encryption | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Multiple threat actors are exploiting the recently disclosed security flaws in JetBrains TeamCity software to deploy ransomware, cryptocurrency miners, Cobalt Strike beacons, and a Golang-based remote access trojan called Spark RAT. The attacks entail the exploitation of  CVE-2024-27198  (CVSS score: 9.8) that enables an adversary to bypass authentication measures and gain administrative control over affected servers. "The attackers are then able to install malware that can reach out to its command-and-control (C&C) server and perform additional commands such as deploying Cobalt Strike beacons and remote access trojans (RATs)," Trend Micro  said  in a new report. "Ransomware can then be installed as a final payload to encrypt files and demand ransom payments from victims." Following public disclosure of the flaw earlier this month, it has been weaponized by threat actors associated with  BianLian  and  Jasmin ransomware  families, as well as to drop the XMR

The Cyber Police of Ukraine has  arrested  three individuals on suspicion of hijacking more than 100 million emails and Instagram accounts from users across the world. The suspects, aged between 20 and 40, are said to be part of an organized criminal group living in different parts of the country. If convicted, they face up to 15 years in prison. The accounts, authorities said, were taken over by carrying out brute-force attacks, which employ trial-and-error methods to guess login credentials. The group operated under the direction of a leader, who distributed the hacking tasks to other members. The cybercrime group subsequently monetized their ill-gotten credentials by putting them up for sale on dark web forums. Other threat actors who purchased the information used the compromised accounts to conduct a variety of  fraudulent schemes , including those in which scammers reach out to the victim's friends to urgently transfer money to their bank account. "You can protect

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

A new phishing campaign is targeting U.S. organizations with the intent to deploy a remote access trojan called NetSupport RAT. Israeli cybersecurity company Perception Point is tracking the activity under the moniker  Operation PhantomBlu . "The PhantomBlu operation introduces a nuanced exploitation method, diverging from NetSupport RAT's typical delivery mechanism by leveraging OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) template manipulation, exploiting Microsoft Office document templates to execute malicious code while evading detection," security researcher Ariel Davidpur  said . NetSupport RAT is a  malicious offshoot  of a legitimate remote desktop tool known as NetSupport Manager, allowing threat actors to conduct a spectrum of data gathering actions on a compromised endpoint. The starting point is a salary-themed phishing email that purports to be from the accounting department and urges recipients to open the attached Microsoft Word document to view the "monthly

A new elaborate attack campaign has been observed employing PowerShell and VBScript malware to infect Windows systems and harvest sensitive information. Cybersecurity company Securonix, which dubbed the campaign DEEP#GOSU, said it's likely associated with the North Korean state-sponsored group tracked as Kimsuky (aka Emerald Sleet, Springtail, or Velvet Chollima). "The malware payloads used in the  DEEP#GOSU  represent a sophisticated, multi-stage threat designed to operate stealthily on Windows systems especially from a network-monitoring standpoint," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a technical analysis shared with The Hacker News. "Its capabilities included keylogging, clipboard monitoring, dynamic payload execution, and data exfiltration, and persistence using both RAT software for full remote access, scheduled tasks as well as self-executing PowerShell scripts using jobs." A notable aspect of the infection proced

Cybersecurity researchers have found that third-party plugins available for OpenAI ChatGPT could act as a new attack surface for threat actors looking to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data. According to  new research  published by Salt Labs, security flaws found directly in ChatGPT and within the ecosystem could allow attackers to install malicious plugins without users' consent and hijack accounts on third-party websites like GitHub. ChatGPT plugins , as the name implies, are tools designed to run on top of the large language model (LLM) with the aim of accessing up-to-date information, running computations, or accessing third-party services. OpenAI has since also introduced  GPTs , which are bespoke versions of ChatGPT tailored for specific use cases, while reducing third-party service dependencies. As of March 19, 2024, ChatGPT users  will no longer  be able to install new plugins or create new conversations with existing plugins. One of the flaws unearthed by Salt

Google on Thursday announced an enhanced version of Safe Browsing to provide real-time, privacy-preserving URL protection and safeguard users from visiting potentially malicious sites. "The  Standard protection mode for Chrome  on desktop and iOS will check sites against Google's server-side list of known bad sites in real-time," Google's Jonathan Li and Jasika Bawa  said . "If we suspect a site poses a risk to you or your device, you'll see a warning with more information. By checking sites in real time, we expect to block 25% more phishing attempts." Up until now, the Chrome browser used a locally-stored list of known unsafe sites that's updated every 30 to 60 minutes, and then leveraging a  hash-based approach  to compare every site visited against the database. Google  first revealed  its plans to switch to real-time server-side checks without sharing users' browsing history with the company in September 2023. The reason for the change, the search giant said, is motivated b

Chinese users looking for legitimate software such as Notepad++ and VNote on search engines like Baidu are being targeted with malicious ads and bogus links to distribute trojanized versions of the software and ultimately deploy  Geacon , a Golang-based implementation of Cobalt Strike. "The malicious site found in the notepad++ search is distributed through an advertisement block," Kaspersky researcher Sergey Puzan  said . "Opening it, an attentive user will immediately notice an amusing inconsistency: the website address contains the line vnote, the title offers a download of Notepad‐‐ (an analog of Notepad++, also distributed as open-source software), while the image proudly shows Notepad++. In fact, the packages downloaded from here contain Notepad‐‐." The website, named vnote.fuwenkeji[.]cn, contains download links to Windows, Linux, and macOS versions of the software, with the link to the Windows variant pointing to the official  Gitee repository  containing the Notepad-- ins

A 34-year-old Russian-Canadian national has been sentenced to nearly four years in jail in Canada for his participation in the LockBit global ransomware operation. Mikhail Vasiliev , an Ontario resident, was  originally arrested  in November 2022 and charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) with "conspiring with others to intentionally damage protected computers and to transmit ransom demands in connection with doing so." News of Vasiliev's jail term was  first reported  by CTV News.  The defendant, who had his home searched by Canadian law enforcement authorities in August and October 2022, is said to have kept a list of "prospective or historical" victims and screenshots of communications exchanged with "LockBitSupp" on the Tox messaging platform. The raid also uncovered a text file with instructions to deploy LockBit ransomware, the ransomware source code, and a control panel used by the e-crime group to deliver the file-locking malware.

A DarkGate malware campaign observed in mid-January 2024 leveraged a recently patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows as a zero-day using bogus software installers. "During this campaign, users were lured using PDFs that contained Google DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) open redirects that led unsuspecting victims to compromised sites hosting the Microsoft Windows SmartScreen bypass CVE-2024-21412 that led to malicious Microsoft (.MSI) installers," Trend Micro  said . CVE-2024-21412 (CVSS score: 8.1) concerns an internet shortcut files security feature bypass vulnerability that permits an unauthenticated attacker to circumvent SmartScreen protections by tricking a victim into clicking on a specially crafted file. It was  fixed  by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for February 2024, but not before it was weaponized by a threat actor called  Water Hydra  (aka DarkCasino) to deliver the DarkMe malware in attacks targeting financial institutions. The latest finding

In the realm of cybersecurity, the stakes are sky-high, and at its core lies secrets management — the foundational pillar upon which your security infrastructure rests. We're all familiar with the routine: safeguarding those API keys, connection strings, and certificates is non-negotiable. However, let's dispense with the pleasantries; this isn't a simple 'set it and forget it' scenario. It's about guarding your secrets in an age where threats morph as swiftly as technology itself. Lets shed some light on common practices that could spell disaster as well as the tools and strategies to confidently navigate and overcome these challenges. In simple words this is a first step guide for mastering secrets management across diverse terrains.  Top 5 common secrets management mistakes Alright, let's dive into some common secrets management mistakes that can trip up even the savviest of teams: Hard coding secrets in code repositories:  A classic mistake, hard codin

The notorious North Korean state-backed hacking group Lazarus uploaded four packages to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository with the goal of infecting developer systems with malware. The packages, now taken down, are  pycryptoenv ,  pycryptoconf ,  quasarlib , and  swapmempool . They have been collectively downloaded 3,269 times, with pycryptoconf accounting for the most downloads at 1,351. "The package names pycryptoenv and pycryptoconf are similar to pycrypto, which is a Python package used for encryption algorithms in Python," JPCERT/CC researcher Shusei Tomonaga  said . "Therefore, the attacker probably prepared the malware-containing malicious packages to target users' typos in installing Python packages." The disclosure comes days after Phylum  uncovered  several rogue packages on the npm registry that have been used to single out software developers as part of a campaign codenamed Contagious Interview. An interesting commonality between the t

An "intricately designed" remote access trojan (RAT) called  Xeno RAT  has been made available on GitHub, making it easily accessible to other actors at no extra cost. Written in C# and compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems, the open-source RAT comes with a "comprehensive set of features for remote system management," according to its developer, who goes by the name moom825. It includes a SOCKS5 reverse proxy and the ability to record real-time audio, as well as incorporate a hidden virtual network computing ( hVNC ) module along the lines of  DarkVNC , which allows attackers to gain remote access to an infected computer. "Xeno RAT is developed entirely from scratch, ensuring a unique and tailored approach to remote access tools," the developer  states  in the project description. Another notable aspect is that it has a builder that enables the creation of bespoke variants of the malware.  It's worth noting that moom825 is a

The threat actors behind the LockBit ransomware operation have resurfaced on the dark web using new infrastructure, days after an international law enforcement exercise  seized control  of its servers. To that end, the notorious group has moved its data leak portal to a new .onion address on the TOR network, listing 12 new victims as of writing. The administrator behind LockBit, in a  lengthy follow-up message , said some of their websites were confiscated by most likely exploiting a critical PHP flaw tracked as CVE-2023-3824, acknowledging that they didn't update PHP due to "personal negligence and irresponsibility." "I realize that it may not have been this CVE, but something else like 0-day for PHP, but I can't be 100% sure, because the version installed on my servers was already known to have a known vulnerability, so this is most likely how the victims' admin and chat panel servers and the blog server were accessed," they noted. They also cla

LockBitSupp, the individual(s) behind the persona representing the LockBit ransomware service on cybercrime forums such as Exploit and XSS, "has engaged with law enforcement," authorities said. The development comes following the  takedown  of the prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation as part of a coordinated international operation codenamed Cronos. Over 14,000 rogue accounts on third-party services like Mega, Protonmail, and Tutanota used by the criminals have been shuttered. "We know who he is. We know where he lives. We know how much he is worth. LockbitSupp has engaged with law enforcement," according to a  message  posted on the now-seized (and offline) dark web data leak site. The move has been  interpreted  by long-term watchers of LockBit as an attempt to create suspicion and sow the seeds of distrust among affiliates, ultimately undermining trust in the group within the cybercrime ecosystem. According to research published by Analyst1 in A