phishing attack | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The decentralized file system solution known as IPFS is becoming the new "hotbed" for hosting phishing sites, researchers have warned. Cybersecurity firm Trustwave SpiderLabs, which disclosed specifics of the spam campaigns, said it identified no less than 3,000 emails containing IPFS phishing URLs as an attack vector in the last three months. IPFS , short for InterPlanetary File System, is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network to store and share files and data using cryptographic hashes, instead of URLs or filenames, as is observed in a traditional client-server approach. Each hash forms the basis for a unique content identifier ( CID ). The idea is to create a resilient distributed file system that allows data to be stored across multiple computers. This would allow information to be accessed without having to rely on third parties such as cloud storage providers, effectively making it resistant to censorship. "Taking down phishing content stored on IPFS can be difficult

The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor tracked as Evilnum is once again exhibiting signs of renewed activity aimed at European financial and investment entities. "Evilnum is a backdoor that can be used for data theft or to load additional payloads," enterprise security firm Proofpoint  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The malware includes multiple interesting components to evade detection and modify infection paths based on identified antivirus software." Targets include organizations with operations supporting foreign exchanges, cryptocurrency, and decentralized finance (DeFi). The latest spate of attacks are said to have commenced in late 2021. The findings also dovetail with a report from Zscaler last month that  detailed  low-volume targeted attack campaigns launched against companies in Europe and the U.K. Active since 2018,  Evilnum  is tracked by the wider cybersecurity community using the names TA4563 and DeathStalker, with infection

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed that a large-scale phishing campaign targeted over 10,000 organizations since September 2021 by hijacking Office 365's authentication process even on accounts secured with multi-factor authentication (MFA). "The attackers then used the stolen credentials and session cookies to access affected users' mailboxes and perform follow-on business email compromise (BEC) campaigns against other targets," the company's cybersecurity teams  reported . The intrusions entailed setting up adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing sites, wherein the attacker deploys a proxy server between a potential victim and the targeted website so that recipients of a phishing email are redirected to lookalike landing pages designed to capture credentials and MFA information. "The phishing page has two different Transport Layer Security (TLS) sessions — one with the target and another with the actual website the target wants to access," the company

The Cyber Police of Ukraine last week disclosed that it apprehended nine members of a criminal gang that embezzled 100 million hryvnias via hundreds of phishing sites that claimed to offer financial assistance to Ukrainian citizens as part of a campaign aimed at capitalizing on the ongoing conflict. "Criminals created more than 400 phishing links to obtain bank card data of citizens and appropriate money from their accounts," the agency  said  in a press statement last week. "The perpetrators may face up to 15 years behind bars." The law enforcement operation culminated in the seizure of computer equipment, mobile phones, bank cards as well as the criminal proceeds illicitly obtained through the scheme. Some of the rogue domains registered by the actors included ross0.yolasite[.]com, foundationua[.]com, ua-compensation[.]buzz, www.bless12[.]store, help-compensation[.]xyz, newsukraine10.yolasite[.]com, and euro24dopomoga0.yolasite[.]com, among others. The mali

A malware-as-a-service (Maas) dubbed  Matanbuchus  has been observed spreading through phishing campaigns, ultimately dropping the Cobalt Strike post-exploitation framework on compromised machines. Matanbuchus, like other  malware loaders  such as  BazarLoader ,  Bumblebee , and  Colibri , is engineered to download and execute second-stage executables from command-and-control (C&C) servers on infected systems without detection. Available on Russian-speaking cybercrime forums for a price of $2,500 since February 2021, the malware is equipped with capabilities to launch .EXE and .DLL files in memory and run arbitrary PowerShell commands. The findings, released by threat intelligence firm Cyble last week, document the latest infection chain associated with the loader, which is linked to a threat actor who goes by the online moniker BelialDemon. "If we look historically, BelialDemon has been involved in the development of malware loaders," Unit 42 researchers Jeff White

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has  cautioned  of a new set of spear-phishing attacks exploiting the "Follina" flaw in the Windows operating system to deploy password-stealing malware. Attributing the intrusions to a Russian nation-state group tracked as APT28 (aka Fancy Bear or Sofacy), the agency said the attacks commence with a lure document titled "Nuclear Terrorism A Very Real Threat.rtf" that, when opened, exploits the recently disclosed vulnerability to download and execute a malware called CredoMap. Follina ( CVE-2022-30190 , CVSS score: 7.8), which concerns a case of remote code execution affecting the Windows Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT), was addressed by Microsoft on June 14, as part of its Patch Tuesday updates , but not before it was subjected to widespread zero-day exploit activity by numerous threat actors. According to an independent report published by Malwarebytes,  CredoMap  is a variant of the .NET-based credenti

Europol on Tuesday announced the dismantling of an organized crime group that dabbled in phishing, fraud, scams, and money laundering activities. The cross-border operation, which involved law enforcement authorities from Belgium and the Netherlands, saw the arrests of nine individuals in the Dutch nation. The suspects are men between the ages of 25 and 36 from Amsterdam, Almere, Rotterdam, and Spijkenisse and a 25-year-old woman from Deventer, according to a  statement  from the National Police Force. Also confiscated as part of 24 house searches were firearms, ammunition, jewelry, designer clothing, expensive watches, electronic devices, tens of thousands of euros in cash, and cryptocurrency, the officials said. "The criminal group contacted victims by email, text message and through mobile messaging applications," the agency  noted . "These messages were sent by the members of the gang and contained a phishing link leading to a bogus banking website." Unsu

A new wave of phishing campaigns has been observed spreading a previously documented malware called SVCReady . "The malware is notable for the unusual way it is delivered to target PCs — using shellcode hidden in the properties of Microsoft Office documents," Patrick Schläpfer, a threat analyst at HP,  said  in a technical write-up. SVCReady is said to be in its early stage of development, with the authors iteratively updating the malware several times last month. First signs of activity date back to April 22, 2022. Infection chains involve sending Microsoft Word document attachments to targets via email that contain VBA macros to activate the deployment of malicious payloads. But where this campaign stands apart is that instead of employing PowerShell or MSHTA to retrieve next-stage executables from a remote server, the macro runs shellcode stored in the  document properties , which subsequently drops the SVCReady malware. In addition to achieving persistence on the i

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) last week disclosed that it had taken legal proceedings against an Iranian threat actor dubbed  Bohrium  in connection with a spear-phishing operation. The adversarial collective is said to have targeted entities in tech, transportation, government, and education sectors located in the U.S., Middle East, and India. "Bohrium actors create fake social media profiles, often posing as recruiters," Amy Hogan-Burney of the DCU  said  in a tweet. "Once personal information was obtained from the victims, Bohrium sent malicious emails with links that ultimately infected their target's computers with malware." According to an  ex parte order  shared by the tech giant, the goal of the intrusions was to steal and exfiltrate sensitive information, take control over the infected machines, and carry out remote reconnaissance. To halt the malicious activities of Bohrium, Microsoft said it took down 41 ".com," ".info

An international law enforcement operation involving 11 countries has culminated in the takedown of a notorious mobile malware threat called  FluBot . "This Android malware has been spreading aggressively through SMS, stealing passwords, online banking details and other sensitive information from infected smartphones across the world," Europol  said  in a statement. The "complex investigation" included authorities from Australia, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the U.S. FluBot , also called Cabassous, emerged in the wild in December 2020, masking its insidious intent behind the veneer of seemingly innocuous package tracking applications such as FedEx, DHL, and Correos.  It primarily spreads via smishing (aka SMS-based phishing) messages that trick unsuspecting recipients into clicking on a link to download the malware-laced apps. Once launched, the app would proceed to request access to Android

A Russian state-sponsored threat actor has been observed targeting diplomatic and government entities as part of a series of phishing campaigns commencing on January 17, 2022. Threat intelligence and incident response firm Mandiant attributed the attacks to a hacking group tracked as APT29 (aka Cozy Bear), with some set of the activities associated with the crew assigned the moniker  Nobelium  (aka UNC2452/2652). "This latest wave of spear phishing showcases APT29's enduring interests in obtaining diplomatic and foreign policy information from governments around the world," Mandiant  said  in a report published last week. The initial access is said to have been aided through spear-phishing emails masquerading as administrative notices, using legitimate but compromised email addresses from other diplomatic entities. These emails contain an HTML dropper attachment called ROOTSAW (aka  EnvyScout ) that, when opened, triggers an infection sequence that delivers and exec

Ukraine's technical security and intelligence service is warning of a new wave of cyber attacks that are aimed at gaining access to users' Telegram accounts. "The criminals sent messages with malicious links to the Telegram website in order to gain unauthorized access to the records, including the possibility to transfer a one-time code from SMS," the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection (SSSCIP) of Ukraine  said  in an alert. The attacks , which have been attributed to a threat cluster called "UAC-0094," originate with Telegram messages alerting recipients that a login had been detected from a new device located in Russia and urging the users to confirm their accounts by clicking on a link. The URL, in reality a phishing domain, prompts the victims to enter their phone numbers as well as the one-time passwords sent via SMS that are then used by the threat actors to take over the accounts. The modus operandi  mirrors  that

Email marketing service Mailchimp on Monday revealed a data breach that resulted in the compromise of an internal tool to gain unauthorized access to customer accounts and stage phishing attacks.  The development was first  reported  by Bleeping Computer. The company, which was acquired by financial software firm Intuit in September 2021, told the publication that it became aware of the incident on March 26 when it became aware of a malicious party accessing the customer support tool. "The incident was propagated by an external actor who conducted a successful social engineering attack on Mailchimp employees, resulting in employee credentials being compromised," Siobhan Smyth, Mailchimp's chief information security officer, was quoted as saying. Although Mailchimp stated it acted quickly to terminate access to the breached employee account, the siphoned credentials were used to access 319 MailChimp accounts and further export the mailing lists pertaining to 102 acc

A new email phishing campaign has been spotted leveraging the tactic of conversation hijacking to deliver the IcedID info-stealing malware onto infected machines by making use of unpatched and publicly-exposed Microsoft Exchange servers. "The emails use a social engineering technique of conversation hijacking (also known as thread hijacking)," Israeli company Intezer said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "A forged reply to a previous stolen email is being used as a way to convince the recipient to open the attachment. This is notable because it increases the credibility of the phishing email and may cause a high infection rate." The latest wave of attacks, detected in mid-March 2022, is said to have targeted organizations within energy, healthcare, law, and pharmaceutical sectors. IcedID, aka BokBot, like its counterparts TrickBot and  Emotet , is a  banking trojan  that has evolved to become an entry point for more sophisticated threats, including hu

A novel phishing technique called browser-in-the-browser (BitB) attack can be exploited to simulate a browser window within the browser in order to spoof a legitimate domain, thereby making it possible to stage convincing phishing attacks. According to penetration tester and security researcher, who goes by the handle mrd0x on Twitter, the method takes advantage of third-party single sign-on ( SSO ) options embedded on websites such as "Sign in with Google" (or Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft). While the default behavior when a user attempts to sign in via these methods is to be greeted by a pop-up window to complete the authentication process, the BitB attack aims to replicate this entire process using a mix of HTML and CSS code to create an entirely fabricated browser window. "Combine the window design with an iframe pointing to the malicious server hosting the phishing page, and it's basically indistinguishable," mrd0x  said  in a technical write-up publ

Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) warned of new phishing attacks aimed at its citizens by leveraging compromised email accounts belonging to three different Indian entities with the goal of compromising their inboxes and stealing sensitive information. The agency  cautioned  that the emails arrive with the subject line "Увага" (meaning "Attention") and claim to be from a domestic email service called Ukr.net, when in actuality, the email address of the sender is "muthuprakash.b@tvsrubber[.]com." The messages purportedly warn the recipients of an unauthorized attempt to log in to their accounts from an IP address based out of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, further prompting them to click on a link to change their passwords with immediate effect. "After following the link and entering the password, it gets to the attackers," CERT-UA noted in a Facebook post over the weekend. "In this way, they gain access to

Details of a new nation-state sponsored phishing campaign have been uncovered setting its sights on European governmental entities in what's seen as an attempt to obtain intelligence on refugee and supply movement in the region. Enterprise security company Proofpoint, which detected the malicious emails for the first time on February 24, 2022, dubbed the social engineering attacks " Asylum Ambuscade ." "The email included a malicious macro attachment which utilized social engineering themes pertaining to the Emergency Meeting of the NATO Security Council held on February 23, 2022," researchers Michael Raggi and Zydeca Cass  said  in a report published Tuesday. "The email also contained a malicious attachment which attempted to download malicious Lua malware named SunSeed and targeted European government personnel tasked with managing transportation and population movement in Europe." The findings build on an  advisory  issued by the State Service

Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) has warned of Belarusian state-sponsored hackers targeting its military personnel and related individuals as part of a phishing campaign mounted amidst Russia's military invasion of the country. "Mass  phishing emails  have recently been observed targeting private 'i.ua' and 'meta.ua' accounts of Ukrainian military personnel and related individuals," the CERT-UA  said . "After the account is compromised, the attackers, by the IMAP protocol, get access to all the messages." Subsequently, the attacks leverage the contact information stored in the victim's address book to propagate the phishing messages to other targets. The Ukrainian government attributed the activities to a threat actor tracked as UNC1151, a Minsk-based group whose "members are officers of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Belarus." In a follow-up  update , the agency said the nation-state group a