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A Moscow-based company sanctioned by the U.S. earlier this year has been linked to yet another influence operation designed to turn public opinion against Ukraine and erode Western support since at least December 2023. The covert campaign undertaken by Social Design Agency (SDA) leverages videos enhanced using artificial intelligence (AI) and bogus websites impersonating reputable news sources to target audiences across Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. It has been dubbed Operation Undercut by Recorded Future's Insikt Group. "This operation, running in tandem with other campaigns like Doppelganger , is designed to discredit Ukraine's leadership, question the effectiveness of Western aid, and stir socio-political tensions," the cybersecurity company said . "The campaign also seeks to shape narratives around the 2024 U.S. elections and geopolitical conflicts, such as the Israel-Gaza situation, to deepen divisions." Social Design Agency has been previously a...

Threat actors with ties to Russia have been linked to a cyber espionage campaign aimed at organizations in Central Asia, East Asia, and Europe. Recorded Future's Insikt Group, which has assigned the activity cluster the name TAG-110, said it overlaps with a threat group tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) as UAC-0063, which, in turn, overlaps with APT28 . The hacking crew has been active since at least 2021. "Using custom malware tools HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY, TAG-110 primarily attacks government entities, human rights groups, and educational institutions," the cybersecurity company said in a Thursday report. "HATVIBE functions as a loader to deploy CHERRYSPY, a Python backdoor used for data exfiltration and espionage." TAG-110's use of HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY was first documented by CERT-UA back in late May 2023 in connection with a cyber attack targeting state agencies in Ukraine. Both the malware families were again spo...

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A China-linked nation-state group called TAG-112 compromised Tibetan media and university websites in a new cyber espionage campaign designed to facilitate the delivery of the Cobalt Strike post-exploitation toolkit for follow-on information collection. "The attackers embedded malicious JavaScript in these sites, which spoofed a TLS certificate error to trick visitors into downloading a disguised security certificate," Recorded Future's Insikt Group said . "This malware, often used by threat actors for remote access and post-exploitation, highlights a continued cyber-espionage focus on Tibetan entities." The compromises have been pinned on a state-sponsored threat group called TAG-112, which has been described as a possible sub-group of another cluster tracked as Evasive Panda (aka Bronze Highland, Daggerfly, StormBamboo, and TAG-102) owing to tactical overlaps and their historical targeting of Tibetan entities. The two Tibetan community websites that wer...

Threat actors operating with interests aligned to Belarus and Russia have been linked to a new cyber espionage campaign that likely exploited cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in Roundcube webmail servers to target over 80 organizations. These entities are primarily located in Georgia, Poland, and Ukraine, according to Recorded Future, which attributed the intrusion set to a threat actor known as Winter Vivern, which is also known as TA473 and UAC0114. The cybersecurity firm is  tracking  the hacking outfit under the moniker Threat Activity Group 70 (TAG-70). Winter Vivern's exploitation of security flaws in Roundcube email servers was  previously highlighted  by ESET in October 2023, joining other Russia-linked threat actor groups such as APT28, APT29, and Sandworm that are known to target email software. The adversary, which has been active since at least December 2020, has also been  linked  to the abuse of a now-patched vulnerability in Zi...

Cloudzy, a prominent cloud infrastructure provider, proudly announces a significant enhancement in its cybersecurity landscape. This breakthrough has been achieved through a recent consultation with Recorded Future, a leader in providing real-time threat intelligence and cybersecurity analytics. This initiative, coupled with an overhaul of Cloudzy's cybersecurity strategies, represents a major leap forward in our commitment to digital safety and infrastructure integrity. Key Enhancements in Cybersecurity Comprehensive Threat Intelligence from Recorded Future Recorded Future provides critical security reports, spotlighting potential security breaches and malicious activities. This sophisticated intelligence, allows us to act promptly against threats like Ransomware, APT(Advanced Persistent Threats), C2 (Command and Control) servers, malware, and more Upon thorough evaluation of these reports and confirmation that the implicated accounts are indeed conducting illegal activities a...

A pair of recently disclosed zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) virtual private network (VPN) devices have been exploited to deliver a Rust-based payload called  KrustyLoader  that's used to drop the open-source Sliver adversary simulation tool. The  security vulnerabilities , tracked as CVE-2023-46805 (CVSS score: 8.2) and CVE-2024-21887 (CVSS score: 9.1), could be abused in tandem to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution on susceptible appliances. As of January 26,  patches for the two flaws  have been delayed, although the software company has released a temporary mitigation through an XML file. Volexity, which first shed light on the shortcomings, said they have been weaponized as zero-days since December 3, 2023, by a Chinese nation-state threat actor it tracks under the name UTA0178. Google-owned Mandiant has assigned the moniker UNC5221 to the group. Following public disclosure earlier this month, the vulnerabilities have  co...

A state-sponsored hacking group with links to Russia has been linked to attack infrastructure that spoofs the Microsoft login page of Global Ordnance, a legitimate U.S.-based military weapons and hardware supplier. Recorded Future attributed the new infrastructure to a threat activity group it tracks under the name  TAG-53 , and is broadly known by the cybersecurity community as Blue Callisto , Callisto, COLDRIVER, SEABORGIUM, and TA446. "Based on historical public reporting on overlapping TAG-53 campaigns, it is likely that this credential harvesting activity is enabled in part through phishing," Recorded Future's Insikt Group  said  in a report published this week. The cybersecurity firm said it discovered 38 domains, nine of which contained references to companies like UMO Poland, Sangrail LTD, DTGruelle, Blue Sky Network, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. It's suspected that the t...

Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed the intrusion activity aimed at Indian power grid entities earlier this year likely involved the exploitation of security flaws in a now-discontinued web server called Boa . The tech behemoth's cybersecurity division  said  the vulnerable component poses a "supply chain risk that may affect millions of organizations and devices." The findings build on a prior report  published  by Recorded Future in April 2022, which delved into a sustained campaign orchestrated by suspected China-linked adversaries to strike critical infrastructure organizations in India. The cybersecurity firm attributed the attacks to a previously undocumented threat cluster called Threat Activity Group 38. While the Indian government described the attacks as unsuccessful "probing attempts," China denied it was behind the campaign. The connections to China stem from the use of a modular backdoor dubbed  ShadowPad , which is known to be shared amo...

Telecommunications and IT service providers in the Middle East and Asia are being targeted by a previously undocumented Chinese-speaking threat group dubbed WIP19 . The espionage-related attacks are characterized by the use of a stolen digital certificate issued by a Korean company called DEEPSoft to sign malicious artifacts deployed during the infection chain to evade detection. "Almost all operations performed by the threat actor were completed in a 'hands-on keyboard' fashion, during an interactive session with compromised machines," SentinelOne researchers Joey Chen and Amitai Ben Shushan Ehrlich  said  in a report this week. "This meant the attacker gave up on a stable [command-and-control] channel in exchange for stealth." WIP, short for work-in-progress, is the moniker assigned by SentinelOne to emerging or hitherto unattributed activity clusters,  similar  to the UNC####, DEV-####, and TAG-## designations given by Mandiant, Microsoft, and Reco...

The notorious cybercrime group known as FIN7 has diversified its initial access vectors to incorporate software supply chain compromise and the use of stolen credentials, new research has revealed. "Data theft extortion or ransomware deployment following FIN7-attributed activity at multiple organizations, as well as technical overlaps, suggests that FIN7 actors have been associated with various ransomware operations over time," incident response firm Mandiant  said  in a Monday analysis. The cybercriminal group, since its emergence in the mid-2010s, has gained notoriety for large-scale malware campaigns targeting the point-of-sale (POS) systems aimed at restaurant, gambling, and hospitality industries with credit card-stealing malware. FIN7's shift in monetization strategy towards ransomware follows an October 2021 report from Recorded Future's Gemini Advisory unit, which  found  the adversary setting up a fake front company named Bastion Secure to recruit unwit...