hacking | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A Brazilian citizen has been charged in the United States for allegedly threatening to release data stolen by hacking into a company's network in March 2020. Junior Barros De Oliveira , 29, of Curitiba, Brazil has been charged with four counts of extortionate threats involving information obtained from protected computers and four counts of threatening communications, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in an unsealed indictment earlier this week. The said victim, a Brazilian subsidiary of a New Jersey-based company, had its computers breached by the defendant, who then exploited the access to steal confidential customer information from about 300,000 customers on at least three occasions. De Oliveira is alleged to have subsequently sent the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company an email message in September 2020 using an alias, demanding a payment of 300 bitcoin (valued at about $3.2 million at the time) in return for not selling the data. A month later, the de...

The Iranian nation-state hacking group known as Charming Kitten has been observed deploying a C++ variant of a known malware called BellaCiao. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, which dubbed the new version BellaCPP , said it discovered the artifact as part of a "recent" investigation into a compromised machine in Asia that was also infected with the BellaCiao malware. BellaCiao was first documented by Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender in April 2023, describing it as a custom dropper capable of delivering additional payloads. The malware has been deployed by the hacking group in cyber attacks targeting the United States, the Middle East, and India. It's also one of the many bespoke malware families the Charming Kitten actor has developed over the years. Affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the advanced persistent threat (APT) group is also known by the monikers APT35, CALANQUE, Charming Kitten, CharmingCypress, ITG18, Mint...

You can tell the story of the current state of stolen credential-based attacks in three numbers: Stolen credentials were the #1 attacker action in 2023/24, and the breach vector for 80% of web app attacks . (Source: Verizon). Cybersecurity budgets grew again in 2024, with organizations now spending almost $1,100 per user (Source: Forrester).  Stolen credentials on criminal forums cost as little as $10 (Source: Verizon). Something doesn't add up. So, what's going on? In this article, we'll cover: What's contributing to the huge rise in account compromises linked to stolen creds and why existing approaches aren't working.  The world of murky intelligence on stolen credentials, and how to cut through the noise to find the true positives. Recommendations for security teams to stop attackers from using stolen creds to achieve account takeover. Stolen credential-based attacks are on the rise There's clear evidence that identity attacks are now the #1 cyber threat f...

Meta Platforms-owned WhatsApp scored a major legal victory in its fight against Israeli commercial spyware vendor NSO Group after a federal judge in the U.S. state of California ruled in favor of the messaging giant for exploiting a security vulnerability to deliver Pegasus. "The limited evidentiary record before the court does show that defendants' Pegasus code was sent through plaintiffs' California-based servers 43 times during the relevant time period in May 2019," United States District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton said . The order further lambasted NSO Group, stating it "repeatedly failed to produce relevant discovery and failed to obey court orders regarding such discovery," referring to the company's failure to produce the Pegasus source code and for limiting the access to Israeli citizens present in Israel. This information, per WhatsApp, included code only pertaining to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) server, and not the entire codebase that wo...

A suspected South Asian cyber espionage threat group known as Bitter targeted a Turkish defense sector organization in November 2024 to deliver two C++-malware families tracked as WmRAT and MiyaRAT. "The attack chain used alternate data streams in a RAR archive to deliver a shortcut (LNK) file that created a scheduled task on the target machine to pull down further payloads," Proofpoint researchers Nick Attfield, Konstantin Klinger, Pim Trouerbach, and David Galazin said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The enterprise security company is tracking the threat actor under the name TA397. Known to be active since at least 2013, the adversary is also referred to as APT-C-08, APT-Q-37, Hazy Tiger, and Orange Yali. Prior attacks conducted by the hacking group have targeted entities in China, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh with malware such as BitterRAT , ArtraDownloader , and ZxxZ, indicating a heavy Asian focus. Bitter has also been linked to cyber...

Dive into the evolution of phishing and malware evasion techniques and understand how attackers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to bypass security measures. The Evolution of Phishing Attacks "I really like the saying that 'This is out of scope' said no hacker ever. Whether it's tricks, techniques or technologies, hackers will do anything to evade detection and make sure their attack is successful," says Etay Maor, Chief Security Strategist at Cato Networks and member of Cato CTRL . Phishing attacks have transformed significantly over the years. 15-20 years ago, simple phishing sites were sufficient for capturing the crown jewels of the time - credit card details. Today, attacks and defense methods have become much more sophisticated, as we'll detail below. "This is also the time where the "cat-and-mouse" attack-defense game began," says Tal Darsan, Security Manager and member of Cato CTRL. At the time, a major defense technique against credit card phishing sites inv...

A threat actor affiliated with Hamas has expanded its malicious cyber operations beyond espionage to carry out disruptive attacks that exclusively target Israeli entities. The activity, linked to a group called WIRTE , has also targeted the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, Check Point said in an analysis. "The [Israel-Hamas] conflict has not disrupted the WIRTE's activity, and they continue to leverage recent events in the region in their espionage operations," the company said . "In addition to espionage, the threat actor recently engaged in at least two waves of disruptive attacks against Israel." WIRTE is the moniker assigned to a Middle Eastern advanced persistent threat (APT) that has been active since at least August 2018, targeting a broad spectrum of entities across the region. It was first documented by Spanish cybersecurity company S2 Grupo. The hacking crew is assessed to be part of a politically motivated group ca...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a spike in phishing pages created using a website builder tool called Webflow, as threat actors continue to abuse legitimate services like Cloudflare and Microsoft Sway to their advantage. "The campaigns target sensitive information from different crypto wallets, including Coinbase, MetaMask, Phantom, Trezor, and Bitbuy, as well as login credentials for multiple company webmail platforms, as well as Microsoft 365 login credentials," Netskope Threat Labs researcher Jan Michael Alcantara said in an analysis. The cybersecurity company said it tracked a 10-fold increase in traffic to phishing pages crafted using Webflow between April and September 2024, with the attacks targeting more than 120 organizations across the world. A majority of those targeted are located in North America and Asia spanning financial services, banking, and technology sectors. The attackers have been observed using Webflow to create standalone phishing pages...

Ukraine has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack that targeted Russia state media company VGTRK and disrupted its operations, according to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters . The incident took place on the night of October 7, VGTRK confirmed , describing it as an "unprecedented hacker attack." However, it said "no significant damage" was caused and that everything was working normally despite attempts to interrupt radio and TV broadcasts. That said, Russian media outlet Gazeta.ru reported that the hackers wiped "everything" from the company's servers, including backups, citing an anonymous source. A source told Reuters that "Ukrainian hackers 'congratulated' Putin on his birthday by carrying out a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company." The attack is believed to be the work of a pro-Ukrainian hacker group called Sudo rm-RF . The Russian government has since said an investi...

A new set of malicious packages has been unearthed in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that masqueraded as cryptocurrency wallet recovery and management services, only to siphon sensitive data and facilitate the theft of valuable digital assets. "The attack targeted users of Atomic, Trust Wallet, Metamask, Ronin, TronLink, Exodus, and other prominent wallets in the crypto ecosystem," Checkmarx researcher Yehuda Gelb said in a Tuesday analysis. "Presenting themselves as utilities for extracting mnemonic phrases and decrypting wallet data, these packages appeared to offer valuable functionality for cryptocurrency users engaged in wallet recovery or management." However, they harbor functionality to steal private keys, mnemonic phrases, and other sensitive wallet data, such as transaction histories or wallet balances. Each of the packages attracted hundreds of downloads prior to them being taken down - atomicdecoderss (366 downloads) trondecoderss ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged a 39-year-old U.K. national for perpetrating a hack-to-trade fraud scheme that netted him nearly $3.75 million in illegal profits. Robert Westbrook of London was arrested last week and is expected to be extradited to the U.S. to face charges related to securities fraud, wire fraud, and five counts of computer fraud. According to the court documents, Westbrook is believed to have executed a fraudulent scheme between January 2019 and May 2020 that allowed him to generate millions in profits by gaining unauthorized access to Microsoft 365 accounts belonging to corporate executives. "On at least five occasions, Westbrook gained unauthorized access to Office 365 email accounts belonging to corporate executives employed by certain U.S.-based companies to obtain non-public information, including information about impending earnings announcements," the DoJ said . The accused then used that information to purchase securities and ma...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a set of now patched vulnerabilities in Kia vehicles that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed remote control over key functions simply by using only a license plate. "These attacks could be executed remotely on any hardware-equipped vehicle in about 30 seconds, regardless of whether it had an active Kia Connect subscription," security researchers Neiko Rivera, Sam Curry, Justin Rhinehart, and Ian Carroll said . The issues impact almost all vehicles made after 2013, even letting attackers covertly gain access to sensitive information including the victim's name, phone number, email address, and physical address. Essentially, this could then be abused by the adversary to add themselves as an "invisible" second user on the car without the owner's knowledge. The crux of the research is that the issues exploit the Kia dealership infrastructure ("kiaconnect.kdealer[.]com") used for vehicle activat...

The cryptojacking operation known as TeamTNT has likely resurfaced as part of a new campaign targeting Virtual Private Server (VPS) infrastructures based on the CentOS operating system. "The initial access was accomplished via a Secure Shell (SSH) brute force attack on the victim's assets, during which the threat actor uploaded a malicious script," Group-IB researchers Vito Alfano and Nam Le Phuong said in a Wednesday report. The malicious script, the Singaporean cybersecurity company noted, is responsible for disabling security features, deleting logs, terminating cryptocurrency mining processes, and inhibiting recovery efforts. The attack chains ultimately pave the way for the deployment of the Diamorphine rootkit to conceal malicious processes, while also setting up persistent remote access to the compromised host. The campaign has been attributed to TeamTNT with moderate confidence, citing similarities in the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) observed...

Nearly 1.3 million Android-based TV boxes running outdated versions of the operating system and belonging to users spanning 197 countries have been infected by a new malware dubbed Vo1d (aka Void). "It is a backdoor that puts its components in the system storage area and, when commanded by attackers, is capable of secretly downloading and installing third-party software," Russian antivirus vendor Doctor Web said in a report published today. A majority of the infections have been detected in Brazil, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Russia, Tunisia, Ecuador, Malaysia, Algeria, and Indonesia. It's currently not known what the source of the infection is, although it's suspected that it may have either involved an instance of prior compromise that allows for gaining root privileges or the use of unofficial firmware versions with built-in root access. The following TV models have been targeted as part of the campaign - KJ-SMART4KVIP (Android 10.1; KJ-SMA...

A "simplified Chinese-speaking actor" has been linked to a new campaign that has targeted multiple countries in Asia and Europe with the end goal of performing search engine optimization (SEO) rank manipulation. The black hat SEO cluster has been codenamed DragonRank by Cisco Talos, with victimology footprint scattered across Thailand, India, Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China. "DragonRank exploits targets' web application services to deploy a web shell and utilizes it to collect system information and launch malware such as PlugX and BadIIS, running various credential-harvesting utilities," security researcher Joey Chen said . The attacks have led to compromises of 35 Internet Information Services ( IIS ) servers with the end goal of deploying the BadIIS malware, which was first documented by ESET in August 2021. It's specifically designed to facilitate proxy ware and SEO fraud by turning the compromised IIS server into a relay point for mal...

The Singapore Police Force (SPF) has announced the arrest of five Chinese nationals and one Singaporean man for their alleged involvement in illicit cyber activities in the country. The development comes after a group of about 160 law enforcement officials conducted a series of raids on September 9, 2024, simultaneously at several locations. The six men, aged between 32 and 42, are suspected of being linked to a "global syndicate" that conducts malicious cyber activities. Pursuant to the operation, electronic devices and cash were seized. Among those apprehended includes a 42-year-old Chinese national from Bidadari Park Drive, who was found to be in possession of a laptop that contained credentials to access web servers used by known hacker groups. The identities of the threat actors were not disclosed. In addition, five laptops, six mobile phones, cash totaling more than S$24,000 (USD$18,400), and cryptocurrency worth approximately USD$850,000 were confiscated from th...