Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

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

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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

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

Cybersecurity researchers have unmasked a prolific threat actor known as farnetwork, who has been linked to five different ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) programs over the past four years in various capacities. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB, which attempted to infiltrate a private RaaS program that uses the  Nokoyawa   ransomware  strain, said it underwent a "job interview" process with the threat actor, learning several valuable insights into their background and role within those RaaS programs. "Throughout the threat actor's cybercriminal career, which began in 2019, farnetwork has been involved in several connected ransomware projects, including JSWORM, Nefilim, Karma, and Nemty, as part of which they helped develop ransomware and manage the RaaS programs before launching their own RaaS program based on Nokoyawa ransomware," Nikolay Kichatov, threat intelligence analyst at Group-IB,  said . The latest disclosure comes nearly six months after the cyber

ChatGPT: Productivity tool, great for writing poems, and… a security risk?! In this article, we show how threat actors can exploit ChatGPT, but also how defenders can use it for leveling up their game. ChatGPT is the most swiftly growing consumer application to date. The extremely popular generative AI chatbot has the ability to generate human-like, coherent and contextually relevant responses. This makes it very valuable for applications like content creation, coding, education, customer support, and even personal assistance. However, ChatGPT also comes with security risks. ChatGPT can be used for data exfiltration, spreading misinformation, developing cyber attacks and writing phishing emails. On the flip side, it can help defenders who can use it for identifying vulnerabilities and learning about various defenses. In this article, we show numerous ways attackers can exploit ChatGPT and the OpenAI Playground. Just as importantly, we show ways that defenders can leverage ChatGPT t

The Pakistan-linked threat actor known as  SideCopy  has been observed leveraging the recent WinRAR security vulnerability in its attacks targeting Indian government entities to deliver various remote access trojans such as AllaKore RAT, Ares RAT, and DRat. Enterprise security firm SEQRITE described the campaign as multi-platform, with the attacks also designed to infiltrate Linux systems with a compatible version of Ares RAT. SideCopy, active since at least 2019, is  known  for its  attacks  on Indian and Afghanistan entities. It's suspected to be a sub-group of the Transparent Tribe (aka APT36) actor. "Both SideCopy and APT36 share infrastructure and code to aggressively target India," SEQRITE researcher Sathwik Ram Prakki  said  in a Monday report. Earlier this May, the group was  linked  to a phishing campaign that took advantage of lures related to India's Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) to deliver information-stealing malware. Since

A threat actor known as  Prolific Puma  has been maintaining a low profile and operating an underground link shortening service that's offered to other threat actors for at least over the past four years. Prolific Puma creates "domain names with an  RDGA  [registered domain generation algorithm] and use these domains to provide a link shortening service to other malicious actors, helping them evade detection while they distribute phishing, scams, and malware," Infoblox  said  in a new analysis pieced together from Domain Name System ( DNS)  analytics. With malicious actors known to use link shorteners for phishing attacks, the adversary plays an important role in the cybercrime supply chain, registering between 35,000 to 75,000 unique domain names since April 2022. Prolific Puma is also a  DNS threat actor  for leveraging DNS infrastructure for nefarious purposes. A notable aspect of the threat actor's operations is the use of an American domain registrar and web