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The loader-as-a-service (LaaS) known as FakeBat has become one of the most widespread loader malware families distributed using the drive-by download technique this year, findings from Sekoia reveal. "FakeBat primarily aims to download and execute the next-stage payload, such as IcedID , Lumma , RedLine , SmokeLoader , SectopRAT , and Ursnif ," the company said in a Tuesday analysis. Drive-by attacks entail the use of methods like search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, malvertising, and nefarious code injections into compromised sites to entice users into downloading bogus software installers or browser updates. The use of malware loaders over the past few years dovetails with the growing use of landing pages impersonating legitimate software websites by passing them off as legitimate installers. This ties into the larger aspect that phishing and social engineering remain one of the threat actors' main ways to acquire initial access. FakeBat , also known as Eu...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple security flaws in Cinterion cellular modems that could be potentially exploited by threat actors to access sensitive information and achieve code execution. "These vulnerabilities include critical flaws that permit remote code execution and unauthorized privilege escalation, posing substantial risks to integral communication networks and IoT devices foundational to industrial, healthcare, automotive, financial and telecommunications sectors," Kaspersky  said . Cinterion modems were originally developed by Gemalto before the business was  acquired  by Telit from Thales as part of a deal announced in July 2022. The findings were  presented  at the OffensiveCon held in Berlin on May 11. The list of eight flaws is as follows - CVE-2023-47610  (CVSS score: 8.1) - A buffer overflow vulnerability that could allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system by ...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Cloud storage services provider Dropbox on Wednesday disclosed that Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign) was breached by unidentified threat actors, who accessed emails, usernames, and general account settings associated with all users of the digital signature product. The company, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said it became aware of the "unauthorized access" on April 24, 2024. Dropbox  announced  its plans to acquire HelloSign in January 2019. "The threat actor had accessed data related to all users of Dropbox Sign, such as emails and usernames, in addition to general account settings," it  said  in the Form 8-K filing.. "For subsets of users, the threat actor also accessed phone numbers, hashed passwords, and certain authentication information such as API keys, OAuth tokens, and multi-factor authentication." Even worse, the intrusion also affects third-parties who received or signed a docu...

The maintainers of the  PuTTY Secure Shell (SSH) and Telnet client  are alerting users of a critical vulnerability impacting versions from 0.68 through 0.80 that could be exploited to achieve full recovery of NIST P-521 (ecdsa-sha2-nistp521) private keys. The flaw has been assigned the CVE identifier  CVE-2024-31497 , with the discovery credited to researchers Fabian Bäumer and Marcus Brinkmann from the Ruhr University Bochum. "The effect of the vulnerability is to compromise the private key," the PuTTY project  said  in an advisory. "An attacker in possession of a few dozen signed messages and the public key has enough information to recover the private key, and then forge signatures as if they were from you, allowing them to (for instance) log in to any servers you use that key for." However, in order to obtain the signatures, an attacker will have to compromise the server for which the key is used to authenticate to. In a message posted on the Open Sou...

The maintainers of LibreOffice and OpenOffice have shipped security updates to their productivity software to remediate multiple vulnerabilities that could be weaponized by malicious actors to alter documents to make them appear as if they are digitally signed by a trusted source. The list of the three flaws is as follows — CVE-2021-41830  /  CVE-2021-25633  - Content and Macro Manipulation with Double Certificate Attack CVE-2021-41831  /  CVE-2021-25634  - Timestamp Manipulation with Signature Wrapping CVE-2021-41832  /  CVE-2021-25635  - Content Manipulation with Certificate Validation Attack Successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities could permit an attacker to  manipulate the timestamp  of signed ODF documents, and worse,  alter the contents  of a document or  self-sign a document  with an untrusted signature, which is then tweaked to change the  signature algorithm  to an invalid or un...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two new attack techniques on certified PDF documents that could potentially enable an attacker to alter a document's visible content by displaying malicious content over the certified content without invalidating its signature. "The attack idea exploits the flexibility of PDF certification, which allows signing or adding annotations to certified documents under different permission levels,"  said  researchers from Ruhr-University Bochum, who have  systematically   analyzed  the security of the PDF specification over the years. The findings were presented at the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy ( IEEE S&P 2021 ) held this week. The two attacks — dubbed  Evil Annotation and Sneaky Signature attacks  — hinge on manipulating the PDF certification process by exploiting flaws in the specification that governs the implementation of digital signatures (aka approval signature) and its more flexible vari...

A years-old vulnerability has been discovered in the way several security products for Mac implement Apple's code-signing API that could make it easier for malicious programs to bypass the security check, potentially leaving millions of Apple users vulnerable to hackers. Josh Pitts, a researcher from security firm Okta, discovered that several third-party security products for Mac—including Little Snitch, F-Secure xFence, VirusTotal, Google Santa, and Facebook OSQuery—could be tricked into believing that an unsigned malicious code is signed by Apple. Code-signing mechanism is a vital weapon in the fight against malware, which helps users identify who has signed the app and also provides reasonable proof that it has not been altered. However, Pitts found that the mechanism used by most products to check digital signatures is trivial to bypass, allowing malicious files bundle with a legitimate Apple-signed code to effectively make the malware look like it has been signed by...

Millions of Android devices are at serious risk of a newly disclosed critical vulnerability that allows attackers to secretly overwrite legitimate applications installed on your smartphone with their malicious versions. Dubbed Janus , the vulnerability allows attackers to modify the code of Android apps without affecting their signature verification certificates, eventually allowing them to distribute malicious update for the legitimate apps, which looks and works same as the original apps. The vulnerability ( CVE-2017-13156 ) was discovered and reported to Google by security researchers from mobile security firm GuardSquare this summer and has been patched by Google, among four dozen vulnerabilities, as part of its December Android Security Bulletin . However, the worrisome part is that majority of Android users would not receive these patches for next few month, until their device manufacturers (OEMs) release custom updates for them, apparently leaving a large number of sma...