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The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) on Tuesday said it thwarted a cyber attack against an unnamed critical energy infrastructure facility in the country. The intrusion, per the agency, started with a phishing email containing a link to a malicious ZIP archive that activates the infection chain. "Visiting the link will download a ZIP archive containing three JPG images (decoys) and a BAT file 'weblinks.cmd' to the victim's computer," CERT-UA  said , attributing it to the Russian threat actor known as  APT28  (aka BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, or FROZENLAKE). "When a CMD file is run, several decoy web pages will be opened, .bat and .vbs files will be created, and a VBS file will be launched, which in turn will execute the BAT file." The next phase of the attack involves running the "whoami" command on the compromised host and exfiltrating the information, alongside downloading the TOR hidden service to route malicious traffic. Persistence is achieve

In a US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)  8-K filing , Omnicell, the healthcare technology provider, revealed that some of its products, services, and internal systems were affected by ransomware.  Upon detecting the incident, the medication management systems provider took immediate action to contain the attack and ensure continued operation. In its  10-Q form  filing, Omnicell disclosed that cyber-attacks or data breaches disrupted its business.  Will you be the next victim? If you overlook the importance of data protection, attackers can get you in no time.  Explore the  impact of the data breach  on the healthcare sector and what preventive measures can be taken against such attacks. Omnicell Announced Data Breach  Founded in 1992, Omnicell is a leading provider of medication management solutions for hospitals, long-term care facilities, and retail pharmacies.  On May 4, 2022 , Omnicell's IT systems and third-party cloud services were affected by ransomware attac

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Microsoft on Friday shared more of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the Russia-based Gamaredon hacking group to facilitate a barrage of cyber espionage attacks aimed at several entities in Ukraine over the past six months. The attacks are said to have singled out government, military, non-government organizations (NGO), judiciary, law enforcement, and non-profit organizations with the main goal of exfiltrating sensitive information, maintaining access, and leveraging it to move laterally into related organizations. The Windows maker's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is tracking the cluster under the moniker ACTINIUM (previously as DEV-0157), sticking to its tradition of identifying nation-state activities by chemical element names. The Ukrainian government, in November 2021,  publicly attributed  Gamaredon to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and connected its operations to the FSB Office of Russia in the Republic of Crimea and the city of S

Cybersecurity researchers have turned the spotlight on a new wave of offensive cyberattacks targeting Palestinian activists and entities starting around October 2021 using politically-themed phishing emails and decoy documents. The intrusions are part of what Cisco Talos calls a longstanding espionage and information theft campaign undertaken by the  Arid Viper hacking group  using a Delphi-based implant called Micropsia dating all the way back to  June 2017 . The threat actor's  activities , also tracked under the monikers Desert Falcon and the APT-C-23, were first documented in  February 2015  by Kasperksy and subsequently in 2017, when Qihoo 360 disclosed details of  cross-platform   backdoors  developed by the group to strike Palestinian institutions. The Russian cybersecurity company-branded Arid Viper the "first exclusively Arabic APT group." Then in April 2021, Meta (formerly Facebook), which pointed out the group's affiliations to the cyber arm of  Hamas

Latest analysis into the wiper malware that targeted dozens of Ukrainian agencies earlier this month has revealed "strategic similarities" to  NotPetya malware  that was unleashed against the country's infrastructure and elsewhere in 2017. The malware, dubbed  WhisperGate , was discovered by Microsoft last week, which said it observed the destructive cyber campaign targeting government, non-profit, and information technology entities in the nation, attributing the intrusions to an emerging threat cluster codenamed "DEV-0586." "While WhisperGate has some strategic similarities to the notorious NotPetya wiper that attacked Ukranian entities in 2017, including masquerading as ransomware and targeting and destroying the master boot record (MBR) instead of encrypting it, it notably has more components designed to inflict additional damage," Cisco Talos  said  in a report detailing its response efforts. Stating that stolen credentials were likely used i

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are warning of active exploitation of a newly patched flaw in Zoho's ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus product to deploy web shells and carry out an array of malicious activities. Tracked as  CVE-2021-44077  (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue relates to an unauthenticated, remote code execution vulnerability affecting ServiceDesk Plus versions up to and including 11305 that, if left unfixed, "allows an attacker to upload executable files and place web shells that enable post-exploitation activities, such as compromising administrator credentials, conducting lateral movement, and exfiltrating registry hives and Active Directory files," CISA  said . "A security misconfiguration in ServiceDesk Plus led to the vulnerability," Zoho  noted  in an independent advisory published on November 22. "This vulnerability can allow an adversary to execute arbitrary code

Opportunistic threat actors have been found actively exploiting a recently disclosed critical security flaw in Atlassian Confluence deployments across Windows and Linux to deploy web shells that result in the execution of crypto miners on compromised systems. Tracked as  CVE-2021-26084  (CVSS score: 9.8), the vulnerability concerns an OGNL (Object-Graph Navigation Language) injection flaw that could be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution on a Confluence Server or Data Center instance. "A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request containing a malicious parameter to a vulnerable server," researchers from Trend Micro  noted  in a technical write-up detailing the weakness. "Successful exploitation can result in arbitrary code execution in the security context of the affected server." The vulnerability, which resides in the Webwork module of Atlassian Confluence Server and Data Center, stems from an insufficient valid

There has been a lot of buzz in the industry about ransomware lately. Almost every other day, it's making headlines. With businesses across the globe holding their breath, scared they might fall victim to the next major ransomware attack, it is now time to take action. The FBI IC3 report of 2020 classified Ransomware as the most financially damaging cybercrime of the year, with no major improvement in 2021. Wouldn't it be nice if you could prevent a ransomware attack from occurring in the first place?  DMARC  can make this seemingly impossible claim a possibility for domain owners!  Multiple benefits arise from your DMARC implementation over time, including an increase in the deliverability of your email as well as a higher domain reputation. DMARC is also known as the first line of defense against Ransomware. Let's take a closer look. What are the Risks Associated with Ransomware?  Ransomware is malicious software that installs itself on your computer without your p

Meat processing company JBS on Wednesday confirmed it paid extortionists $11 million in bitcoins to regain access to its systems following a destructive ransomware attack late last month. "In consultation with internal IT professionals and third-party cybersecurity experts, the company made the decision to mitigate any unforeseen issues related to the attack and ensure no data was exfiltrated," JBS USA  said  in a statement, with CEO Andre Nogueira adding the firm made the "very difficult decision" to prevent any potential risk for its customers. Stating that third-party forensic investigations into the incident are still ongoing, the company noted that no company, customer, or employee data was compromised as a consequence of the breach. The FBI officially discourages victims from paying ransoms because doing so can establish a profitable criminal marketplace. JBS, the world's largest meat company by sales, on May 30  disclosed  it fell prey to an "org

We likely all agree that 2020 was a year we won't soon forget - for many reasons. One area particularly impacted last year was (and continues to be) cybersecurity.  While Internet access allowed many businesses to continue functioning during the COVID-19 stay at home requirements, the unprecedented number of people accessing company assets remotely introduced many new challenges for cybersecurity professionals. With a history of leveraging societal maladies to their advantage, cyber criminals leverage the confusion and unpreparedness created by the global pandemic in their cyber attacks.  In just the last two months of 2020, several high-profile organizations and government entities were successfully attacked using clever approaches that were overlooked by cybersecurity experts. Making sense of how attacks have changed and what new defensive strategies should be taken is no easy task. Cybersecurity company Cynet will help by reviewing the 2020 high profile attacks in depth and

A hackers-for-hire operation has been discovered using a strain of previously undocumented malware to target South Asian financial institutions and global entertainment companies. Dubbed " CostaRicto " by Blackberry researchers, the campaign appears to be the handiwork of APT mercenaries who possess bespoke malware tooling and complex VPN proxy and SSH tunneling capabilities. "CostaRicto targets are scattered across different countries in Europe, Americas, Asia, Australia and Africa, but the biggest concentration appears to be in South Asia (especially India, Bangladesh and Singapore and China), suggesting that the threat actor could be based in that region, but working on a wide range of commissions from diverse clients," the researchers said. The modus operandi in itself is quite straight-forward. Upon gaining an initial foothold in the target's environment via stolen credentials, the attacker proceeds to set up an SSH tunnel to download a backdoor and a p

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday uncovered a new espionage campaign targeting media, construction, engineering, electronics, and finance sectors in Japan, Taiwan, the U.S., and China. Linking the attacks to Palmerworm (aka BlackTech) — likely a  China-based  advanced persistent threat (APT) — Symantec's Threat Hunter Team  said  the first wave of activity associated with this campaign began last year in August 2019, although their ultimate motivations still remain unclear. "While we cannot see what Palmerworm is exfiltrating from these victims, the group is considered an espionage group and its likely motivation is considered to be stealing information from targeted companies," the cybersecurity firm said. Among the multiple victims infected by Palmerworm, the media, electronics, and finance companies were all based in Taiwan, while an engineering company in Japan and a construction firm in China were also targeted. In addition to using custom malware to compromi

If you also found yourself logged out of Facebook on Friday, you are not alone. Facebook forced more than 90 million users to log out and back into their accounts in response to a massive data breach. On Friday afternoon, the social media giant disclosed that some unknown hackers managed to exploit three vulnerabilities in its website and steal data from 50 million users and that as a precaution, the company reset access tokens for nearly 90 million Facebook users. We covered a story yesterday based upon the information available at that time. Facebook Hack: 10 Important Updates You Need To Know About However, in a conference call [ Transcript 1 , Transcript 2 ] with reporters, Facebook vice president of product Guy Rosen shared a few more details of the terrible breach, which is believed to be the most significant security blunder in Facebook's history. Here's below we have briefed the new developments in the Facebook data breach incident that you need to know abo

Bristol Airport has blamed a ransomware attack for causing a blackout of flight information screens for two days over the weekend. The airport said that the attack started Friday morning, taking out several computers over the airport network, including its in-house display screens which provide details about the arrival and departure information of flights. The attack forced the airport officials to take down its systems and use whiteboards and paper posters to announce check-in and arrival information for flights going through the airport and luggage pickup points for all Friday, Saturday, and the subsequent night. "We are currently experiencing technical problems with our flight information screens," a post on the Bristol Airport's official Twitter feed read on Friday. "Flights are unaffected and details of check-in desks, boarding gates, and arrival/departure times will be made over the public address system. Additional staff are on hand to assist passeng