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Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a set of flaws impacting Palo Alto Networks and SonicWall virtual private network (VPN) clients that could be potentially exploited to gain remote code execution on Windows and macOS systems. "By targeting the implicit trust VPN clients place in servers, attackers can manipulate client behaviours, execute arbitrary commands, and gain high levels of access with minimal effort," AmberWolf said in an analysis. In a hypothetical attack scenario, this plays out in the form of a rogue VPN server that can trick the clients into downloading malicious updates that can cause unintended consequences. The result of the investigation is a proof-of-concept (PoC) attack tool called NachoVPN that can simulate such VPN servers and exploit the vulnerabilities to achieve privileged code execution. The identified flaws are listed below - CVE-2024-5921 (CVSS score: 5.6) - An insufficient certificate validation vulnerability impacting Palo Alto N...

A newly patched security flaw impacting Windows NT LAN Manager (NTLM) was exploited as a zero-day by a suspected Russia-linked actor as part of cyber attacks targeting Ukraine. The vulnerability in question, CVE-2024-43451 (CVSS score: 6.5), refers to an NTLM hash disclosure spoofing vulnerability that could be exploited to steal a user's NTLMv2 hash. It was patched by Microsoft earlier this week. "Minimal interaction with a malicious file by a user such as selecting (single-click), inspecting (right-click), or performing an action other than opening or executing could trigger this vulnerability," Microsoft revealed in its advisory. Israeli cybersecurity company ClearSky, which discovered the zero-day exploitation of the flaw in June 2024, said it's been abused as part of an attack chain that delivers the open-source Spark RAT malware. "The vulnerability activates URL files, leading to malicious activity," the company said, adding the malicious file...

Serverless environments, leveraging services such as AWS Lambda, offer incredible benefits in terms of scalability, efficiency, and reduced operational overhead. However, securing these environments is extremely challenging. The core of current serverless security practices often revolves around two key components: log monitoring and static analysis of code or system configuration. But here is the issue with that: 1. Logs Only Tell Part of the Story Logs can track external-facing activities, but they don't provide visibility into the internal execution of functions. For example, if an attacker injects malicious code into a serverless function that doesn't interact with external resources (e.g., external APIs or databases), traditional log-based tools will not detect this intrusion. The attacker may execute unauthorized processes, manipulate files, or escalate privileges—all without triggering log events. 2. Static Misconfiguration Detection is Incomplete Static tools that check ...

Microsoft on Tuesday revealed that two security flaws impacting Windows NT LAN Manager ( NTLM ) and Task Scheduler have come under active exploitation in the wild. The security vulnerabilities are among the 90 security bugs the tech giant addressed as part of its Patch Tuesday update for November 2024. Of the 90 flaws, four are rated Critical, 85 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. Fifty-two of the patched vulnerabilities are remote code execution flaws. The fixes are in addition to 31 vulnerabilities Microsoft resolved in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the October 2024 Patch Tuesday update. The two vulnerabilities that have been listed as actively exploited are below - CVE-2024-43451 (CVSS score: 6.5) - Windows NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability CVE-2024-49039 (CVSS score: 8.8) - Windows Task Scheduler Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability "This vulnerability discloses a user's NTLMv2 hash to the attacker who c...

Cybersecurity researchers have unpacked the inner workings of a new ransomware variant called Cicada3301 that shares similarities with the now-defunct BlackCat (aka ALPHV) operation. "It appears that Cicada3301 ransomware primarily targets small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), likely through opportunistic attacks that exploit vulnerabilities as the initial access vector," cybersecurity company Morphisec said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. Written in Rust and capable of targeting both Windows and Linux/ESXi hosts, Cicada3301 first emerged in June 2024, inviting potential affiliates to join their ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platform via an advertisement on the RAMP underground forum. A notable aspect of the ransomware is that the executable embeds the compromised user's credentials, which are then used to run PsExec , a legitimate tool that makes it possible to run programs remotely. Cicada3301's similarities with BlackCat also extend t...

The Chinese state-sponsored group known as  UNC3886  has been found to exploit a zero-day flaw in VMware ESXi hosts to backdoor Windows and Linux systems. The VMware Tools authentication bypass vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2023-20867  (CVSS score: 3.9), "enabled the execution of privileged commands across Windows, Linux, and PhotonOS (vCenter) guest VMs without authentication of guest credentials from a compromised ESXi host and no default logging on guest VMs," Mandiant  said . UNC3886 was  initially documented  by the Google-owned threat intelligence firm in September 2022 as a cyber espionage actor infecting VMware ESXi and vCenter servers with backdoors named VIRTUALPITA and VIRTUALPIE. Earlier this March, the group was  linked  to the exploitation of a now-patched medium-severity security flaw in the Fortinet FortiOS operating system to deploy implants on the network appliances and interact with the aforementioned malware. The th...

Details have emerged about a now-patched actively exploited security flaw in Microsoft Windows that could be abused by a threat actor to gain elevated privileges on affected systems. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2023-29336 , is rated 7.8 for severity and concerns an elevation of privilege bug in the Win32k component. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," Microsoft  disclosed  in an advisory issued last month as part of Patch Tuesday updates. Avast researchers Jan Vojtěšek, Milánek, and Luigino Camastra were credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. Win32k.sys is a kernel-mode driver and an integral part of the Windows architecture, being responsible for graphical device interface (GUI) and window management. While the exact specifics surrounding in-the-wild abuse of the flaw is presently not known, Numen Cyber has deconstructed the patch released by Microsoft to craft a proof-of-concept ( PoC ) expl...

Enterprise communications service provider 3CX confirmed that the  supply chain attack  targeting its desktop application for Windows and macOS was the handiwork of a threat actor with North Korean nexus. The findings are the result of an interim assessment conducted by Google-owned Mandiant, whose services were enlisted after the intrusion came to light late last month. The threat intelligence and incident response unit is tracking the activity under its uncategorized moniker  UNC4736 . It's worth noting that CrowdStrike has tied the attack to a Lazarus sub-group dubbed Labyrinth Chollima , citing tactical overlaps. The cybersecurity firm told The Hacker News the latest findings appear to be consistent with their previous attribution. The  attack chain , based on analyses from multiple security vendors, entailed the use of DLL side-loading techniques to load an information stealer known as ICONIC Stealer, followed by a second-stage called  Gopuram  in...

A Chinese state-sponsored threat activity group tracked as  RedGolf  has been  attributed  to the use of a custom Windows and Linux backdoor called KEYPLUG. "RedGolf is a particularly prolific Chinese state-sponsored threat actor group that has likely been active for many years against a wide range of industries globally," Recorded Future told The Hacker News. "The group has shown the ability to rapidly weaponize  newly reported vulnerabilities (e.g. Log4Shell and  ProxyLogon ) and has a history of developing and using a large range of custom malware families." The use of KEYPLUG by Chinese threat actors was  first disclosed  by Google-owned Mandiant in March 2022 in attacks targeting multiple U.S. state government networks between May 2021 and February 2022. Then in October 2022, Malwarebytes  detailed  a separate set of attacks targeting government entities in Sri Lanka in early August that leveraged a novel implant dubbed DBox...

Researchers have shed light on a new hybrid malware campaign targeting both Android and Windows operating systems in a bid to expand its pool of victims. The attacks entail the use of different malware such as  ERMAC ,  Erbium ,  Aurora , and  Laplas , according to a  ThreatFabric report  shared with The Hacker News. "This campaign resulted in thousands of victims," the Dutch cybersecurity company said, adding, "Erbium stealer successfully exfiltrated data from more then 1,300 victims." The ERMAC infections commence with a fraudulent website that claims to offer Wi-Fi authorization software for Android and Windows that, when installed, comes with features to steal seed phrases from crypto wallets and other sensitive data. ThreatFabric said it also found a number of malicious apps that were trojanized versions of legitimate apps like Instagram, with the operators using them as droppers to deliver the obfuscated malicious payload. The rogue apps, dubb...

The operators of the RansomExx ransomware have become the latest to develop a new variant fully rewritten in the Rust programming language, following other strains like  BlackCat ,  Hive , and  Luna . The latest version, dubbed RansomExx2 by the threat actor known as Hive0091 (aka DefrayX), is primarily designed to run on the Linux operating system, although it's expected that a Windows version will be released in the future. RansomExx, also known as Defray777 and Ransom X, is a  ransomware   family  that's known to be active since 2018. It has since been linked to a number of attacks on government agencies, manufacturers, and other high-profile entities like Embraer and GIGABYTE. "Malware written in Rust often benefits from lower [antivirus] detection rates (compared to those written in more common languages) and this may have been the primary reason to use the language," IBM Security X-Force researcher Charlotte Hammond  said  in a report p...

Details have emerged about a previously undocumented and fully undetectable (FUD) PowerShell backdoor that gains its stealth by disguising itself as part of a Windows update process. "The covert self-developed tool and the associated C2 commands seem to be the work of a sophisticated, unknown threat actor who has targeted approximately 100 victims," Tomer Bar, director of security research at SafeBreach,  said  in a new report. Attributed to an  unnamed threat actor , attack chains involving the malware commence with a weaponized  Microsoft Word document  that, per the company, was uploaded from Jordan on August 25, 2022. Metadata associated with the lure document indicates that the initial intrusion vector is a LinkedIn-based spear-phishing attack, which ultimately leads to the execution of a PowerShell script via a piece of embedded macro code. "The Macro drops 'updater.vbs,' creates a scheduled task pretending to be part of a Windows update, which will ...

Details have emerged about a now-patched security flaw in Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) that could be exploited by an attacker to gain elevated permissions on compromised machines. Tracked as  CVE-2022-37969  (CVSS score: 7.8), the issue was addressed by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for September 2022, while also noting that it was being actively exploited in the wild. "An attacker must already have access and the ability to run code on the target system," the company  noted  in its advisory. "This technique does not allow for remote code execution in cases where the attacker does not already have that ability on the target system." It also credited researchers from CrowdStrike, DBAPPSecurity, Mandiant, and Zscaler for reporting the vulnerability without delving into additional specifics surrounding the nature of the attacks. Now, the Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher team has disclosed that it captured an in-the-wild exploit for the the...

A previously undocumented command-and-control (C2) framework dubbed Alchimist is likely being used in the wild to target Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. "Alchimist C2 has a web interface written in Simplified Chinese and can generate a configured payload, establish remote sessions, deploy payload to the remote machines, capture screenshots, perform remote shellcode execution, and run arbitrary commands," Cisco Talos  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Written in GoLang, Alchimist is complemented by a beacon implant called Insekt, which comes with remote access features that can be instrumented by the C2 server. The discovery of Alchimist and its assorted family of malware implants comes three months after Talos also detailed another self-contained framework known as  Manjusaka , which has been  touted  as the "Chinese sibling of Sliver and Cobalt Strike." Even more interestingly, both Manjusaka and Alchimist pack in similar functionalities, ...

Tech giant Microsoft on Tuesday shipped fixes to quash  64 new security flaws  across its software lineup, including one zero-day flaw that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Of the 64 bugs, five are rated Critical, 57 are rated Important, one is rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. The patches are in addition to  16 vulnerabilities  that Microsoft addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser earlier this month. "In terms of CVEs released, this Patch Tuesday may appear on the lighter side in comparison to other months," Bharat Jogi, director of vulnerability and threat research at Qualys, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "However, this month hit a sizable milestone for the calendar year, with MSFT having fixed the 1000th CVE of 2022 – likely on track to surpass 2021, which patched 1,200 CVEs in total." The actively exploited vulnerability in question is  CVE-2022-37969  (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege e...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added a recently disclosed security flaw in the UnRAR utility to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2022-30333 (CVSS score: 7.5), the issue concerns a path traversal vulnerability in the Unix versions of UnRAR that can be triggered upon extracting a maliciously crafted RAR archive. This means that an adversary could exploit the flaw to drop arbitrary files on a target system that has the utility installed simply by decompressing the file. The vulnerability was  revealed  by SonarSource researcher Simon Scannell in late June. "RARLAB UnRAR on Linux and UNIX contains a directory traversal vulnerability, allowing an attacker to write to files during an extract (unpack) operation," the agency  said  in an advisory. Although the flaw affects any Linux application that uses UnRAR to extract an archive file, a successful exploi...

Microsoft on Monday announced the general availability of a feature called Autopatch that automatically keeps Windows and Office software up-to-date on enrolled endpoints. The launch, which comes a day before Microsoft is expected to release its monthly round of security patches, is available for customers with Windows Enterprise E3 and E5 licenses. It, however, doesn't support Windows Education (A3) or Windows Front Line Worker (F3) licenses. "Microsoft will continue to release updates on the second Tuesday of every month and now Autopatch helps streamline updating operations and create new opportunities for IT pros," Lior Bela  said . Autopatch works by  applying security updates  first to devices in what's called the Test ring, which contains a minimum number of representative devices. After a validation period, the updates are pushed to the First (1% devices), Fast (9%), and Broad (90%) rings. The service was first  teased  by the tech giant in April...