OPSEC | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Kimsuky has been linked to a new set of attacks targeting university staff, researchers, and professors for intelligence gathering purposes. Cybersecurity firm Resilience said it identified the activity in late July 2024 after it observed an operation security (OPSEC) error made by the hackers. Kimsuky, also known by the names APT43, ARCHIPELAGO, Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet, Springtail, and Velvet Chollima, is just one of the myriad offensive cyber teams operating under the direction of the North Korean government and military. It's also very active, often leveraging spear-phishing campaigns as a starting point to deliver an ever-expanding set of custom tools to conduct reconnaissance, pilfer data, and establish persistent remote access to infected hosts. The attacks are also characterized by the use of compromised hosts as staging infrastructure to deploy an obfuscated version of the Green Dinosaur web shell, which is then used...

North Korean nation-state actors affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) have been attributed to the  JumpCloud hack  following an operational security (OPSEC) blunder that exposed their actual IP address. Google-owned threat intelligence firm Mandiant attributed the activity to a threat actor it tracks under the name UNC4899, which likely shares overlaps with clusters already being monitored as Jade Sleet and TraderTraitor, a group with a history of striking blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors. UNC4899 also overlaps with  APT43 , another hacking crew associated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that was unmasked earlier this March as conducting a series of campaigns to gather intelligence and siphon cryptocurrency from targeted companies. The adversarial collective's modus operandi is characterized by the use of Operational Relay Boxes ( ORBs ) using L2TP IPsec tunnels along with commercial VPN providers to disguise the attacker'...

A financially motivated threat actor has been observed deploying a previously unknown rootkit targeting Oracle Solaris systems with the goal of compromising Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) switching networks and carrying out unauthorized cash withdrawals at different banks using fraudulent cards. Threat intelligence and incident response firm Mandiant is tracking the cluster under the moniker UNC2891, with some of the group's tactics, techniques, and procedures sharing overlaps with that of another cluster dubbed  UNC1945 . The intrusions staged by the actor involve "a high degree of OPSEC and leverage both public and private malware, utilities, and scripts to remove evidence and hinder response efforts," Mandiant researchers  said  in a new report published this week. Even more concerningly, the attacks spanned several years in some cases, during the entirety of which the actor remained undetected by taking advantage of a rootkit called CAKETAP, whic is designed to c...

A newly released report by cybersecurity firm CTM360 reveals a large-scale scam operation utilizing fake news websites—known as Baiting News Sites (BNS)—to deceive users into online investment fraud across 50 countries. These BNS pages are made to look like real news outlets: CNN, BBC, CNBC, or regional media. They publish fake stories that feature public figures, central banks, or financial brands, all claiming to back new ways to earn passive income. The goal? Build trust quickly and steer readers toward professional-looking scam platforms like Trap10, Solara Vynex, or Eclipse Earn. Scammers use sponsored ads on Google, Meta, and blog networks to push traffic to these sites. Ads often carry clickbait headlines—"You won't believe what a prominent public figure just revealed"—paired with official photos or national flags to make them feel legit. Clicking the ad directs users to a fake article, which then redirects them to a fraudulent trading platform. Many of these scams follow a...