressed only one that results in IP address leakage from Android devices, with the tech giant noting that a fix for the denial-of-service (DoS) flaw will be considered in a future version of the product. The issues were responsibly disclosed to the company on March 10, 2021. Chief among the flaws is a server-side request forgery ( SSRF ) vulnerability in the endpoint "/urlp...

Microsoft has patched a worm-like vulnerability in its Teams workplace video chat and collaboration platform that could have allowed attackers to take over an organization's entire roster of Teams accounts just by sending participants a malicious link to an innocent-looking image. The flaw, impacting both desktop and web versions of the app, was discovered by cybersecurity researchers at CyberArk. After the findings were responsibly disclosed on March 23, Microsoft patched the vulnerability in an update released on April 20. "Even if an attacker doesn't gather much information from a Teams' account, they could still use the account to traverse throughout an organization (just like a worm)," CyberArk's Omer Tsarfati said. "Eventually, the attacker could access all the data from your organization's Teams accounts — gathering confidential information, meetings and calendar information, competitive data, secrets, passwords, private information, ...