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A number of malicious samples have been created for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with the goal of compromising Windows machines, highlighting a sneaky method that allows the operators to stay under the radar and thwart detection by popular anti-malware engines. The "distinct tradecraft" marks the first instance where a threat actor has been found abusing WSL to install subsequent payloads. "These files acted as loaders running a payload that was either embedded within the sample or retrieved from a remote server and was then injected into a running process using Windows API calls," researchers from Lumen Black Lotus Labs  said  in a report published on Thursday. Windows Subsystem for Linux, launched in August 2016, is a  compatibility layer  that's designed to run Linux binary executables (in ELF format) natively on the Windows platform without the overhead of a traditional virtual machine or dual-boot setup. The earliest artifacts date back to M

Microsoft on Wednesday disclosed details of a targeted phishing campaign that leveraged a now-patched zero-day flaw in its MSHTML platform using specially-crafted Office documents to deploy Cobalt Strike Beacon on compromised Windows systems. "These attacks used the vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2021-40444 , as part of an initial access campaign that distributed custom Cobalt Strike Beacon loaders," Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center  said  in a technical write-up. "These loaders communicated with an infrastructure that Microsoft associates with multiple cybercriminal campaigns, including human-operated ransomware." Details about CVE-2021-40444 (CVSS score: 8.8) first  emerged  on September 7 after researchers from EXPMON alerted the Windows maker about a "highly sophisticated zero-day attack" aimed at Microsoft Office users by taking advantage of a remote code execution vulnerability in MSHTML (aka Trident), a proprietary browser engine for the now

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Researchers on Monday took the wraps off a newly discovered Linux and Windows re-implementation of  Cobalt Strike Beacon  that's actively set its sights on government, telecommunications, information technology, and financial institutions in the wild. The as-yet undetected version of the penetration testing tool — codenamed "Vermilion Strike" — marks one of the  rare Linux ports , which has been traditionally a Windows-based red team tool heavily repurposed by adversaries to mount an array of targeted attacks. Cobalt Strike bills itself as a " threat emulation software ," with Beacon being the payload engineered to model an advanced actor and duplicate their post-exploitation actions. "The stealthy sample uses Cobalt Strike's command-and-control (C2) protocol when communicating to the C2 server and has remote access capabilities such as uploading files, running shell commands and writing to files," Intezer researchers said in a report publishe

Microsoft on Tuesday warned of an actively exploited zero-day flaw impacting Internet Explorer that's being used to hijack vulnerable Windows systems by leveraging weaponized Office documents. Tracked as CVE-2021-40444 (CVSS score: 8.8), the remote code execution flaw is rooted in MSHTML (aka Trident), a proprietary browser engine for the now-discontinued Internet Explorer and which is used in Office to render web content inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. "Microsoft is investigating reports of a remote code execution vulnerability in MSHTML that affects Microsoft Windows. Microsoft is aware of targeted attacks that attempt to exploit this vulnerability by using specially-crafted Microsoft Office documents," the company  said . "An attacker could craft a malicious ActiveX control to be used by a Microsoft Office document that hosts the browser rendering engine. The attacker would then have to convince the user to open the malicious document. Users who

Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out its scheduled  monthly security update  with patches for 55 security flaws affecting Windows, Exchange Server, Internet Explorer, Office, Hyper-V, Visual Studio, and Skype for Business. Of these 55 bugs, four are rated as Critical, 50 are rated as Important, and one is listed as Moderate in severity. Three of the vulnerabilities are publicly known, although, unlike  last month , none of them are under active exploitation at the time of release. The most critical of the flaws addressed is  CVE-2021-31166 , a wormable remote code execution vulnerability in the HTTP protocol stack. The issue, which could allow an unauthenticated attacker to send a specially crafted packet to a targeted server, is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scale. Another vulnerability of note is a remote code execution flaw in Hyper-V ( CVE-2021-28476 ), which also scores the highest severity among all flaws patched this month with a CVSS rating of 9.9. "This i

A credential stealer infamous for targeting Windows systems has resurfaced in a new phishing campaign that aims to steal credentials from Microsoft Outlook, Google Chrome, and instant messenger apps. Primarily directed against users in Turkey, Latvia, and Italy starting mid-January, the attacks involve the use of  MassLogger  — a .NET-based malware with capabilities to hinder static analysis — building on similar campaigns undertaken by the same actor against users in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Hungary, Estonia, Romania, and Spain in September, October, and November 2020. MassLogger was first spotted in the wild last April, but the presence of a new variant implies malware authors are constantly retooling their arsenal to evade detection and monetize them. "Although operations of the Masslogger trojan have been previously documented, we found the new campaign notable for using the compiled HTML file format to start the infection chain," researchers with Cisco Talos  said  on W

More details have emerged about a security feature bypass vulnerability in Windows NT LAN Manager ( NTLM ) that was addressed by Microsoft as part of its monthly  Patch Tuesday updates  earlier this month. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2021-1678  (CVSS score 4.3), was described as a "remotely exploitable" bug found in a vulnerable component bound to the network stack, although exact details of the issue remained unknown. Now according to researchers from Crowdstrike, the security bug, if left unpatched, could allow a bad actor to achieve remote code execution via an NTLM relay. "This vulnerability allows an attacker to relay NTLM authentication sessions to an attacked machine, and use a printer spooler  MSRPC  interface to remotely execute code on the attacked machine," the researchers  said  in a Friday advisory. NTLM relay attacks are a kind of man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks that typically permit attackers with access to a network to intercept legitimate authe

Cybersecurity researchers today revealed a wide-ranging scam targeting cryptocurrency users that began as early as January last year to distribute trojanized applications to install a previously undetected remote access tool on target systems. Called ElectroRAT by Intezer, the RAT is written from ground-up in Golang and designed to target multiple operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and macOS.  The apps are developed using the open-source Electron cross-platform desktop app framework. "ElectroRAT is the latest example of attackers using Golang to develop multi-platform malware and evade most antivirus engines," the researchers said . "It is common to see various information stealers trying to collect private keys to access victims wallets. However, it is rare to see tools written from scratch and targeting multiple operating systems for these purposes." The campaign, first detected in December, is believed to have claimed over 6,500 victims based on th

Cybersecurity researchers at ESET have unveiled what they claim to be the first-ever UEFI rootkit being used in the wild, allowing hackers to implant persistent malware on the targeted computers that could survive a complete hard-drive wipe. Dubbed LoJax , the UEFI rootkit is part of a malware campaign conducted by the infamous Sednit group, also known as APT28, Fancy Bear , Strontium , and Sofacy , to target several government organizations in the Balkans as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. Operating since at least 2007, Sednit group is a state-sponsored hacking group believed to be a unit of GRU (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate), a Russian secret military intelligence agency. The hacking group has been associated with a number of high profile attacks, including the DNC hack just before the U.S. 2016 presidential election . UEFI, or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, a replacement for the traditional BIOS, is a core and critical firmware component of a

Just a few days prior to its monthly patch release, Microsoft released an emergency patch for a critical vulnerability in the Windows Host Compute Service Shim (hcsshim) library that could allow remote attackers to run malicious code on Windows computers. Windows Host Compute Service Shim (hcsshim) is an open source library that helps "Docker for Windows" execute Windows Server containers using a low-level container management API in Hyper-V. Discovered by Swiss developer and security researcher Michael Hanselmann , the critical vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2018-8115) is the result of the failure of the hcsshim library to properly validate input when importing a Docker container image. This, in turn, allows an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code on the Windows host operating system, eventually letting the attacker create, remove, and replace files on the target host. As Hanselmann explained  in his personal blog, "Importing a Docker container image or

It's an impressive milestone for Google — For the first time in decades, Android has been crowned as the world's most popular operating system in terms of Internet usage, knocking Microsoft Windows off the top spot. According to a new report from web traffic analytics firm StatCounter, Google's Android is the most popular operating system worldwide in terms of total internet usage across desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile combined. Looking at overall internet usage, Android represented 37.93 percent of the global OS Internet usage market share in March, while Windows accounted for 37.91 percent. Although Windows is still not far behind, Android taking the lead is being described by StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen as a "milestone in technology history." This achievement is due to the fact that mobile devices are used to connect to the Internet far more frequently than desktops and laptops, and people are spending more time on smartphones surfing the Inter

While the whole world was waiting for the next generation of Windows operating system , i.e. Windows 9, but skipping right over 9, Microsoft has announced the next version of its Windows is Windows 10 , disclosing its first details on Tuesday at an event in San Francisco. The latest version of Microsoft's flagship operating system, which will be available for everyone next year, brings back the popular Start Menu, which had been removed from Windows 8. Windows 10 will be Microsoft's single platform for developing apps across all devices, from Smartphones and tablets to desktop PCs. However, Windows 10 will not be a one-size-fits-all operating system and instead will vary a bit from device to device. " Windows 10 will run on the broadest amount of devices. A tailored experience for each device ," Microsoft's executive VP of operating systems, Terry Myerson said at a press event here Tuesday. " There will be one way to write a universal application, one

Tomorrow, 8th April could be a sad day for all those who are still using Windows XP, as it is an official assassination day of it, but there is also a good news that Microsoft is going to stop charging for its Windows Operating System on on the devices with screens smaller than nine inches. Yes, Free a Windows OS for the  Internet of Things (IoTs) ,  such as Mobile Devices, Smart thermostats, Smart TVs, wearable devices etc., that was announced by Microsoft at Build 2014 conference on Wednesday. " To accelerate the creation of great mobile devices running Windows and grow our number of users, we announced today that Windows will be available for $0 to hardware partners for Windows Phones and tablets smaller than 9" in size, " said Terry Myerson, executive vice president, OS Group at Microsoft and he also added that it will include a one-year subscription to Office 365. FREE, BUT NOT OPEN SOURCE Free Windows , means the manufacturers of small tablets, phones and any o

Adobe has released a security update to address critical vulnerabilities for Adobe Shockwave Player 12.0.7.148 and earlier versions of the Windows and Mac OS X systems. The Patch fixes two critical remote code execution vulnerabilities, that could potentially allow an attacker to remotely take control of the affected system. According to the Security  Advisory released by Adobe, the vulnerabilities labeled as CVE-2014-0500 and CVE-2014-0501, and very limited information is available at this moment. These vulnerabilities discovered and reported by Liangliang Song of Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs. ' An attacker can exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code in the context of the user running the affected application. Failed exploit attempts will likely result in denial-of-service conditions. ' advisory explained. Adobe gave the update its highest 'Priority Ranking' of 1 , which indicates that a vulnerability is actively being targeted, or has

Hey Android users! I am quite sure that you must be syncing your Smartphone with your PCs for transferring files and generating backup of your device.  If your system is running a windows operating system, then it's a bad news for you. Researchers have discovered a new piece of windows malware that attempts to install mobile banking malware on Android devices while syncing. Last year in the month of February, Kaspersky Lab revealed an Android malware that could infect your computer when connected to Smartphone or tablets.   Recently, Researchers at Symantec antivirus firm discovered another interesting windows malware called ' Trojan . Droidpak ', that drops a malicious DLL in the computer system and then downloads a configuration file from the following remote server: https://xia2.dy[REMOVED]s-web.com/iconfig.txt The Windows Trojan then parses this configuration file and download a malicious APK (an Android application) from the following location on the

Microsoft has  released  11 Security Patch this Tuesday, including one for CVE-2013-5065  zero-day vulnerability, recently discovered Local privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow a hacker to launch an attack using corrupted TIFF images to take over victims' computers. FireEye researchers said they found the exploit in the wild being used alongside a PDF-based exploit against a patched Adobe Reader vulnerability. December's Patch Tuesday update bundle brings five bulletins ranked critical, including a patch for a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution in Internet Explorer and another remote code execution vulnerability in Office and Microsoft Server is also addressed. Other patches addressing remote code execution vulnerabilities in Lync, all versions of Office and Microsoft Exchange. All supported versions of Windows, from XP to RT and 8.1, are affected by at least one of the critical vulnerabilities. The Six Security bulletins rated important de

Security researchers at FireEye have detected a new series of drive-by attacks based on a new Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability. The attackers breached a website based in the US to deploy the exploit code to conduct a classic watering hole attack. The discovery was announced just a few days after Microsoft revealed the Microsoft Zero-day CVE-2013-3906 , a Zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft graphics component that is actively exploited in targeted attacks using crafted Word documents sent by email. Microsoft graphics component zero-day vulnerability allows attackers to install a malware via infected Word documents and target Microsoft Office users running on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Recently reported new Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability detected by FireEye affects the English versions of IE 7 and 8 in Windows XP and IE 8 on Windows 7, but according the experts it can be easily changed to leverage other languages. Experts at FireEye conf

Microsoft today announced that they had paid more than $28,000 in rewards to Security Researchers for its first Bug Bounty program, that went on for a month during the preview release of Internet Explorer 11 (IE11). The program was designed to run during Internet Explorer 11's browser beta test on June 26 and went on till July 26. They said it would pay researchers up to $11,000 for each Internet Explorer 11 vulnerability they found. In July, the company announced that the first such bounty award was given to a current employee of Google, Ivan Fratric. Today Microsoft has released the names of all the people who the company said found vulnerabilities that qualified for a bounty and paid out $28k a total of six researchers for reporting 15 different bugs. J ames Forshaw, Context Security 4 Internet Explorer 11 Preview Bug Bounty - $4,400 1 Bonus for finding cool IE design vulnerabilities - $5,000 Jose Antonio Vazquez Gonzalez, Yenteasy - Security Research 5 Internet Explorer 11

This Tuesday, Microsoft will be releasing its September's Patch Tuesday updates includes 14 bulletins in total, fixing issues in Windows, Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer, SharePoint and FrontPage. In all, there are eight remote code execution flaws in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Server Software, Microsoft Windows, which can allow hackers to gain access to, or take control of an affected system without user prompts or permission. The four critical bulletins affect Sharepoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer and XP and Windows 2003. Bulletien second will address a Remote Code Execution flaw in Microsoft Office that can be triggered simply by previewing an email in Outlook, even without explicitly opening the e-mail. The problem for users is that Outlook automatically displays the content of each email it previews. The remaining 10 bulletins are all rated important by Microsoft, four of them patch remote code execution flaws in Office, while three other privilege escalati

Yeah, it's Patch Tuesday once again. Almost 10 years ago in October, 2003 - Microsoft  invented the process of regularly scheduled security updates on every second Tuesday of the Month, as  Patch Tuesday. Today, the Microsoft Security team will i ssue eight security updates in total, out of that -- three of which are designated as " critical ," and rest five as " Important " updates, that patches vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Server Software, and Internet Explorer. The eight bulletins that Microsoft is releasing fixes a total of 23 different vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. Microsoft will be rolling out a total of three Critical patches dealing with Remote Code Execution. Windows 8 is expected to get four of the updates, one of them is critical and dealing with Remote Code Execution with Internet Explorer 10, while the other three updates are Important and deal with Elevation of Privilege and Denial of Service . Windows RT i