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Government entities in the Middle East have been targeted as part of a previously undocumented campaign to deliver a new backdoor dubbed CR4T. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it discovered the activity in February 2024, with evidence suggesting that it may have been active since at least a year prior. The campaign has been codenamed  DuneQuixote . "The group behind the campaign took steps to prevent collection and analysis of its implants and implemented practical and well-designed evasion methods both in network communications and in the malware code," Kaspersky  said . The starting point of the attack is a dropper, which comes in two variants -- a regular dropper that's either implemented as an executable or a DLL file and a tampered installer file for a legitimate tool named  Total Commander . Regardless of the method used, the primary function of the dropper is to extract an embedded command-and-control (C2) address that's decrypted using a nove

A suspected Vietnamese-origin threat actor has been observed targeting victims in several Asian and Southeast Asian countries with malware designed to harvest valuable data since at least May 2023. Cisco Talos is tracking the cluster under the name  CoralRaider , describing it as financially motivated. Targets of the campaign include India, China, South Korea, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Vietnam. "This group focuses on stealing victims' credentials, financial data, and social media accounts, including business and advertisement accounts," security researchers Chetan Raghuprasad and Joey Chen  said . "They use RotBot, a customized variant of Quasar RAT, and XClient stealer as payloads." Other commodity malware used by the group comprises a combination of remote access trojans and information stealers such as  AsyncRAT ,  NetSupport RAT , and Rhadamanthys . The targeting of business and advertisement accounts has been of particular focus for attacke

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In June 2017, a  study  of more than 3,000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students  published  by the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) found that 98% of them were willing to give away their friends' email addresses in exchange for free pizza. "Whereas people say they care about privacy, they are willing to relinquish private data quite easily when incentivized to do so," the research said, pointing out a what's called the privacy paradox. Now, nearly seven years later, Telegram has introduced a new feature that gives some users a free  premium membership  in exchange for allowing the popular messaging app to use their phone numbers as a relay for sending one-time passwords (OTPs) to other users who are attempting to sign in to the platform. The feature, called Peer-to-Peer Login (P2PL), is currently being tested in selected countries for Android users of Telegram. It was first spotted by  tginfo  in February 2024 (via  @AssembleDebug ). A

In the past 2 years, we have observed a significant surge in hacktivism activity due to ongoing wars and geopolitical conflicts in various regions. Since the war against Ukraine began, we have witnessed a notable mobilization of non-state and state-backed actors alike, forming new groups or joining existing hacker collectives.  We understand hacktivism as a form of computer hacking that is done to further the goals of political or social  activism 1 . While  activism  describes a normal, non-disruptive use of the Internet in order to support a specific cause (online petitions, fundraising, coordinating activities),  hacktivism  includes operations that use hacking techniques with the intent to disrupt but not to cause serious harm (e.g., data theft, website defacements, redirects, Denial-of-Service attacks). Cyber operations that inherit a willingness or intent to cause harm to physical property, severe economic damage or loss of life would be referred to as  cyberterrorism, 2, 3  Th

Threat actors are leveraging bogus Facebook job advertisements as a lure to trick prospective targets into installing a new Windows-based stealer malware codenamed  Ov3r_Stealer . "This malware is designed to steal credentials and crypto wallets and send those to a Telegram channel that the threat actor monitors," Trustwave SpiderLabs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Ov3r_Stealer is capable of siphoning IP address-based location, hardware info, passwords, cookies, credit card information, auto-fills, browser extensions, crypto wallets, Microsoft Office documents, and a list of antivirus products installed on the compromised host. While the exact end goal of the campaign is unknown, it's likely that the stolen information is offered for sale to other threat actors. Another possibility is that Ov3r_Stealer could be updated over time to act as a  QakBot-like loader  for additional payloads, including ransomware. The starting point of the attack is a weapo

Employment agencies and retail companies chiefly located in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region have been targeted by a previously undocumented threat actor known as  ResumeLooters  since early 2023 with the goal of stealing sensitive data. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB said the hacking crew's activities are geared towards job search platforms and the theft of resumes, with as many as 65 websites compromised between November 2023 and December 2023. The stolen files are estimated to contain 2,188,444 user data records, of which 510,259 have been taken from job search websites. Over two million unique email addresses are present within the dataset. "By using SQL injection attacks against websites, the threat actor attempts to steal user databases that may include names, phone numbers, emails, and DoBs, as well as information about job seekers' experience, employment history, and other sensitive personal data," security researcher Nikita Rostovcev  said  in a report sh

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to the "democratization" of the phishing ecosystem owing to the emergence of Telegram as an epicenter for cybercrime, enabling threat actors to mount a mass attack for as little as $230. "This messaging app has transformed into a bustling hub where seasoned cybercriminals and newcomers alike exchange illicit tools and insights creating a dark and well-oiled supply chain of tools and victims' data," Guardio Labs researchers Oleg Zaytsev and Nati Tal  said  in a new report. "Free samples, tutorials, kits, even hackers-for-hire – everything needed to construct a complete end-to-end malicious campaign." The company also described Telegram as a "scammers paradise" and a "breeding ground for modern phishing operations." This is not the first time the popular messaging platform has  come under the radar  for facilitating malicious activities, which are in part driven by its lenient modera

Threat actors have been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows to deploy an open-source information stealer called  Phemedrone Stealer . "Phemedrone targets web browsers and data from cryptocurrency wallets and messaging apps such as Telegram, Steam, and Discord," Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Simon Zuckerbraun  said . "It also takes screenshots and gathers system information regarding hardware, location, and operating system details. The stolen data is then sent to the attackers via Telegram or their command-and-control (C&C) server." The attacks leverage  CVE-2023-36025  (CVSS score: 8.8), a security bypass vulnerability in Windows SmartScreen, that could be exploited by tricking a user into clicking on a specially crafted Internet Shortcut (.URL) or a hyperlink pointing to an Internet Shortcut file. The actively-exploited shortcoming was  addressed  by Microsoft as part of its November 2023 Patch Tuesday updates.

Threat actors operating under the name Anonymous Arabic have released a remote access trojan (RAT) called  Silver RAT  that's equipped to bypass security software and stealthily launch hidden applications. "The developers operate on multiple hacker forums and social media platforms, showcasing an active and sophisticated presence," cybersecurity firm Cyfirma  said  in a report published last week. The actors, assessed to be of Syrian origin and linked to the development of another RAT known as S500 RAT, also run a Telegram channel offering various services such as the distribution of cracked RATs, leaked databases, carding activities, and the sale of Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) bots. The social media bots are then utilized by other cyber criminals to promote various illicit services by automatically engaging with and commenting on user content. In-the-wild detections of Silver RAT v1.0 were first observed in November 2023, although the threat actor's plans to release the tr

A phishing campaign has been observed delivering an information stealer malware called  MrAnon Stealer  to unsuspecting victims via seemingly benign booking-themed PDF lures. "This malware is a Python-based information stealer compressed with cx-Freeze to evade detection," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . "MrAnon Stealer steals its victims' credentials, system information, browser sessions, and cryptocurrency extensions." There is evidence to suggest that Germany is the primary target of the attack as of November 2023, owing to the number of times the downloader URL hosting the payload has been queried. Masquerading as a company looking to book hotel rooms, the phishing email bears a PDF file that, upon opening, activates the infection by prompting the recipient to download an updated version of Adobe Flash. Doing so results in the execution of .NET executables and PowerShell scripts to ultimately run a pernicious Python script, which i

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

Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that's designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. According to Kaspersky security researcher Igor Golovin, the apps come with  nefarious features  to capture and exfiltrate names, user IDs, contacts, phone numbers, and chat messages to an actor-controlled server. The activity has been codenamed  Evil Telegram  by the Russian cybersecurity company. The apps have been collectively downloaded millions of times before they were taken down by Google. Their details are as follows - 電報,紙飛機-TG繁體中文版 or 電報,小飛機-TG繁體中文版 (org.telegram.messenger.wab) - 10 million+ downloads TG繁體中文版-電報,紙飛機 (org.telegram.messenger.wab) - 50,000+ downloads 电报,纸飞机-TG简体中文版 (org.telegram.messenger.wob) - 50,000+ downloads 电报,纸飞机-TG简体中文版 (org.tgcn.messenger.wob) - 10,000+ downloads ئۇيغۇر تىلى TG - تېلېگرامما (org.telegram.messenger.wcb) - 100+ downloads The last app on the list tran

In yet another sign that developers continue to be targets of software supply chain attacks, a number of malicious packages have been discovered on the Rust programming language's crate registry. The libraries, uploaded between August 14 and 16, 2023, were published by a user named "amaperf," Phylum  said  in a report published last week. The names of the packages, now taken down, are as follows: postgress, if-cfg, xrvrv, serd, oncecell, lazystatic, and envlogger. It's not clear what the end goal of the campaign was, but the suspicious modules were found to harbor functionalities to capture the operating system information (i.e., Windows, Linux, macOS, or Unknown) and transmit the data to a hard-coded Telegram channel via the messaging platform's API. This suggests that the campaign may have been in its early stages and that the threat actor may have been casting a wide net to compromise as many developer machines as possible to deliver rogue updates with imp

A new financially motivated operation is leveraging a malicious Telegram bot to help threat actors scam their victims. Dubbed  Telekopye , a portmanteau of Telegram and kopye (meaning "spear" in Russian), the toolkit functions as an  automated means  to create a phishing web page from a premade template and send the URL to potential victims, codenamed Mammoths by the criminals. "This toolkit is implemented as a Telegram bot that, when activated, provides several easy-to-navigate menus in the form of clickable buttons that can accommodate many scammers at once," ESET researcher Radek Jizba  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The exact origins of the threat actors, dubbed Neanderthals, are unclear, but evidence points to Russia as the country of origin of the toolkit's authors and users, owing to the use of Russian SMS templates and the fact that a majority of the targeted online marketplaces are popular in the country. Multiple versions of Teleko