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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI recently collaborated in a multinational operation to dismantle the notorious Qakbot malware and botnet. While the operation was successful in disrupting this long-running threat, concerns have arisen as it appears that Qakbot may still pose a danger in a reduced form. This article discusses the aftermath of the takedown, provides mitigation strategies, and offers guidance on determining past infections. The Takedown and Its Limitations During the takedown operation, law enforcement secured court orders to remove Qakbot malware from infected devices remotely. It was discovered that the malware had infected a substantial number of devices, with 700,000 machines globally, including 200,000 computers in the U.S., being compromised at the time of the takedown. However, recent reports suggest that Qakbot is still active but in a diminished state. The absence of arrests during the takedown operation indicates that only the command-and-cont

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, it's crucial to reevaluate how we secure web environments. Traditional antivirus-approach solutions have their merits, but they're reactive. A new report delves into the reasons for embracing proactive web security solutions, ensuring you stay ahead of emerging threats.  To learn more, download the full report  here . The New Paradigm If you've been relying on the old-style antivirus-based approach to website security up to now, then we could summarize why you need to update to the more proactive approach simply by saying — prevention is always preferable to cure. That's the overarching rationale for adopting a proactive web security solution, but let's break it down into a few more detailed reasons for updating to the newer and more effective proactive approach.  To be clear, we're not denying that an antivirus-approach solution is ideal for detecting and responding to threats, but there's no escaping the fact that it's limited

If forecasters are right, over the course of today, consumers will spend  $13.7 billion . Just about every click, sale, and engagement will be captured by a CRM platform. Inventory applications will trigger automated re-orders; communication tools will send automated email and text messages confirming sales and sharing shipping information.  SaaS applications supporting retail efforts will host nearly all of this behind-the-scenes activity. While retailers are rightfully focused on sales during this time of year, they need to ensure that the SaaS apps supporting their business operations are secure. No one wants a repeat of one of the biggest retail cyber-snafus in history, like when one U.S.-based national retailer had 40 million credit card records stolen.  The attack surface is vast and retailers must remain vigilant in protecting their entire SaaS app stack. For example, many often use multiple instances of the same application. They may use a different Salesforce tenant for eve

Identity services provider Okta has disclosed that it detected "additional threat actor activity" in connection with the  October 2023 breach  of its support case management system. "The threat actor downloaded the names and email addresses of all Okta customer support system users," the company said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "All Okta Workforce Identity Cloud (WIC) and Customer Identity Solution (CIS) customers are impacted except customers in our FedRamp High and DoD IL4 environments (these environments use a separate support system NOT accessed by the threat actor). The Auth0/CIC support case management system was not impacted by this incident." On top of that, the adversary is believed to have accessed reports containing contact information of all Okta certified users, some Okta Customer Identity Cloud (CIC) customers, and unspecified Okta employee information. However, it emphasized that the data does not include user credenti

A variant of a ransomware strain known as DJVU has been observed to be distributed in the form of cracked software. "While this attack pattern is not new, incidents involving a DJVU variant that appends the .xaro extension to affected files and demanding ransom for a decryptor have been observed infecting systems alongside a host of various commodity loaders and infostealers," Cybereason security researcher Ralph Villanueva  said . The new variant has been codenamed Xaro by the American cybersecurity firm. DJVU, in itself, is a  variant of the STOP ransomware , typically arrives on the scene masquerading as legitimate services or applications. It's also delivered as a payload of  SmokeLoader . A significant aspect of DJVU attacks is the deployment of additional malware, such as information stealers (e.g., RedLine Stealer and Vidar), making them more damaging in nature. In the latest attack chain documented by Cybereason, Xaro is propagated as an archive file from a

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a "severe design flaw" in Google Workspace's domain-wide delegation ( DWD ) feature that could be exploited by threat actors to facilitate privilege escalation and obtain unauthorized access to Workspace APIs without super admin privileges. "Such exploitation could result in theft of emails from Gmail, data exfiltration from Google Drive, or other unauthorized actions within Google Workspace APIs on all of the identities in the target domain," cybersecurity firm Hunters  said  in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The design weakness – which remains active to this date – has been codenamed  DeleFriend  for its ability to manipulate existing delegations in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Workspace without possessing super admin privileges. When reached for comment, Google disputed the characterization of the issue as a design flaw. "This report does not identify an underlying security issue in ou

Account credentials, a popular initial access vector, have become a valuable commodity in cybercrime. As a result, a single set of stolen credentials can put your organization's entire network at risk. According to the  2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report , external parties were responsible for  83 percent  of breaches that occurred between November 2021 and October 2022.  Forty-nine percent  of those breaches involved stolen credentials. How are threat actors compromising credentials? Social engineering is one of the  top five cybersecurity threats  in 2023. Phishing, which accounts for %of social engineering attempts, is the go-to method for stealing credentials. It's a relatively cheap tactic that yields results. As phishing and social engineering techniques become more sophisticated and the tools become more readily available, credential theft should become a top security concern for all organizations if it already isn't one. Phishing has evolved With phishing and s

The title of this article probably sounds like the caption to a meme. Instead, this is an actual problem GitGuardian's engineers had to solve in implementing the mechanisms for their new  HasMySecretLeaked service . They wanted to help developers find out if their secrets (passwords, API keys, private keys, cryptographic certificates, etc.) had found their way into public GitHub repositories. How could they comb a vast library of secrets found in publicly available GitHub repositories and their histories and compare them to your secrets without you having to expose sensitive information? This article will tell you how. First, if we were to set a bit's mass as equal to that of one electron, a ton of data would be around 121.9 quadrillion petabytes of data at standard Earth gravity or $39.2 billion billion billion US dollars in MacBook Pro storage upgrades (more than all the money in the world). So when this article claims GitGuardian scanned a "ton" of GitHub public commit data, t

Ambitious Employees Tout New AI Tools, Ignore Serious SaaS Security Risks Like the  SaaS shadow IT  of the past, AI is placing CISOs and cybersecurity teams in a tough but familiar spot.  Employees are covertly using AI  with little regard for established IT and cybersecurity review procedures. Considering  ChatGPT's meteoric rise to 100 million users within 60 days of launch , especially with little sales and marketing fanfare, employee-driven demand for AI tools will only escalate.  As new studies show  some workers boost productivity by 40% using generative AI , the pressure for CISOs and their teams to fast-track AI adoption — and turn a blind eye to unsanctioned AI tool usage — is intensifying.  But succumbing to these pressures can introduce serious SaaS data leakage and breach risks, particularly as employees flock to AI tools developed by small businesses, solopreneurs, and indie developers. AI Security Guide Download AppOmni's CISO Guide to AI Security - Part 1 AI evoke

The ransomware strain known as  Play  is now being offered to other threat actors "as a service," new evidence unearthed by Adlumin has revealed. "The unusual lack of even small variations between attacks suggests that they are being carried out by affiliates who have purchased the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) and are following step-by-step instructions from playbooks delivered with it," the cybersecurity company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The findings are based on various Play ransomware attacks tracked by Adlumin spanning different sectors that incorporated almost identical tactics and in the same sequence. This includes the use of the public music folder (C:\...\public\music) to hide the malicious file, the same password to create high-privilege accounts, and both attacks, and the same commands. Play , also called Balloonfly and PlayCrypt, first came to light in June 2022, leveraging security flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server – i.e., 

In this article, we will provide a brief overview of Silverfort's platform, the first (and currently only) unified identity protection platform on the market. Silverfort's patented technology aims to protect organizations from identity-based attacks by integrating with existing identity and access management solutions, such as AD (Active Directory) and cloud-based services, and extending secure access controls like Risk-Based Authentication and MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) to all their resources. This includes on-prem and cloud resources, legacy systems, command-line tools and service accounts. A recent report by Silverfort and Osterman Research revealed that  83% of organizations worldwide have experienced data breaches due to compromised credentials . Many organizations admit that they are underprotected against identity-based attacks, such as lateral movement and ransomware. Resources like command-line access tools and legacy systems, which are widely used, are particular

The threat actors behind a new ransomware group called  Hunters International  have acquired the source code and infrastructure from the now-dismantled Hive operation to kick-start its own efforts in the threat landscape. "It appears that the leadership of the Hive group made the strategic decision to cease their operations and transfer their remaining assets to another group, Hunters International," Martin Zugec, technical solutions director at Bitdefender,  said  in a report published last week. Hive, once a prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation, was  taken down  as part of a coordinated law enforcement operation in January 2023. While it's common for ransomware actors to regroup, rebrand, or disband their activities following such seizures, what can also happen is that the core developers can pass on the source code and other infrastructure in their possession to another threat actor. Reports about Hunters International as a possible Hive rebrand  sur

Numerous industries—including technology, financial services, energy, healthcare, and government—are rushing to incorporate cloud-based and containerized web applications.  The benefits are undeniable; however, this shift presents new security challenges.  OPSWAT's 2023 Web Application Security report  reveals: 75% of organizations have modernized their infrastructure this year. 78% have increased their security budgets. Yet just 2% are confident in their security posture. Let's explore why confidence in security lags infrastructure upgrades and how OPSWAT closes that gap. Evolving Infrastructure Outpaces Security Upgrades. The pace of security upgrades struggles to keep up with technological advancements. This gap is especially visible in file upload security. Companies are updating their infrastructure by embracing distributed, scalable applications that leverage microservices and cloud solutions—creating new avenues of attack for criminals. Cloud Hosting  Businesse

ChatGPT: Productivity tool, great for writing poems, and… a security risk?! In this article, we show how threat actors can exploit ChatGPT, but also how defenders can use it for leveling up their game. ChatGPT is the most swiftly growing consumer application to date. The extremely popular generative AI chatbot has the ability to generate human-like, coherent and contextually relevant responses. This makes it very valuable for applications like content creation, coding, education, customer support, and even personal assistance. However, ChatGPT also comes with security risks. ChatGPT can be used for data exfiltration, spreading misinformation, developing cyber attacks and writing phishing emails. On the flip side, it can help defenders who can use it for identifying vulnerabilities and learning about various defenses. In this article, we show numerous ways attackers can exploit ChatGPT and the OpenAI Playground. Just as importantly, we show ways that defenders can leverage ChatGPT t