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A newly uncovered security flaw in the Windows operating system can be exploited to coerce remote Windows servers, including Domain Controllers, to authenticate with a malicious destination, thereby allowing an adversary to stage an  NTLM relay attack  and completely take over a Windows domain. The issue, dubbed " PetitPotam ," was discovered by security researcher Gilles Lionel, who shared technical details and proof-of-concept (PoC) code last week, noting that the flaw works by forcing "Windows hosts to authenticate to other machines via MS-EFSRPC EfsRpcOpenFileRaw function." MS-EFSRPC  is Microsoft's Encrypting File System Remote Protocol that's used to perform "maintenance and management operations on encrypted data that is stored remotely and accessed over a network." Specifically, the attack enables a domain controller to authenticate against a remote NTLM under a bad actor's control using the MS-EFSRPC interface and share its authen

An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor has been tracked in a new campaign deploying Android malware via the Syrian e-Government Web Portal, indicating an upgraded arsenal designed to compromise victims. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the group has been publicly observed using malicious Android applications as part of its attacks," Trend Micro researchers Zhengyu Dong, Fyodor Yarochkin, and Steven Du  said  in a technical write-up published Wednesday. StrongPity , also codenamed  Promethium  by Microsoft, is believed to have been active since 2012 and has typically focused on targets across Turkey and Syria. In June 2020, the espionage threat actor was  connected  to a wave of activities that banked on watering hole attacks and tampered installers, which abuse the popularity of legitimate applications, to infect targets with malware. "Promethium has been resilient over the years," Cisco Talos  disclosed  last year. "Its campai

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

A U.K. citizen has been arrested in the Spanish town of Estepona over his alleged involvement in the July 2020 hack of Twitter, resulting in the compromise of 130 high-profile accounts. Joseph O'Connor , 22, has been  charged  with intentionally accessing a computer without authorization and obtaining information from a protected computer, as well as for making extortive communications. The Spanish National Police made the arrest pursuant to a U.S. warrant. Besides his role in the Twitter hack, O'Connor is also charged with computer intrusions related to takeovers of TikTok and Snapchat user accounts and cyberstalking an unnamed juvenile victim. The  great Twitter hack  of July 15, 2020, emerged as one of the biggest security lapses in the social media platform's history after O'Connor, along with  Mason Sheppard, Nima Fazeli, and Graham Ivan Clark , managed to gain access to Twitter's internal tools, abusing it to breach the accounts of politicians, celebritie

Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities impacting CODESYS automation software and the WAGO programmable logic controller (PLC) platform that could be remotely exploited to take control of a company's cloud operational technology (OT) infrastructure. The flaws can be turned "into innovative attacks that could put threat actors in position to remotely control a company's cloud OT implementation, and threaten any industrial process managed from the cloud," the New York-headquartered industrial security company Claroty said in a report shared with The Hacker News, adding they "can be used to target a cloud-based management console from a compromised field device, or take over a company's cloud and attack PLCs and other devices to disrupt operations." CODESYS is a development environment for programming controller applications, enabling easy configuration of PLCs in industrial control systems. WAGO PFC100/200 is

Microsoft's Windows 10 and the upcoming Windows 11 versions have been found vulnerable to a new local privilege escalation vulnerability that permits users with low-level permissions access Windows system files, in turn, enabling them to unmask the operating system installation password and even decrypt private keys. The vulnerability has been nicknamed "SeriousSAM." "Starting with Windows 10 build 1809, non-administrative users are granted access to SAM, SYSTEM, and SECURITY registry hive files," CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) said in a  vulnerability note  published Monday. "This can allow for local privilege escalation (LPE)." The operating system configuration files in question are as follows - c:\Windows\System32\config\sam c:\Windows\System32\config\system c:\Windows\System32\config\security Microsoft, which is tracking the vulnerability under the identifier  CVE-2021-36934 , acknowledged the issue, but has yet to roll out a patch, o

Details have emerged about a high severity security vulnerability affecting a software driver used in HP, Xerox, and Samsung printers that has remained undetected since 2005. Tracked as  CVE-2021-3438  (CVSS score: 8.8), the issue concerns a buffer overflow in a print driver installer package named "SSPORT.SYS" that can enable remote privilege and arbitrary code execution. Hundreds of millions of printers have been released worldwide to date with the vulnerable driver in question. However, there is no evidence that the flaw was abused in real-world attacks. "A potential buffer overflow in the software drivers for certain HP LaserJet products and Samsung product printers could lead to an escalation of privilege," according to an advisory published in May. The issue was reported to HP by threat intelligence researchers from SentinelLabs on February 18, 2021, following which  remedies  have been  published  for the affected printers as of May 19, 2021. Specific

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday lifted the lid on a previously undocumented malware strain dubbed " MosaicLoader " that singles out individuals searching for cracked software as part of a global campaign. "The attackers behind MosaicLoader created a piece of malware that can deliver any payload on the system, making it potentially profitable as a delivery service," Bitdefender researchers said in a  report  shared with The Hacker News. "The malware arrives on target systems by posing as cracked installers. It downloads a malware sprayer that obtains a list of URLs from the C2 server and downloads the payloads from the received links." The malware has been so named because of its sophisticated internal structure that's orchestrated to prevent reverse-engineering and evade analysis. Attacks involving MosaicLoader rely on a well-established tactic for malware delivery called search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, wherein cybercriminals purc

The U.S. government and its key allies, including the European Union, the U.K., and NATO, formally attributed the massive cyberattack against Microsoft Exchange email servers to state-sponsored hacking crews working affiliated with the People's Republic of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). In a  statement  issued by the White House on Monday, the administration said, "with a high degree of confidence that malicious cyber actors affiliated with PRC's MSS conducted cyber-espionage operations utilizing the zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server disclosed in early March 2021. The U.K. government  accused  Beijing of a "pervasive pattern of hacking" and "systemic cyber sabotage." The  sweeping espionage campaign  exploited four previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange software and is believed to have hit at least 30,000 organizations in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands more worldwide. Microsoft identified

A threat group likely based in Romania and active since at least 2020 has been behind an active cryptojacking campaign targeting Linux-based machines with a previously undocumented SSH brute-forcer written in Golang. Dubbed " Diicot brute ," the password cracking tool is alleged to be distributed via a software-as-a-service model, with each threat actor furnishing their own unique API keys to facilitate the intrusions, Bitdefender researchers said in a report published last week. While the goal of the campaign is to deploy Monero mining malware by remotely compromising the devices via brute-force attacks, the researchers connected the gang to at least two  DDoS  botnets, including a  Demonbot  variant called chernobyl and a Perl  IRC bot , with the XMRig mining payload hosted on a domain named mexalz[.]us since February 2021. The Romanian cybersecurity technology company said it began its investigation into the group's hostile online activities in May 2021, leading

Merely days after Microsoft sounded the alarm on an unpatched security vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, possibly yet another zero-day flaw in the same component has come to light, making it the fourth printer-related shortcoming to be discovered in recent weeks. "Microsoft Windows allows for non-admin users to be able to install printer drivers via Point and Print," CERT Coordination Center's Will Dormann  said  in an advisory published Sunday. "Printers installed via this technique also install queue-specific files, which can be arbitrary libraries to be loaded by the privileged Windows Print Spooler process." An exploit for the vulnerability was disclosed by security researcher and  Mimikatz creator   Benjamin Delpy . #printnightmare - Episode 4 You know what is better than a Legit Kiwi Printer ? 🥝Another Legit Kiwi Printer...👍 No prerequiste at all, you even don't need to sign drivers/package🤪 pic.twitter.com/oInb5jm3tE — 🥝 B

A sweeping probe into a data leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers has revealed an extensive misuse of Israeli company NSO Group's Pegasus "military-grade spyware" to facilitate human rights violations by surveilling heads of state, activists, journalists, and lawyers around the world. Dubbed the " Pegasus Project ," the  investigation  is a collaboration by more than 80 journalists from a consortium of 17 media organizations in 10 countries coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based media non-profit, along with the technical support of Amnesty International. "The Pegasus Project lays bare how NSO's spyware is a weapon of choice for repressive governments seeking to silence journalists, attack activists and crush dissent, placing countless lives in peril," Amnesty International's Secretary-General, Agnès Callamard,  said . "These revelations blow apart any claims by NSO that such attacks are rare and down to rogue use of their te

Web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare last month fixed a critical vulnerability in its CDNJS library that's  used by 12.7% of all websites  on the internet. CDNJS is a free and open-source content delivery network (CDN) that serves about  4,041 JavaScript and CSS libraries , making it the  second most popular  CDN for JavaScript after Google Hosted Libraries. The weakness concerned an issue in the CDNJS library update server that could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands, leading to a complete compromise. The vulnerability was discovered and reported by security researcher RyotaK on April 6, 2021. There is no evidence of in-the-wild attacks abusing this flaw. Specifically, the vulnerability works by publishing packages to Cloudflare's CDNJS using GitHub and npm, using it to trigger a  path traversal vulnerability , and ultimately trick the server into executing arbitrary code, thus achieving remote code execution. It's wor

Two of the zero-day Windows flaws rectified by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update earlier this week were weaponized by an Israel-based company called Candiru in a series of "precision attacks" to hack more than 100 journalists, academics, activists, and political dissidents globally. The spyware vendor was also formally identified as the commercial surveillance company that Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) revealed as exploiting multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome browser to target victims located in Armenia, according to a report published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. " Candiru 's apparent widespread presence, and the use of its surveillance technology against global civil society, is a potent reminder that the mercenary spyware industry contains many players and is prone to widespread abuse," Citizen Lab researchers  said . "This case demonstrates, yet again, that in the absence of any international safegua

Advanced Persistent Threats groups were once considered a problem that concerns Fortune 100 companies only. However, the threat landscape of the recent years tells otherwise—in fact, every organization, regardless of vertical and size is at risk, whether as a direct target, supply chain or collateral damage. The vast majority of security decision-makers acknowledge they need to address the APT risk with additional security solutions but struggle with mapping APT attack vectors to a clear-cut set of security product capabilities, which impairs their ability to choose the products that would best protect them. Cynet is now addressing this need with the definitive RFP templates for EDR/EPP and APT Protection , an expert-made security requirement list, that enables stakeholders to accelerate and optimize the evaluation process of the products they evaluate. These RFP templates aim to capture the widest common denominator in terms of security needs and deliver the essential that are

Facebook on Thursday disclosed it dismantled a "sophisticated" online cyber espionage campaign conducted by Iranian hackers targeting about 200 military personnel and companies in the defense and aerospace sectors in the U.S., U.K., and Europe using fake online personas on its platform. The social media giant pinned the attacks to a threat actor known as  Tortoiseshell  (aka Imperial Kitten) based on the fact that the adversary used similar techniques in past campaigns attributed to the threat group, which was  previously   known  to focus on the information technology industry in Saudi Arabia, suggesting an apparent expansion of malicious activity. "This group used various malicious tactics to identify its targets and infect their devices with malware to enable espionage,"  said  Mike Dvilyanski, Head of Cyber Espionage Investigations, and David Agranovich, Director, Threat Disruption, at Facebook. "This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and

Microsoft on Thursday shared fresh guidance on yet another vulnerability affecting the Windows Print Spooler service, stating that it's working to address it in an upcoming security update. Tracked as  CVE-2021-34481  (CVSS score: 7.8), the issue concerns a local privilege escalation flaw that could be abused to perform unauthorized actions on the system. The company credited security researcher Jacob Baines for discovering and reporting the bug. "An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Windows Print Spooler service improperly performs privileged file operations. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges," the Windows maker said in its advisory. "An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights." However, it's worth pointing out that successful exploitation of the vulnerability requires the attacker to have t