The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

A new kind of Windows NTLM relay attack dubbed  DFSCoerce  has been uncovered that leverages the Distributed File System (DFS): Namespace Management Protocol (MS-DFSNM) to seize control of a domain. "Spooler service disabled, RPC filters installed to prevent PetitPotam and File Server VSS Agent Service not installed but you still want to relay [Domain Controller authentication] to [Active Directory Certificate Services]? Don't worry MS-DFSNM have (sic) your back," security researcher Filip Dragovic  said  in a tweet. MS-DFSNM  provides a remote procedure call (RPC) interface for administering distributed file system configurations. The NTLM (NT Lan Manager) relay attack is a well-known method that exploits the challenge-response mechanism. It allows malicious parties to sit between clients and servers and intercept and relay validated authentication requests in order to gain unauthorized access to network resources, effectively gaining an initial foothold i...

Insurance exists to protect the insured party against catastrophe, but the insurer needs protection so that its policies are not abused – and that's where the fine print comes in. However, in the case of ransomware insurance, the fine print is becoming contentious and arguably undermining the usefulness of ransomware insurance. In this article, we'll outline why, particularly given the current climate, war exclusion clauses are increasingly rendering ransomware insurance of reduced value – and why your organization should focus on protecting itself instead. What is ransomware insurance In recent years, ransomware insurance has grown as a product field because organizations are trying to buy protection against the catastrophic effects of a successful ransomware attack. Why try to buy insurance? Well, a single, successful attack can just about wipe out a large organization, or lead to crippling costs –  NotPetya alone led to a total of $10bn in damages .  Ransomware attacks...

A security flaw in Apple Safari that was exploited in the wild earlier this year was originally fixed in 2013 and reintroduced in December 2016, according to a new report from Google Project Zero. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2022-22620  (CVSS score: 8.8), concerns a case of a use-after-free vulnerability in the WebKit component that could be exploited by a piece of specially crafted web content to gain arbitrary code execution. In early February 2022, Apple shipped patches for the bug across Safari, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, while acknowledging that it "may have been actively exploited." "In this case, the variant was completely patched when the vulnerability was initially reported in 2013," Maddie Stone of Google Project Zero  said . "However, the variant was reintroduced three years later during large refactoring efforts. The vulnerability then continued to exist for 5 years until it was fixed as an in-the-wild zero-day in January 2022." While both th...

The operators behind  BRATA  have once again added more capabilities to the Android mobile malware in an attempt to make their attacks against financial apps more stealthy. "In fact, the modus operandi now fits into an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) activity pattern," Italian cybersecurity firm Cleafy  said  in a report last week. "This term is used to describe an attack campaign in which criminals establish a long-term presence on a targeted network to steal sensitive information." An acronym for "Brazilian Remote Access Tool Android," BRATA was first  detected  in the wild in Brazil in late 2018, before making its first appearance in Europe last April, while masquerading as antivirus software and other common productivity tools to trick users into downloading them. The change in the attack pattern, which scaled new highs in early April 2022, involves tailoring the malware to strike a specific financial institution at a time, switching to a differe...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details about 15 security flaws in Siemens SINEC network management system (NMS), some of which could be chained by an attacker to achieve remote code execution on affected systems. "The vulnerabilities, if exploited, pose a number of risks to Siemens devices on the network including denial-of-service attacks, credential leaks, and remote code execution in certain circumstances," industrial security company Claroty  said  in a new report. The shortcomings in question — tracked from CVE-2021-33722 through CVE-2021-33736 — were addressed by Siemens in version V1.0 SP2 Update 1 as part of patches shipped on October 12, 2021. "The most severe could allow an authenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system, with system privileges, under certain conditions," Siemens  noted  in an advisory at the time. Chief among the weaknesses is CVE-2021-33723 (CVSS score: 8.8), which allows for privilege escalation to...

In the world of cybersecurity, reputation is everything. Most business owners have little understanding of the technical side, so they have to rely on credibility. Founded back in 2005, Palo Alto Networks is a cybersecurity giant that has earned the trust of the business community thanks to its impressive track record. The company now provides services to over 70,000 organizations in 150 countries. The  Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity Fundamentals (PCCSA)  course helps you gain that same level of credibility, with 27 tutorials working towards official certification. It's normally priced at $295, but readers of The Hacker News can currently  get the training for only $19.99 . Special Offer  — The Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity Fundamentals (PCCSA) course is worth $295, but you can  grab it today for just $19.99  with lifetime access included. That's 93% off the full price! There are many different certifications you can earn in cybersecurity today. ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday disclosed that it took down the infrastructure associated with a Russian botnet known as RSOCKS in collaboration with law enforcement partners in Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K. The botnet, operated by a sophisticated cybercrime organization, is believed to have ensnared millions of internet-connected devices, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Android phones, and computers for use as a proxy service. Botnets, a constantly evolving threat, are networks of hijacked computer devices that are under the control of a single attacking party and are used to facilitate a variety of large-scale cyber intrusions such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, email spam, and cryptojacking. "The RSOCKS botnet offered its clients access to IP addresses assigned to devices that had been hacked," the DoJ  said  in a press release. "The owners of these devices did not give the RSOCKS operator(s) authority to ac...

A recently patched  critical security flaw  in Atlassian Confluence Server and Data Center products is being actively weaponized in real-world attacks to drop cryptocurrency miners and ransomware payloads. In at least two of the Windows-related incidents observed by cybersecurity vendor Sophos, adversaries exploited the vulnerability to deliver Cerber ransomware and a  crypto miner  called z0miner on victim networks. The bug ( CVE-2022-26134 , CVSS score: 9.8), which was  patched  by Atlassian on June 3, 2022, enables an unauthenticated actor to inject malicious code that paves the way of remote code execution (RCE) on affected installations of the collaboration suite. All supported versions of Confluence Server and Data Center are affected. Other notable malware pushed as part of disparate instances of attack activity include Mirai and Kinsing bot variants, a rogue package called  pwnkit , and Cobalt Strike by way of a web shell deployed after ga...

An enterprise-grade surveillanceware dubbed Hermit has been put to use by entities operating from within Kazakhstan, Syria, and Italy over the years since 2019, new research has revealed. Lookout attributed the spy software, which is equipped to target both Android and iOS, to an Italian company named RCS Lab S.p.A and Tykelab Srl, a telecom services provider which it suspects to be a front company. The San Francisco-based cybersecurity firm said it detected the campaign aimed at Kazakhstan in April 2022. Hermit is modular and comes with myriad capabilities that allow it to "exploit a rooted device, record audio and make and redirect phone calls, as well as collect data such as call logs, contacts, photos, device location and SMS messages," Lookout researchers Justin Albrecht and Paul Shunk  said  in a new write-up. The spyware is believed to be distributed via SMS messages that trick users into installing what are seemingly innocuous apps from Samsung, Vivo, and Oppo, w...

It was first the pandemic that changed the usual state of work - before, it was commuting, working in the office & coming home for most corporate employees. Then, when we had to adapt to the self-isolation rules, the work moved to home offices, which completely changed the workflow for many businesses. As the pandemic went down, we realized success never relied on where the work was done. Whether your office is your kitchen, your bedroom, a nearby cafe, or your actual workplace in an office building, it all comes down to the fact that job success has nothing to do with your location.  The role of the office in the hybrid era is also changing - according to the research conducted by  PwC , it now serves the purpose of collaborating with team members and building relationships. From an employee's side, it sounds pretty logical and obvious.  However, if we look at hybrid work with the eyes of an employer, things get complicated. How does one make sure corporate device...