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Threat actors have been exploiting the newly disclosed zero-day flaw in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software dating back to March 26, 2024, nearly three weeks before it came to light yesterday. The network security company's Unit 42 division is  tracking  the activity under the name  Operation MidnightEclipse , attributing it as the work of a single threat actor of unknown provenance. The security vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-3400  (CVSS score: 10.0), is a command injection flaw that enables unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code with root privileges on the firewall. It's worth noting that the issue is applicable only to PAN-OS 10.2, PAN-OS 11.0, and PAN-OS 11.1 firewall configurations that have GlobalProtect gateway and device telemetry enabled. Operation MidnightEclipse entails the exploitation of the flaw to create a cron job that runs every minute to fetch commands hosted on an external server ("172.233.228[

A threat group of suspected Romanian origin called  RUBYCARP  has been observed maintaining a long-running botnet for carrying out crypto mining, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), and phishing attacks. The group, believed to be active for at least 10 years, employs the botnet for financial gain, Sysdig said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Its primary method of operation leverages a botnet deployed using a variety of public exploits and brute-force attacks," the cloud security firm said . "This group communicates via public and private IRC networks." Evidence  gathered  so far suggests that RUBYCARP may have crossover with another threat cluster tracked by Albanian cybersecurity firm Alphatechs under the moniker Outlaw , which has a history of conducting crypto mining and brute-force attacks and has since pivoted to phishing and spear-phishing campaigns to cast a wide net. "These phishing emails often lure victims into revealing sensitive i

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday unsealed indictments against seven Chinese nationals for their involvement in a hacking group that targeted U.S. and foreign critics, journalists, businesses, and political officials for about 14 years. The defendants include Ni Gaobin (倪高彬), Weng Ming (翁明), Cheng Feng (程锋), Peng Yaowen (彭耀文), Sun Xiaohui (孙小辉), Xiong Wang (熊旺), and Zhao Guangzong (赵光宗).  The suspected cyber spies have been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a state-sponsored threat group tracked as  APT31 , which is also known as Altaire,  Bronze Vinewood , Judgement Panda, and Violet Typhoon (formerly Zirconium). The hacking collective has been  active since at least 2010 . Specifically, their responsibilities entail testing and exploiting the malware used to conduct the intrusions, managing the attack infrastructure, and conducting surveillance of specific U.S. entities, federal prosecutors no

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

A financial entity in Vietnam was the target of a previously undocumented threat actor called  Lotus Bane  as part of a cyber attack that was first detected in March 2023. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB described the hacking outfit as an advanced persistent threat group that's believed to have been active since at least 2022. The exact specifics of the infection chain remain unknown as yet, but it involves the use of various malicious artifacts that serve as the stepping stone for the next-stage. "The cybercriminals used methods such as DLL side-loading and data exchange via named pipes to run malicious executables and create remote scheduled tasks for lateral movement," the company  said . Group-IB told The Hacker News that the techniques used by Lotus Bane overlap with that of  OceanLotus , a Vietnam-aligned threat actor also known as APT32, Canvas Cyclone (formerly Bismuth), and Cobalt Kitty. This stems from the use of malware like PIPEDANCE for named pipes co

A recently open-sourced network mapping tool called  SSH-Snake  has been repurposed by threat actors to conduct malicious activities. "SSH-Snake is a self-modifying worm that leverages SSH credentials discovered on a compromised system to start spreading itself throughout the network," Sysdig researcher Miguel Hernández  said . "The worm automatically searches through known credential locations and shell history files to determine its next move." SSH-Snake was first released on GitHub in early January 2024, and is described by its developer as a "powerful tool" to carry out  automatic network traversal  using SSH private keys discovered on systems. In doing so, it creates a comprehensive map of a network and its dependencies, helping determine the extent to which a network can be compromised using SSH and SSH private keys starting from a particular host. It also supports  resolution of domains  which have multiple IPv4 addresses. "It's comp

The Android banking trojan known as  Anatsa  has expanded its focus to include Slovakia, Slovenia, and Czechia as part of a new campaign observed in November 2023. "Some of the droppers in the campaign successfully exploited the accessibility service, despite Google Play's enhanced detection and protection mechanisms," ThreatFabric  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "All droppers in this campaign have demonstrated the capability to bypass the restricted settings for accessibility service in Android 13." The campaign, in total, involves five droppers with more than 100,000 total installations. Also known by the name TeaBot and Toddler, Anatsa is known to be distributed under the guise of seemingly innocuous apps on the Google Play Store. These apps, called droppers, facilitate the installation of the malware by circumventing security measures imposed by Google that seek to grant sensitive permissions. In June 2023, the Dutch mobile security firm

Threat hunters have identified a new variant of Android malware called  MoqHao  that automatically executes on infected devices without requiring any user interaction. "Typical MoqHao requires users to install and launch the app to get their desired purpose, but this new variant requires no execution," McAfee Labs  said  in a report published this week. "While the app is installed, their malicious activity starts automatically." The campaign's targets include Android users located in France, Germany, India, Japan, and South Korea. MoqHao, also called Wroba and XLoader (not to be confused with the  Windows and macOS malware  of the same name), is an Android-based mobile threat that's associated with a Chinese financially motivated cluster dubbed  Roaming Mantis  (aka Shaoye). Typical  attack chains  commence with package delivery-themed SMS messages bearing fraudulent links that, when clicked from Android devices, lead to the deployment of the malware b

Companies are engaged in a seemingly endless cat-and-mouse game when it comes to cybersecurity and cyber threats. As organizations put up one defensive block after another, malicious actors kick their game up a notch to get around those blocks. Part of the challenge is to coordinate the defensive abilities of disparate security tools, even as organizations have limited resources and a dearth of skilled cybersecurity experts. XDR, or Extended Detection and Response, addresses this challenge. XDR platforms correlate indicators from across security domains to detect threats and then provide the tools to remediate incidents.  While XDR has many benefits, legacy approaches have been hampered by the lack of good-quality data. You might end up having a very good view of a threat from events generated by your EPP/EDR system but lack events about the network perspective (or vice versa). XDR products will import data from third-party sensors, but data comes in different formats. The XDR platf

The iPhones belonging to nearly three dozen journalists, activists, human rights lawyers, and civil society members in Jordan have been targeted with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, according to joint findings from Access Now and the Citizen Lab. Nine of the 35 individuals have been  publicly confirmed  as  targeted , out of whom six had their devices compromised with the mercenary surveillanceware tool. The infections are estimated to have taken place from at least 2019 until September 2023. "In some cases, perpetrators posed as journalists, seeking an interview or a quote from victims, while embedding malicious links to Pegasus spyware amid and in between their messages," Access Now  said . "A number of victims were reinfected with Pegasus spyware multiple times — demonstrating the relentless nature of this targeted surveillance campaign." The Israeli company has been under the radar for failing to implement rigorous human rights safeguards prior to selling

Remote desktop software maker AnyDesk disclosed on Friday that it suffered a cyber attack that led to a compromise of its production systems. The German company said the incident, which it discovered following a security audit, is not a ransomware attack and that it has notified relevant authorities. "We have revoked all security-related certificates and systems have been remediated or replaced where necessary," the company  said  in a statement. "We will be revoking the previous code signing certificate for our binaries shortly and have already started replacing it with a new one." Out of an abundance of caution, AnyDesk has also revoked all passwords to its web portal, my.anydesk[.]com, and it's urging users to change their passwords if the same passwords have been reused on other online services. It's also recommending that users download the latest version of the software, which comes with a new  code signing certificate . AnyDesk did not disclose