Turla Trojan | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A new version of COMpfun remote access trojan (RAT) has been discovered in the wild that uses HTTP status codes to control compromised systems targeted in a recent campaign against diplomatic entities in Europe. The cyberespionage malware—traced to Turla APT with "medium-to-low level of confidence" based on the history of compromised victims—spread via an initial dropper that masks itself as a visa application, the Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky discovered. The Turla APT , a Russian-based threat group, has a long history of carrying out espionage and watering hole attacks spanning various sectors, including governments, embassies, military, education, research, and pharmaceutical companies. First documented by G-Data in 2014, COMpfun received a significant upgrade last year (called "Reductor") after Kaspersky found that the malware was used to spy on a victim's browser activity by staging man-in-the-middle ( MitM ) attacks on encrypte...

Security researchers at ESET have discovered a new malware campaign targeting consulates, ministries and embassies worldwide to spy on governments and diplomats. Active since 2016, the malware campaign is leveraging a new backdoor, dubbed Gazer , and is believed to be carried out by Turla advanced persistent threat (APT) hacking group that's been previously linked to Russian intelligence. Gazer, written in C++, the backdoor delivers via spear phishing emails and hijacks targeted computers in two steps—first, the malware drops Skipper backdoor, which has previously been linked to Turla and then installs Gazer components. In previous cyber espionage campaigns, the Turla hacking group used Carbon and Kazuar backdoors as its second-stage malware, which also has many similarities with Gazer, according to research [ PDF ] published by ESET. Gazer receives encrypted commands from a remote command-and-control server and evades detection by using compromised, legitimate website...

Organizations now use an average of 112 SaaS applications —a number that keeps growing. In a 2024 study, 49% of 644 respondents who frequently used Microsoft 365 believed that they had less than 10 apps connected to the platform, despite the fact that aggregated data indicated over 1,000+ Microsoft 365 SaaS-to-SaaS connections on average per deployment. And that's just one major SaaS provider. Imagine other unforeseen critical security risks: Each SaaS app has unique security configurations —making misconfigurations a top risk. Business-critical apps (CRM, finance, and collaboration tools) store vast amounts of sensitive data, making them prime targets for attackers. Shadow IT and third-party integrations introduce hidden vulnerabilities that often go unnoticed. Large and small third-party AI service providers (e.g. audio/video transcription service) may not comply with legal and regulatory requirements, or properly test and review code. Major SaaS providers also have thous...

Security researchers have discovered a highly nasty Linux trojan that has been used by cybercriminals in state sponsored attack in order to steal personal, confidential information from government institutions, military and pharmaceutical companies around the world. A previously unknown piece of a larger puzzle called " Turla ," one of the most complex Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) uncovered by researchers at Kaspersky Lab in August, remained hidden on some systems for at least four years. The malware was notable for its use of a rootkit that made it extremely hard to detect. The German security company G Data believed that Turla campaign is linked to Russia and has in the past exploited a variety of Windows vulnerabilities, at least two of which were zero-days, to infect government institutions, embassies, military, education, research, and pharmaceutical companies in more than 45 countries. Recently, security researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab...