VPN hacking | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Network credentials and virtual private network (VPN) access for colleges and universities based in the U.S. are being advertised for sale on underground and public criminal marketplaces. "This exposure of sensitive credential and network access information, especially privileged user accounts, could lead to subsequent cyber attacks against individual users or affiliated organizations," the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)  said  in an advisory published last week. The cyber intrusions against educational institutions involve threat actors leveraging tactics like spear-phishing and ransomware to carry out credential harvesting activities. The gathered credentials are then exfiltrated and sold on Russian cybercrime forums for prices ranging from a few to thousands of U.S. dollars. Armed with this login information, the agency pointed out, adversaries can proceed to conduct brute-force  credential stuffing  attacks to break into victim accounts spanning different

A new report published by cybersecurity researchers has unveiled evidence of Iranian state-sponsored hackers targeting dozens of companies and organizations in Israel and around the world over the past three years. Dubbed " Fox Kitten ," the cyber-espionage campaign is said to have been directed at companies from the IT, telecommunication, oil and gas, aviation, government, and security sectors. "We estimate the campaign revealed in this report to be among Iran's most continuous and comprehensive campaigns revealed until now," ClearSky researchers said . "The revealed campaign was used as a reconnaissance infrastructure; however, it can also be used as a platform for spreading and activating destructive malware such as ZeroCleare and Dustman." Tying the activities to threat groups APT33, APT34, and APT39, the offensive — conducted using a mix of open source and self-developed tools — also facilitated the groups to steal sensitive information

Compromising the browser is a high-return target for adversaries. Browser extensions, which are small software modules that are added to the browser and can enhance browsing experiences, have become a popular browser attack vector. This is because they are widely adopted among users and can easily turn malicious through developer actions or attacks on legitimate extensions. Recent incidents like  DataSpii  and the  Nigelthorn  malware attack have exposed the extent of damage that malicious extensions can inflict. In both cases, users innocently installed extensions that compromised their privacy and security. The underlying issue lies in the permissions granted to extensions. These permissions, often excessive and lacking granularity, allow attackers to exploit them. What can organizations do to protect themselves from the risks of browser extensions without barring them from use altogether (an act that would be nearly impossible to enforce)?  A new report by LayerX, "Unveiling the