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A previously undocumented threat activity cluster dubbed Earth Minotaur is leveraging the MOONSHINE exploit kit and an unreported Android-cum-Windows backdoor called DarkNimbus to facilitate long-term surveillance operations targeting Tibetans and Uyghurs. "Earth Minotaur uses MOONSHINE to deliver the DarkNimbus backdoor to Android and Windows devices, targeting WeChat, and possibly making it a cross-platform threat," Trend Micro researchers Joseph C Chen and Daniel Lunghi said in an analysis published today. "MOONSHINE exploits multiple known vulnerabilities in Chromium-based browsers and applications, requiring users to update software regularly to prevent attacks." Countries affected by Earth Minotaur's attacks span Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Nepal, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the U.S. MOONSHINE first came to light in September 2019 as part of cyber attacks targeting t...

A coalition of law enforcement agencies coordinated by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) has led to the arrest and extradition of a Belarussian and Ukrainian dual-national believed to be associated with Russian-speaking cybercrime groups. Maksim Silnikau (aka Maksym Silnikov), 38, went by the online monikers J.P. Morgan, xxx, and lansky. He was extradited to the U.S. from Poland on August 9, 2024, to face charges related to international computer hacking and wire fraud schemes. "J.P. Morgan and his associates are elite cyber criminals who practiced extreme operational and online security in an effort to avoid law enforcement detection," the NCA said in a statement. These individuals, the agency said, were responsible for the development and distribution of ransomware strains such as Reveton and Ransom Cartel , as well as exploit kits like Angler . Reveton, introduced in 2011, has been described as the "first ever ransomware-as-a-service business model." V...

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...

Fake web browser updates are being used to deliver remote access trojans (RATs) and information stealer malware such as BitRAT and Lumma Stealer (aka LummaC2). "Fake browser updates have been responsible for numerous malware infections, including those of the well-known SocGholish malware," cybersecurity firm eSentire said in a new report. "In April 2024, we observed FakeBat being distributed via similar fake update mechanisms." The attack chain commences when prospective targets visits a booby-trapped website that contains JavaScript code designed to redirect users to a bogus browser update page ("chatgpt-app[.]cloud"). The redirected web page comes embedded with a download link to a ZIP archive file ("Update.zip") that's hosted on Discord and downloaded automatically to the victim's device. It's worth pointing out that threat actors often use Discord as an attack vector, with a recent analysis from Bitdefender uncovering m...

The RIG exploit kit (EK) touched an all-time high successful exploitation rate of nearly 30% in 2022, new findings reveal. "RIG EK is a financially-motivated program that has been active since 2014," Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT  said  in an exhaustive report shared with The Hacker News. "Although it has yet to substantially change its exploits in its more recent activity, the type and version of the malware they distribute constantly change. The frequency of updating samples ranges from weekly to daily updates." Exploit kits are programs used to distribute malware to large numbers of victims by taking advantage of known security flaws in commonly-used software such as web browsers. The fact that  RIG EK  runs as a service model means threat actors can financially compensate the RIG EK administrator for installing malware of their choice on victim machines. The RIG EK operators primarily employ malvertising to ensure a high infection rate and large-scale...

A new campaign leveraging an exploit kit has been observed abusing an Internet Explorer flaw patched by Microsoft last year to deliver the RedLine Stealer trojan. "When executed, RedLine Stealer performs recon against the target system (including username, hardware, browsers installed, anti-virus software) and then exfiltrates data (including passwords, saved credit cards, crypto wallets, VPN logins) to a remote command and control server," Bitdefender  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. Most of the infections are located in Brazil and Germany, followed by the U.S., Egypt, Canada, China, and Poland, among others. Exploit kits or exploit packs are comprehensive tools that contain a collection of exploits designed to take advantage of vulnerabilities in commonly-used software by scanning infected systems for different kinds of flaws and deploying additional malware. The primary infection method used by attackers to distribute exploit kits, in this case the...

As the world comes to grips with the coronavirus pandemic , the situation has proven to be a blessing in disguise for threat actors, who've taken advantage of the opportunity to target victims with scams or malware campaigns. Now, according to a new report published by Check Point Research today and shared with The Hacker News, hackers are exploiting the COVID-19 outbreak to spread their own infections, including registering malicious Coronavirus-related domains and selling discounted off-the-shelf malware in the dark web. "Special offers by different hackers promoting their 'goods' — usually malicious malware or exploit tools — are being sold over the darknet under special offers with 'COVID19' or 'coronavirus' as discount codes, targeting wannabe cyber-attackers," the cybersecurity firm said. COVID-19 Discounts: Exploit Tools for Sale The report comes following an uptick in the number of malicious coronavirus-related domains that hav...

The Russian government has introduced a draft bill that proposes prison sentences as punishment for hackers and cyber criminals creating malicious software used in targeting critical Russian infrastructure, even if they have no part in actual cyber attacks. The bill, published on the Russian government's website on Wednesday, proposes amendments to the Russian Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code with a new article titled, "Illegal influence upon the critical informational infrastructure of the Russian Federation." The article introduces punishment for many malicious acts, including the "creation and distribution of programs or information, which can be used for the destruction, blocking or copying data from the Russian systems." When suspects found as part of any hacking operation, they will face a fine between 500,000 and 1 Million rubles (about $7,700 to $15,400) and up to five years in prison, even if the hacking causes little or no harm. Also R...

If you have visited any popular mainstream website over the past two months, your computer may have been infected — Thanks to a new exploit kit discovered by security researchers. Researchers from antivirus provider ESET released a report on Tuesday stating that they have discovered an exploit kit, dubbed Stegano , hiding malicious code in the pixels of banner advertisements that are currently in rotation on several high profile news websites. Stegano originally dates back to 2014, but since early October this year, cyber crooks had managed to get the malicious ads displayed on a variety of unnamed reputable news websites, each with Millions of daily visitors. Stegano derived from the word Steganography , which is a technique of hiding messages and content inside a digital graphic image, making the content impossible to spot with the naked eye. In this particular malvertising campaign, operators hide malicious code inside transparent PNG image's Alpha Channel, which def...

Hackers are always in search for an elite method to create loopholes in the cyberspace to implement the dark rules in the form of vulnerability exploitation. Top Trustworthy sites such as The New York Times , BBC , MSN , AOL and many more are on the verge of losing their face value as a malwertized advertisement campaign are looming around the websites, according to SpiderLabs. Here's what Happens to Users when Clicking Ads on these Big Brand Sites: The advertisements on the legit sites trick users into clicking on it, making them believe that these circulated ads come from a trusted networks. Once clicked, the malicious Ad redirects the user to a malicious website that hosts Angler Exploit Kit (AEK) to infect visitors by installing malware and ransomware on their computer. Angler Exploit Kit includes many malicious hacking tools and zero-day exploits that let hackers execute drive-by attacks on visitors' computers. In this case, the Angler kit scan...

Who else didn't see this coming? It was so obvious as I stressed earlier that the  Let's Encrypt free HTTPS certificates would not just help legitimate website operators to encrypt its users' traffic, but also help criminals to bother innocent users with malware through secure sites. Let's Encrypt allows anyone to obtain free SSL/TLS ( Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security ) certificates for their web servers that encrypt all the Internet traffic passed between a server and users. Let's Encrypt is recognized by all major browsers, including Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The organization started offering Free HTTPS certs to everyone from last month, and it is very easy for anyone to set up an HTTPS website in a few simple steps ( How to Install Free SSL Cert ). However, the most bothersome part is that Let's Encrypt free SSL certs are not only used by website owners to secure its...

Security researchers have uncovered a malvertising campaign used to distribute malware to visitors of The Huffington Post website, as well as several other sites, through malicious advertisements served over the AOL  advertising  network . At the end of last year, Cyphort Labs, security firm specialized in detecting malware threats, came across some malicious advertisements that were being served on the United States and Canadian versions of the popular news website The Huffington Post . The malicious advertisements eventually redirected visitors of the news website to other websites hosting exploit kits, in order to attack victims' computers and install malware. Researchers discovered that the malvertising campaign originates with ads being served by AOL's Advertising.com network. Once clicked, users are redirected through a series of redirects, some of which used HTTPS encrypted connections, to a page that served either the Neutrino Exploit Kit or the Sweet...

Adobe has rolled-out an urgent out-of-band update for a critical remote code-execution vulnerability in its popular Flash Player that is currently being exploited by hackers. The critical vulnerability ( CVE 2014-8439 ) in Flash Player for Windows, Mac and Linux was originally mitigated more than a month ago in October 14, 2014 patch release, but a French researcher Kafeine found its exploits in the Angler and Nuclear malware kits after Adobe released a patch, according to security vendor F-Secure. " The vulnerability is being exploited in blind mass attack. No doubt about it : the team behind Angler is really good at what it does ," Kafeine said in a blog post . The vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code due to a weakness in the way a dereferenced pointer to memory is handled. An attacker could serve a specially crafted Flash file to trigger the vulnerability, which would lead to the execution of attacker's code in order to take control...

Oh MY God! Is Tracy Morgan Really Dead? NO, Thankfully it's only a hoax, but scammers announced the popular comedian and actor Tracy Morgan dead. Another Facebook scam is circulating across the social networking website just a day before the former " Saturday Night Live " and " 30 Rock " star Tracy Morgan was critically hurt in a six-vehicle fatal accident on the New Jersey Turnpike that killed his friend and writer 62-year-old James McNair. With the rise in various scams on the popular social networking giant, Facebook that has more than one billion active users, it became very clear that not only does the social networking platform provide special opportunities for people to connect and share information, but serves as a great platform for scammers as well. TOTAL SCAM LEADS TO MALWARE Scammers spare no incident to target as many victims as possible, and this time they made use of this roadway accident to target users by spreading the fake Facebook videos proclaimin...

A new and relatively rare Zeus Trojan  program has found which is totally different from other banking Trojans and has capability to secretly steal data from forms, login credentials and files from the victim as well as can create fake web pages and take screenshots of victim's computer. Researchers at RSA Security's FraudAction team have discovered this new and critical threat, dubbed as ' Pandemiya ', which is being offered to the cyber criminals in underground forums as an alternative to the infamous Zeus Trojan and its many variants, that is widely used by most of the cyber-criminals for years to steal banking information from consumers and companies. The source code of the Zeus banking Trojan is available on the underground forums from past few years, which lead malware developers to design more sophisticated variants of Zeus Trojan such as Citadel, Ice IX and Gameover Zeus . But, Pandemiya is something by far the most isolated and dangerous piece of malware ...