dns malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The cybercriminal group behind the infamous DNSpionage malware campaign has been found running a new sophisticated operation that infects selected victims with a new variant of the DNSpionage malware. First uncovered in November last year, the DNSpionage attacks used compromised sites and crafted malicious documents to infect victims' computers with DNSpionage —a custom remote administrative tool that uses HTTP and DNS communication to communicate with the attacker-controlled command and control server. According to a new report published by Cisco's Talos threat research team, the group has adopted some new tactics, techniques and procedures to improve the efficacy of their operations, making their cyber attacks more targeted, organised and sophisticated in nature. Unlike previous campaigns, attackers have now started performing reconnaissance on its victims before infecting them with a new piece of malware, dubbed Karkoff , allowing them to selectively choose which t...

It is no secret that cybercriminals are becoming dramatically more adept, innovative, and stealthy with each passing day. While new forms of cybercrime are on the rise, traditional activities seem to be shifting towards more clandestine techniques that involve the exploitation of standard system tools and protocols, which are not always monitored. The latest example of such attack is DNSMessenger – a new Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that uses DNS queries to conduct malicious PowerShell commands on compromised computers – a technique that makes the RAT difficult to detect onto targeted systems. The Trojan came to the attention of Cisco's Talos threat research group by a security researcher named Simpo, who highlighted a tweet that encoded text in a PowerShell script that said 'SourceFireSux.' SourceFire is one of Cisco's corporate security products. DNSMessenger Attack Is Completely Fileless Further analysis of the malware ultimately led Talos researchers to...

Organizations now use an average of 112 SaaS applications —a number that keeps growing. In a 2024 study, 49% of 644 respondents who frequently used Microsoft 365 believed that they had less than 10 apps connected to the platform, despite the fact that aggregated data indicated over 1,000+ Microsoft 365 SaaS-to-SaaS connections on average per deployment. And that's just one major SaaS provider. Imagine other unforeseen critical security risks: Each SaaS app has unique security configurations —making misconfigurations a top risk. Business-critical apps (CRM, finance, and collaboration tools) store vast amounts of sensitive data, making them prime targets for attackers. Shadow IT and third-party integrations introduce hidden vulnerabilities that often go unnoticed. Large and small third-party AI service providers (e.g. audio/video transcription service) may not comply with legal and regulatory requirements, or properly test and review code. Major SaaS providers also have thous...