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Category — botnet
Chinese Actor SecShow Conducts Massive DNS Probing on Global Scale

Chinese Actor SecShow Conducts Massive DNS Probing on Global Scale

Jun 11, 2024 DDoS Attack / Cyber Espionage
Cybersecurity researchers have shed more light on a Chinese actor codenamed SecShow that has been observed conducting Domain Name System (DNS) on a global scale since at least June 2023. The adversary, according to Infoblox security researchers Dr. Renée Burton and Dave Mitchell, operates from the China Education and Research Network ( CERNET ), a project funded by the Chinese government. "These probes seek to find and measure DNS responses at open resolvers," they said in a report published last week. "The end goal of the SecShow operations is unknown, but the information that is gathered can be used for malicious activities and is only for the benefit of the actor." That said, there is some evidence to suggest that it may have been linked to some kind of academic research related to "performing measurements using IP Address Spoofing Techniques on domains within secshow.net" modeled on the same approach as the Closed Resolver Project . This, howeve...
Muhstik Botnet Exploiting Apache RocketMQ Flaw to Expand DDoS Attacks

Muhstik Botnet Exploiting Apache RocketMQ Flaw to Expand DDoS Attacks

Jun 06, 2024 Botnet / DDoS Attack
Muhstik botnet exploits a critical Apache RocketMQ flaw (CVE-2023-33246) for remote code execution , targeting Linux servers and IoT devices for DDoS attacks and cryptocurrency mining . Infection involves executing a shell script from a remote IP, downloading the Muhstik malware binary ("pty3") , and ensuring persistence by copying to multiple directories and editing system files. With over 5,000 vulnerable Apache RocketMQ instances still exposed, organizations must update to the latest version to mitigate risks, while securing MS-SQL servers against brute-force attacks and ensuring regular password changes. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet known as Muhstik has been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw impacting Apache RocketMQ to co-opt susceptible servers and expand its scale. "Muhstik is a well-known threat targeting IoT devices and Linux-based servers, notorious for its ability to infect devices and utilize the...
The Future of Serverless Security in 2025: From Logs to Runtime Protection

The Future of Serverless Security in 2025: From Logs to Runtime Protection

Nov 28, 2024Cloud Security / Threat Detection
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 ...
Oracle WebLogic Server OS Command Injection Flaw Under Active Attack

Oracle WebLogic Server OS Command Injection Flaw Under Active Attack

Jun 04, 2024 Network Security / Cryptocurrency
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a security flaw impacting the Oracle WebLogic Server to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2017-3506 (CVSS score: 7.4), the issue concerns an operating system (OS) command injection vulnerability that could be exploited to obtain unauthorized access to susceptible servers and take complete control. "Oracle WebLogic Server, a product within the Fusion Middleware suite, contains an OS command injection vulnerability that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code via a specially crafted HTTP request that includes a malicious XML document," CISA said. While the agency did not disclose the nature of attacks exploiting the vulnerability, the China-based cryptojacking group known as the 8220 Gang (aka Water Sigbin) has a history of leveraging it since early last year to co-opt unpatched devices into a crypto-mining bot...
cyber security

Creating, Managing and Securing Non-Human Identities

websitePermisoCybersecurity / Identity Security
A new class of identities has emerged alongside traditional human users: non-human identities (NHIs). Permiso Security's new eBook details everything you need to know about managing and securing non-human identities, and strategies to unify identity security without compromising agility.
Authorities Ramp Up Efforts to Capture the Mastermind Behind Emotet

Authorities Ramp Up Efforts to Capture the Mastermind Behind Emotet

Jun 03, 2024 Malware / Cybercrime
Law enforcement authorities behind Operation Endgame are seeking information related to an individual who goes by the name Odd and is allegedly the mastermind behind the Emotet malware.  Odd is also said to go by the nicknames Aron, C700, Cbd748, Ivanov Odd, Mors, Morse, and Veron over the past few years, according to a video released by the agencies. "Who is he working with? What is his current product?," the video continues, suggesting that he is likely not acting alone and may be collaborating with others on malware other than Emotet. The threat actor(s) behind Emotet has been tracked by the cybersecurity community under the monikers Gold Crestwood, Mealybug, Mummy Spider, and TA542. Originally conceived as a banking trojan, it evolved into a broader-purpose tool capable of delivering other payloads, along the lines of malware such as TrickBot, IcedID, QakBot, and others. It re-emerged in late 2021, albeit as part of low-volume campaigns, following a law enforceme...
Russian Hackers Target Europe with HeadLace Malware and Credential Harvesting

Russian Hackers Target Europe with HeadLace Malware and Credential Harvesting

May 31, 2024 Cyber Attack / Credential Harvesting
The Russian GRU-backed threat actor APT28 has been attributed as behind a series of campaigns targeting networks across Europe with the HeadLace malware and credential-harvesting web pages. APT28, also known by the names BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, ITG05, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422, is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group affiliated with Russia's strategic military intelligence unit, the GRU. The hacking crew operates with a high level of stealth and sophistication, often demonstrating their adaptability through deep preparedness and custom tooling, and relying on legitimate internet services (LIS) and living off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) to conceal their operations within regular network traffic. "From April to December 2023, BlueDelta deployed Headlace malware in three distinct phases using geofencing techniques to target networks throughout Europe with a heavy focus on Ukraine," Recorded Future's Insikt ...
Europol Shuts Down 100+ Servers Linked to IcedID, TrickBot, and Other Malware

Europol Shuts Down 100+ Servers Linked to IcedID, TrickBot, and Other Malware

May 30, 2024 Malware / Cyber Crime
Europol on Thursday said it shut down the infrastructure associated with several malware loader operations such as IcedID, SystemBC, PikaBot, SmokeLoader, Bumblebee, and TrickBot as part of a coordinated law enforcement effort codenamed Operation Endgame . "The actions focused on disrupting criminal services through arresting High Value Targets, taking down the criminal infrastructures and freezing illegal proceeds," Europol said in a statement. "The malware [...] facilitated attacks with ransomware and other malicious software." The action, which took place between May 27 and May 29, has resulted in the dismantling of over 100 servers worldwide and the arrest of four people, one in Armenia three in Ukraine , following searches across 16 locations in Armenia, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Ukraine. The servers, according to Europol, were located in Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the...
U.S. Dismantles World's Largest 911 S5 Botnet with 19 Million Infected Devices

U.S. Dismantles World's Largest 911 S5 Botnet with 19 Million Infected Devices

May 30, 2024 Financial Fraud / Dark Web
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Wednesday said it dismantled what it described as "likely the world's largest botnet ever," which consisted of an army of 19 million infected devices that was leased to other threat actors to commit a wide array of offenses. The botnet, which has a global footprint spanning more than 190 countries , functioned as a residential proxy service known as 911 S5 . A 35-year-old Chinese national, YunHe Wang, was arrested in Singapore on May 24, 2024, for creating and acting as the primary administrator of the illegal platform from 2014 to July 2022. Wang has been charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud, substantive computer fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. If convicted on all counts, Wang faces a maximum penalty of 65 years in prison. The Justice Department said the botnet was used to carry out cyber attacks, financial fraud, identity theft, child exploitation, harassment, bo...
Researchers Warn of CatDDoS Botnet and DNSBomb DDoS Attack Technique

Researchers Warn of CatDDoS Botnet and DNSBomb DDoS Attack Technique

May 28, 2024 Vulnerability / Server Security
The threat actors behind the CatDDoS malware botnet have exploited over 80 known security flaws in various software over the past three months to infiltrate vulnerable devices and co-opt them into a botnet for conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. "CatDDoS-related gangs' samples have used a large number of known vulnerabilities to deliver samples," the QiAnXin XLab team  said . "Additionally, the maximum number of targets has been observed to exceed 300+ per day." The flaws impact routers, networking gear, and other devices from vendors such as Apache (ActiveMQ, Hadoop, Log4j, and RocketMQ), Cacti, Cisco, D-Link, DrayTek, FreePBX, GitLab, Gocloud, Huawei, Jenkins, Linksys, Metabase, NETGEAR, Realtek, Seagate, SonicWall, Tenda, TOTOLINK, TP-Link, ZTE, and Zyxel, among others. CatDDoS was previously documented by  QiAnXin  and  NSFOCUS  in late 2023, describing it as a  Mirai botnet variant  capable of performing DDoS attacks using...
Kinsing Hacker Group Exploits More Flaws to Expand Botnet for Cryptojacking

Kinsing Hacker Group Exploits More Flaws to Expand Botnet for Cryptojacking

May 17, 2024 Cryptojacking / Malware
The cryptojacking group known as  Kinsing  has demonstrated an ability to continuously evolve and adapt, proving to be a persistent threat by swiftly integrating newly disclosed vulnerabilities to the exploit arsenal and expand its botnet. The  findings  come from cloud security firm Aqua, which described the threat actor as actively orchestrating illicit cryptocurrency mining campaigns since 2019. Kinsing (aka  H2Miner ), a name given to both the malware and the adversary behind it, has consistently expanded its toolkit with new exploits to enroll infected systems in a crypto-mining botnet. It was  first documented  by TrustedSec in January 2020. In recent years, campaigns involving the Golang-based malware have weaponized  various flaws  in  Apache ActiveMQ ,  Apache Log4j ,  Apache NiFi ,  Apache Tomcat ,  Atlassian Confluence ,  Citrix ,  Liferay Portal ,  Linux ,  Openfire ,  Oracle W...
Critical Tinyproxy Flaw Opens Over 50,000 Hosts to Remote Code Execution

Critical Tinyproxy Flaw Opens Over 50,000 Hosts to Remote Code Execution

May 06, 2024 Vulnerability / Server Security
More than 50% of the 90,310 hosts have been found exposing a  Tinyproxy service  on the internet that's vulnerable to a critical unpatched security flaw in the HTTP/HTTPS proxy tool. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-49606 , carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10, per Cisco Talos, which described it as a use-after-free bug impacting versions 1.10.0 and 1.11.1, the latter of which is the latest version. "A specially crafted HTTP header can trigger reuse of previously freed memory, which leads to memory corruption and could lead to remote code execution," Talos  said  in an advisory last week. "An attacker needs to make an unauthenticated HTTP request to trigger this vulnerability." In other words, an unauthenticated threat actor could send a specially crafted  HTTP Connection header  to trigger memory corruption that can result in remote code execution. According to  data  shared by attack surface management company Censys, of ...
Ukrainian REvil Hacker Sentenced to 13 Years and Ordered to Pay $16 Million

Ukrainian REvil Hacker Sentenced to 13 Years and Ordered to Pay $16 Million

May 02, 2024 Ransomware / Cyber Crime
A Ukrainian national has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison and ordered to pay $16 million in restitution for carrying out thousands of ransomware attacks and extorting victims. Yaroslav Vasinskyi (aka Rabotnik), 24, along with his co-conspirators part of the  REvil ransomware group  orchestrated more than 2,500 ransomware attacks and demanded ransom payments in cryptocurrency totaling more than $700 million. "The co-conspirators demanded ransom payments in cryptocurrency and used cryptocurrency exchangers and mixing services to hide their ill-gotten gains," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  said . "To drive their ransom demands higher, Sodinokibi/REvil co-conspirators also publicly exposed their victims' data when victims would not pay ransom demands." Vasinskyi was  extradited  to the U.S. in March 2022 following his arrest in Poland in October 2021. REvil, prior to formally going offline in late 2021, was responsible ...
New "Goldoon" Botnet Targets D-Link Routers With Decade-Old Flaw

New "Goldoon" Botnet Targets D-Link Routers With Decade-Old Flaw

May 02, 2024 Botnet / Vulnerability
A never-before-seen botnet called  Goldoon  has been observed targeting D-Link routers with a nearly decade-old critical security flaw with the goal of using the compromised devices for further attacks. The vulnerability in question is  CVE-2015-2051  (CVSS score: 9.8), which affects D-Link DIR-645 routers and allows remote attackers to  execute arbitrary commands  by means of specially crafted HTTP requests. "If a targeted device is compromised, attackers can gain complete control, enabling them to extract system information, establish communication with a C2 server, and then use these devices to launch further attacks, such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researchers Cara Lin and Vincent Li  said . Telemetry data from the network security company points to a spike in the botnet activity around April 9, 2024. It all starts with the exploitation of CVE-2015-2051 to ret...
New U.K. Law Bans Default Passwords on Smart Devices Starting April 2024

New U.K. Law Bans Default Passwords on Smart Devices Starting April 2024

Apr 30, 2024 IoT Security / Botnet
The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is calling on manufacturers of smart devices to comply with new legislation that prohibits them from using default passwords, effective April 29, 2024. "The law, known as the  Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure act  (or PSTI act), will help consumers to choose smart devices that have been designed to provide ongoing protection against cyber attacks," the NCSC  said . To that end, manufacturers are required to not supply devices that use guessable default passwords, provide a point of contact to report security issues, and state the duration for which their devices are expected to receive important security updates. Default passwords can not only be easily found online, they also act as a vector for threat actors to log in to devices for follow-on exploitation. That said, a unique default password is permissible under t...
Okta Warns of Unprecedented Surge in Proxy-Driven Credential Stuffing Attacks

Okta Warns of Unprecedented Surge in Proxy-Driven Credential Stuffing Attacks

Apr 28, 2024 Credential Stuffing / Data Breach
Identity and access management (IAM) services provider Okta has warned of a spike in the "frequency and scale" of credential stuffing attacks aimed at online services. These unprecedented attacks, observed over the last month, are said to be facilitated by "the broad availability of residential proxy services, lists of previously stolen credentials ('combo lists'), and scripting tools," the company  said  in an alert published Saturday. The findings build on a  recent advisory  from Cisco, which cautioned of a global surge in brute-force attacks targeting various devices, including Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, web application authentication interfaces, and SSH services, since at least March 18, 2024. "These attacks all appear to be originating from TOR exit nodes and a range of other anonymizing tunnels and proxies," Talos noted at the time, adding targets of the attacks comprise VPN appliances from Cisco, Check Point, Fortinet, Soni...
Cisco Warns of Global Surge in Brute-Force Attacks Targeting VPN and SSH Services

Cisco Warns of Global Surge in Brute-Force Attacks Targeting VPN and SSH Services

Apr 17, 2024 IoT Security / Network Security
Cisco is warning about a global surge in brute-force attacks targeting various devices, including Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, web application authentication interfaces, and SSH services, since at least March 18, 2024. "These attacks all appear to be originating from TOR exit nodes and a range of other anonymizing tunnels and proxies," Cisco Talos  said . Successful attacks could pave the way for unauthorized network access, account lockouts, or denial-of-service conditions, the cybersecurity company added. The attacks, said to be broad and opportunistic, have been observed targeting the below devices - Cisco Secure Firewall VPN  Check Point VPN Fortinet VPN SonicWall VPN RD Web Services  MikroTik  Draytek  Ubiquiti  Cisco Talos described the brute-forcing attempts as using both generic and valid usernames for specific organizations, with the attacks indiscriminately targeting a wide range of sectors across geographies. The sourc...
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