botnet | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have exposed a new campaign that targets web servers running PHP-based applications to promote gambling platforms in Indonesia. "Over the past two months, a significant volume of attacks from Python-based bots has been observed, suggesting a coordinated effort to exploit thousands of web apps," Imperva researcher Daniel Johnston said in an analysis. "These attacks appear tied to the proliferation of gambling-related sites, potentially as a response to the heightened government scrutiny ." The Thales-owned company said it has detected millions of requests originating from a Python client that includes a command to install GSocket (aka Global Socket), an open-source tool that can be used to establish a communication channel between two machines regardless of the network perimeter. It's worth noting that GSocket has been put to use in many a cryptojacking operation in recent months, not to mention even exploiting the access provi...

A Mirai botnet variant has been found exploiting a newly disclosed security flaw impacting Four-Faith industrial routers since early November 2024 with the goal of conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The botnet maintains approximately 15,000 daily active IP addresses, with the infections primarily scattered across China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Exploiting an arsenal of over 20 known security vulnerabilities and weak Telnet credentials for initial access, the malware is known to have been active since February 2024. The botnet has been dubbed "gayfemboy" in reference to the offensive term present in the source code. QiAnXin XLab said it observed the malware leveraging a zero-day vulnerability in industrial routers manufactured by China-based Four-Faith to deliver the artifacts as early as November 9, 2024. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-12856 (CVSS score: 7.2), which refers to an operating system (OS) command injectio...

As SaaS providers race to integrate AI into their product offerings to stay competitive and relevant, a new challenge has emerged in the world of AI: shadow AI.  Shadow AI refers to the unauthorized use of AI tools and copilots at organizations. For example, a developer using ChatGPT to assist with writing code, a salesperson downloading an AI-powered meeting transcription tool, or a customer support person using Agentic AI to automate tasks – without going through the proper channels. When these tools are used without IT or the Security team's knowledge, they often lack sufficient security controls, putting company data at risk. Shadow AI Detection Challenges Because shadow AI tools often embed themselves in approved business applications via AI assistants, copilots, and agents they are even more tricky to discover than traditional shadow IT. While traditional shadow apps can be identified through network monitoring methodologies that scan for unauthorized connections based on...

Cybersecurity researchers have revealed several malicious packages on the npm registry that have been found impersonating the Nomic Foundation's Hardhat tool in order to steal sensitive data from developer systems. "By exploiting trust in open source plugins, attackers have infiltrated these platforms through malicious npm packages, exfiltrating critical data such as private keys, mnemonics, and configuration details," the Socket research team said in an analysis. Hardhat is a development environment for Ethereum software, incorporating various components for editing, compiling, debugging and deploying smart contracts and decentralized apps (dApps). The list of identified counterfeit packages is as follows - nomicsfoundations @nomisfoundation/hardhat-configure installedpackagepublish @nomisfoundation/hardhat-config @monicfoundation/hardhat-config @nomicsfoundation/sdk-test @nomicsfoundation/hardhat-config @nomicsfoundation/web3-sdk @nomicsfoundation/sdk-...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about a spike in malicious activity that involves roping vulnerable D-Link routers into two different botnets, a Mirai variant dubbed FICORA and a Kaiten (aka Tsunami) variant called CAPSAICIN. "These botnets are frequently spread through documented D-Link vulnerabilities that allow remote attackers to execute malicious commands via a GetDeviceSettings action on the HNAP (Home Network Administration Protocol) interface," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Vincent Li said in a Thursday analysis. "This HNAP weakness was first exposed almost a decade ago, with numerous devices affected by a variety of CVE numbers, including CVE-2015-2051 , CVE-2019-10891 , CVE-2022-37056 , and CVE-2024-33112 ." According to the cybersecurity company's telemetry data, attacks involving FICORA have targeted various countries globally, whereas those related to CAPSAICIN primarily singled out East Asian territories like Japan and Taiwan. T...

Juniper Networks is warning that Session Smart Router (SSR) products with default passwords are being targeted as part of a malicious campaign that deploys the Mirai botnet malware. The company said it's issuing the advisory after "several customers" reported anomalous behavior on their Session Smart Network (SSN) platforms on December 11, 2024. "These systems have been infected with the Mirai malware and were subsequently used as a DDoS attack source to other devices accessible by their network," it said . "The impacted systems were all using default passwords." Mirai , which has had its source code leaked in 2016, has spawned several variants over the years. The malware is capable of scanning for known vulnerabilities as well as default credentials to infiltrate devices and enlist them into a botnet for mounting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. To mitigate such threats, organizations are recommended to change their passwords with i...

Germany's Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) has announced that it has disrupted a malware operation called BADBOX that came preloaded on at least 30,000 internet-connected devices sold across the country. In a statement published earlier this week, authorities said they severed the communications between the devices and their command-and-control (C2) servers by sinkholing the domains in question. Impacted devices include digital picture frames, media players, and streamers, and likely phones and tablets. "What all of these devices have in common is that they have outdated Android versions and were delivered with pre-installed malware," the BSI said in a press release. BADBOX was first documented by HUMAN's Satori Threat Intelligence and Research team in October 2023, describing it as a "complex threat actor scheme" that involves deploying the Triada Android malware on low-cost, off-brand Android devices by exploiting weak supply chain links...

A global law enforcement operation has failed 27 stresser services that were used to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and took them offline as part of a multi-year international exercise called PowerOFF. The effort, coordinated by Europol and involving 15 countries, dismantled several booter and stresser websites, including zdstresser.net, orbitalstress.net, and starkstresser.net. These services typically employ botnet malware installed on compromised devices to launch attacks on behalf of paying customers against targets of their liking. In addition, three administrators associated with the illicit platforms have been arrested in France and Germany, with over 300 users identified for planned operational activities. "Known as 'booter' and 'stresser' websites, these platforms enabled cybercriminals and hacktivists to flood targets with illegal traffic, rendering websites and other web-based services inaccessible," Europol said in a stat...

A malicious botnet called Socks5Systemz is powering a proxy service called PROXY.AM, according to new findings from Bitsight. "Proxy malware and services enable other types of criminal activity adding uncontrolled layers of anonymity to the threat actors, so they can perform all kinds of malicious activity using chains of victim systems," the company's security research team said in an analysis published last week. The disclosure comes merely weeks after the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies revealed that systems compromised by another malware known as Ngioweb are being abused as residential proxy servers for NSOCKS. Socks5Systemz, originally advertised in the cybercrime underground as far back as March 2013, was previously documented by BitSight as being deployed as part of cyber attacks targeting distributing PrivateLoader, SmokeLoader, and Amadey. The primary objective of the malware is to turn compromised systems into proxy exit nodes, which are t...

Cisco on Monday updated an advisory to warn customers of active exploitation of a decade-old security flaw impacting its Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2014-2120 (CVSS score: 4.3), concerns a case of insufficient input validation in ASA's WebVPN login page that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack against a targeted user of the appliance. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by convincing a user to access a malicious link," Cisco noted in an alert released in March 2014. As of December 2, 2024, the networking equipment major has revised its bulletin to note that it has become aware of "additional attempted exploitation" of the vulnerability in the wild. The development comes shortly after cybersecurity firm CloudSEK revealed that the threat actors behind AndroxGh0st are leveraging an extensive list of security vulnerabilities in various internet-faci...

A threat actor named Matrix has been linked to a widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaign that leverages vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in Internet of Things (IoT) devices to co-opt them into a disruptive botnet. "This operation serves as a comprehensive one-stop shop for scanning, exploiting vulnerabilities, deploying malware, and setting up shop kits, showcasing a do-it-all-yourself approach to cyberattacks," Assaf Morag, director of threat intelligence at cloud security firm Aqua, said . There is evidence to suggest that the operation is the work of a lone wolf actor, a script kiddie of Russian origin. The attacks have primarily targeted IP addresses located in China, Japan, and to a lesser extent Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, India, and the U.S. The absence of Ukraine in the victimology footprint indicates that the attackers are purely driven by financial motivations, the cloud security firm said. The attack chains are characterized by ...

The malware known as Ngioweb has been used to fuel a notorious residential proxy service called NSOCKS, as well as by other services such as VN5Socks and Shopsocks5, new findings from Lumen Technologies reveal. "At least 80% of NSOCKS bots in our telemetry originate from the Ngioweb botnet, mainly utilizing small office/home office (SOHO) routers and IoT devices," the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen Technologies said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Two-thirds of these proxies are based in the U.S." "The network maintains a daily average of roughly 35,000 working bots, with 40% remaining active for a month or longer." Ngioweb, first documented by Check Point way back in August 2018 in connection with a Ramnit trojan campaign that distributed the malware, has been the subject of extensive analyses in recent weeks by LevelBlue and Trend Micro , the latter of which is tracking the financially motivated threat actor behind the operation as Wate...

The threat actors behind the AndroxGh0st malware are now exploiting a broader set of security flaws impacting various internet-facing applications, while also deploying the Mozi botnet malware. "This botnet utilizes remote code execution and credential-stealing methods to maintain persistent access, leveraging unpatched vulnerabilities to infiltrate critical infrastructures," CloudSEK said in a new report. AndroxGh0st is the name given to a Python-based cloud attack tool that's known for its targeting of Laravel applications with the goal of sensitive data pertaining to services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), SendGrid, and Twilio. Active since at least 2022, it has previously leveraged flaws in the Apache web server ( CVE-2021-41773 ), Laravel Framework ( CVE-2018-15133 ), and PHPUnit ( CVE-2017-9841 ) to gain initial access, escalate privileges, and establish persistent control over compromised systems. Earlier this January, U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence a...

German law enforcement authorities have announced the disruption of a criminal service called dstat[.]cc that made it possible for other threat actors to easily mount distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. "The platform made such DDoS attacks accessible to a wide range of users, even those without any in-depth technical skills of their own," the Federal Criminal Police Office (aka Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) said . "The use of stresser services to carry out DDoS attacks has recently become increasingly known in the context of police investigations." The BKA described dstat[.]cc as a platform that offered recommendations and evaluations of stresser services in order to conduct DDoS attacks against websites of interest and render them unresponsive. According to an alert published by Radware in January 2023, dstat[.]cc offered botnet owners the ability to assess the capacity and capabilities of their DDoS attack services. "Bot herders use DStat sites ...

Microsoft has revealed that a Chinese threat actor it tracks as Storm-0940 is leveraging a botnet called Quad7 to orchestrate highly evasive password spray attacks. The tech giant has given the botnet the name CovertNetwork-1658, stating the password spray operations are used to steal credentials from multiple Microsoft customers. "Active since at least 2021, Storm-0940 obtains initial access through password spray and brute-force attacks, or by exploiting or misusing network edge applications and services," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said . "Storm-0940 is known to target organizations in North America and Europe, including think tanks, government organizations, non-governmental organizations, law firms, defense industrial base, and others." Quad7, aka 7777 or xlogin, has been the subject of extensive analyses by Sekoia and Team Cymru in recent months. The botnet malware has been observed targeting several brands of SOHO routers and VPN appliances...

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged two Sudanese brothers with running a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet for hire that conducted a record 35,000 DDoS attacks in a single year, including those that targeted Microsoft's services in June 2023. The attacks, which were facilitated by Anonymous Sudan's "powerful DDoS tool," singled out critical infrastructure, corporate networks, and government agencies in the United States and around the world, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, have been charged with one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers. Ahmed Salah has also been charged with three counts of damaging protected computers. If convicted on all charges, Ahmed Salah faces a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison, while Alaa Salah faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. The DDoS tool is said to have been disabled in March 2024, the same...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new botnet malware family called Gorilla (aka GorillaBot) that draws its inspiration from the leaked Mirai botnet source code. Cybersecurity firm NSFOCUS, which identified the activity last month, said the botnet "issued over 300,000 attack commands, with a shocking attack density" between September 4 and September 27, 2024. No less than 20,000 commands designed to mount distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have been issued from the botnet every day on average. The botnet is said to have targeted more than 100 countries, attacking universities, government websites, telecoms, banks, gaming, and gambling sectors. China, the U.S., Canada, and Germany have emerged as the most attacked countries. The Beijing-headquartered company said Gorilla primarily uses UDP flood , ACK BYPASS flood, Valve Source Engine (VSE) flood , SYN flood , and ACK flood to conduct the DDoS attacks, adding the connectionless nature of the UDP prot...

Cloudflare has disclosed that it mitigated a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that peaked at 3.8 terabits per second (Tbps) and lasted 65 seconds. The web infrastructure and security company said it fended off "over one hundred hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks throughout last month, with many exceeding 2 billion packets per second (Bpps) and 3 terabits per second (Tbps)." The hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks have been ongoing since early September 2024, it noted, adding they targeted multiple customers in the financial services, Internet, and telecommunication industries. The activity has not been attributed to any specific threat actor. The previous record for the largest volumetric DDoS attack hit a peak throughput of 3.47 Tbps in November 2021 , targeting an unnamed Microsoft Azure customer in Asia. The attacks leverage the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) protocol on a fixed port, with the flood of packets originating from Vietnam, Russi...