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Just as animals use their senses to detect danger, cybersecurity depends on sensors to identify signals in the computing environment that may signal danger. The more highly tuned, diverse and coordinated the senses, the more likely one is to detect important signals that indicate danger. This, however, can be a double-edged sword. Too many signals with too little advanced signal processing just leads to a lot of noise. The right, diverse set of signals with highly evolved signal processing leads to survival. It therefore makes sense that broad threat visibility across the IT environment is fundamental for detecting cyberattacks. Cybersecurity company Cynet puts this in perspective in a new eBook,  The Guide for Threat Visibility for Lean IT Security Teams – link to this . The Ongoing Problem of Limited Threat Visibility The complexity of today's IT environments has made it exceedingly difficult to protect. The defensive perimeter has expanded with an expanded remote workforce, ...

The financially motivated  FIN8 actor , in all likelihood, has resurfaced with a never-before-seen ransomware strain called " White Rabbit " that was recently deployed against a local bank in the U.S. in December 2021. That's according to new findings published by Trend Micro, calling out the malware's overlaps with Egregor, which was taken down by Ukrainian law enforcement authorities in February 2021. "One of the most notable aspects of White Rabbit's attack is how its payload binary requires a specific command-line password to decrypt its internal configuration and proceed with its ransomware routine," the researchers  noted . "This method of hiding malicious activity is a trick that the ransomware family Egregor uses to hide malware techniques from analysis." Egregor, which commenced operations in September 2020 until its operations took a huge hit, is widely believed to be a  reincarnation of Maze , which shut down its criminal enterp...

An IRC  (Internet Relay Chat) bot strain programmed in GoLang is being used to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting users in Korea. "The malware is being distributed under the guise of adult games," researchers from AhnLab's Security Emergency-response Center (ASEC)  said  in a new report published on Wednesday. "Additionally, the DDoS malware was installed via downloader and  UDP RAT  was used." The attack works by uploading the malware-laced games to webhards — which refers to a web hard drive or a remote file hosting service — in the form of compressed ZIP archives that, when opened, includes an executable ("Game_Open.exe") that's orchestrated to run a malware payload aside from launching the actual game. This payload, a GoLang-based downloader, establishes connections with a remote command-and-control (C&C) server to retrieve additional malware, including an IRC bot that can perform DDoS attacks. "It is...

The coordinated cyberattacks targeting  Ukrainian government websites  and the deployment of a data-wiper malware called  WhisperGate  on select government systems are part of a broader wave of malicious activities aimed at  sabotaging critical infrastructure  in the country. The Secret Service of Ukraine on Monday confirmed that the two incidents are related, adding the breaches also exploited the recently disclosed  Log4j vulnerabilities  to gain access to some of the compromised systems. "The attack used vulnerabilities in the site's content management systems (October CMS) and Log4j, as well as compromised accounts of employees of the development company," the SSU  said , corroborating prior disclosure from the  Ukraine CERT team . The disclosure comes days after Microsoft warned of a malware operation aimed at government, non-profit, and information technology entities in Ukraine, attributing the attacks to a threat cluster cod...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched bug in Box's multi-factor authentication (MFA) mechanism that could be abused to completely sidestep SMS-based login verification. "Using this technique, an attacker could use stolen credentials to compromise an organization's Box account and exfiltrate sensitive data without access to the victim's phone," Varonis researchers  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity company said it reported the issue to the cloud service provider on November 2, 2021, post which fixes were issued by Box. MFA is an authentication method that relies on a combination of factors such as a password (something only the user knows) and a temporary one-time password aka TOTP (something only the user has) to provide users a second layer of defense against credential stuffing and other account takeover attacks. This two-step authentication can either involve sending the code as an SMS or alternat...

VPNLab.net, a  VPN provider  that was used by malicious actors to deploy ransomware and facilitate other cybercrimes, was taken offline following a coordinated law enforcement operation. Europol said it took action against the misuse of the VPN service by grounding 15 of its servers on January 17 and rendering it inoperable as part of a disruptive action that took place across Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Latvia, Ukraine, the U.S., and the U.K. A second outcome of the seizure is that at least 100 businesses that have been identified as at risk of impending cyber attacks are being notified. Europol didn't disclose the names of the companies. Established in 2008, the tool provided an advanced level of anonymity by offering double VPN connections to its clients — wherein the internet traffic is routed through two VPN servers located in different countries instead of one — for as cheap as $60 a year. "This made VPNLab.net a popular ...

Providing public Wi-Fi is a great service to offer your customers as it becomes more and more standard in today's society. I like the fact that I do not have to worry about accessing the Internet while I am away, or spending a lot of money on an international connection, or just staying offline while I am away. With public Wi-Fi, modern life has become a constant connection to the Internet, whether we are on the bus, on the way to school or work, waiting for our flight in the airport or during the flight itself, or doing our homework or working on our projects in a café. We do business and communicate online in a variety of ways. We check our work emails, chat with our friends, and even take business calls online through the service. According to recent statistics, there are about 410,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States alone, in public places such as parks, libraries, public transportation, and train stations. Cons of using public Wi-Fi Despite the many benefits t...

An elusive threat actor called Earth Lusca has been observed striking organizations across the world as part of what appears to be simultaneously an espionage campaign and an attempt to reap monetary profits. "The list of its victims includes high-value targets such as government and educational institutions, religious movements, pro-democracy and human rights organizations in Hong Kong, COVID-19 research organizations, and the media, amongst others," Trend Micro researchers  said  in a new report. "However, the threat actor also seems to be financially motivated, as it also took aim at gambling and cryptocurrency companies. The cybersecurity firm attributed the group as part of the larger China-based  Winnti cluster , which refers to a number of linked groups rather than a single discrete entity that are focused on intelligence gathering and intellectual property theft. Earth Lusca's intrusion routes are facilitated by spear-phishing and watering hole attacks...

Enterprise software maker Zoho on Monday issued patches for a critical security vulnerability in Desktop Central and Desktop Central MSP that a remote adversary could exploit to perform unauthorized actions in affected servers. Tracked as  CVE-2021-44757 , the shortcoming concerns an instance of authentication bypass that "may allow an attacker to read unauthorized data or write an arbitrary zip file on the server," the company  noted  in an advisory. Osword from SGLAB of Legendsec at Qi'anxin Group has been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability. The Indian firm said it remediated the issue in build version 10.1.2137.9. With the latest fix, Zoho has addressed a total of four vulnerabilities over the past five months — CVE-2021-40539  (CVSS score: 9.8) – Authentication bypass vulnerability affecting Zoho ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus CVE-2021-44077  (CVSS score: 9.8) – Unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability affecting Zoh...

Google Chrome has announced plans to prohibit public websites from directly accessing endpoints located within private networks as part of an upcoming major security shakeup to prevent intrusions via the browser. The proposed change is set to be rolled out in two phases consisting of releases Chrome 98 and Chrome 101 scheduled in the coming months via a newly implemented W3C specification called private network access ( PNA ). "Chrome will start sending a  CORS  preflight request ahead of any private network request for a subresource, which asks for explicit permission from the target server," Titouan Rigoudy and Eiji Kitamura  said . "This preflight request will carry a new header, Access-Control-Request-Private-Network: true, and the response to it must carry a corresponding header, Access-Control-Allow-Private-Network: true." What this means is that starting with Chrome version 101, any website accessible via the internet will be made to seek explicit permi...