data exfiltration | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A previously undocumented China-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) group named PlushDaemon has been linked to a supply chain attack targeting a South Korean virtual private network (VPN) provider in 2023, according to new findings from ESET. "The attackers replaced the legitimate installer with one that also deployed the group's signature implant that we have named SlowStepper – a feature-rich backdoor with a toolkit of more than 30 components," ESET researcher Facundo Muñoz said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. PlushDaemon is assessed to be a China-nexus group that has been operational since at least 2019, targeting individuals and entities in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, the United States, and New Zealand. Central to its operations is a bespoke backdoor called SlowStepper, which is described as a large toolkit consisting of around 30 modules, programmed in C++, Python, and Go. Another crucial aspect of its attacks is the hijackin...

An Android information stealing malware named FireScam has been found masquerading as a premium version of the Telegram messaging app to steal data and maintain persistent remote control over compromised devices. "Disguised as a fake 'Telegram Premium' app, it is distributed through a GitHub.io-hosted phishing site that impersonates RuStore – a popular app store in the Russian Federation," Cyfirma said , describing it as a "sophisticated and multifaceted threat." "The malware employs a multi-stage infection process, starting with a dropper APK, and performs extensive surveillance activities once installed." The phishing site in question, rustore-apk.github[.]io, mimics RuStore, an app store launched by Russian tech giant VK in the country, and is designed to deliver a dropper APK file ("GetAppsRu.apk"). Once installed, the dropper acts as a delivery vehicle for the main payload, which is responsible for exfiltrating sensitive data,...

Every week seems to bring news of another data breach, and it's no surprise why: securing sensitive data has become harder than ever. And it's not just because companies are dealing with orders of magnitude more data. Data flows and user roles are constantly shifting, and data is stored across multiple technologies and cloud environments. Not to mention, compliance requirements are only getting stricter and more elaborate.  The problem is that while the data landscape has evolved rapidly, the usual strategies for securing that data are stuck in the past. Gone are the days when data lived in predictable places, with access controlled by a chosen few. Today, practically every department in the business needs to use customer data, and AI adoption means huge datasets, and a constant flux of permissions, use cases, and tools. Security teams are struggling to implement effective strategies for securing sensitive data, and a new crop of tools, called data security platforms, have appear...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged two malicious packages that were uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository and came fitted with capabilities to exfiltrate sensitive information from compromised hosts, according to new findings from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs. The packages, named zebo and cometlogger , attracted 118 and 164 downloads each, prior to them being taken down. According to ClickPy statistics, a majority of these downloads came from the United States, China, Russia, and India.  Zebo is a "typical example of malware, with functions designed for surveillance, data exfiltration, and unauthorized control," security researcher Jenna Wang said, adding cometlogger "also shows signs of malicious behavior, including dynamic file manipulation, webhook injection, stealing information, and anti-[virtual machine] checks." The first of the two packages, zebo, uses obfuscation techniques, such as hex-encoded strings, to conceal the URL of the co...

The Russia-linked APT29 threat actor has been observed repurposing a legitimate red teaming attack methodology as part of cyber attacks leveraging malicious Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) configuration files. The activity, which has targeted governments and armed forces, think tanks, academic researchers, and Ukrainian entities, entails adopting a "rogue RDP" technique that was previously documented by Black Hills Information Security in 2022, Trend Micro said in a report. "A victim of this technique would give partial control of their machine to the attacker, potentially leading to data leakage and malware installation," researchers Feike Hacquebord and Stephen Hilt said . The cybersecurity company is tracking the threat group under its own moniker Earth Koshchei, stating preparations for the campaign began as early as August 7-8, 2024. The RDP campaigns were also spotlighted by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA), Microsoft, and Amazon ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a novel surveillance program that's suspected to be used by Chinese police departments as a lawful intercept tool to gather a wide range of information from mobile devices. The Android tool, codenamed EagleMsgSpy by Lookout, has been operational since at least 2017, with artifacts uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform as recently as September 25, 2024. "The surveillanceware consists of two parts: an installer APK, and a surveillance client that runs headlessly on the device when installed," Kristina Balaam, senior staff threat intelligence researcher at Lookout, said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "EagleMsgSpy collects extensive data from the user: third-party chat messages, screen recording and screenshot capture, audio recordings, call logs, device contacts, SMS messages, location data, [and] network activity." EagleMsgSpy has been described by its developers as a "compreh...

The threat actor known as Gamaredon has been observed leveraging Cloudflare Tunnels as a tactic to conceal its staging infrastructure hosting a malware called GammaDrop. The activity is part of an ongoing spear-phishing campaign targeting Ukrainian entities since at least early 2024 that's designed to drop the Visual Basic Script malware, Recorded Future's Insikt Group said in a new analysis. The cybersecurity company is tracking the threat actor under the name BlueAlpha, which is also known as Aqua Blizzard, Armageddon, Hive0051, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, Trident Ursa, UAC-0010, UNC530, and Winterflounder. The group, believed to be active since 2014, is affiliated with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). "BlueAlpha has recently started using Cloudflare Tunnels to conceal staging infrastructure used by GammaDrop , an increasingly popular technique used by cybercriminal threat groups to deploy malware," Insikt Group noted . "BlueAl...

A threat actor known as BrazenBamboo has exploited an unresolved security flaw in Fortinet's FortiClient for Windows to extract VPN credentials as part of a modular framework called DEEPDATA . Volexity, which disclosed the findings Friday, said it identified the zero-day exploitation of the credential disclosure vulnerability in July 2024, describing BrazenBamboo as the developer behind DEEPDATA, DEEPPOST, and LightSpy . "DEEPDATA is a modular post-exploitation tool for the Windows operating system that is used to gather a wide range of information from target devices," security researchers Callum Roxan, Charlie Gardner, and Paul Rascagneres said in a technical report. The malware first came to light earlier this week, when BlackBerry detailed the Windows-based surveillance framework as used by the China-linked APT41 threat actor to harvest data from WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat, LINE, QQ, Skype, Microsoft Outlook, DingDing, Feishu, KeePass, as well as applic...

Tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) form the foundation of modern defense strategies. Unlike indicators of compromise (IOCs), TTPs are more stable, making them a reliable way to identify specific cyber threats. Here are some of the most commonly used techniques, according to ANY.RUN's Q3 2024 report on malware trends, complete with real-world examples. Disabling of Windows Event Logging (T1562.002) Disrupting Windows Event Logging helps attackers prevent the system from recording crucial information about their malicious actions. Without event logs, important details such as login attempts, file modifications, and system changes go unrecorded, leaving security solutions and analysts with incomplete or missing data. Windows Event Logging can be manipulated in different ways, including by changing registry keys or using commands like "net stop eventlog". Altering group policies is another common method. Since many detection mechanisms rely on log analysis to identify s...

Threat actors have been observed abusing Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) Transfer Acceleration feature as part of ransomware attacks designed to exfiltrate victim data and upload them to S3 buckets under their control. "Attempts were made to disguise the Golang ransomware as the notorious LockBit ransomware," Trend Micro researchers Jaromir Horejsi and Nitesh Surana said . "However, such is not the case, and the attacker only seems to be capitalizing on LockBit's notoriety to further tighten the noose on their victims." The ransomware artifacts have been found to embed hard-coded Amazon Web Services (AWS) credentials to facilitate data exfiltration to the cloud, a sign that adversaries are increasingly weaponizing popular cloud service providers for malicious schemes. The AWS account used in the campaign is presumed to be either their own or compromised. Following responsible disclosure to the AWS security team, the identified AWS access keys and accounts...

Threat actors are actively attempting to exploit a now-patched security flaw in Veeam Backup & Replication to deploy Akira and Fog ransomware. Cybersecurity vendor Sophos said it has been tracking a series of attacks in the past month leveraging compromised VPN credentials and CVE-2024-40711 to create a local account and deploy the ransomware. CVE-2024-40711, rated 9.8 out of 10.0 on the CVSS scale, refers to a critical vulnerability that allows for unauthenticated remote code execution. It was addressed by Veeam in Backup & Replication version 12.2 in early September 2024. Security researcher Florian Hauser of Germany-based CODE WHITE has been credited with discovering and reporting the security shortcoming. "In each of the cases, attackers initially accessed targets using compromised VPN gateways without multifactor authentication enabled," Sophos said . "Some of these VPNs were running unsupported software versions." "Each time, the attacker...

A little-known threat actor tracked as GoldenJackal has been linked to a series of cyber attacks targeting embassies and governmental organizations with an aim to infiltrate air-gapped systems using two disparate bespoke toolsets. Victims included a South Asian embassy in Belarus and a European Union (E.U.) government organization, Slovak cybersecurity company ESET said. "The ultimate goal of GoldenJackal seems to be stealing confidential information, especially from high-profile machines that might not be connected to the internet," security researcher Matías Porolli noted in an exhaustive analysis. GoldenJackal first came to light in May 2023, when Russian security vendor Kaspersky detailed the threat cluster's attacks on government and diplomatic entities in the Middle East and South Asia. The adversary's origins stretch back to at least 2019. An important characteristic of the intrusions is the use of a worm named JackalWorm that's capable of infectin...

The threat actor known as Storm-0501 has targeted government, manufacturing, transportation, and law enforcement sectors in the U.S. to stage ransomware attacks. The multi-stage attack campaign is designed to compromise hybrid cloud environments and perform lateral movement from on-premises to cloud environment, ultimately resulting in data exfiltration, credential theft, tampering, persistent backdoor access, and ransomware deployment, Microsoft said. "Storm-0501 is a financially motivated cybercriminal group that uses commodity and open-source tools to conduct ransomware operations," according to the tech giant's threat intelligence team. Active since 2021, the threat actor has a history of targeting education entities with Sabbath (54bb47h) ransomware before evolving into a ransomware-as-a-service ( RaaS ) affiliate delivering various ransomware payloads over the years, including Hive, BlackCat (ALPHV), Hunters International, LockBit, and Embargo ransomware. A n...