Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Google has revealed a new multilingual text vectorizer called  RETVec  (short for Resilient and Efficient Text Vectorizer) to  help detect  potentially harmful content such as spam and malicious emails in Gmail. "RETVec is trained to be resilient against character-level manipulations including insertion, deletion, typos, homoglyphs, LEET substitution, and more," according to the  project's description  on GitHub. "The RETVec model is trained on top of a novel character encoder which can encode all UTF-8 characters and words efficiently." While huge platforms like Gmail and YouTube rely on text classification models to spot phishing attacks, inappropriate comments, and scams, threat actors are known to devise counter-strategies to bypass these defense measures. They have been observed resorting to adversarial text manipulations, which range from the use of homoglyphs to keyword stuffing to invisible characters. RETVec , which works on over 100 languages o

Threat actors from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are increasingly targeting the cryptocurrency sector as a  major revenue generation mechanism  since at least 2017 to get around sanctions imposed against the country. "Even though movement in and out of and within the country is heavily restricted, and its general population is isolated from the rest of the world, the regime's ruling elite and its highly trained cadre of computer science professionals have privileged access to new technologies and information," cybersecurity firm Recorded Future  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The privileged access to resources, technologies, information, and sometimes international travel for a small set of selected individuals with promise in mathematics and computer science equips them with the necessary skills for conducting cyber attacks against the cryptocurrency industry." The disclosure comes as the U.S. Treasury Department  imp

If forecasters are right, over the course of today, consumers will spend  $13.7 billion . Just about every click, sale, and engagement will be captured by a CRM platform. Inventory applications will trigger automated re-orders; communication tools will send automated email and text messages confirming sales and sharing shipping information.  SaaS applications supporting retail efforts will host nearly all of this behind-the-scenes activity. While retailers are rightfully focused on sales during this time of year, they need to ensure that the SaaS apps supporting their business operations are secure. No one wants a repeat of one of the biggest retail cyber-snafus in history, like when one U.S.-based national retailer had 40 million credit card records stolen.  The attack surface is vast and retailers must remain vigilant in protecting their entire SaaS app stack. For example, many often use multiple instances of the same application. They may use a different Salesforce tenant for eve

Identity services provider Okta has disclosed that it detected "additional threat actor activity" in connection with the  October 2023 breach  of its support case management system. "The threat actor downloaded the names and email addresses of all Okta customer support system users," the company said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "All Okta Workforce Identity Cloud (WIC) and Customer Identity Solution (CIS) customers are impacted except customers in our FedRamp High and DoD IL4 environments (these environments use a separate support system NOT accessed by the threat actor). The Auth0/CIC support case management system was not impacted by this incident." On top of that, the adversary is believed to have accessed reports containing contact information of all Okta certified users, some Okta Customer Identity Cloud (CIC) customers, and unspecified Okta employee information. However, it emphasized that the data does not include user credenti

Account credentials, a popular initial access vector, have become a valuable commodity in cybercrime. As a result, a single set of stolen credentials can put your organization's entire network at risk. According to the  2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report , external parties were responsible for  83 percent  of breaches that occurred between November 2021 and October 2022.  Forty-nine percent  of those breaches involved stolen credentials. How are threat actors compromising credentials? Social engineering is one of the  top five cybersecurity threats  in 2023. Phishing, which accounts for %of social engineering attempts, is the go-to method for stealing credentials. It's a relatively cheap tactic that yields results. As phishing and social engineering techniques become more sophisticated and the tools become more readily available, credential theft should become a top security concern for all organizations if it already isn't one. Phishing has evolved With phishing and s

A coordinated law enforcement operation has led to the arrest of key individuals in Ukraine who are alleged to be a part of several ransomware schemes. "On 21 November, 30 properties were searched in the regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, Rivne, and Vinnytsia, resulting in the arrest of the 32-year-old ringleader," Europol  said  in a statement today. "Four of the ringleader's most active accomplices were also detained." The  development  comes more than two years after  12 people were apprehended  in connection with the same operation. The individuals are primarily linked to LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Dharma ransomware families. The suspects are estimated to have targeted over 1,800 victims across 71 countries since 2019. They have also been accused of deploying the now-defunct  Hive ransomware  against high-profile organizations. Some of the co-conspirators are believed to be involved in penetrating IT networks by orchestrating brute-force attacks, SQL injectio

More details have emerged about a malicious Telegram bot called  Telekopye  that's used by threat actors to pull off large-scale phishing scams. "Telekopye can craft phishing websites, emails, SMS messages, and more," ESET security researcher Radek Jizba  said  in a new analysis. The  threat actors behind the operation  – codenamed Neanderthals – are known to run the criminal enterprise as a legitimate company, spawning a hierarchical structure that encompasses different members who take on various roles. Once aspiring Neanderthals are recruited via advertisements on underground forums, they are invited to join designated Telegram channels that are used for communicating with other Neanderthals and keeping track of transaction logs. The ultimate goal of the operation is to pull off one of the three types of scams: seller, buyer, or refund. In the case of the former, Neanderthals pose as sellers and try to lure unwary Mammoths into purchasing a non-existent item. Bu

North Korean threat actors have been linked to two campaigns in which they masquerade as both job recruiters and seekers to distribute malware and obtain unauthorized employment with organizations based in the U.S. and other parts of the world. The activity clusters have been codenamed Contagious Interview and Wagemole, respectively, by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. While the first set of attacks aims to "infect software developers with malware through a fictitious job interview," the latter is designed for financial gain and espionage. "The first campaign's objective is likely cryptocurrency theft and using compromised targets as a staging environment for additional attacks," the cybersecurity company  said . The fraudulent job-seeking activity, on the other hand, involves the use of a GitHub repository to host resumes with forged identities that impersonate individuals of various nationalities. The Contagious Interview attacks pave the way for two hitherto undocumented cross-plat

A new variant of the  Agent Tesla  malware has been observed delivered via a lure file with the  ZPAQ compression format  to harvest data from several email clients and nearly 40 web browsers. "ZPAQ is a file compression format that offers a better compression ratio and journaling function compared to widely used formats like ZIP and RAR," G Data malware analyst Anna Lvova  said  in a Monday analysis. "That means that ZPAQ archives can be smaller, saving storage space and bandwidth when transferring files. However, ZPAQ has the biggest disadvantage: limited software support." First appearing in 2014, Agent Tesla is a  keylogger  and  remote access trojan  (RAT) written in .NET that's  offered  to other threat actors as part of a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model. It's often used as a first-stage payload, providing remote access to a compromised system and utilized to download more sophisticated second-stage tools such as ransomware. Agent Tesla is typ

Threat actors are targeting the education, government and business services sectors with a remote access trojan called  NetSupport RAT . "The delivery mechanisms for the NetSupport RAT encompass fraudulent updates, drive-by downloads, utilization of malware loaders (such as  GHOSTPULSE ), and various forms of phishing campaigns," VMware Carbon Black researchers said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity firm said it detected no less than 15 new infections related to NetSupport RAT in the last few weeks.  While NetSupport Manager started off as a  legitimate remote administration tool  for technical assistance and support, malicious actors have misappropriated the tool to their own advantage, using it as a beachhead for subsequent attacks. NetSupport RAT is typically downloaded onto a victim's computer via deceptive websites and fake browser updates. In August 2022, Sucuri  detailed  a campaign in which compromised WordPress sites were being us

Phishing campaigns delivering malware families such as DarkGate and PikaBot are following the same tactics previously used in attacks leveraging the now-defunct QakBot trojan. "These include hijacked email threads as the initial infection, URLs with unique patterns that limit user access, and an infection chain nearly identical to what we have seen with QakBot delivery," Cofense  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The malware families used also follow suit to what we would expect QakBot affiliates to use." QakBot, also called QBot and Pinkslipbot, was  shut down  as part of a coordinated law enforcement effort codenamed Operation Duck Hunt earlier this August. The use of DarkGate and PikaBot in these campaigns is not surprising as they can both act as conduits to deliver additional payloads to compromised hosts, making them both an attractive option for cybercriminals. PikaBot's parallels to QakBot were  previously highlighted  by Zscaler in its analysis of the malw

An Indian hack-for-hire group targeted the U.S., China, Myanmar, Pakistan, Kuwait, and other countries as part of a wide-ranging espionage, surveillance, and disruptive operation for over a decade. Indian security firm under scrutiny, according to an in-depth analysis from SentinelOne, began as an educational startup offering offensive security training programs, while carrying out covert hacking operations since at least 2009. In May 2013, ESET  disclosed  a set of cyber attacks targeting Pakistan with information-stealing malware. While the activity was attributed to a cluster tracked as  Hangover  (aka  Patchwork  or Zinc Emerson), evidence shows that the infrastructure was owned and controlled by the aforementioned security firm. "The group has conducted hacking operations against high value individuals, governmental organizations, and other businesses involved in  specific legal disputes ," cybersecurity company SentinelOne  said  in a comprehensive analysis publishe

Russian cyber espionage actors affiliated with the Federal Security Service (FSB) have been observed using a USB propagating worm called  LitterDrifter  in attacks targeting Ukrainian entities. Check Point, which  detailed  Gamaredon's (aka Aqua Blizzard, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, and Winterflounder) latest tactics, branded the group as engaging in large-scale campaigns that are followed by "data collection efforts aimed at specific targets, whose selection is likely motivated by espionage goals." The LitterDrifter worm packs in two main features: automatically spreading the malware via connected USB drives as well as communicating with the threat actor's command-and-control (C&C) servers. It's also suspected to be an evolution of a PowerShell-based USB worm that was previously  disclosed  by Symantec in June 2023. Written in VBS, the spreader module is responsible for distributing the worm as a hidden file in a USB drive together with a deco

Threat actors are leveraging manipulated search results and bogus Google ads that trick users who are looking to download legitimate software such as WinSCP into installing malware instead. Cybersecurity company Securonix is tracking the ongoing activity under the name  SEO#LURKER . "The malicious advertisement directs the user to a compromised WordPress website gameeweb[.]com, which redirects the user to an attacker-controlled phishing site," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The threat actors are believed to leverage Google's Dynamic Search Ads ( DSAs ), which automatically generates ads based on a site's content to serve the malicious ads that take the victims to the infected site. The ultimate goal of the complex multi-stage attack chain is to entice users into clicking on the fake, lookalike WinSCP website, winccp[.]net, and download the malware. "Traffic from the gaweeweb[.]com website to the fake

A hacking group that leveraged a recently disclosed security flaw in the WinRAR software as a zero-day has now been categorized as an entirely new advanced persistent threat (APT). Cybersecurity company NSFOCUS has described  DarkCasino  as an "economically motivated" actor that first came to light in 2021. "DarkCasino is an APT threat actor with strong technical and learning ability, who is good at integrating various popular APT attack technologies into its attack process," the company  said  in an analysis. "Attacks launched by the APT group DarkCasino are very frequent, demonstrating a strong desire to steal online property." DarkCasino was most recently linked to the zero-day exploitation of  CVE-2023-38831  (CVSS score: 7.8), a security flaw that can be weaponized to launch malicious payloads. In August 2023, Group-IB disclosed real-world attacks weaponizing the vulnerability and aimed at online trading forums at least since April 2023 to deli

Government entities in the Middle East are the target of new phishing campaigns that are designed to deliver a new initial access downloader dubbed IronWind . The activity, detected between July and October 2023, has been  attributed  by Proofpoint to a threat actor it tracks under the name  TA402 , which is also known as Molerats, Gaza Cyber Gang, and shares  tactical overlaps  with a pro-Hamas hacking crew known as  APT-C-23  (aka Arid Viper). "When it comes to state-aligned threat actors, North Korea, Russia, China, and Iran generally reap the lion's share of attention," Joshua Miller, senior threat researcher at Proofpoint, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "But TA402, a Middle Eastern advanced persistent threat (APT) group that historically has operated in the interests of the Palestinian Territories, has consistently proven to be an intriguing threat actor capable of highly sophisticated cyber espionage with a focus on intelligence collection

The Vietnamese threat actors behind the Ducktail stealer malware have been linked to a new campaign that ran between March and early October 2023, targeting marketing professionals in India with an aim to hijack Facebook business accounts. "An important feature that sets it apart is that, unlike previous campaigns, which relied on .NET applications, this one used Delphi as the programming language," Kaspersky  said  in a report published last week. Ducktail , alongside  Duckport  and  NodeStealer , is part of a  cybercrime ecosystem  operating out of Vietnam, with the attackers primarily using sponsored ads on Facebook to propagate malicious ads and deploy malware capable of plundering victims' login cookies and ultimately taking control of their accounts. Such attacks primarily single out users who may have access to a Facebook Business account. The fraudsters then use the unauthorized access to place advertisements for financial gain, perpetuating the infections fur