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Category — supply chain attack
The Pivot: How MSPs Can Turn a Challenge Into a Once-in-a-Decade Opportunity

The Pivot: How MSPs Can Turn a Challenge Into a Once-in-a-Decade Opportunity

Feb 03, 2023 DevSecOps / Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is quickly becoming one of the most significant growth drivers for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). That's the main insight from a  recent study  from Lumu: in North America, more than 80% of MSPs cite cybersecurity as a primary growth driver of their business. Service providers have a huge opportunity to expand their business and win new customers by developing their cybersecurity offerings. This hardly comes as a surprise since the demand for cybersecurity is in full swing among SMBs and larger enterprises. According to  Gartner , "by 2025, 60% of organizations will use cybersecurity risk as a primary determinant in conducting third-party transactions and business engagements." This means that the perception around security is transforming: from liability, it's becoming a powerful business driver. Of course, cybersecurity continues to evolve at a very rapid pace, with threats emerging every day and the stakes getting higher. This alone can fuel the...
Researchers Uncover 3 PyPI Packages Spreading Malware to Developer Systems

Researchers Uncover 3 PyPI Packages Spreading Malware to Developer Systems

Jan 17, 2023 Software Security / Supply Chain
A threat actor by the name  Lolip0p  has uploaded three rogue packages to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that are designed to drop malware on compromised developer systems. The packages – named  colorslib  (versions 4.6.11 and 4.6.12),  httpslib  (versions 4.6.9 and 4.6.11), and  libhttps  (version 4.6.12) – by the author between January 7, 2023, and January 12, 2023. They have since been yanked from PyPI but not before they were cumulatively downloaded over 550 times. The modules come with identical setup scripts that are designed to invoke PowerShell and run a malicious binary (" Oxzy.exe ") hosted on Dropbox, Fortinet  disclosed  in a report published last week. The executable, once launched, triggers the retrieval of a next-stage, also a binary named  update.exe , that runs in the Windows temporary folder ("%USER%\AppData\Local\Temp\"). update.exe is flagged by antivirus vendors on VirusTotal as an information ...
Don't Overlook These 6 Critical Okta Security Configurations

Don't Overlook These 6 Critical Okta Security Configurations

Feb 10, 2025Identity Security / Data Protection
Given Okta's role as a critical part of identity infrastructure, strengthening Okta security is essential. This article covers six key Okta security settings that provide a strong starting point, along with recommendations for implementing continuous monitoring of your Okta security posture. With over 18,000 customers, Okta serves as the cornerstone of identity governance and security for organizations worldwide. However, this prominence has made it a prime target for cybercriminals who seek access to valuable corporate identities, applications, and sensitive data. Recently, Okta warned its customers of an increase in phishing social engineering attempts to impersonate Okta support personnel. Given Okta's role as a critical part of identity infrastructure, strengthening Okta security is essential. This article covers six key Okta security settings that provide a strong starting point, along with how continuous monitoring of your Okta security posture helps you avoid miscon...
PyTorch Machine Learning Framework Compromised with Malicious Dependency

PyTorch Machine Learning Framework Compromised with Malicious Dependency

Jan 02, 2023 Supply Chain / Machine Learning
The maintainers of the PyTorch package have warned users who have installed the nightly builds of the library between December 25, 2022, and December 30, 2022, to uninstall and download the latest versions following a  dependency confusion attack . "PyTorch-nightly Linux packages installed via pip during that time installed a dependency,  torchtriton , which was compromised on the Python Package Index (PyPI) code repository and ran a malicious binary," the PyTorch team  said  in an alert over the weekend. PyTorch, analogous to Keras and TensorFlow, is an open source Python-based machine learning framework that was originally developed by Meta Platforms. The PyTorch team said that it became aware of the malicious dependency on December 30, 4:40 p.m. GMT. The supply chain attack entailed uploading the malware-laced copy of a legitimate dependency named torchtriton to the Python Package Index (PyPI) code repository. Since package managers like pip check public cod...
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W4SP Stealer Discovered in Multiple PyPI Packages Under Various Names

W4SP Stealer Discovered in Multiple PyPI Packages Under Various Names

Dec 24, 2022 Software Security / Supply Chain
Threat actors have published yet another round of malicious packages to Python Package Index (PyPI) with the goal of delivering information-stealing malware on compromised developer machines. Interestingly, while the malware goes by a variety of names like ANGEL Stealer, Celestial Stealer, Fade Stealer, Leaf $tealer, PURE Stealer, Satan Stealer, and @skid Stealer, cybersecurity company Phylum found them all to be copies of  W4SP Stealer . W4SP Stealer primarily functions to siphon user data, including credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, Discord tokens, and other files of interest. It's created and published by an actor who goes by the aliases BillyV3, BillyTheGoat, and billythegoat356. "For some reason, each deployment appears to have simply tried to do a find/replace of the W4SP references in exchange for some other seemingly arbitrary name," the researchers  said  in a report published earlier this week. The 16 rogue modules are as follows: modulesecurity, inform...
Researchers Discover Malicious PyPI Package Posing as SentinelOne SDK to Steal Data

Researchers Discover Malicious PyPI Package Posing as SentinelOne SDK to Steal Data

Dec 19, 2022 Software Security / Supply Chain
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that impersonates a software development kit (SDK) for SentinelOne, a major cybersecurity company, as part of a campaign dubbed  SentinelSneak . The package, named  SentinelOne  and now taken down, is said to have been published between December 8 and 11, 2022, with nearly two dozen versions pushed in quick succession over a period of two days. It claims to offer an easier method to access the  company's APIs , but harbors a malicious backdoor that's engineered to amass sensitive information from development systems, including access credentials, SSH keys, and configuration data. What's more, the threat actor has also been observed releasing two more packages with similar naming variations –  SentinelOne-sdk  and  SentinelOneSDK  – underscoring the  continued threats  lurking in open source repositories. "The SentinelOne ...
Serious Attacks Could Have Been Staged Through This Amazon ECR Public Gallery Vulnerability

Serious Attacks Could Have Been Staged Through This Amazon ECR Public Gallery Vulnerability

Dec 13, 2022 Software Security / Cloud Security
A critical security flaw has been disclosed in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) Public Gallery that could have been potentially exploited to stage a multitude of attacks, according to cloud security firm Lightspin. "By exploiting this vulnerability, a malicious actor could delete all images in the Amazon ECR Public Gallery or update the image contents to inject malicious code," Gafnit Amiga, director of security research at Lightspin, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This malicious code is executed on any machine that pulls and runs the image, whether on user's local machines, Kubernetes clusters or cloud environments." ECR is a  container image registry service  managed by Amazon Web Services, enabling users to package code as Docker images and deploy the artifacts in a scalable manner. Public repositories hosted on ECR are displayed in what's called the  ECR Public Gallery . "By default, your account has read and write acce...
Researchers Disclose Supply-Chain Flaw Affecting IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL

Researchers Disclose Supply-Chain Flaw Affecting IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL

Dec 02, 2022 Kubernetes / Cloud Security
IBM has fixed a high-severity security vulnerability affecting its Cloud Databases (ICD) for PostgreSQL product that could be potentially exploited to tamper with internal repositories and run unauthorized code. The privilege escalation flaw (CVSS score: 8.8), dubbed " Hell's Keychain " by cloud security firm Wiz, has been described as a "first-of-its-kind supply-chain attack vector impacting a cloud provider's infrastructure." Successful exploitation of the bug could enable a malicious actor to remotely execute code in customers' environments and even read or modify data stored in the PostgreSQL database. "The vulnerability consists of a chain of three exposed secrets (Kubernetes service account token, private container registry password, CI/CD server credentials) coupled with overly permissive network access to internal build servers," Wiz researchers Ronen Shustin and Shir Tamari  said . Hell's Keychain commences with an SQL inject...
Researchers Find a Way Malicious NPM Libraries Can Evade Vulnerability Detection

Researchers Find a Way Malicious NPM Libraries Can Evade Vulnerability Detection

Nov 30, 2022
New findings from cybersecurity firm JFrog show that malware targeting the npm ecosystem can evade security checks by taking advantage of an "unexpected behavior" in the npm command line interface (CLI) tool. npm CLI's  install  and  audit   commands  have built-in capabilities to check a package and all of its dependencies for known vulnerabilities, effectively acting as a warning mechanism for developers by highlighting the flaws. But as JFrog established, the security advisories are not displayed when the packages follow certain version formats, creating a scenario where critical flaws could be introduced into their systems either directly or via the package's dependencies. Specifically, the problem arises only when the installed package version contains a hyphen (e.g., 1.2.3-a), which is included to denote a  pre-release version  of an npm module. While the project maintainers treat the discrepancy between regular npm package versions and pre...
Dell, HP, and Lenovo Devices Found Using Outdated OpenSSL Versions

Dell, HP, and Lenovo Devices Found Using Outdated OpenSSL Versions

Nov 25, 2022
An analysis of firmware images across devices from Dell, HP, and Lenovo has revealed the presence of outdated versions of the  OpenSSL  cryptographic library, underscoring a supply chain risk. EFI Development Kit, aka  EDK , is an open source implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ), which functions as an interface between the operating system and the firmware embedded in the device's hardware. The firmware development environment, which is in its second iteration (EDK II), comes with its own cryptographic package called  CryptoPkg  that, in turn, makes use of services from the OpenSSL project. Per firmware security company Binarly, the firmware image associated with Lenovo Thinkpad enterprise devices was found to use three different versions of OpenSSL: 0.9.8zb, 1.0.0a, and 1.0.2j, the last of which was released in 2018. What's more, one of the firmware modules named InfineonTpmUpdateDxe relied on OpenSSL version 0.9.8zb that w...
W4SP Stealer Constantly Targeting Python Developers in Ongoing Supply Chain Attack

W4SP Stealer Constantly Targeting Python Developers in Ongoing Supply Chain Attack

Nov 18, 2022
An ongoing supply chain attack has been leveraging malicious Python packages to distribute malware called W4SP Stealer, with over hundreds of victims ensnared to date. "The threat actor is still active and is releasing more malicious packages," Checkmarx researcher Jossef Harush  said  in a technical write-up, calling the adversary  WASP . "The attack seems related to cybercrime as the attacker claims that these tools are undetectable to increase sales." The findings from Checkmarx build on recent reports from  Phylum  and  Check Point , which flagged 30 different modules published on the Python Package Index (PyPI) that were designed to propagate malicious code under the guise of benign-looking packages. The attack is just the latest threat to target the software supply chain. What makes it notable is the use of steganography to extract a  polymorphic malware  payload hidden within an image file hosted on Imgur. The installation of the pac...
APT29 Exploited a Windows Feature to Compromise European Diplomatic Entity Network

APT29 Exploited a Windows Feature to Compromise European Diplomatic Entity Network

Nov 09, 2022
The Russia-linked APT29 nation-state actor has been found leveraging a "lesser-known" Windows feature called Credential Roaming following a successful phishing attack against an unnamed European diplomatic entity. "The diplomatic-centric targeting is consistent with Russian strategic priorities as well as historic APT29 targeting," Mandiant researcher Thibault Van Geluwe de Berlaere  said  in a technical write-up. APT29, a Russian espionage group also called Cozy Bear, Iron Hemlock, and The Dukes, is  known  for its intrusions aimed at collecting intelligence that align with the country's strategic objectives. It's believed to be sponsored by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Some of the adversarial collective's cyber activities are tracked publicly under the moniker  Nobelium , a threat cluster responsible for the widespread supply chain compromise through SolarWinds software in December 2020. The Google-owned threat intelligence and inciden...
GitHub Repojacking Bug Could've Allowed Attackers to Takeover Other Users' Repositories

GitHub Repojacking Bug Could've Allowed Attackers to Takeover Other Users' Repositories

Oct 31, 2022
Cloud-based repository hosting service GitHub has addressed a high-severity security flaw that could have been exploited to create malicious repositories and mount supply chain attacks. The RepoJacking technique,  disclosed  by Checkmarx, entails a bypass of a protection mechanism called  popular repository namespace retirement , which aims to prevent developers from pulling unsafe repositories with the same name. The issue was addressed by the Microsoft-owned subsidiary on September 19, 2022 following responsible disclosure. RepoJacking  occurs  when a creator of a repository opts to change the username, potentially enabling a threat actor to claim the old username and publish a rogue repository with the same name in an attempt to trick users into downloading them. While Microsoft's countermeasure "retire[s] the namespace of any open source project that had more than 100 clones in the week leading up to the owner's account being renamed or deleted," Che...
Google Launches GUAC Open Source Project to Secure Software Supply Chain

Google Launches GUAC Open Source Project to Secure Software Supply Chain

Oct 20, 2022
Google on Thursday announced that it's seeking contributors to a new open source initiative called Graph for Understanding Artifact Composition , also known as GUAC, as part of its ongoing efforts to beef up the  software supply chain . "GUAC addresses a need created by the burgeoning efforts across the ecosystem to generate software build, security, and dependency metadata," Brandon Lum, Mihai Maruseac, and Isaac Hepworth of Google said in a post shared with The Hacker News. "GUAC is meant to democratize the availability of this security information by making it freely accessible and useful for every organization, not just those with enterprise-scale security and IT funding." Software supply chain has  emerged  a  lucrative   attack vector  for threat actors, wherein exploiting just one weakness -- as seen in the case of  SolarWinds  and  Log4Shell  -- opens a pathway long enough to traverse down the supply chain and steal sensiti...
Scribe Platform: End-to-end Software Supply Chain Security

Scribe Platform: End-to-end Software Supply Chain Security

Oct 12, 2022
As software supply chain security becomes more and more crucial, security, DevSecOps, and DevOps teams are more challenged than ever to build transparent trust in the software they deliver or use. In fact, in Gartner recently published their 2022 cybersecurity predictions - not only do they anticipate the continued expansion of attack surfaces in the near future, they also list digital supply chain as a major rising attack surface and one of the top trends to follow in 2022. After all, any software is only as secure as the weakest link in its supply chain. One bad component, any malicious access to your development environment—or any vulnerability in your software's delivery life cycle—and you risk your code's integrity, your customers, and your reputation.  Scribe Security  recently launched a new platform that claims to address these urgent needs by enabling its users to build trust in their software across teams and organizations. According to Scribe Security, SBOM is a ...
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