Python Programming | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A new set of malicious Python packages has slithered their way to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository with the ultimate aim of stealing sensitive information from compromised developer systems. The packages masquerade as seemingly innocuous obfuscation tools, but harbor a piece of malware called  BlazeStealer , Checkmarx said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "[BlazeStealer] retrieves an additional malicious script from an external source, enabling a Discord bot that gives attackers complete control over the victim's computer," security researcher Yehuda Gelb said. The campaign, which commenced in January 2023, entails a total of eight packages named Pyobftoexe, Pyobfusfile, Pyobfexecute, Pyobfpremium, Pyobflite, Pyobfadvance, Pyobfuse, and pyobfgood, the last of which was published in October.  These modules come with setup.py and init.py files that are designed to retrieve a Python script hosted on transfer[.]sh, which gets executed immediately upon...

An ongoing campaign is targeting Facebook Business accounts with bogus messages to harvest victims' credentials using a variant of the Python-based  NodeStealer  and potentially take over their accounts for follow-on malicious activities.  "The attacks are reaching victims mainly in Southern Europe and North America across different segments, led by the manufacturing services and technology sectors," Netskope Threat Labs researcher Jan Michael Alcantara  said  in an analysis published Thursday. First documented by Meta in May 2023, NodeStealer  originated  as a JavaScript malware capable of pilfering cookies and passwords from web browsers to compromise Facebook, Gmail, and Outlook accounts. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, last month,  revealed  a separate attack wave that took place in December 2022 using a Python version of the malware, with select iterations also designed to conduct cryptocurrency theft. The latest findings from Netskope...

Intro: Why hack in when you can log in? SaaS applications are the backbone of modern organizations, powering productivity and operational efficiency. But every new app introduces critical security risks through app integrations and multiple users, creating easy access points for threat actors. As a result, SaaS breaches have increased, and according to a May 2024 XM Cyber report, identity and credential misconfigurations caused 80% of security exposures. Subtle signs of a compromise get lost in the noise, and then multi-stage attacks unfold undetected due to siloed solutions. Think of an account takeover in Entra ID, then privilege escalation in GitHub, along with data exfiltration from Slack. Each seems unrelated when viewed in isolation, but in a connected timeline of events, it's a dangerous breach. Wing Security's SaaS platform is a multi-layered solution that combines posture management with real-time identity threat detection and response. This allows organizations to get a ...

Python has its pros and cons, but it's nonetheless used extensively. For example, Python is frequently used in data crunching tasks even when there are more appropriate languages to choose from. Why? Well, Python is relatively easy to learn. Someone with a science background can pick up Python much more quickly than, say, C. However, Python's inherent approachability also creates a couple of problems. Whenever Python is updated, it means a big refactoring workload, which often gets dealt with poorly – or not at all. That leads to poor performance and security vulnerabilities. But maybe there is a better way: a tool to keep your Python tasks running smoothly and securely day in, day out. Let's take a look. It's slow, but it does the job Python isn't the fastest language around, but despite its comparative disadvantages, you'll often see it used for intensive data crunching operations. Think machine learning, computer vision, or even pure math in high-perform...