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Palo Alto Networks has shared more details of a critical security flaw impacting PAN-OS that has come under active exploitation in the wild by malicious actors. The company described the vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-3400  (CVSS score: 10.0), as "intricate" and a combination of two bugs in versions PAN-OS 10.2, PAN-OS 11.0, and PAN-OS 11.1 of the software. "In the first one, the GlobalProtect service did not sufficiently validate the session ID format before storing them. This enabled the attacker to store an empty file with the attacker's chosen filename," Chandan B. N., senior director of product security at Palo Alto Networks,  said . "The second bug (trusting that the files were system-generated) used the filenames as part of a command."  It's worth noting that while neither of the issues are critical enough on their own, when chained together, they could lead to unauthenticated remote shell command execution. Palo Alto Networks sai

Users of the CrushFTP enterprise file transfer software are being urged to update to the latest version following the discovery of a security flaw that has come under targeted exploitation in the wild. "CrushFTP v11 versions below 11.1 have a vulnerability where users can escape their VFS and download system files," CrushFTP  said  in an advisory released Friday. "This has been patched in v11.1.0." That said, customers who are operating their CrushFTP instances within a  DMZ  ( demilitarized zone ) restricted environment are protected against the attacks. Simon Garrelou of Airbus CERT has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. It has yet to be assigned a CVE identifier. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, in a post shared on Reddit, said it has observed an exploit for the flaw being used in the wild in a "targeted fashion." These intrusions are said to have mainly targeted U.S. entities, with the intelligence gathering activity suspe

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,

Technology, research, and government sectors in the Asia-Pacific region have been targeted by a threat actor called  BlackTech  as part of a recent cyber attack wave. The intrusions pave the way for an updated version of modular backdoor dubbed Waterbear as well as its enhanced successor referred to as Deuterbear. Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro is tracking the threat actor under the moniker Earth Hundun, which is known to be active since at least 2007. It also goes by other names such as Circuit Panda, HUAPI, Manga Taurus, Palmerworm, Red Djinn, and Temp.Overboard. "Waterbear is known for its complexity, as it uses a number of evasion mechanisms to minimize the chance of detection and analysis," Trend Micro researchers Cyris Tseng and Pierre Lee  said  in an analysis last week. "In 2022, Earth Hundun began using the latest version of Waterbear — also known as Deuterbear — which has several changes, including anti-memory scanning and decryption routines, that make us

Threat actors behind the Akira ransomware group have extorted approximately $42 million in illicit proceeds after breaching the networks of more than 250 victims as of January 1, 2024. "Since March 2023, Akira ransomware has impacted a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure entities in North America, Europe, and Australia," cybersecurity agencies from the Netherlands and the U.S., along with Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3),  said  in a joint alert. "In April 2023, following an initial focus on Windows systems, Akira threat actors deployed a Linux variant targeting VMware ESXi virtual machines." The double-extortion group has been observed using a C++ variant of the locker in the early stages, before shifting to a Rust-based code as of August 2023. It's worth noting that the e-crime actor is  completely different  from the Akira ransomware family that was active in 2017. Initial access to target networks is facilitated by means o

Government entities in the Middle East have been targeted as part of a previously undocumented campaign to deliver a new backdoor dubbed CR4T. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it discovered the activity in February 2024, with evidence suggesting that it may have been active since at least a year prior. The campaign has been codenamed  DuneQuixote . "The group behind the campaign took steps to prevent collection and analysis of its implants and implemented practical and well-designed evasion methods both in network communications and in the malware code," Kaspersky  said . The starting point of the attack is a dropper, which comes in two variants -- a regular dropper that's either implemented as an executable or a DLL file and a tampered installer file for a legitimate tool named  Total Commander . Regardless of the method used, the primary function of the dropper is to extract an embedded command-and-control (C2) address that's decrypted using a nove

Select Ukrainian government networks have remained infected with a malware called OfflRouter since 2015. Cisco Talos said its findings are based on an analysis of over 100 confidential documents that were infected with the VBA macro virus and uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform since 2018. More than 20 such documents have been uploaded since 2022. "The documents contained VBA code to drop and run an executable with the name 'ctrlpanel.exe,'" security researcher Vanja Svajcer  said . "The virus is still active in Ukraine and is causing potentially confidential documents to be uploaded to publicly accessible document repositories." A striking aspect of OfflRouter is its inability to spread via email, necessitating that it be propagated via other means, such as sharing documents and removable media, including USB memory sticks containing the infected documents. "It would require manual user intervention to send an infected document as

The infamous cybercrime syndicate known as FIN7 has been linked to a spear-phishing campaign targeting the U.S. automotive industry to deliver a known backdoor called Carbanak (aka Anunak). "FIN7 identified employees at the company who worked in the IT department and had higher levels of administrative rights," the BlackBerry research and intelligence team  said  in a new write-up. "They used the lure of a free IP scanning tool to run their well-known Anunak backdoor and gain an initial foothold utilizing living off the land binaries, scripts, and libraries ( LOLBAS )." FIN7, also known as Carbon Spider, Elbrus, Gold Niagara, ITG14, and Sangria Tempest, is a well-known  financially motivated e-crime group  that has a track record of striking a wide range of industry verticals to deliver malware capable of stealing information from point-of-sale (PoS) systems since 2012. In recent years, the threat actor has  transitioned  to  conducting ransomware operations ,

A new Android trojan called  SoumniBot  has been detected in the wild targeting users in South Korea by leveraging weaknesses in the manifest extraction and parsing procedure. The malware is "notable for an unconventional approach to evading analysis and detection, namely obfuscation of the Android manifest," Kaspersky researcher Dmitry Kalinin  said  in a technical analysis. Every Android app comes with a  manifest XML file  ("AndroidManifest.xml") that's located in the root directory and declares the various components of the app, as well as the permissions and the hardware and software features it requires. Knowing that threat hunters typically commence their analysis by inspecting the app's manifest file to determine its behavior, the threat actors behind the malware have been found to leverage three different techniques to make the process a lot more challenging. The first method involves the use of an invalid Compression method value when unpackin

Sandboxes are synonymous with dynamic malware analysis. They help to execute malicious files in a safe virtual environment and observe their behavior. However, they also offer plenty of value in terms of static analysis. See these five scenarios where a sandbox can prove to be a useful tool in your investigations. Detecting Threats in PDFs PDF files are frequently exploited by threat actors to deliver payloads. Static analysis in a sandbox makes it possible to expose any threat a malicious PDF contains by extracting its structure. The presence of JavaScript or Bash scripts can reveal a possible mechanism for downloading and executing malware.  Sandboxes like ANY.RUN also allows users to scrutinize URLs found in PDFs to identify suspicious domains, potential command and control (C2) servers, or other indicators of compromise. Example: Static analysis of a PDF file in ANY.RUN Interactivity allows our users to manipulate files within a VM as they wish, but static Discovery offers

As many as 37 individuals have been arrested as part of an international crackdown on a cybercrime service called  LabHost  that has been used by criminal actors to steal personal credentials from victims around the world. Described as one of the largest Phishing-as-a-Service ( PhaaS ) providers, LabHost offered phishing pages targeting banks, high-profile organizations, and other service providers located primarily in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. As part of the operation, codenamed PhishOFF and Nebulae (referring to the Australian arm of the probe), two LabHost users from Melbourne and Adelaide were arrested on April 17, with three others arrested and charged with drug-related offenses. "Australian offenders are allegedly among 10,000 cybercriminals globally who have used the platform, known as LabHost, to trick victims into providing their personal information, such as online banking logins, credit card details and passwords, through persistent phishing attacks sent via te

Threat actors are actively exploiting critical vulnerabilities in OpenMetadata to gain unauthorized access to Kubernetes workloads and leverage them for cryptocurrency mining activity. That's according to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team, which  said  the flaws have been weaponized since the start of April 2024. OpenMetadata is an  open-source platform  that operates as a metadata management tool, offering a unified solution for data asset discovery, observability, and governance. The flaws in question – all discovered and credited to security researcher Alvaro Muñoz – are listed below - CVE-2024-28847  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A Spring Expression Language (SpEL) injection vulnerability in PUT /api/v1/events/subscriptions (fixed in version 1.2.4) CVE-2024-28848  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A SpEL injection vulnerability in GET /api/v1/policies/validation/condition/<expr> (fixed in version 1.2.4) CVE-2024-28253  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A SpEL injection vulnerability in PUT /api/v

A new Google malvertising campaign is leveraging a cluster of domains mimicking a legitimate IP scanner software to deliver a previously unknown backdoor dubbed  MadMxShell . "The threat actor registered multiple look-alike domains using a typosquatting technique and leveraged Google Ads to push these domains to the top of search engine results targeting specific search keywords, thereby luring victims to visit these sites," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Roy Tay and Sudeep Singh  said . As many as 45 domains are said to have been registered between November 2023 and March 2024, with the sites masquerading as port scanning and IT management software such as Advanced IP Scanner, Angry IP Scanner, IP scanner PRTG, and ManageEngine. While this is  not the first time  threat actors are  banking  on  malvertising techniques  to serve malware via lookalike sites, the development marks the first time the delivery vehicle is being used to propagate a sophisticated Windows backdoo

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo