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

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...

Android smartphone users in India are the target of a new malware campaign that employs social engineering lures to install fraudulent apps that are capable of harvesting sensitive data. “Using social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, attackers are sending messages designed to lure users into installing a malicious app on their mobile device by impersonating legitimate organizations, such as banks, government services, and utilities,” Microsoft threat intelligence researchers Abhishek Pustakala, Harshita Tripathi, and Shivang Desai  said  in a Monday analysis. The ultimate goal of the operation is to capture banking details, payment card information, account credentials, and other personal data. The attack chains involve sharing malicious APK files via social media messages sent on WhatsApp and Telegram by falsely presenting them as banking apps and inducing a sense of urgency by claiming that the targets’ bank accounts will be blocked unless they update their pe...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is adopting new rules that aim to protect consumers from cell phone account scams that make it possible for malicious actors to orchestrate SIM-swapping attacks and port-out fraud. “The rules will help protect consumers from scammers who target data and personal information by covertly swapping SIM cards to a new device or porting phone numbers to a new carrier without ever gaining physical control of a consumer’s phone,” FCC  said  this week. While SIM swapping refers to transferring a user’s account to a SIM card controlled by the scammer by convincing the victim’s wireless carrier,  port-out fraud  occurs when the bad actor, posing as the victim, transfers their phone number from one service provider to another without their knowledge. The new rules,  first proposed in July 2023 , mandate wireless providers to adopt secure methods of authenticating a customer before redirecting a customer’s phone number to...

A sophisticated Facebook phishing campaign has been observed exploiting a zero-day flaw in Salesforce's email services, allowing threat actors to craft targeted phishing messages using the company's domain and infrastructure. "Those phishing campaigns cleverly evade conventional detection methods by chaining the Salesforce vulnerability and legacy quirks in Facebook's Web Games platform," Guardio Labs researchers Oleg Zaytsev and Nati Tal  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The email messages masquerade as coming from Meta, while being sent from an email address with a "@salesforce.com" domain. They seek to trick recipients into clicking on a link by claiming that their Facebook accounts are undergoing a "comprehensive investigation" due to "suspicions of engaging in impersonation." The goal is to direct users to a rogue landing page that's designed to capture the victim's account credentials and two-factor aut...

The Python Package Index (PyPI) announced last week that every account that maintains a project on the official third-party software repository will be required to turn on two-factor authentication ( 2FA ) by the end of the year. "Between now and the end of the year, PyPI will begin gating access to certain site functionality based on 2FA usage," PyPI administrator Donald Stufft said. "In addition, we may begin selecting certain users or projects for early enforcement." The enforcement also includes  organization maintainers , but does not extend to every single user of the service. The goal is to neutralize the threats posed by account takeover attacks, which an attacker can leverage to distribute trojanized versions of popular packages to poison the software supply chain and deploy malware on a large scale. PyPI, like other open source repositories such as npm, has  witnessed  innumerable instances of malware and package impersonation. Earlier this month, F...

Various sectors in East Asian markets have been subjected to a new email phishing campaign that distributes a previously undocumented strain of Android malware called  FluHorse  that abuses the Flutter software development framework. "The malware features several malicious Android applications that mimic legitimate applications, most of which have more than 1,000,000 installs," Check Point  said  in a technical report. "These malicious apps steal the victims' credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes." The malicious apps have been found to imitate popular apps like ETC and VPBank Neo, which are widely used in Taiwan and Vietnam. Evidence gathered so far shows that the activity has been active since at least May 2022.  The phishing scheme in itself is fairly straightforward, wherein victims are lured with emails that contain links to a bogus website that hosts malicious APK files. Also added to the website are checks that aim to screen victi...

Online account creation poses a challenge for engineers and system architects: if you put up too many barriers, you risk turning away genuine users. Make it too easy, and you risk fraud or fake accounts. The Problem with Identity Verification The traditional model of online identity – username/email and password – has long outlived its usefulness. This is how multi-factor or two-factor authentication (MFA or 2FA) has come into play, to patch up vulnerabilities of the so-called knowledge-based model, usually by SMS passcode to verify possession of a mobile phone number. The simplicity of SMS-based verification has taken apps by storm – it's the default option, as most users have a mobile phone. Yet bad actors have learned how to exploit this verification method, leading to the menace of  SIM swap fraud , which is alarmingly easy to pull off and rising rapidly in incidents. There's been no lack of effort in finding a more secure factor that is still universal. For example, b...

Smart doorbells and cameras bring a great sense of security to your home, especially when you're away, but even a thought that someone could be spying on you through the same surveillance system would shiver up your spine. Following several recent reports of hackers gaining access to people's internet-connected Ring doorbell and security cameras, Amazon yesterday announced to make two-factor authentication security feature mandatory for all Ring users. Until now, enabling the two-factor authentication in Ring devices was optional, which definitely would have prevented most Ring hacks, but of course, many never bothered to enable it. That means, from now onwards, at the time of login after entering the account's username and password, every user needs to input a secret six-digit authentication code sent to them via their phone or email. Two-factor authentication is an effective defense because it acts as a deterrent, preventing unauthorized users from gaining acces...

Instagram is growing quickly—and with the second most popular social media network in the world (behind just Facebook), the photo-sharing network absolutely dominates when it comes to user interactions. And with great success comes great responsibility—responsibility to keep users' accounts safe, responsibility to fight fake accounts and news, and responsibility of being transparent. You might know that the Facebook-owned photo-sharing network has recently been a victim of a widespread hacking campaign that has affected thousands of Instagram users, leaving them locked out of their accounts. In the wake of the security mishappening, Instagram has announced a trio of security updates intended to discourage trolls, stop misinformation, and make the platform a little safer for its one billion users. In an official blog post , titled "New Tools to Keep Instagram Safe," published by Instagram Co-Founder & CTO Mike Krieger on August 28, the company announced thr...

We have heard a lot about data breaches nowadays. And if you think that switching to an encrypted messaging service may secure you and your data, then you may be wrong. No good deed today can help you protect yourself completely. Reuters and several media outlets are reporting that the phone numbers of 15 Million users in Iran and more than a dozen accounts on the Telegram instant messaging service have been compromised by Iranian hackers exploiting an SMS text message flaw. Telegram is a messaging app " with a focus on security " that promotes itself as an ultra secure instant messaging system as all data is end-to-end encrypted. The service claims to have 100 Million active subscribers. According to research conducted by two security researchers, Collin Anderson and Claudio Guarnieri, this attack has threatened the communications of activists, journalists and other people in Iran, where around 20 Million people use Telegram. The incident is even said to be the...