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Crafting and Communicating Your Cybersecurity Strategy for Board Buy-In

Crafting and Communicating Your Cybersecurity Strategy for Board Buy-In

Mar 19, 2024 Regulatory Compliance / Cloud Security
In an era where digital transformation drives business across sectors, cybersecurity has transcended its traditional operational role to become a cornerstone of corporate strategy and risk management. This evolution demands a shift in how cybersecurity leaders—particularly Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs)—articulate the value and urgency of cybersecurity investments to their boards.  The Strategic Importance of Cybersecurity Cybersecurity is no longer a backroom IT concern but a pivotal agenda item in boardroom discussions. The surge in cyber threats, coupled with their capacity to disrupt business operations, erode customer trust, and incur significant financial losses, underscores the strategic value of robust cybersecurity measures. Moreover, as companies increasingly integrate digital technologies into their core operations, the significance of cybersecurity in safeguarding corporate assets and reputation continues to rise. The Current State of Cybersecurity in Corpo
Suspected Russian Data-Wiping 'AcidPour' Malware Targeting Linux x86 Devices

Suspected Russian Data-Wiping 'AcidPour' Malware Targeting Linux x86 Devices

Mar 19, 2024 Linux / Cyber Espionage
A new variant of a data wiping malware called AcidRain has been detected in the wild that's specifically designed for targeting Linux x86 devices. The malware, dubbed AcidPour, is compiled for Linux x86 devices, SentinelOne's Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade said in a series of posts on X. "The new variant [...] is an ELF binary compiled for x86 (not MIPS) and while it refers to similar devices/strings, it's a largely different codebase," Guerrero-Saade  noted . AcidRain  first came to light  in the early days of the Russo-Ukrainian war, with the malware deployed against KA-SAT modems from U.S. satellite company Viasat. An ELF binary compiled for MIPS architectures is capable of wiping the filesystem and different known storage device files by recursively iterating over common directories for most Linux distributions. The cyber attack was  subsequently attributed  to Russia by the Five Eyes nations, along with Ukraine and the European Union. AcidPour, as the new
CTEM 101 - Go Beyond Vulnerability Management with Continuous Threat Exposure Management

CTEM 101 - Go Beyond Vulnerability Management with Continuous Threat Exposure Management

Mar 12, 2024CTEM / Vulnerability Management
In a world of ever-expanding jargon, adding another FLA (Four-Letter Acronym) to your glossary might seem like the last thing you'd want to do. But if you are looking for ways to continuously reduce risk across your environment while making significant and consistent improvements to security posture, in our opinion, you probably want to consider establishing a  Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)  program.  CTEM is an approach to cyber risk management that combines attack simulation, risk prioritization, and remediation guidance in one coordinated process. The term Continuous Threat Exposure Management first appeared in the Gartner ® report, Implement a Continuous Threat Exposure Management Program (CTEM) (Gartner, 21 July 2022,). Since then, we have seen that organizations across the globe are seeing the benefits of this integrated, continual approach. Webinar: Why and How to Adopt the CTEM Framework XM Cyber is hosting a webinar featuring Gartner VP Analyst Pete Shoa
New Phishing Attack Uses Clever Microsoft Office Trick to Deploy NetSupport RAT

New Phishing Attack Uses Clever Microsoft Office Trick to Deploy NetSupport RAT

Mar 19, 2024 Social Engineering / Email Security
A new phishing campaign is targeting U.S. organizations with the intent to deploy a remote access trojan called NetSupport RAT. Israeli cybersecurity company Perception Point is tracking the activity under the moniker  Operation PhantomBlu . "The PhantomBlu operation introduces a nuanced exploitation method, diverging from NetSupport RAT's typical delivery mechanism by leveraging OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) template manipulation, exploiting Microsoft Office document templates to execute malicious code while evading detection," security researcher Ariel Davidpur  said . NetSupport RAT is a  malicious offshoot  of a legitimate remote desktop tool known as NetSupport Manager, allowing threat actors to conduct a spectrum of data gathering actions on a compromised endpoint. The starting point is a Salary-themed phishing email that purports to be from the accounting department and urges recipients to open the attached Microsoft Word document to view the "monthly
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Uncover Critical Gaps in 7 Core Areas of Your Cybersecurity Program

websiteArmor PointCyber Security / Assessment
Turn potential vulnerabilities into strengths. Start evaluating your defenses today. Download the Checklist.
E-Root Marketplace Admin Sentenced to 42 Months for Selling 350K Stolen Credentials

E-Root Marketplace Admin Sentenced to 42 Months for Selling 350K Stolen Credentials

Mar 19, 2024 Threat Intel / Cybercrime
A 31-year-old Moldovan national has been sentenced to 42 months in prison in the U.S. for operating an illicit marketplace called E-Root Marketplace that offered for sale hundreds of thousands of compromised credentials, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced. Sandu Boris Diaconu was charged with conspiracy to commit access device and computer fraud and possession of 15 or more unauthorized access devices. He pleaded guilty on December 1, 2023. "The E-Root Marketplace operated across a widely distributed network and took steps to hide the identities of its administrators, buyers, and sellers," the DoJ  said  last week. "Buyers could search for compromised computer credentials on E-Root, such as usernames and passwords that would allow buyers to access remote computers for purposes of stealing private information or manipulating the contents of the remote computer." Prospective customers could also search for RDP and SSH credentials based on various filter c
New DEEP#GOSU Malware Campaign Targets Windows Users with Advanced Tactics

New DEEP#GOSU Malware Campaign Targets Windows Users with Advanced Tactics

Mar 18, 2024 Cybercrime / Cryptocurrency
A new elaborate attack campaign has been observed employing PowerShell and VBScript malware to infect Windows systems and harvest sensitive information. Cybersecurity company Securonix, which dubbed the campaign DEEP#GOSU, said it's likely associated with the North Korean state-sponsored group tracked as  Kimsuky . "The malware payloads used in the  DEEP#GOSU  represent a sophisticated, multi-stage threat designed to operate stealthily on Windows systems especially from a network-monitoring standpoint," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a technical analysis shared with The Hacker News. "Its capabilities included keylogging, clipboard monitoring, dynamic payload execution, and data exfiltration, and persistence using both RAT software for full remote access, scheduled tasks as well as self-executing PowerShell scripts using jobs." A notable aspect of the infection procedure is that it leverages legitimate services such a
Hackers Using Sneaky HTML Smuggling to Deliver Malware via Fake Google Sites

Hackers Using Sneaky HTML Smuggling to Deliver Malware via Fake Google Sites

Mar 18, 2024 Cryptocurrency / Malspam
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware campaign that leverages bogus Google Sites pages and HTML smuggling to distribute a commercial malware called  AZORult  in order to facilitate information theft. "It uses an unorthodox HTML smuggling technique where the malicious payload is embedded in a separate JSON file hosted on an external website," Netskope Threat Labs researcher Jan Michael Alcantara  said  in a report published last week. The phishing campaign has not been attributed to a specific threat actor or group. The cybersecurity company described it as widespread in nature, carried out with an intent to collect sensitive data for selling them in underground forums. AZORult, also called PuffStealer and Ruzalto, is an  information stealer  first detected around 2016. It's typically distributed via phishing and malspam campaigns, trojanized installers for pirated software or media, and malvertising. Once installed, it's capable of gathering cr
WordPress Admins Urged to Remove miniOrange Plugins Due to Critical Flaw

WordPress Admins Urged to Remove miniOrange Plugins Due to Critical Flaw

Mar 18, 2024 Website Security / Vulnerability
WordPress users of miniOrange's Malware Scanner and Web Application Firewall plugins are being urged to delete them from their websites following the discovery of a critical security flaw. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2024-2172 , is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scoring system and discovered by Stiofan . It impacts the following versions of the two plugins - Malware Scanner  (versions <= 4.7.2) Web Application Firewall  (versions <= 2.1.1) It's worth noting that the plugins have been permanently closed by the maintainers as of March 7, 2024. While Malware Scanner has over 10,000 active installs, Web Application Firewall has more than 300 active installations. "This vulnerability makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to grant themselves administrative privileges by updating the user password," Wordfence  reported  last week.  The issue is the result of a missing capability check in the function mo_wpns_init() that enables an unau
APT28 Hacker Group Targeting Europe, Americas, Asia in Widespread Phishing Scheme

APT28 Hacker Group Targeting Europe, Americas, Asia in Widespread Phishing Scheme

Mar 18, 2024 Cyber Warfare / Malware
The Russia-linked threat actor known as  APT28  has been linked to multiple ongoing phishing campaigns that employ lure documents imitating government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Europe, the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and North and South America. "The uncovered lures include a mixture of internal and publicly available documents, as well as possible actor-generated documents associated with finance, critical infrastructure, executive engagements, cyber security, maritime security, healthcare, business, and defense industrial production," IBM X-Force  said  in a report published last week. The tech company is tracking the activity under the moniker  ITG05 , which is also known as Blue Athena, BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Fighting Ursa, Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium), FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy, TA422, and UAC-028. The disclosure comes more than three months after the adversary was spotted using decoys related to the ongoing I
Hackers Using Cracked Software on GitHub to Spread RisePro Info Stealer

Hackers Using Cracked Software on GitHub to Spread RisePro Info Stealer

Mar 16, 2024 Malware / Cybercrime
Cybersecurity researchers have found a number of GitHub repositories offering cracked software that are used to deliver an information stealer called RisePro. The campaign, codenamed  gitgub , includes 17 repositories associated with 11 different accounts, according to G DATA. The repositories in question have since been taken down by the Microsoft-owned subsidiary. "The repositories look similar, featuring a README.md file with the promise of free cracked software," the German cybersecurity company  said . "Green and red circles are commonly used on Github to display the status of automatic builds. Gitgub threat actors added four green Unicode circles to their README.md that pretend to display a status alongside a current date and provide a sense of legitimacy and recency." The list of repositories is as follows, with each of them pointing to a download link ("digitalxnetwork[.]com") containing a RAR archive file - andreastanaj/AVAST andreastanaj
GhostRace – New Data Leak Vulnerability Affects Modern CPUs

GhostRace – New Data Leak Vulnerability Affects Modern CPUs

Mar 15, 2024 Hardware Security / Data Protection
A group of researchers has discovered a new data leakage attack impacting modern CPU architectures supporting speculative execution. Dubbed  GhostRace  ( CVE-2024-2193 ), it is a variation of the transient execution CPU vulnerability known as Spectre v1 (CVE-2017-5753). The approach combines speculative execution and race conditions. "All the common synchronization primitives implemented using conditional branches can be microarchitecturally bypassed on speculative paths using a branch misprediction attack, turning all architecturally race-free critical regions into Speculative Race Conditions (SRCs), allowing attackers to leak information from the target," the researchers  said . The findings from the Systems Security Research Group at IBM Research Europe and VUSec, the latter of which disclosed another side-channel attack called  SLAM  targeting modern processors in December 2023. Spectre refers to a  class of side-channel attacks  that exploit branch prediction and s
Third-Party ChatGPT Plugins Could Lead to Account Takeovers

Third-Party ChatGPT Plugins Could Lead to Account Takeovers

Mar 15, 2024 Data Privacy / Artificial Intelligence
Cybersecurity researchers have found that third-party plugins available for OpenAI ChatGPT could act as a new attack surface for threat actors looking to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data. According to  new research  published by Salt Labs, security flaws found directly in ChatGPT and within the ecosystem could allow attackers to install malicious plugins without users' consent and hijack accounts on third-party websites like GitHub. ChatGPT plugins , as the name implies, are tools designed to run on top of the large language model (LLM) with the aim of accessing up-to-date information, running computations, or accessing third-party services. OpenAI has since also introduced  GPTs , which are bespoke versions of ChatGPT tailored for specific use cases, while reducing third-party service dependencies. As of March 19, 2024, ChatGPT users  will no longer  be able to install new plugins or create new conversations with existing plugins. One of the flaws unearthed by Salt
Google Introduces Enhanced Real-Time URL Protection for Chrome Users

Google Introduces Enhanced Real-Time URL Protection for Chrome Users

Mar 15, 2024 Browser Security / Phishing Attack
Google on Thursday announced an enhanced version of Safe Browsing to provide real-time, privacy-preserving URL protection and safeguard users from visiting potentially malicious sites. "The  Standard protection mode for Chrome  on desktop and iOS will check sites against Google's server-side list of known bad sites in real-time," Google's Jonathan Li and Jasika Bawa  said . "If we suspect a site poses a risk to you or your device, you'll see a warning with more information. By checking sites in real time, we expect to block 25% more phishing attempts." Up until now, the Chrome browser used a locally-stored list of known unsafe sites that's updated every 30 to 60 minutes, and then leveraging a  hash-based approach  to compare every site visited against the database. Google  first revealed  its plans to switch to real-time server-side checks without sharing users' browsing history with the company in September 2023. The reason for the change, the search giant said, is motivated b
Malicious Ads Targeting Chinese Users with Fake Notepad++ and VNote Installers

Malicious Ads Targeting Chinese Users with Fake Notepad++ and VNote Installers

Mar 15, 2024 Malvertising / Threat Intelligence
Chinese users looking for legitimate software such as Notepad++ and VNote on search engines like Baidu are being targeted with malicious ads and bogus links to distribute trojanized versions of the software and ultimately deploy  Geacon , a Golang-based implementation of Cobalt Strike. "The malicious site found in the notepad++ search is distributed through an advertisement block," Kaspersky researcher Sergey Puzan  said . "Opening it, an attentive user will immediately notice an amusing inconsistency: the website address contains the line vnote, the title offers a download of Notepad‐‐ (an analog of Notepad++, also distributed as open-source software), while the image proudly shows Notepad++. In fact, the packages downloaded from here contain Notepad‐‐." The website, named vnote.fuwenkeji[.]cn, contains download links to Windows, Linux, and macOS versions of the software, with the link to the Windows variant pointing to the official  Gitee repository  containing the Notepad-- ins
LockBit Ransomware Hacker Ordered to Pay $860,000 After Guilty Plea in Canada

LockBit Ransomware Hacker Ordered to Pay $860,000 After Guilty Plea in Canada

Mar 14, 2024 Ransomware / Cyber Crime
A 34-year-old Russian-Canadian national has been sentenced to nearly four years in jail in Canada for his participation in the LockBit global ransomware operation. Mikhail Vasiliev , an Ontario resident, was  originally arrested  in November 2022 and charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) with "conspiring with others to intentionally damage protected computers and to transmit ransom demands in connection with doing so." News of Vasiliev's jail term was  first reported  by CTV News.  The defendant, who had his home searched by Canadian law enforcement authorities in August and October 2022, is said to have kept a list of "prospective or historical" victims and screenshots of communications exchanged with "LockBitSupp" on the Tox messaging platform. The raid also uncovered a text file with instructions to deploy LockBit ransomware, the ransomware source code, and a control panel used by the e-crime group to deliver the file-locking malware.
Researchers Detail Kubernetes Vulnerability That Enables Windows Node Takeover

Researchers Detail Kubernetes Vulnerability That Enables Windows Node Takeover

Mar 14, 2024 Container Security / Vulnerability
Details have been made public about a now-patched high-severity flaw in Kubernetes that could allow a malicious attacker to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges under specific circumstances. "The vulnerability allows remote code execution with SYSTEM privileges on all Windows endpoints within a Kubernetes cluster," Akamai security researcher Tomer Peled  said . "To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker needs to apply malicious YAML files on the cluster." Tracked as CVE-2023-5528 (CVSS score: 7.2), the shortcoming impacts all versions of kubelet, including and after version 1.8.0. It was addressed as part of updates released on November 14, 2023, in the following versions - kubelet v1.28.4 kubelet v1.27.8 kubelet v1.26.11, and kubelet v1.25.16 "A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user that can create pods and persistent volumes on Windows nodes may be able to escalate to admin privileges on those nodes," Kubernetes maintainers  said  in a
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