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A new audit of DeepSeek's mobile app for the Apple iOS operating system has found glaring security issues, the foremost being that it sends sensitive data over the internet sans any encryption, exposing it to interception and manipulation attacks. The assessment comes from NowSecure, which also found that the app fails to adhere to best security practices and that it collects extensive user and device data. "The DeepSeek iOS app sends some mobile app registration and device data over the Internet without encryption," the company said . "This exposes any data in the internet traffic to both passive and active attacks." The teardown also revealed several implementation weaknesses when it comes to applying encryption on user data. This includes the use of an insecure symmetric encryption algorithm ( 3DES ), a hard-coded encryption key, and the reuse of initialization vectors . What's more, the data is sent to servers that are managed by a cloud compute a...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned that a security flaw impacting Trimble Cityworks GIS-centric asset management software has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-0994 (CVSS v4 score: 8.6), a deserialization of untrusted data bug that could permit an attacker to conduct remote code execution. "This could allow an authenticated user to perform a remote code execution attack against a customer's Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) web server," CISA said in an advisory dated February 6, 2025. The flaw affects the following versions - Cityworks (All versions prior to 15.8.9) Cityworks with office companion (All versions prior to 23.10) While Trimble has released patches to address the security defect as of January 29, 2025, CISA has warned that it is being weaponized in real-world attacks. The Colorado-headquartered company also noted that it has received reports o...

Attack surfaces are growing faster than security teams can keep up – to stay ahead, you need to know what's exposed and where attackers are most likely to strike. With cloud adoption dramatically increasing the ease of exposing new systems and services to the internet, prioritizing threats and managing your attack surface from an attacker's perspective has never been more important. In this guide, we look at why attack surfaces are growing and how to monitor and manage them properly with  tools like Intruder . Let's dive in. What is your attack surface? First, it's important to understand what we mean when we talk about an attack surface. An attack surface is the sum of your digital assets that are 'reachable' by an attacker – whether they are secure or vulnerable, known or unknown, in active use or not. You can also have both internal and external attack surfaces - imagine for example a malicious email attachment landing in a colleague's inbox, vs a new FTP server being...

The foundations for social engineering attacks – manipulating humans – might not have changed much over the years. It's the vectors – how these techniques are deployed – that are evolving. And like most industries these days, AI is accelerating its evolution.  This article explores how these changes are impacting business, and how cybersecurity leaders can respond. Impersonation attacks: using a trusted identity Traditional forms of defense were already struggling to solve social engineering, the 'cause of most data breaches' according to Thomson Reuters. The next generation of AI-powered cyber attacks and threat actors can now launch these attacks with unprecedented speed, scale, and realism.  The old way: Silicone masks By impersonating a French government minister, two fraudsters were able to extract over €55 million from multiple victims. During video calls, one would wear a silicone mask of Jean-Yves Le Drian. To add a layer of believability, they also sat in a rec...

Microsoft is warning of an insecure practice wherein software developers are incorporating publicly disclosed ASP.NET machine keys from publicly accessible resources, thereby putting their applications in attackers' pathway. The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed limited activity in December 2024 that involved an unknown threat actor using a publicly available, static ASP.NET machine key to inject malicious code and deliver the Godzilla post-exploitation framework. It also noted that it has identified over 3,000 publicly disclosed keys that could be used for these types of attacks, which it's calling ViewState code injection attacks . "Whereas many previously known ViewState code injection attacks used compromised or stolen keys that are often sold on dark web forums, these publicly disclosed keys could pose a higher risk because they are available in multiple code repositories and could have been pushed into development code without modificat...

India's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said it's introducing an exclusive "bank.in" internet domain for banks in the country to combat digital financial fraud. "This initiative aims to reduce cyber security threats and malicious activities like phishing; and, streamline secure financial services, thereby enhancing trust in digital banking and payment services," the RBI said in a statement issued today. To that end, the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) will act as the exclusive registrar. Registrations for the domains are expected to start from April 2025. The RBI also said it plans to roll out a separate exclusive domain "fin.in" for other non-bank entities in the financial sector. As part of broader efforts to enhance trust in online payments, the RBI said it's also debuting what's called Additional Factor of Authentication ( AFA ) for cross-border card-not-present ( CNP ) online t...

Threat actors have been observed exploiting recently disclosed security flaws in SimpleHelp's Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software as a precursor for what appears to be a ransomware attack. The intrusion leveraged the now-patched vulnerabilities to gain initial access and maintain persistent remote access to an unspecified target network, cybersecurity company Field Effect said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The attack involved the quick and deliberate execution of several post-compromise tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) including network and system discovery, administrator account creation, and the establishment of persistence mechanisms, which could have led to the deployment of ransomware," security researchers Ryan Slaney and Daniel Albrecht said . The vulnerabilities in question, CVE-2024-57726, CVE-2024-57727, and CVE-2024-57728 , were disclosed by Horizon3.ai last month. Successful exploitation of the security holes could allow f...

Bogus websites advertising Google Chrome have been used to distribute malicious installers for a remote access trojan called ValleyRAT. The malware, first detected in 2023, is attributed to a threat actor tracked as Silver Fox, with prior attack campaigns primarily targeting Chinese-speaking regions like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. "This actor has increasingly targeted key roles within organizations—particularly in finance, accounting, and sales department — highlighting a strategic focus on high-value positions with access to sensitive data and systems," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said in a report published earlier this week. Early attack chains have been observed delivering ValleyRAT alongside other malware families such as Purple Fox and Gh0st RAT, the latter of which has been extensively used by various Chinese hacking groups . As recently as last month, counterfeit installers for legitimate software have served as a distribution mechanism for t...

Ransomware attacks netted cybercrime groups a total of $813.5 million in 2024, a decline from $1.25 billion in 2023. The total amount extorted during the first half of 2024 stood at $459.8 million, blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis said, adding payment activity slumped after July 2024 by about 3.94%. "The number of ransomware events increased into H2, but on-chain payments declined, suggesting that more victims were targeted, but fewer paid," the company said . Adding to the challenges is an increasingly fragmented ransomware ecosystem, which, in the wake of the collapse of LockBit and BlackCat, has led to the emergence of a lot of newcomers that have eschewed big game hunting in favor of small- to mid-size entities that, in turn, translate to more modest ransom demands. According to data compiled by Coveware, the average ransomware payment in Q4 2024 was at $553,959, up from $479,237 in Q3 . The median ransomware payment, in contrast, dropped from $200,000 to $...

A new malware campaign dubbed SparkCat has leveraged a suit of bogus apps on both Apple's and Google's respective app stores to steal victims' mnemonic phrases associated with cryptocurrency wallets.  The attacks leverage an optical character recognition (OCR) model to exfiltrate select images containing wallet recovery phrases from photo libraries to a command-and-control (C2) server, Kaspersky researchers Dmitry Kalinin and Sergey Puzan said in a technical report. The moniker is a reference to an embedded software development kit (SDK) that employs a Java component called Spark that masquerades as an analytics module. It's currently not known whether the infection was a result of a supply chain attack or if it was intentionally introduced by the developers. While this is not the first time Android malware with OCR capabilities has been detected in the wild, it's one of the first instances where such a stealer has been found in Apple's App Store. The inf...

Privileged Access Management (PAM) has emerged as a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity strategies, shifting from a technical necessity to a critical pillar in leadership agendas. With the PAM market projected to reach $42.96 billion by 2037 (according to Research Nester), organizations invest heavily in PAM solutions. Why is PAM climbing the ranks of leadership priorities? While Gartner highlights key reasons such as enhanced security, regulatory compliance readiness, and insurance requirements, the impact of PAM extends across multiple strategic areas. PAM can help organizations enhance their overall operational efficiency and tackle many challenges they face today. To explore more about PAM's transformative impact on businesses, read The Cyber Guardian: PAM's Role in Shaping Leadership Agendas for 2025 by a renowned cybersecurity expert and former Gartner lead analyst Jonathan Care.  What cybersecurity challenges may organizations face in 2025? The cybersecurity landsca...

The North Korea-linked nation-state hacking group known as Kimsuky has been observed conducting spear-phishing attacks to deliver an information stealer malware named forceCopy, according to new findings from the AhnLab Security Intelligence Center (ASEC). The attacks commence with phishing emails containing a Windows shortcut (LNK) file that's disguised as a Microsoft Office or PDF document. Opening this attachment triggers the execution of PowerShell or mshta.exe, a legitimate Microsoft binary designed to run HTML Application (HTA) files, that are responsible for downloading and running next-stage payloads from an external source. The South Korean cybersecurity company said the attacks culminated in the deployment of a known trojan dubbed PEBBLEDASH and a custom version of an open-source Remote Desktop utility named RDP Wrapper . Also delivered as part of the attacks is a proxy malware that allows the threat actors to establish persistent communications with an external ...