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Apple iCloud users in China are not safe from the hackers — believed to be working for Chinese government — who are trying to wiretap Apple customers in the country. Great Fire , a reputed non-profit organization that monitors Internet censorship in China, claimed that the Chinese authorities have launched a nationwide Man in the Middle (MITM) campaign against users of Apple's iCloud service, designed to steal users' login credentials and access private data. MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE ATTACK The attacks on the iCloud service was first reported on Saturday and come as Apple begins the official rollout of its latest launched iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on the Chinese mainland. If we talk about less publicized but more danger, Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack is the most common one. By attempting MitM attack, a potential attacker could intercept users' internet communication, steal sensitive information and even hijack sessions. ACCESS TO CREDENTIALS AND ALL PERSONAL DATA Usin...

For the very first time in history, China has arrested hackers within its borders at the request of the United States government. The helping hands of China made me remind of recent Hollywood movie, The Martian , in which China's CNSA helped the United States' NASA to rescue astronaut Mark Watney who was mistakenly presumed dead and left behind on the planet Mars. Although China did not rescue anyone, rather it did arrest, but the point is – China helped the United States. Just two weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the U.S., the Chinese government took unprecedented step by complying with a United States request and arresting a handful of hackers within its borders, anonymous U.S. officials told the Washington Post. The arrested hackers were suspected of stealing commercial secrets from U.S. firms and then selling or passing on those secrets to Chinese state-run companies. The hackers were part of a wanted list drawn up by the U.S....

The United States Justice Department has charged three Chinese nationals for allegedly hacking Moody's Analytics economist, German electronics manufacturer Siemens, and GPS maker Trimble, and stealing gigabytes of sensitive data and trade secrets. According to an indictment unsealed Monday in federal court in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the three men worked for a Chinese cybersecurity company, Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Limited ( Boyusec ), previously linked to China's Ministry of State Security. Earlier this year, security researchers also linked Boyusec to one of the active Chinese government-sponsored espionage groups, called Advanced Persistent Threat 3 (or APT3 ), which is also known as Gothic Panda, UPS Team, Buckeye, and TG-0110. In 2013, APT3 allegedly stole the blueprints for ASIO's new Canberra building using a piece of malware that was uploaded to an ASIO employee's laptop. According to the indictment, the three Chinese nationals...

Security operations centers (SOCs) are under pressure from both sides: threats are growing more complex and frequent, while security budgets are no longer keeping pace. Today's security leaders are expected to reduce risk and deliver results without relying on larger teams or increased spending. At the same time, SOC inefficiencies are draining resources. Studies show that up to half of all alerts are false positives, with some reports citing false positive rates as high as 99 percent . This means highly trained analysts spend a disproportionate amount of time chasing down harmless activity, wasting effort, increasing fatigue, and raising the chance of missing real threats. In this environment, the business imperative is clear: maximize the impact of every analyst and every dollar by making security operations faster, smarter, and more focused. Enter the Agentic AI SOC Analyst The agentic AI SOC Analyst is a force multiplier that enables organizations to do more with the team an...

Chinese Government taking strong step against Cyber Crime The Chinese government is working with domestic Internet search engines like Baidu Inc and Sohu.com and financial institutions to prevent phishing attacks on unsuspecting Chinese web users. The Chinese government has announced that it will work together with 10 Chinese search engines. The user IDs, passwords and email addresses of more than 6 million accounts registered on CSDN, a site for programmers were leaked as we reported last week . The popular social-networking site Tianya was also hit by hackers last week. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Wednesday it would investigate the hacking incidents. In the U.S. data theft and hacking have become very common over the last few years. Recently, hacker group Anonymous hacked into the servers of security firm Stratfor and stole credit card and other personal details on thousands of users of the site and its services. The U.S. isn't alone in f...

A previously undocumented China-aligned threat actor has been linked to a set of adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks that hijack update requests from legitimate software to deliver a sophisticated implant named NSPX30. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET is tracking the advanced persistent threat (APT) group under the name  Blackwood . It's said to be active since at least 2018. The NSPX30 implant has been observed deployed via the update mechanisms of known software such as Tencent QQ, WPS Office, and Sogou Pinyin, with the attacks targeting Chinese and Japanese manufacturing, trading, and engineering companies as well as individuals located in China, Japan, and the U.K. "NSPX30 is a multistage implant that includes several components such as a dropper, an installer, loaders, an orchestrator, and a backdoor," security researcher Facundo Muñoz  said . "Both of the latter two have their own sets of plugins." "The implant was designed around the attackers...

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a new advisory on Monday about a wave of cyberattacks carried by Chinese nation-state actors targeting US government agencies and private entities. "CISA has observed Chinese [Ministry of State Security]-affiliated cyber threat actors operating from the People's Republic of China using commercially available information sources and open-source exploitation tools to target US Government agency networks," the cybersecurity agency said. Over the past 12 months, the victims were identified through sources such as Shodan , the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure ( CVE ) database, and the National Vulnerabilities Database (NVD), exploiting the public release of a vulnerability to pick vulnerable targets and further their motives. By compromising legitimate websites and leveraging spear-phishing emails with malicious links pointing to attacker-owned sites in order to gain initial access, the Chinese ...

The China-based threat actor known as Mustang Panda has been observed refining and retooling its tactics and malware to strike entities located in Asia, the European Union, Russia, and the U.S. "Mustang Panda is a highly motivated APT group relying primarily on the use of topical lures and social engineering to trick victims into infecting themselves," Cisco Talos  said  in a new report detailing the group's evolving modus operandi. The group is known to have targeted a wide range of organizations since at least 2012, with the actor primarily relying on email-based social engineering to gain initial access to drop PlugX, a backdoor predominantly deployed for long-term access. Phishing messages attributed to the campaign contain malicious lures masquerading as official European Union reports on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine or Ukrainian government reports, both of which download malware onto compromised machines. Also observed are phishing messages tailored to ta...

The White House acknowledged Monday that one of its computer networks was hit by a cyber attack, but said there was no breach of any classified systems and no indication any data was lost. Including systems used by the military for nuclear commands were breached by Chinese hackers. A conservative newspaper that has been regularly critical of the Obama administration, called The Washington Free Beacon, first published the report on Sunday and said that the attackers were linked to the Chinese government. One official said the cyber breach was one of Beijing's most brazen cyber attacks against the United States and highlights a failure of the Obama administration to press China on its persistent cyber attacks. Disclosure of the cyber attack also comes amid heightened tensions in Asia, as the Pentagon moved two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and Marine amphibious units near waters by Japan's Senkaku islands. The official called the incident a " spear-phishing " a...

Chinese hackers suspected in compromise of Australian PM 's computer The parliamentary computers of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and at least two other senior ministers are suspected of being hacked. Ms Gillard's parliamentary computer, along with those of several cabinet ministers including Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Defence Minister Stephen Smith were believed to have been compromised, News Ltd newspapers report. Thousands of emails are believed to have been accessed in the cyber attacks. Advertisement: Story continues below Four Australian government sources confirmed with the newspapers they had been told Chinese intelligence agencies were part of a list of suspected hackers. US intelligence officials alerted their Australian counterparts and News Ltd believes ASIO has started an investigation. The cyber attacks are believed to be on the Australian Parliament House email network, the less secure of two networks used by MPs. Ministers use a departmental network for more ...

An amalgam of multiple state-sponsored threat groups from China may have been behind a string of targeted attacks against Russian federal executive authorities in 2020. The latest research, published by Singapore-headquartered company Group-IB, delves into a piece of computer virus called " Webdav-O " that was detected in the intrusions, with the cybersecurity firm observing similarities between the tool and that of popular Trojan called " BlueTraveller ," that's known to be connected to a Chinese threat group called TaskMasters and deployed in malicious activities with the aim of espionage and plundering confidential documents. "Chinese APTs are one of the most numerous and aggressive hacker communities," researchers Anastasia Tikhonova and Dmitry Kupin  said . "Hackers mostly target state agencies, industrial facilities, military contractors, and research institutes. The main objective is espionage: attackers gain access to confidential data...

Hackers took control of two satellites for few minutes According to a US report recently claimed that hackers had managed to interfere with two military satellites, but one expert argues the amount of energy required would be too great for ordinary hackers. The hackers took control of the Landsat-7 and Terra AM-1 satellites for a grand total of 12 minutes and two minutes respectively. One might hope that the communications satellites suspended in orbit above the earth might be one component of the planet's technology infrastructure that is safely out of harm's way. But as satellite communications enthusiast Paul Marsh explained at the London Security B-Sides event in April, there are reasons to doubt the reports. He spoke about a similar story, reported in the late 1990s, about hackers supposedly accessing UK military satellite communications network SkyNet and 'nudging' one satellite out of synch. Whether Chinese hackers have that capability now is just one more matter of specu...

A suspected Chinese-speaking threat actor has been attributed to a malicious campaign that targets the Uzbekistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and South Korean users with a remote access trojan called  SugarGh0st RAT . The activity, which commenced no later than August 2023, leverages two different infection sequences to deliver the malware, which is a customized variant of  Gh0st RAT  (aka Farfli). It comes with features to "facilitate the remote administration tasks as directed by the C2 and modified communication protocol based on the similarity of the command structure and the strings used in the code," Cisco Talos researchers Ashley Shen and Chetan Raghuprasad  said . The attacks commence with a phishing email bearing decoy documents, opening which activates a multi-stage process that leads to the deployment of SugarGh0st RAT. The decoy documents are incorporated within a heavily obfuscated JavaScript dropper that's contained within a Windows Shortcut file ...

Update: ' Hack The Pentagon ' has opened registration for its pilot bug bounty program of $150,000 for hackers in return for the vulnerabilities they find in its public facing websites. The Defense Department has enlisted the bug bounty startup HackerOne to manage the pilot program. Interested hackers can Register Now to participate in the Bug Bounty program. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has the plan to boost their internal and network security by announcing what it calls "the first cyber Bug Bounty Program in the history of the federal government," officially inviting hackers to take up the challenge. Dubbed " Hack the Pentagon ," the bug bounty program invites the hackers and security researchers only from the United States to target its networks as well as the public faced websites which are registered under DoD. The bug bounty program will begin in April 2016, and the participants could win money (cash rewards) ...

According to the report from Bloomberg, In 2009, the FBI told Coca-Cola executives that hackers had broken into their computer systems, when a malicious link was emailed to a senior executive, but never revealed the incident. Hackers were able to spend a month operating undetected, logging commercially sensitive information. " Hackers had broken into the company's computer systems and were pilfering sensitive files about its attempted $2.4 billion acquisition of China Huiyuan Juice Group (1886), according to three people familiar with the situation and an internal company document detailing the cyber intrusion. " Bloomberg said . Coca-Cola, the world's largest soft-drink maker, has never publicly disclosed the loss of the Huiyuan information, despite its potential effect on the deal. Although the report claimed state-sponsored actors were involved, experts interviewed by the news wire said the attack had all the hallmarks of Comment a prolific Chinese hacking group. Re...

Samsung has been surrounded by a lot of controversies since the past few years, but that has not influenced its productivity. But this report has raised a few eyebrows... Samsung's mobile payment system company, LoopPay , was hacked back in March this year, just a month after Samsung bought it to help make Samsung Pay a reality. Samsung acquired LoopPay for more than $250 Million in February this year, and a group of Chinese Hackers were able to access LoopPay computer systems in March. The most worrisome part is – the hack was discovered 5 months later in August . Hackers were After Technology; Not Money or Sensitive Data The hackers, believed to be from a group called ' Codoso Group ' or ' Sunshock Group ,' were after the company's Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) Technology . The group injected LoopPay's computer network with a hidden sophisticated attack in March, but the investigation kicked off when LoopPay learned of...

A Chinese state-sponsored threat activity group named RedAlpha has been attributed to a multi-year mass credential theft campaign aimed at global humanitarian, think tank, and government organizations. "In this activity, RedAlpha very likely sought to gain access to email accounts and other online communications of targeted individuals and organizations," Recorded Future  disclosed  in a new report.  A lesser-known threat actor, RedAlpha was first  documented  by Citizen Lab in January 2018 and has a history of conducting cyber espionage and surveillance operations directed against the Tibetan community, some in India, to facilitate intelligence collection through the deployment of the NjRAT backdoor . "The campaigns [...] combine light reconnaissance, selective targeting, and diverse malicious tooling," Recorded Future  noted  at the time. Since then, malicious activities undertaken by the group have involved weaponizing as many as 350 domains ...

Cybersecurity researchers today unveiled a complex and targeted espionage attack on potential government sector victims in South East Asia that they believe was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese APT group at least since 2018. "The attack has a complex and complete arsenal of droppers, backdoors and other tools involving Chinoxy backdoor, PcShare RAT and FunnyDream backdoor binaries, with forensic artefacts pointing towards a sophisticated Chinese actor," Bitdefender said in a new analysis shared with The Hacker News. It's worth noting that the  FunnyDream  campaign has been previously linked to high-profile government entities in Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines, with a majority of victims located in Vietnam. According to the researchers, not only around 200 machines exhibited attack indicators associated with the campaign, evidence points to the fact the threat actor may have compromised  domain controllers  on the victim's network, allowing them to m...

A suspected Chinese threat actor targeted a large U.S. organization earlier this year as part of a four-month-long intrusion. According to Broadcom-owned Symantec, the first evidence of the malicious activity was detected on April 11, 2024 and continued until August. However, the company doesn't rule out the possibility that the intrusion may have occurred earlier. "The attackers moved laterally across the organization's network, compromising multiple computers," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Some of the machines targeted were Exchange Servers, suggesting the attackers were gathering intelligence by harvesting emails. Exfiltration tools were also deployed, suggesting that targeted data was taken from the organizations." The name of the organization that was impacted by the persistent attack campaign was not disclosed, but noted that the victim has a significant presence in China. The links to China as ...

The brand new Android smartphone launched by Google just a few months back has been hacked by Chinese hackers just in less than a minute. Yes, the Google's latest Pixel smartphone has been hacked by a team white-hat hackers from Qihoo 360, besides at the 2016 PwnFest hacking competition in Seoul. The Qihoo 360 team demonstrated a proof-of-concept exploit that used a zero-day vulnerability in order to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on the target smartphone. The exploit then launched the Google Play Store on the Pixel smartphone before opening Google Chrome and displaying a web page that read "Pwned By 360 Alpha Team," the Reg media reports . Qihoo 360 won $120,000 cash prize for hacking the Pixel. Google will now work to patch the vulnerability. Besides the Google Pixel, Microsoft Edge running under Windows 10 was also hacked in PwnFest hacking competition. The Qihoo 360 team also hacked Adobe Flash with a combination of a decade-old, use-after-free ...