Nobelium | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft on Friday revealed that it was the target of a nation-state attack on its corporate systems that resulted in the theft of emails and attachments from senior executives and other individuals in the company's cybersecurity and legal departments. The Windows maker attributed the attack to a Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group it tracks as  Midnight Blizzard  (formerly Nobelium), which is also known as APT29, BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes. It further said that it immediately took steps to investigate, disrupt, and mitigate the malicious activity upon discovery on January 12, 2024. The campaign is estimated to have commenced in late November 2023. "The threat actor used a  password spray attack  to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold, and then used the account's permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership ...

Microsoft has disclosed that it's detected a spike in credential-stealing attacks conducted by the Russian state-affiliated hacker group known as Midnight Blizzard. The intrusions, which make use of residential proxy services to obfuscate the source IP address of the attacks, target governments, IT service providers, NGOs, defense, and critical manufacturing sectors, the tech giant's threat intelligence team said. Midnight Blizzard, formerly known as Nobelium , is also tracked under the monikers APT29, Cozy Bear, Iron Hemlock, and The Dukes. The  group , which drew worldwide attention for the SolarWinds supply chain compromise in December 2020, has  continued  to rely on  unseen tooling  in its targeted attacks aimed at foreign ministries and diplomatic entities. It's a sign of how determined they are to keep their operations up and running despite being exposed, which makes them a particularly formidable actor in the espionage area. "These credentia...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

The threat actor behind the SolarWinds supply chain attack has been linked to yet another "highly targeted" post-exploitation malware that could be used to maintain persistent access to compromised environments. Dubbed  MagicWeb  by Microsoft's threat intelligence teams, the development reiterates Nobelium's commitment to developing and maintaining purpose-built capabilities. Nobelium is the tech giant's moniker for a cluster of activities that came to light with the  sophisticated attack targeting SolarWinds  in December 2020, and which overlaps with the Russian nation-state hacking group widely known as  APT29 , Cozy Bear, or The Dukes. "Nobelium remains highly active, executing multiple campaigns in parallel targeting government organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and think tanks across the US, Europe, and Central Asia," Microsoft  said . MagicWeb, which shares similarities with another t...

A Russian state-sponsored threat actor has been observed targeting diplomatic and government entities as part of a series of phishing campaigns commencing on January 17, 2022. Threat intelligence and incident response firm Mandiant attributed the attacks to a hacking group tracked as APT29 (aka Cozy Bear), with some set of the activities associated with the crew assigned the moniker  Nobelium  (aka UNC2452/2652). "This latest wave of spear phishing showcases APT29's enduring interests in obtaining diplomatic and foreign policy information from governments around the world," Mandiant  said  in a report published last week. The initial access is said to have been aided through spear-phishing emails masquerading as administrative notices, using legitimate but compromised email addresses from other diplomatic entities. These emails contain an HTML dropper attachment called ROOTSAW (aka  EnvyScout ) that, when opened, triggers an infection sequence that deliver...

Nobelium, the threat actor attributed to the massive SolarWinds supply chain compromise, has been once again linked to a series of attacks targeting multiple cloud solution providers, services, and reseller companies, as the hacking group continues to refine and retool its tactics at an alarming pace in response to public disclosures. The intrusions, which are being tracked by Mandiant under two different activity clusters UNC3004 and UNC2652, are both associated with UNC2452, an  uncategorized threat group  that has since been tied to the Russian intelligence service. UNC2652, in particular, has been observed targeting diplomatic entities with phishing emails containing HTML attachments with malicious JavaScript, ultimately dropping a Cobalt Strike Beacon onto the infected devices. "In most instances, post compromise activity included theft of data relevant to Russian interests," Mandiant researchers Luke Jenkins, Sarah Hawley, Parnian Najafi, and Doug Bienstock  said...

Nobelium, the  threat actor  behind the SolarWinds compromise in December 2020, has been behind an ongoing wave of attacks that compromised 14 downstream customers of multiple cloud service providers (CSP), managed service providers (MSP), and other IT services organizations, illustrating the adversary's continuing interest in targeting the supply chain via the "compromise-one-to-compromise-many" approach. Microsoft, which disclosed details of the campaign on Monday, said it notified more than 140 resellers and technology service providers since May. Between July 1 and October 19, 2021, Nobelium is said to have singled out 609 customers, who were collectively attacked a grand total of 22,868 times. "This recent activity is another indicator that Russia is trying to gain long-term, systematic access to a variety of points in the technology supply chain and establish a mechanism for surveilling – now or in the future – targets of interest to the Russian government,...