State-Sponsored Hackers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Iranian state-sponsored threat actors have been observed orchestrating spear-phishing campaigns targeting a prominent Jewish figure starting in late July 2024 with the goal of delivering a new intelligence-gathering tool called AnvilEcho. Enterprise security company Proofpoint is tracking the activity under the name TA453, which overlaps with activity tracked by the broader cybersecurity community under the monikers APT42 (Mandiant), Charming Kitten (CrowdStrike), Damselfly (Symantec), Mint Sandstorm (Microsoft), and Yellow Garuda (PwC). "The initial interaction attempted to lure the target to engage with a benign email to build conversation and trust to then subsequently click on a follow-up malicious link," security researchers Joshua Miller, Georgi Mladenov, Andrew Northern, and Greg Lesnewich said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The attack chain attempted to deliver a new malware toolkit called BlackSmith, which delivered a PowerShell trojan dubbed Anv...

Cybersecurity agencies from Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the U.K., and the U.S. have released a joint advisory about a China-linked cyber espionage group called APT40 , warning about its ability to co-opt exploits for newly disclosed security flaws within hours or days of public release. "APT40 has previously targeted organizations in various countries, including Australia and the United States," the agencies said . "Notably, APT40 possesses the ability to quickly transform and adapt vulnerability proofs-of-concept (PoCs) for targeting, reconnaissance, and exploitation operations." The adversarial collective, also known as Bronze Mohawk, Gingham Typhoon (formerly Gadolinium), ISLANDDREAMS, Kryptonite Panda, Leviathan, Red Ladon, TA423, and TEMP.Periscope, is known to be active since at least 2011 , carrying out cyber attacks targeting entities in the Asia-Pacific region. It's assessed to be based in Haikou. In July 2021, the ...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

State-sponsored actors with ties to Russia have been linked to targeted cyber attacks aimed at French diplomatic entities, the country's information security agency ANSSI said in an advisory. The attacks have been attributed to a cluster tracked by Microsoft under the name Midnight Blizzard (formerly Nobelium), which overlaps with activity tracked as APT29 , BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes. While the monikers APT29 and Midnight Blizzard have been interchangeably used to refer to intrusion sets associated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), ANSSI said it prefers to treat them as disparate threat clusters alongside a third one dubbed Dark Halo , which has been held responsible for the 2020 supply chain attack via SolarWinds software. "Nobelium is characterized by the use of specific codes, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Most of Nobelium campaigns against diplomatic entities use compromised legitimate email accounts belonging to dipl...

The threat actors behind the  KV-botnet  made "behavioral changes" to the malicious network as U.S. law enforcement began issuing commands to neutralize the activity. KV-botnet is the name given to a network of compromised small office and home office (SOHO) routers and firewall devices across the world, with one specific cluster acting as a covert data transfer system for other Chinese state-sponsored actors, including  Volt Typhoon  (aka Bronze Silhouette, Insidious Taurus, or Vanguard Panda). Active since at least February 2022, it was  first documented  by the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies in mid-December 2023. The botnet is known to comprise two main sub-groups, viz. KV and JDY, with the latter principally used for scanning potential targets for reconnaissance. Late last month, the U.S. government  announced  a court-authorized disruption effort to take down the KV cluster, which is typically reserved for manual operations a...

UAE and Kuwait government agencies are targets of a new cyberespionage campaign potentially carried out by Iranian threat actors, according to new research. Attributing the operation to be the work of  Static Kitten  (aka MERCURY or MuddyWater), Anomali  said  the "objective of this activity is to install a remote management tool called ScreenConnect (acquired by ConnectWise 2015) with unique launch parameters that have custom properties," with malware samples and URLs masquerading as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of Kuwait and the UAE National Council. Since its origins in 2017, MuddyWater has been tied to a number of attacks primarily against Middle Eastern nations, actively  exploiting Zerologon vulnerability  in real-world attack campaigns to strike prominent  Israeli organizations  with malicious payloads. The state-sponsored hacking group is believed to be working at the behest of Iran's Islamic Republic Guard Corps, the count...