Winnti Hacking Group | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The China-aligned espionage-focused actor dubbed Winnti has set its sights on government organizations in Hong Kong as part of an ongoing campaign dubbed  Operation CuckooBees . Active since at least 2007,  Winnti  (aka APT41, Barium, Bronze Atlas, and Wicked Panda) is the name designated to a prolific cyber threat group that carries out Chinese state-sponsored espionage activity, predominantly aimed at stealing technology secrets from organizations in developed economies. The threat actor's campaigns have targeted healthcare, telecoms, high-tech, media, agriculture, and education sectors, with infection chains primarily relying on spear-phishing emails with attachments to initially break into the victims' networks. Earlier this May, Cybereason  disclosed  long-running attacks orchestrated by the group since 2019 to siphon intellectual property from technology and manufacturing companies mainly located in East Asia, Western Europe, and North America. The intrusions, clubb

Cybersecurity researchers claim to have discovered a previously undocumented backdoor specifically designed for Microsoft SQL servers that could allow a remote attacker to control an already compromised system stealthily. Dubbed Skip-2.0 , the backdoor malware is a post-exploitation tool that runs in the memory and lets remote attackers connect to any account on the server running MSSQL version 11 and version 12 by using a "magic password." What's more? The malware manages to remain undetected on the victim's MSSQL Server by disabling the compromised machine's logging functions, event publishing, and audit mechanisms every time the "magic password" is used. With these capabilities, an attacker can stealthily copy, modify, or delete the content stored in a database, the impact of which varies from application to application integrated with targeted servers. "This could be used, for example, to manipulate in-game currencies for financial gai

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo