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A recent malware campaign has been found to leverage  Satacom downloader  as a conduit to deploy stealthy malware capable of siphoning cryptocurrency using a rogue extension for Chromium-based browsers. "The main purpose of the malware that is dropped by the Satacom downloader is to steal BTC from the victim's account by performing web injections into targeted cryptocurrency websites," Kaspersky researchers Haim Zigel and Oleg Kupreev  said . Targets of the campaign include Coinbase, Bybit, KuCoin, Huobi, and Binance users primarily located in Brazil, Algeria, Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Egypt, and Mexico. Satacom downloader, also called  Legion Loader , first emerged in 2019 as a dropper for next-stage payloads, including information stealers and cryptocurrency miners. Infection chains involving the malware begin when users searching for cracked software are redirected to bogus websites that host ZIP archive files containing the malware. "Various types

A financially motivated threat actor is actively scouring the internet for unprotected  Apache NiFi instances  to covertly install a cryptocurrency miner and facilitate lateral movement. The findings come from the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC), which detected a spike in HTTP requests for "/nifi" on May 19, 2023. "Persistence is achieved via timed processors or entries to cron,"  said  Dr. Johannes Ullrich, dean of research for SANS Technology Institute. "The attack script is not saved to the system. The attack scripts are kept in memory only." A honeypot setup allowed the ISC to determine that the initial foothold is weaponized to drop a shell script that removes the "/var/log/syslog" file, disables the firewall, and terminates competing crypto-mining tools, before downloading and launching the Kinsing malware from a remote server. It's worth pointing out that  Kinsing  has a  track record  of  leveraging  publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in publicly accessible web applicati

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A new stealthy information stealer malware called Bandit Stealer has caught the attention of cybersecurity researchers for its ability to target numerous web browsers and cryptocurrency wallets.  "It has the potential to expand to other platforms as Bandit Stealer was developed using the Go programming language, possibly allowing cross-platform compatibility," Trend Micro  said  in a Friday report. The malware is currently focused on targeting Windows by using a legitimate command-line tool called  runas.exe  that allows users to run programs as another user with different permissions. The goal is to escalate privileges and execute itself with administrative access, thereby effectively bypassing security measures to harvest wide swathes of data. That said, Microsoft's access control mitigations to prevent unauthorized execution of the tool means an attempt to run the malware binary as an administrator requires providing the necessary credentials. "By using the

A financially motivated threat actor of Indonesian origin has been observed leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances to carry out illicit crypto mining operations. Cloud security company's Permiso P0 Labs, which first detected the group in November 2021, has assigned it the moniker  GUI-vil  (pronounced Goo-ee-vil). "The group displays a preference for Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools, specifically S3 Browser (version 9.5.5) for their initial operations," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Upon gaining AWS Console access, they conduct their operations directly through the web browser." Attack chains mounted by GUI-vil entail obtaining initial access by weaponizing AWS keys in publicly exposed source code repositories on GitHub or scanning for GitLab instances that are vulnerable to remote code execution flaws (e.g.,  CVE-2021-22205 ). A successful ingress is followed by privilege escalation and

The notorious cryptojacking group tracked as  8220 Gang  has been spotted weaponizing a six-year-old security flaw in Oracle WebLogic servers to ensnare vulnerable instances into a botnet and distribute cryptocurrency mining malware. The flaw in question is  CVE-2017-3506  (CVSS score: 7.4), which, when successfully exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands remotely. "This allows attackers to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data or compromise the entire system," Trend Micro researcher Sunil Bharti  said  in a report published this week. 8220 Gang,  first documented  by Cisco Talos in late 2018, is so named for its original use of port 8220 for command-and-control (C2) network communications. "8220 Gang identifies targets via scanning for misconfigured or vulnerable hosts on the public internet," SentinelOne  noted  last year. "8220 Gang is known to make use of SSH brute force attacks post-infection for the purp

Poorly managed Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers are the target of a new campaign that's designed to propagate a category of malware called  CLR SqlShell  that ultimately facilitates the deployment of cryptocurrency miners and ransomware. "Similar to web shell, which can be installed on web servers, SqlShell is a malware strain that supports various features after being installed on an MS SQL server, such as executing commands from threat actors and carrying out all sorts of malicious behavior," AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC)  said  in a report published last week. A stored procedure is a subroutine that contains a set of Structured Query Language (SQL) statements for use across multiple programs in a relational database management system (RDBMS). CLR (short for common language runtime) stored procedures – available in SQL Server 2005 and later – refer to  stored procedures  that are written in a .NET language such as C# or Visual Basic. The attack me

Threat actors are advertising a new information stealer for the Apple macOS operating system called  Atomic macOS Stealer  (or AMOS) on Telegram for $1,000 per month, joining the likes of  MacStealer . "The Atomic macOS Stealer can steal various types of information from the victim's machine, including Keychain passwords, complete system information, files from the desktop and documents folder, and even the macOS password," Cyble researchers  said  in a technical report. Among other features include its ability to extract data from web browsers and cryptocurrency wallets like Atomic, Binance, Coinomi, Electrum, and Exodus. Threat actors who purchase the stealer from its developers are also provided a ready-to-use web panel for managing the victims. The malware takes the form of an unsigned disk image file (Setup.dmg) that, when executed, urges the victim to enter their system password on a bogus prompt to escalate privileges and carry out its malicious activities --

A large-scale attack campaign discovered in the wild has been exploiting Kubernetes (K8s) Role-Based Access Control ( RBAC ) to create backdoors and run cryptocurrency miners. "The attackers also deployed DaemonSets to take over and hijack resources of the K8s clusters they attack," cloud security firm Aqua said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The Israeli company, which dubbed the attack  RBAC Buster , said it found 60 exposed K8s clusters that have been exploited by the threat actor behind this campaign. The attack chain commenced with the attacker gaining initial access via a misconfigured API server, followed by checking for evidence of competing miner malware on the compromised server, and then using RBAC to set up persistence. "The attacker created a new ClusterRole with near admin-level privileges," the company said. "Next, the attacker created a 'ServiceAccount', 'kube-controller' in the 'kube-system' namespace. Las

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed the inner workings of the cryptocurrency stealer malware that was distributed via 13 malicious NuGet packages as part of a supply chain attack targeting .NET developers. The sophisticated typosquatting campaign, which was uncovered by JFrog late last month, impersonated legitimate packages to execute PowerShell code designed to retrieve a follow-on binary from a hard-coded server. The  two-stage attack  culminates in the deployment of a .NET-based persistent backdoor, called Impala Stealer, which is capable of gaining unauthorized access to users' cryptocurrency accounts. "The payload used a very rare obfuscation technique, called '.NET AoT compilation,' which is a lot more stealthy than using 'off the shelf' obfuscators while still making the binary hard to reverse engineer," JFrog told The Hacker News in a statement. .NET  AoT compilation  is an  optimization technique  that allows apps to be ahead-of-time c

Chromium-based web browsers are the target of a new malware called Rilide that masquerades itself as a seemingly legitimate extension to harvest sensitive data and siphon cryptocurrency. "Rilide malware is disguised as a legitimate Google Drive extension and enables threat actors to carry out a broad spectrum of malicious activities, including monitoring browsing history, taking screenshots, and injecting malicious scripts to withdraw funds from various cryptocurrency exchanges," Trustwave SpiderLabs Research said in a report shared with The Hacker News. What's more, the stealer malware can display forged dialogs to deceive users into entering a two-factor authentication code to withdraw digital assets. Trustwave said it identified two different campaigns involving  Ekipa RAT  and  Aurora Stealer  that led to the installation of the malicious browser extension. While Ekipa RAT is distributed via booby-trapped Microsoft Publisher files, rogue Google Ads act as the

The adversary behind the  supply chain attack targeting 3CX  deployed a second-stage implant specifically singling out a small number of cryptocurrency companies. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which has been  internally tracking  the versatile backdoor under the name  Gopuram  since 2020, said it observed an increase in the number of infections in March 2023 coinciding with the 3CX breach. Gopuram's primary function is to connect to a command-and-control (C2) server and await further instructions that allow the attackers to interact with the victim's file system, create processes, and launch as many as eight in-memory modules. The backdoor's links to North Korea stem from the fact that it "co-existed on victim machines with  AppleJeus , a backdoor attributed to the Korean-speaking threat actor Lazarus," detailing an attack on an unnamed crypto firm located in Southeast Asia in 2020. The targeting of cryptocurrency companies is another telltale sign of

Trojanized installers for the TOR anonymity browser are being used to target users in Russia and Eastern Europe with  clipper malware  designed to siphon cryptocurrencies since September 2022. "Clipboard injectors [...] can be silent for years, show no network activity or any other signs of presence until the disastrous day when they replace a crypto wallet address," Vitaly Kamluk, director of global research and analysis team (GReAT) for APAC at Kaspersky,  said . Another notable aspect of clipper malware is that its nefarious functions are not triggered unless the clipboard data meets a specific criteria, making it more evasive. It's not immediately clear how the installers are distributed, but evidence points to the use of torrent downloads or some unknown third-party source since the Tor Project's website has been  subjected  to  blockades  in  Russia  in recent years. Regardless of the method used, the installer launches the legitimate executable, while als

A new North Korean nation-state cyber operator has been attributed to a series of campaigns orchestrated to gather strategic intelligence that aligns with Pyongyang's geopolitical interests since 2018. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the activity cluster under the moniker  APT43 , said the group's motives are both espionage- and financially-motivated, leveraging techniques like  credential harvesting  and social engineering to further its objectives. The monetary angle to its attack campaigns is an attempt on the part of the threat actor to generate funds to meet its "primary mission of collecting strategic intelligence." Victimology patterns suggest that targeting is focused on South Korea, the U.S., Japan, and Europe, spanning government, education, research, policy institutes, business services, and manufacturing sectors. The threat actor was also observed straying off course by striking health-related verticals and pharma companies from October 2020

Bitcoin ATM maker General Bytes disclosed that unidentified threat actors stole cryptocurrency from hot wallets by exploiting a zero-day security flaw in its software. "The attacker was able to upload his own java application remotely via the master service interface used by terminals to upload videos and run it using 'batm' user privileges," the company  said  in an advisory published over the weekend. "The attacker scanned the Digital Ocean cloud hosting IP address space and identified running CAS services on ports 7741, including the General Bytes Cloud service and other GB ATM operators running their servers on Digital Ocean," it further added. The company said that the server to which the malicious Java application was uploaded was by default configured to start applications present in the deployment folder ("/batm/app/admin/standalone/deployments/"). In doing so, the attack allowed the threat actor to access the database; read and decry

Copycat websites for instant messaging apps like Telegram and WhatApp are being used to distribute trojanized versions and infect Android and Windows users with cryptocurrency clipper malware . "All of them are after victims' cryptocurrency funds, with several targeting cryptocurrency wallets," ESET researchers Lukáš Štefanko and Peter Strýček said in a new analysis. While the first instance of clipper malware on the Google Play Store dates back to 2019, the development marks the first time Android-based clipper malware has been built into instant messaging apps. "Moreover, some of these apps use optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize text from screenshots stored on the compromised devices, which is another first for Android malware," the Slovak cybersecurity firm added. The attack chain begins with unsuspecting users clicking on fraudulent ads on Google search results that lead to hundreds of sketchy YouTube channels, which then direct them

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered the first-ever illicit cryptocurrency mining campaign used to mint Dero since the start of February 2023. "The novel Dero cryptojacking operation concentrates on locating Kubernetes clusters with anonymous access enabled on a Kubernetes API and listening on non-standard ports accessible from the internet," CrowdStrike  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. The development marks a notable shift from Monero, which is a prevalent cryptocurrency used in such campaigns. It's suspected it may have to do with the fact that  Dero  "offers larger rewards and provides the same or better anonymizing features." The attacks, attributed to an unknown financially motivated actor, commence with scanning for Kubernetes clusters with authentication set as  --anonymous-auth=true , which allows anonymous requests to the server, to drop initial payloads from three different U.S.-based IP addresses. This includes deploying

Cryptocurrency companies are being targeted as part of a new campaign that delivers a remote access trojan called Parallax RAT. The malware "uses injection techniques to hide within legitimate processes, making it difficult to detect," Uptycs  said  in a new report. "Once it has been successfully injected, attackers can interact with their victim via Windows Notepad that likely serves as a communication channel." Parallax RAT  grants attackers remote access to victim machines. It comes with features to upload and download files as well as record keystrokes and screen captures. It has been put to use since early 2020 and was  previously delivered  via COVID-19-themed lures. In February 2022, Proofpoint  detailed  an activity cluster dubbed TA2541 targeting aviation, aerospace, transportation, manufacturing, and defense industries using different RATs, including Parallax. The first payload is a Visual C++ malware that employs the  process hollowing  technique to

Trojanized versions of legitimate applications are being used to deploy evasive cryptocurrency mining malware on macOS systems. Jamf Threat Labs, which made the discovery, said the XMRig coin miner was executed by means of an unauthorized modification in Final Cut Pro, a video editing software from Apple. "This malware makes use of the Invisible Internet Project (i2p) [...] to download malicious components and send mined currency to the attacker's wallet," Jamf researchers Matt Benyo, Ferdous Saljooki, and Jaron Bradley  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. An earlier iteration of the campaign was  documented  exactly a year ago by Trend Micro, which pointed out the malware's use of i2p to conceal network traffic and speculated that it may have been delivered as a DMG file for Adobe Photoshop CC 2019.  The Apple device management company said the source of the cryptojacking apps can be traced to Pirate Bay, with the earliest uploads dating all the way