Oracle WebLogic | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Attackers are weaponizing an old Microsoft Office vulnerability as part of phishing campaigns to distribute a strain of malware called  Agent Tesla . The infection chains leverage decoy Excel documents attached in invoice-themed messages to trick potential targets into opening them and activate the exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 (CVSS score: 7.8), a memory corruption vulnerability in Office's Equation Editor that could result in code execution with the privileges of the user. The findings, which come from Zscaler ThreatLabz, build on prior reports from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, which detailed a  similar phishing campaign  that exploited the security flaw to deliver the malware. "Once a user downloads a malicious attachment and opens it, if their version of Microsoft Excel is vulnerable, the Excel file initiates communication with a malicious destination and proceeds to download additional files without requiring any further user interaction," security researcher Kaiva

The threat actors associated with the  8220 Gang  have been observed exploiting a high-severity flaw in Oracle WebLogic Server to propagate their malware. The security shortcoming is  CVE-2020-14883  (CVSS score: 7.2), a remote code execution bug that could be exploited by authenticated attackers to take over susceptible servers. "This vulnerability allows remote authenticated attackers to execute code using a gadget chain and is commonly chained with  CVE-2020-14882  (an authentication bypass vulnerability also affecting Oracle Weblogic Server) or the use of leaked, stolen, or weak credentials," Imperva  said  in a report published last week. The 8220 Gang has a history of  leveraging known security flaws  to distribute cryptojacking malware. Earlier this May, the group was spotted utilizing another shortcoming in Oracle WebLogic servers (CVE-2017-3506, CVSS score: 7.4) to rope the devices into a crypto mining botnet. Recent attack chains documented by Imperva entail t

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

The notorious cryptojacking group tracked as  8220 Gang  has been spotted weaponizing a six-year-old security flaw in Oracle WebLogic servers to ensnare vulnerable instances into a botnet and distribute cryptocurrency mining malware. The flaw in question is  CVE-2017-3506  (CVSS score: 7.4), which, when successfully exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands remotely. "This allows attackers to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data or compromise the entire system," Trend Micro researcher Sunil Bharti  said  in a report published this week. 8220 Gang,  first documented  by Cisco Talos in late 2018, is so named for its original use of port 8220 for command-and-control (C2) network communications. "8220 Gang identifies targets via scanning for misconfigured or vulnerable hosts on the public internet," SentinelOne  noted  last year. "8220 Gang is known to make use of SSH brute force attacks post-infection for the purp

The infamous cryptocurrency miner group called 8220 Gang has been observed using a new crypter called ScrubCrypt to carry out cryptojacking operations. According to Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, the attack chain commences with the successful exploitation of susceptible Oracle WebLogic servers to download a PowerShell script that contains ScrubCrypt. Crypters are a type of software that can encrypt, obfuscate, and manipulate malware with the goal of evading detection by security programs. ScrubCrypt, which is advertised for sale by its author, comes with features to bypass Windows Defender protections as well as check for the presence of debugging and virtual machine environments. "ScrubCrypt is a crypter used to secure applications with a unique BAT packing method," security researcher Cara Lin  said  in a technical report. "The encrypted data at the top can be split into four parts using backslash '\.'" The crypter, in the final stage, decodes and loads

Malicious actors such as Kinsing are taking advantage of both recently disclosed and older security flaws in Oracle WebLogic Server to deliver cryptocurrency-mining malware. Cybersecurity company Trend Micro said it  found  the financially-motivated group leveraging the vulnerability to drop Python scripts with capabilities to disable operating system (OS) security features such as Security-Enhanced Linux ( SELinux ), and others. The operators behind the  Kinsing malware  have a history of scanning for vulnerable servers to co-opt them into a botnet, including that of  Redis ,  SaltStack ,  Log4Shell ,  Spring4Shell , and the Atlassian Confluence flaw ( CVE-2022-26134 ). The Kinsing actors have also been involved in campaigns against container environments via  misconfigured open Docker Daemon API ports  to launch a crypto miner and subsequently spread the malware to other containers and hosts. The latest wave of attacks entails the actor weaponizing  CVE-2020-14882  (CVSS score:

Oracle on Tuesday released its quarterly  Critical Patch Update for July 2021  with 342 fixes spanning across multiple products, some of which could be exploited by a remote attacker to take control of an affected system. Chief among them is  CVE-2019-2729 , a critical deserialization vulnerability via XMLDecoder in Oracle WebLogic Server Web Services that's remotely exploitable without authentication. It's worth noting that the weakness was originally addressed as part of an  out-of-band security update  in June 2019. Oracle WebLogic Server is an application server that functions as a platform for developing, deploying, and running enterprise Java-based applications. The flaw, which is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS severity scale, affects WebLogic Server versions 11.1.2.4 and 11.2.5.0 and exists within the Oracle Hyperion Infrastructure Technology. Also fixed in WebLogic Server are six other flaws, three of which have been assigned a CVSS score of 9.8 out