two-factor authentication | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

WordPress.org has announced a new account security measure that will require accounts with capabilities to update plugins and themes to activate two-factor authentication (2FA) mandatorily. The enforcement is expected to come into effect starting October 1, 2024. "Accounts with commit access can push updates and changes to plugins and themes used by millions of WordPress sites worldwide," the maintainers of the open-source, self-hosted version of the content management system (CMS) said . "Securing these accounts is essential to preventing unauthorized access and maintaining the security and trust of the WordPress.org community." Besides requiring mandatory 2FA, WordPress.org said it's introducing what's called SVN passwords, which refers to a dedicated password for committing changes. This, it said, is an effort to introduce a new layer of security by separating users' code commit access from their WordPress.org account credentials. "This ...

Cloud communications provider Twilio has revealed that unidentified threat actors took advantage of an unauthenticated endpoint in Authy to identify data associated with Authy accounts, including users' cell phone numbers. The company said it took steps to secure the endpoint to no longer accept unauthenticated requests. The development comes days after an online persona named ShinyHunters published on BreachForums a database comprising 33 million phone numbers allegedly pulled from Authy accounts. Authy, owned by Twilio since 2015, is a popular two-factor authentication (2FA) app that adds an additional layer of account security. "We have seen no evidence that the threat actors obtained access to Twilio's systems or other sensitive data," it said in a July 1, 2024, security alert. But out of an abundance of caution, it's recommending that users upgrade their Android (version 25.1.0 or later) and iOS (version 26.1.0 or later) apps to the latest version. It...

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...

Brazilian banking institutions are the target of a new campaign that distributes a custom variant of the Windows-based AllaKore remote access trojan (RAT) called AllaSenha . The malware is "specifically aimed at stealing credentials that are required to access Brazilian bank accounts, [and] leverages Azure cloud as command-and-control (C2) infrastructure," French cybersecurity company HarfangLab said in a technical analysis. Targets of the campaign include banks such as Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, Banco Safra, Caixa Econômica Federal, Itaú Unibanco, Sicoob, and Sicredi. The initial access vector, though not definitively confirmed, points towards the use of malicious links in phishing messages. The starting point of the attack is a malicious Windows shortcut (LNK) file that masquerades as a PDF document ("NotaFiscal.pdf.lnk") hosted on a WebDAV server since at least March 2024. There is also evidence to suggest that the threat actors behind the activity previous...

 Microsoft on Monday confirmed its plans to deprecate NT LAN Manager (NTLM) in Windows 11 in the second half of the year, as it announced a slew of new security measures to harden the widely-used desktop operating system. "Deprecating NTLM has been a huge ask from our security community as it will strengthen user authentication, and deprecation is planned in the second half of 2024," the tech giant  said . The Windows maker  originally announced  its decision to drop NTLM in favor of Kerberos for authentication in October 2023. NTLM's lack of support for cryptographic methods such as AES or SHA-256 notwithstanding, the protocol has also been rendered susceptible to relay attacks, a technique that has been widely exploited by the Russia-linked  APT28 actor  via zero-day flaws in Microsoft Outlook. Other changes coming to Windows 11 include enabling  Local Security Authority (LSA) protection  by default for new consumer devices and the use of v...

Deploying advanced authentication measures is key to helping organizations address their weakest cybersecurity link: their human users. Having some form of 2-factor authentication in place is a great start, but many organizations may not yet be in that spot or have the needed level of authentication sophistication to adequately safeguard organizational data. When deploying advanced authentication measures, organizations can make mistakes, and it is crucial to be aware of these potential pitfalls.  1. Failing to conduct a risk assessment A comprehensive risk assessment is a vital first step to any authentication implementation. An organization leaves itself open to risk if it fails to assess current threats and vulnerabilities, systems and processes or needed level of protections required for different applications and data.  Not all applications demand the same levels of security. For example, an application that handl...

Identity and access management (IAM) services provider Okta has warned of a spike in the "frequency and scale" of credential stuffing attacks aimed at online services. These unprecedented attacks, observed over the last month, are said to be facilitated by "the broad availability of residential proxy services, lists of previously stolen credentials ('combo lists'), and scripting tools," the company  said  in an alert published Saturday. The findings build on a  recent advisory  from Cisco, which cautioned of a global surge in brute-force attacks targeting various devices, including Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, web application authentication interfaces, and SSH services, since at least March 18, 2024. "These attacks all appear to be originating from TOR exit nodes and a range of other anonymizing tunnels and proxies," Talos noted at the time, adding targets of the attacks comprise VPN appliances from Cisco, Check Point, Fortinet, Soni...

As many as 37 individuals have been arrested as part of an international crackdown on a cybercrime service called  LabHost  that has been used by criminal actors to steal personal credentials from victims around the world. Described as one of the largest Phishing-as-a-Service ( PhaaS ) providers, LabHost offered phishing pages targeting banks, high-profile organizations, and other service providers located primarily in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. As part of the operation, codenamed PhishOFF and Nebulae (referring to the Australian arm of the probe), two LabHost users from Melbourne and Adelaide were arrested on April 17, with three others arrested and charged with drug-related offenses. "Australian offenders are allegedly among 10,000 cybercriminals globally who have used the platform, known as LabHost, to trick victims into providing their personal information, such as online banking logins, credit card details and passwords, through persistent phishing attacks sent vi...

A sophisticated phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform called  Darcula  has set its sights on organizations in over 100 countries by leveraging a massive network of more than 20,000 counterfeit domains to help cyber criminals launch attacks at scale. "Using iMessage and RCS rather than SMS to send text messages has the side effect of bypassing SMS firewalls, which is being used to great effect to target USPS along with postal services and other established organizations in 100+ countries," Netcraft  said . Darcula has been employed in several high-profile phishing attacks over the last year, wherein the smishing messages are sent to both Android and iOS users in the U.K., in addition to those that leverage package delivery lures by impersonating legitimate services like USPS. A Chinese-language PhaaS, Darcula is  advertised on Telegram  and offers support for  about 200 templates  impersonating legitimate brands that customers can avail for a month...

The Cyber Police of Ukraine has  arrested  three individuals on suspicion of hijacking more than 100 million emails and Instagram accounts from users across the world. The suspects, aged between 20 and 40, are said to be part of an organized criminal group living in different parts of the country. If convicted, they face up to 15 years in prison. The accounts, authorities said, were taken over by carrying out brute-force attacks, which employ trial-and-error methods to guess login credentials. The group operated under the direction of a leader, who distributed the hacking tasks to other members. The cybercrime group subsequently monetized their ill-gotten credentials by putting them up for sale on dark web forums. Other threat actors who purchased the information used the compromised accounts to conduct a variety of  fraudulent schemes , including those in which scammers reach out to the victim's friends to urgently transfer money to their bank account. "You can pr...

Threat actors are leveraging digital document publishing (DDP) sites hosted on platforms like FlipSnack, Issuu, Marq, Publuu, RelayTo, and Simplebooklet for carrying out phishing, credential harvesting, and session token theft, once again underscoring how threat actors are  repurposing legitimate services  for malicious ends. "Hosting phishing lures on DDP sites increases the likelihood of a successful phishing attack, since these sites often have a favorable reputation, are unlikely to appear on web filter blocklists, and may instill a false sense of security in users who recognize them as familiar or legitimate," Cisco Talos researcher Craig Jackson  said  last week. While adversaries have used popular cloud-based services such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, SharePoint, DocuSign, and Oneflow to host phishing documents in the past, the latest development marks an escalation designed to evade email security controls. DDP services allow users to upload and s...

The threat actors behind the PixPirate Android banking trojan are leveraging a new trick to evade detection on compromised devices and harvest sensitive information from users in Brazil. The approach allows it to hide the malicious app's icon from the home screen of the victim's device, IBM said in a technical report published today. "Thanks to this new technique, during PixPirate reconnaissance and attack phases, the victim remains oblivious to the malicious operations that this malware performs in the background," security researcher Nir Somech  said . PixPirate, which was  first documented  by Cleafy in February 2023, is known for its abuse of Android's accessibility services to covertly perform unauthorized fund transfers using the PIX instant payment platform when a targeted banking app is opened. The constantly mutating malware is also capable of stealing victims' online banking credentials and credit card information, as well as capturing keystrokes and interc...

GitLab has released security updates to address two critical vulnerabilities, including one that could be exploited to take over accounts without requiring any user interaction. Tracked as  CVE-2023-7028 , the flaw has been awarded the maximum severity of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system and could facilitate account takeover by sending password reset emails to an unverified email address. The DevSecOps platform said the vulnerability is the result of a bug in the email verification process, which allowed users to reset their password through a secondary email address. It affects all self-managed instances of GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) using the below versions - 16.1 prior to 16.1.6 16.2 prior to 16.2.9 16.3 prior to 16.3.7 16.4 prior to 16.4.5 16.5 prior to 16.5.6 16.6 prior to 16.6.4 16.7 prior to 16.7.2 GitLab said it addressed the issue in GitLab versions 16.5.6, 16.6.4, and 16.7.2, in addition to backporting the fix to versions 16.1....

Attackers are weaponizing an old Microsoft Office vulnerability as part of phishing campaigns to distribute a strain of malware called  Agent Tesla . The infection chains leverage decoy Excel documents attached in invoice-themed messages to trick potential targets into opening them and activate the exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 (CVSS score: 7.8), a memory corruption vulnerability in Office's Equation Editor that could result in code execution with the privileges of the user. The findings, which come from Zscaler ThreatLabz, build on prior reports from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, which detailed a  similar phishing campaign  that exploited the security flaw to deliver the malware. "Once a user downloads a malicious attachment and opens it, if their version of Microsoft Excel is vulnerable, the Excel file initiates communication with a malicious destination and proceeds to download additional files without requiring any further user interaction," security researcher Kaiva...

Crypto hardware wallet maker Ledger published a new version of its " @ledgerhq/connect-kit " npm module after unidentified threat actors pushed malicious code that led to the theft of  more than $600,000  in virtual assets. The  compromise  was the result of a former employee falling victim to a phishing attack, the company said in a statement. This allowed the attackers to gain access to Ledger's npm account and upload three malicious versions of the module – 1.1.5, 1.1.6, and 1.1.7 — and propagate  crypto drainer malware  to  other applications  that are dependent on the module, resulting in a software supply chain breach. "The malicious code used a rogue WalletConnect project to reroute funds to a hacker wallet," Ledger  said . Connect Kit , as the name implies, makes it possible to connect DApps (short decentralized applications) to Ledger's hardware wallets. According to security firm Sonatype, version 1.1.7 directly embedded a wa...

2023 has seen its fair share of cyber attacks, however there's one attack vector that proves to be more prominent than others - non-human access. With  11 high-profile attacks in 13 months  and an ever-growing ungoverned attack surface, non-human identities are the new perimeter, and 2023 is only the beginning.  Why non-human access is a cybercriminal's paradise  People always look for the easiest way to get what they want, and this goes for cybercrime as well. Threat actors look for the path of least resistance, and it seems that in 2023 this path was non-user access credentials (API keys, tokens, service accounts and secrets).  " 50% of the active access tokens connecting Salesforce and third-party apps are unused. In GitHub and GCP the numbers reach 33%." These non-user access credentials are used to connect apps and resources to other cloud services. What makes them a true hacker's dream is that they have no security measures like user credentials do (M...