supply chain attack | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

SolarWinds has addressed a set of critical security flaws impacting its Access Rights Manager (ARM) software that could be exploited to access sensitive information or execute arbitrary code. Of the 13 vulnerabilities, eight are rated Critical in severity and carry a CVSS score of 9.6 out of 10.0. The remaining five weaknesses have been rated High in severity, with four of them having a CVSS score of 7.6 and one scoring 8.3. The most severe of the flaws are listed below - CVE-2024-23472 - SolarWinds ARM Directory Traversal Arbitrary File Deletion and Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2024-28074 - SolarWinds ARM Internal Deserialization Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2024-23469 - Solarwinds ARM Exposed Dangerous Method Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2024-23475 - Solarwinds ARM Traversal and Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2024-23467 - Solarwinds ARM Traversal Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2024-23466 - Solarwinds ARM Directory

Cybersecurity researchers have identified two malicious packages on the npm package registry that concealed backdoor code to execute malicious commands sent from a remote server. The packages in question – img-aws-s3-object-multipart-copy and legacyaws-s3-object-multipart-copy – have been downloaded 190 and 48 times each. As of writing, they have been taken down by the npm security team. "They contained sophisticated command and control functionality hidden in image files that would be executed during package installation," software supply chain security firm Phylum said in an analysis. The packages are designed to impersonate a legitimate npm library called aws-s3-object-multipart-copy , but come with an altered version of the "index.js" file to execute a JavaScript file ("loadformat.js"). For its part, the JavaScript file is designed to process three images -- that feature the corporate logos for Intel, Microsoft, and AMD -- with the image corres

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

Cybersecurity researchers said they discovered an accidentally leaked GitHub token that could have granted elevated access to the GitHub repositories of the Python language, Python Package Index (PyPI), and the Python Software Foundation (PSF). JFrog, which found the GitHub Personal Access Token, said the secret was leaked in a public Docker container hosted on Docker Hub. "This case was exceptional because it is difficult to overestimate the potential consequences if it had fallen into the wrong hands – one could supposedly inject malicious code into PyPI packages (imagine replacing all Python packages with malicious ones), and even to the Python language itself," the software supply chain security company said . An attacker could have hypothetically weaponized their admin access to orchestrate a large-scale supply chain attack by poisoning the source code associated with the core of the Python programming language, or the PyPI package manager. JFrog noted that the aut

Threat actors have been observed publishing a new wave of malicious packages to the NuGet package manager as part of an ongoing campaign that began in August 2023, while also adding a new layer of stealth to evade detection. The fresh packages, about 60 in number and spanning 290 versions, demonstrate a refined approach from the previous set that came to light in October 2023, software supply chain security firm ReversingLabs said. The attackers pivoted from using NuGet's MSBuild integrations to "a strategy that uses simple, obfuscated downloaders that are inserted into legitimate PE binary files using Intermediary Language (IL) Weaving, a .NET programming technique for modifying an application's code after compilation," security researcher Karlo Zanki said . The end goal of the counterfeit packages, both old and new, is to deliver an off-the-shelf remote access trojan called SeroXen RAT . All the identified packages have since been taken down. The latest coll

Unknown threat actors have been found propagating trojanized versions of jQuery on npm, GitHub, and jsDelivr in what appears to be an instance of a "complex and persistent" supply chain attack. "This attack stands out due to the high variability across packages," Phylum said in an analysis published last week. "The attacker has cleverly hidden the malware in the seldom-used ' end ' function of jQuery, which is internally called by the more popular ' fadeTo ' function from its animation utilities." As many as 68 packages have been linked to the campaign. They were published to the npm registry starting from May 26 to June 23, 2024, using names such as cdnjquery, footersicons, jquertyi, jqueryxxx, logoo, and sytlesheets, among others.  There is evidence to suggest that each of the bogus packages were manually assembled and published due to the sheer number of packages published from various accounts, the differences in naming conventi

The supply chain attack targeting the widely-used Polyfill[.]io JavaScript library is broader in scope than previously thought, with new findings from Censys showing that over 380,000 hosts are embedding a polyfill script linking to the malicious domain as of July 2, 2024. This includes references to "https://cdn.polyfill[.]io" or "https://cdn.polyfill[.]com" in their HTTP responses, the attack surface management firm said. "Approximately 237,700, are located within the Hetzner network (AS24940), primarily in Germany," it noted. "This is not surprising – Hetzner is a popular web hosting service, and many website developers leverage it." Further analysis of the affected hosts has revealed domains tied to prominent companies like WarnerBros, Hulu, Mercedes-Benz, and Pearson that reference the malicious endpoint in question. Details of the attack emerged in late June 2024 when Sansec alerted that code hosted on the Polyfill domain had been m

A trio of security flaws has been uncovered in the CocoaPods dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects that could be exploited to stage software supply chain attacks, putting downstream customers at severe risks. The vulnerabilities allow "any malicious actor to claim ownership over thousands of unclaimed pods and insert malicious code into many of the most popular iOS and macOS applications," E.V.A Information Security researchers Reef Spektor and Eran Vaknin said in a report published today. The Israeli application security firm said the three issues have since been patched by CocoaPods as of October 2023. The project maintainers also reset all user sessions at the time in response to the disclosures. One of the vulnerabilities is CVE-2024-38368 (CVSS score: 9.3), which makes it possible for an attacker to abuse the " Claim Your Pods " process and take control of a package, effectively allowing them to tamper with the source code and int

Installers for three different software products developed by an Indian company named Conceptworld have been trojanized to distribute information-stealing malware. The installers correspond to Notezilla, RecentX, and Copywhiz, according to cybersecurity firm Rapid7, which discovered the supply chain compromise on June 18, 2024. The issue has since been remediated by Conceptworld as of June 24 within 12 hours of responsible disclosure. "The installers had been trojanized to execute information-stealing malware that has the capability to download and execute additional payloads," the company said , adding the malicious versions had a larger file size than their legitimate counterparts. Specifically, the malware is equipped to steal browser credentials and cryptocurrency wallet information, log clipboard contents and keystrokes, and download and execute additional payloads on infected Windows hosts. It also sets up persistence using a scheduled task to execute the main paylo

Google has taken steps to block ads for e-commerce sites that use the Polyfill.io service after a Chinese company acquired the domain and modified the JavaScript library ("polyfill.js") to redirect users to malicious and scam sites. "Protecting our users is our top priority. We detected a security issue recently that may affect websites using certain third-party libraries," the company said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "To help potentially impacted advertisers secure their websites, we have been proactively sharing information on how to quickly mitigate the issue." More than 110,000 sites that embed the library are impacted by the supply chain attack, Sansec said in a Tuesday report. Polyfill is a popular library that incorporates support for modern functions in web browsers. Earlier this February, concerns were raised following its purchase by China-based content delivery network (CDN) company Funnull. The original creator of the pr

Multiple WordPress plugins have been backdoored to inject malicious code that makes it possible to create rogue administrator accounts with the aim of performing arbitrary actions. "The injected malware attempts to create a new administrative user account and then sends those details back to the attacker-controlled server," Wordfence security researcher Chloe Chamberland said in a Monday alert. "In addition, it appears the threat actor also injected malicious JavaScript into the footer of websites that appears to add SEO spam throughout the website." The admin accounts have the usernames "Options" and "PluginAuth," with the account information exfiltrated to the IP address 94.156.79[.]8. It's currently not known how the unknown attackers behind the campaign managed to compromise the plugins, but the earliest signs of the software supply chain attack date back to June 21, 2024. The plugins in question are no longer available for downlo

Russian organizations have been targeted by a cybercrime gang called ExCobalt using a previously unknown Golang-based backdoor known as GoRed. "ExCobalt focuses on cyber espionage and includes several members active since at least 2016 and presumably once part of the notorious Cobalt Gang ," Positive Technologies researchers Vladislav Lunin and Alexander Badayev said in a technical report published this week. "Cobalt attacked financial institutions to steal funds. One of Cobalt's hallmarks was the use of the CobInt tool , something ExCobalt began to use in 2022." Attacks mounted by the threat actor have singled out various sectors in Russia over the past year, including government, information technology, metallurgy, mining, software development, and telecommunications. Initial access to environments is facilitated by taking advantage of a previously compromised contractor and a supply chain attack, wherein the adversary infected a component used to bu

Learn about critical threats that can impact your organization and the bad actors behind them from Cybersixgill's threat experts. Each story shines a light on underground activities, the threat actors involved, and why you should care, along with what you can do to mitigate risk.  In an increasingly interconnected world, supply chain attacks have emerged as a formidable threat, compromising not just individual organizations but the broader digital ecosystem. The web of interdependencies among businesses, especially for software and IT vendors, provides fertile ground for cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities. By targeting one weak link in the supply chain, threat actors can gain unauthorized access to sensitive information and can conduct malicious activities with severe consequences on multiple organizations, from data breaches and financial losses to widespread disruption and reputational damage. Understanding the nature, impact, and mitigation strategies of supply chain att

Early in 2024, Wing Security released its State of SaaS Security report , offering surprising insights into emerging threats and best practices in the SaaS domain. Now, halfway through the year, several SaaS threat predictions from the report have already proven accurate. Fortunately, SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solutions have prioritized mitigation capabilities to address many of these issues, ensuring security teams have the necessary tools to face these challenges head-on. In this article, we will revisit our predictions from earlier in the year, showcase real-world examples of these threats in action, and offer practical tips and best practices to help you prevent such incidents in the future. It's also worth noting the overall trend of an increasing frequency of breaches in today's dynamic SaaS landscape, leading organizations to demand timely threat alerts as a vital capability. Industry regulations with upcoming compliance deadlines are demanding similar time-sens

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a new malicious Python package that has been discovered in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository to facilitate cryptocurrency theft as part of a broader campaign. The package in question is pytoileur , which has been downloaded 316 times as of writing. Interestingly, the package author, who goes by the name PhilipsPY, has uploaded a new version of the package (1.0.2) with identical functionality after a previous version (1.0.1) was yanked by PyPI maintainers on May 28, 2024. According to an analysis released by Sonatype, the malicious code is embedded in the package's setup.py script, allowing it to execute a Base64-encoded payload that's responsible for retrieving a Windows binary from an external server. "The retrieved binary, 'Runtime.exe,' is then run by leveraging Windows PowerShell and VBScript commands on the system," security researcher Ax Sharma said . Once installed, the binary establishes persiste

Malicious actors have backdoored the installer associated with courtroom video recording software developed by Justice AV Solutions (JAVS) to deliver malware that's associated with a known implant called RustDoor. The software supply chain attack, tracked as CVE-2024-4978 (CVSS score: 8.7), impacts JAVS Viewer v8.3.7, a component of the  JAVS Suite 8  that allows users to create, manage, publish, and view digital recordings of courtroom proceedings, business meetings, and city council sessions. Cybersecurity firm Rapid7  said  it commenced an investigation earlier this month after discovering a malicious executable called "fffmpeg.exe" (note the three Fs) in the Windows installation folder of the software, tracing it to a binary named "JAVS Viewer Setup 8.3.7.250-1.exe" that was downloaded from the official JAVS site on March 5, 2024. "Analysis of the installer JAVS Viewer Setup 8.3.7.250-1.exe showed that it was signed with an unexpected Authenticode

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  a critical flaw impacting GitLab to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, owing to active exploitation in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2023-7028  (CVSS score: 10.0), the maximum severity vulnerability could facilitate account takeover by sending password reset emails to an unverified email address. GitLab, which disclosed details of the shortcoming earlier this January, said it was introduced as part of a code change in version 16.1.0 on May 1, 2023. "Within these versions, all authentication mechanisms are impacted," the company  noted  at the time. "Additionally, users who have two-factor authentication enabled are vulnerable to password reset but not account takeover as their second authentication factor is required to login." Successful exploitation of the issue can have serious consequences as it not only enables an adversary to take control of a GitLab user account, b

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered multiple campaigns targeting  Docker Hub  by planting millions of malicious "imageless" containers over the past five years, once again underscoring how open-source registries could pave the way for supply chain attacks. "Over four million of the repositories in Docker Hub are imageless and have no content except for the repository documentation," JFrog security researcher Andrey Polkovnichenko said in a report shared with The Hacker News. What's more, the documentation has no connection whatsoever to the container. Instead, it's a web page that's designed to lure users into visiting phishing or malware-hosting websites. Of the 4.6 million imageless Docker Hub repositories uncovered, 2.81 million of them are said to have been used as landing pages to redirect unsuspecting users to fraudulent sites as part of three broad campaigns - Downloader (repositories created in the first half of 2021 and September 2

A security vulnerability has been discovered in the R programming language that could be exploited by a threat actor to create a malicious RDS (R Data Serialization) file such that it results in code execution when loaded and referenced. The flaw, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2024-27322 (CVSS score: 8.8), "involves the use of promise objects and lazy evaluation in R," AI application security company HiddenLayer said in a report shared with The Hacker News. RDS,  like pickle in Python , is a format used to serialize and save the state of data structures or objects in R, an open-source programming language used in statistical computing, data visualization, and machine learning. This process of serialization – serialize() or saveRDS() – and deserialization – unserialize() and readRDS() – is also leveraged when saving and loading R packages. The root cause behind CVE-2024-27322 lies in the fact that it could lead to arbitrary code execution when deserializing untrusted