The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: Phishing

Cybersecurity researchers have  disclosed  a series of attacks by a threat actor of Chinese origin that has targeted organizations in Russia and Hong Kong with malware — including a previously undocumented backdoor. Attributing the campaign to  Winnti  (or APT41), Positive Technologies dated the first attack to May 12, 2020, when the APT used LNK shortcuts to extract and run the malware payload. A second attack detected on May 30 used a malicious RAR archive file consisting of shortcuts to two bait PDF documents that purported to be a curriculum vitae and an IELTS certificate. The shortcuts themselves contain links to pages hosted on Zeplin, a legitimate collaboration tool for designers and developers that are used to fetch the final-stage malware that, in turn, includes a shellcode loader ("svchast.exe") and a backdoor called  Crosswalk  ("3t54dE3r.tmp"). Crosswalk, first documented by FireEye in 2017, is a bare-bones modular backdoor capable of carrying out s

Threat actors such as the notorious Lazarus group are continuing to tap into the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine research to steal sensitive information to speed up their countries' vaccine-development efforts. Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky  detailed  two incidents at a pharmaceutical company and a government ministry in September and October leveraging different tools and techniques but exhibiting similarities in the post-exploitation process, leading the researchers to connect the two attacks to the North Korean government-linked hackers. "These two incidents reveal the Lazarus group's interest in intelligence related to COVID-19," Seongsu Park, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky, said. "While the group is mostly known for its financial activities, it is a good reminder that it can go after strategic research as well." Kaspersky did not name the targeted entities but said the pharmaceutical firm was breached on September 25, 2020, with the attack again

As if the exponential rise in phishing scams and malware attacks in the last five years wasn't enough, the COVID-19 crisis has worsened it further. The current scenario has given a viable opportunity to cybercriminals to find a way to target individuals, small and large enterprises, government corporations. According to Interpol's  COVID-19 Cybercrime Analysis Report , based on the feedback of 194 countries, phishing/scam/fraud, malware/ransomware, malicious domains, and fake news have emerged as the biggest digital threats across the world in the wake of the pandemic. Image source: interpol.int There are primarily two reasons for emerging cyber threats in 2020: Most of the population is working, learning, shopping, or running their business from home, where they're using personal devices from the home/public internet connection, which are usually unsafe and hence highly vulnerable to cybercrimes. The cybercriminals are using the COVID-19 theme to exploit people and

As businesses are increasingly migrating to the cloud, securing the infrastructure has never been more important. Now according to the latest research, two security flaws in Microsoft's Azure App Services could have enabled a bad actor to carry out server-side request forgery ( SSRF ) attacks or execute arbitrary code and take over the administration server. "This enables an attacker to quietly take over the App Service's git server, or implant malicious phishing pages accessible through Azure Portal to target system administrators," cybersecurity firm Intezer said in a report published today and shared with The Hacker News. Discovered by  Paul Litvak of Intezer Labs, the flaws were reported to Microsoft in June, after which the company subsequently addressed them. Azure App Service is a cloud computing-based platform that's used as a hosting web service for building web apps and mobile backends. When an App Service is created via Azure, a new Docker env

A new malware campaign has been found using coronavirus-themed lures to strike government and energy sectors in Azerbaijan with remote access trojans (RAT) capable of exfiltrating sensitive documents, keystrokes, passwords, and even images from the webcam. The targeted attacks employ Microsoft Word documents as droppers to deploy a previously unknown Python-based RAT dubbed "PoetRAT" due to various references to sonnets by English playwright William Shakespeare. "The RAT has all the standard features of this kind of malware, providing full control of the compromised system to the operation," said Cisco Talos in an analysis published last week. According to the researchers, the malware specifically targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in the energy industry, such as wind turbine systems, whose identities are currently not known. The development is the latest in a surge in cyberattacks exploiting the ongoing coronavirus pandemi

A team of security researchers at Microsoft discovered a potentially serious vulnerability in the Bluetooth-supported version of Google's Titan Security Keys that could not be patched with a software update. However, users do not need to worry as Google has announced to offer a free replacement for the affected Titan Security Key dongles. In a security advisory published Wednesday, Google said a "misconfiguration in the Titan Security Keys Bluetooth pairing protocols" could allow an attacker who is physically close to your Security Key (~within 30 feet) to communicate with it or the device to which your key is paired. Launched by Google in August last year, Titan Security Key is a tiny low-cost USB device that offers hardware-based two-factor authentication (2FA) for online accounts with the highest level of protection against phishing attacks. Titan Security Key, which sells for $50 in the Google Store, includes two keys—a USB-A security key with NFC, and a

The hacker who stole photographs of female celebrities two years ago in a massive data breach — famous as " The Fappening " or "Celebgate" scandal — has finally been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, authorities said on Thursday. 36-year-old Lancaster, Pennsylvania man Ryan Collins was arrested in March and charged with hacking into "at least 50 iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts," most of which owned by Hollywood stars, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, and Kate Upton. Now, a judge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday sentenced Collins to 18 months in federal prison after violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Here's How Collins Stole Celebrities' Photos Federal prosecutors said Collins ran phishing scheme between November 2012 and September 2014 and hijacked more than 100 people using fake emails disguised as official notifications from Google and Apple, asking victims for their account credentials.

Employees are the weakest link when it comes to enterprise security, and unfortunately hackers realized this years ago. All an attacker needs to use some social engineering tactics against employees of companies and organizations they want to target. A massive 91% of successful data breaches at companies started with a social engineering and spear-phishing attack. A phishing attack usually involves an e-mail that manipulates a victim to click on a malicious link that could then expose the victim's computer to a malicious payload. So what is the missing link to manage the problem of employees being Social engineered? The answer is very simple – Educate your Employees and reinforce good security procedures at the same time. Phish your Employees! Yes, you heard me right… by this I mean that you should run a mock phishing campaign in your organization and find out which employees would easily fall victim to the phishing emails. Then step everyone through Internet

Researchers have warned users of Android devices to avoid app downloads from particularly unauthorized sources, since a new and sophisticated piece of malware is targeting Android users through phishing emails . The malware, dubbed SandroRAT , is currently being used by cybercriminals to target Android users in Poland via a widely spread email spam campaign that delivers a new variant of an Android remote access tool (RAT). The emails masquerade itself as a bank alert that warns users of the malware infection in their mobile device and offers a fake mobile security solution in order to get rid of the malware infection. The mobile security solution poses as a Kaspersky Mobile Security , but in real, it is a version of SandroRAT, a remote access tool devised for Android devices, whose source code has been put on sale on underground Hack Forums since December last year. A mobile malware researcher at McAfee, Carlos Castillo, detailed the new variant of Android remot

French leading telecommunications company ' Orange ' hit by second major data breach of its kind in a matter of months. Company announced that hackers have stolen personal data of 1.3 million customers of its online portal. ORANGE HACKED SECOND TIME IN THREE MONTHS Hackers have stolen a " limited amount of personal information concerning clients and future customers ", including their first names, Surnames email addresses, phone numbers for both mobiles and fixed lines, dates of birth as well as the names of clients' mobile and Internet operators. " The data recovered could be used to contact those concerned by email, SMS or by phone, particularly for phishing purposes ," company said in an statement . The Incident was detected by the company on April 18, but the company has waited until now to inform customers to determine its full extent and to ensure that the security holes leveraged by the hackers have been patched. BEWARE OF PHISHING ATTAC

The collection of slashes and hyphens in URLs of websites make it look complicated and messy, now the new experimental version of the Google Chrome browser bury the whole URL into the top-level domain name. Google's new experiment to the recent update to Chrome 's publicly available Canary browser indicates that in the coming weeks Google may eventually hide the full URLs of the websites and will show only the website name and domain even if you are navigating within the website, something familiar with the mobile version of Safari. Chrome Canary is an early build and a leading-edge of the next version of Google's web browser and a couple of days ago, Google pushed an update to both of its Chrome Canary and beta builds that hide long URLs of a website from the address bar. OMNIBOX - NEW ADDRESS BAR The field that is mostly known as address bar is now better known as "omnibox", a single bar at the top of the screen that gives you ability to type terms you want to

Yahoo! The one who enabled the HTTPS connections by default from the beginning of this year, the one who encrypts traffic moving between its data centers from 31st March , now has been accused of harming every  Mailing List  across the world. Experts from the Internet Engineering Council John R. Levine , specialized in email infrastructure and spam filtering claimed this in the post titled " Yahoo breaks every mailing list in the world including the IETF's. " on Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Yahoo has established a new rule to automatically exclude Yahoo users from the mailing list, because Mailing List server does not comply with DMARC requirements and they strongly modifies each email. He talks about an " emerging e-mail security scheme " known as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) that has been implemented by almost every largest email service providers, including Gmail, Hotmail, Comcast, and Yahoo. DMARC helps to reduce the p

Having SSL Certification doesn't mean that the website you are visiting is not a bogus website. SSL certificates protect web users in two ways, it encrypts sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, or credit card numbers and also verify the identity of websites. But today hackers and cyber criminals are using every tantrum to steal your credentials by injecting fake SSL certificates to the bogus websites impersonating Social media, e-commerce, and even bank website. Netcraft Security Researchers have discovered dozens of fake SSL Certificates being used to enact financial institutions, e-commerce site vendors, Internet Service Providers and social networking sites, which allegedly allows an attacker to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks. When you will visit a bogus website from any popular web browser; having self signed fake SSL Certificate, you will see a foreboding warning in the web browser, but the traffic originates from apps and other non-browser software fail

Valentine's Day   - a day of hearts, Chocolates, Flowers and Celebrations when people express their emotions to their loved ones and most of us send E-cards, purchase special gifts with the help of various Online Shop Sites and many other tantrums making them feel special. While you are busy in Googling ideal gifts for your loved ones, the Cyber thieves are also busy in taking advantage of such events by spreading various malware , phishing campaigns and fraud schemes as these days come out to be a goldmine for the cyber criminals. Online Shopping Scams are popular among Cyber criminals as it is the easiest way for hackers to steal money in easy and untraceable ways. Security Researchers at Anti virus firm - Trend Micro discovered various Valentine's Day threats which are common at such occasion i.e. A flower-delivery service and it appears to be a normal promotional e-mail, but the links actually lead to various survey scams. The Malware threats also arr

In past months, we have reported about critical vulnerabilities in many wireless Routers including Netgear, Linksys,  TP-LINK, Cisco, ASUS, TENDA and more vendors, installed by millions of home users worldwide. Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska) recently noticed a large scale cyber attack ongoing campaign aimed at Polish e-banking users. Cyber criminals are using known router vulnerability which allow attackers to change the router's DNS configuration remotely so they can lure users to fake bank websites or can perform Man-in-the-Middle attack. ' After DNS servers settings are changed on a router, all queries from inside the network are forwarded to rogue servers. Obviously the platform of a client device is not an issue, as there is no need for the attackers to install any malicious software at all. ' CERT Polska researchers said. That DNS Hijacking trick is not new, neither most of the router vulnerabilities are, but still millions of r

One of the world's largest mobile operator ' Orange ' has been hit by data breach. The French multinational telecommunication company announced recently, it was targeted by unknown hackers on 16th January 2014, who allegedly gained access to the accounts of up to 800,000 customers of Orange website. According to a report published on the PC INpact website, the company warned their customers in an email that their Client Area website orange.fr was hacked and personal data of 3% customers have been stolen, but the passwords are not affected. The hacker has successfully stolen customers' names, mailing address, email, landline and mobile phone numbers. The company warned, with the information lost in this attack, hackers can perform phishing attacks, allowing them to steal personal data, including bank account details and passwords by sending emails that look as if they have come from official sources. Orange has confirmed the data breach, and afte

A location based Social Networking platform with 45 million users,' Foursquare ' was vulnerable to the primary email address disclosed.  Foursquare is a Smartphone application that gives you details of nearby cafes, bars, shops, parks using GPS location and also tells about your friends nearby. According to a Penetration tester and hacker ' Jamal Eddin e ',  an attacker can extract email addresses of all 45 million users just by using a few lines of scripting tool. Basically the flaw exists in the Invitation system of the Foursquare app. While testing the app, he found that invitation received on the recipient's end actually disclosing the sender's email address, as shown above. Invitation URL:  https://foursquare.com/mehdi?action=acceptFriendship&expires=1378920415&src=wtbfe& uid = 64761059 &sig=mmlx96RwGrQ2fJAg4OWZhAWnDvc%3D Where 'uid' parameter represents the sender's profile ID.  Hacker noticed th

A well-known pro-Syrian hacker group known as Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , aligned with President Bashar al- Assad, who successfully attacked The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Twitter, BBC, National Public Radio, Al-Jazeera, Microsoft, Xbox, Skype and responsible for cyber-attacks against various other U.S media companies in the past. Last evening, the Group claimed the responsibility for hacking another big media outlet " CNN ", compromised their Twitter, Facebook account and the website. CNN's twitter profile with 11.6 million followers saw a number of fake tweets from hackers, including allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is behind the Al-Qaida network. Hackers Tweeted, " Tonight, the #SEA decided to retaliate against #CNN's viciously lying reporting aimed at prolonging the suffering in #Syria. "   Following fake tweets were posted: " Syrian Electronic Army Was Here … Stop lying … All your reports are fake! "  " Obama Bin Laden

A New day begins with a Cup of Coffee and with new massive Data Breach News. This time in Germany, the Digital identities of about 16 million online users had been stolen, and posing a risk to their accounts linked to social media and other services. Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) discovered a security breach after running an analysis of the botnet network of computers infected with malware . The compromised accounts have email addresses as their username and also the passwords were stolen, that could also be sold to spammers and people looking to " phish " account holders. Until now it hasn't been known that how and when the analysis was carried out and who exactly were involved behind this massive data breach, as the BSI refused to give details on the source of the information. Authorities have set up a German-language website which allows users to enter their email address and check whether their email accounts are compromised or not.