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The infamous eGobbler hacking group that surfaced online earlier this year with massive malvertising campaigns has now been caught running a new campaign exploiting two browser vulnerabilities to show intrusive pop-up ads and forcefully redirect users to malicious websites. To be noted, hackers haven't found any way to run ads for free; instead, the modus operandi of eGobbler attackers involves high budgets to display billions of ad impressions on high profile websites through legit ad networks. But rather than relying on visitors' willful interaction with advertisements online, eGobbler uses browser (Chrome and Safari) exploits to achieve maximum click rate and successfully hijack as many users' sessions as possible. In its previous malvertising campaign, eGobbler group was exploiting a then-zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2019-5840) in Chrome for iOS back in April , which allowed them to successfully bypass browser's built-in pop-up blocker on iOS devices and hij...

Here's some bad news for Android users again. Certain low-cost Android smartphones and tablets are shipped with malicious firmware, which covertly gathers data about the infected devices, displays advertisements on top of running applications and downloads unwanted APK files on the victim's devices. Security researchers from Russian antivirus vendor Dr.Web have discovered two types of downloader Trojans that have been incorporated in the firmware of a large number of popular Android devices operating on the MediaTek platform, which are mostly marketed in Russia. The Trojans, detected as Android.DownLoader.473.origin and Android.Sprovider.7 , are capable of collecting data about the infected devices, contacting their command-and-control servers, automatically updating themselves, covertly downloading and installing other apps based on the instructions it receives from their server, and running each time the device is restarted or turned on. The list of Android devic...

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...

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...

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...

With the rise in mobile market, last year we have seen sharp growth in malicious ' adware ' — the most prevalent mobile threat in the world. And now, security researchers have once again found Google Play Store offering malicious apps that are infecting millions of Android users with adware . It's not at all surprising that the Android operating system is surrounded by a number of unwanted intrusions that may gain users' attention to fall victim for one, but this issue might be even worse than we thought. WHAT IS ADWARE ? For those not familiar with adware, adware is a software that automatically displays or downloads advertising material like banners or pop-ups when a user is online. Doesn't sound dangerous, Right? But adware could result in a serious threat to users. Android Adware can pose a major threat to users' privacy, since some ad networks gather personal information like phone number, email address, and many more. Depending on where the ad netwo...

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...