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Conor Brian Fitzpatrick has been sentenced to time served and 20 years of supervised release for his role as the creator and administrator of BreachForums. Fitzpatrick, who went by the online alias "pompompurin," was arrested in March 2023 in New York and was subsequently charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud and possession of child pornography. He was later released on a $300,000 bond, and in July 2023, he pleaded guilty to the charges. BreachForums was a major cyber crime marketplace that facilitated the trafficking of stolen data since March 2022. Prior to its shutdown exactly a year later, the website boasted of over 340,000 members. Among the stolen items commonly sold on the platform were bank account information, Social Security numbers, personally identifying information (PII), hacking tools, breached databases, and account login information for compromised online accounts with service providers and merchants. BreachForums also advertised servic...

Malicious actors have begun to actively exploit a recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Confluence Server, within three days of public disclosure. Tracked as CVE-2023-22527 (CVSS score: 10.0), the vulnerability impacts out-of-date versions of the software, allowing unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution on susceptible installations. The shortcoming affects Confluence Data Center and Server 8 versions released before December 5, 2023, as well as 8.4.5. But merely days after the flaw became public knowledge, nearly 40,000 exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2023-22527 have been recorded in the wild as early as January 19 from more than 600 unique IP addresses, according to both the Shadowserver Foundation and the DFIR Report . The activity is currently limited "testing callback attempts and 'whoami' execution," suggesting that threat actors are opportunistically scanning for vulnerable servers...

Apple on Monday released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and Safari web browser to address a zero-day flaw that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The issue, tracked as CVE-2024-23222 , is a type confusion bug in the WebKit browser engine that could be exploited by a threat actor to achieve arbitrary code execution when processing maliciously crafted web content. The tech giant said the problem was fixed with improved checks. Type confusion vulnerabilities , in general, could be weaponized to perform out-of-bounds memory access, or lead to a crash and arbitrary code execution. In a terse advisory, Apple acknowledged it's "aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited," but did not share any other specifics about the nature of attacks or the threat actors leveraging the shortcoming. The updates are available for the following devices and operating systems - iOS 17.3 and iPadOS 17.3 - iPhone XS and later, iPad Pro 12.9-inch...

Media organizations and high-profile experts in North Korean affairs have been at the receiving end of a new campaign orchestrated by a threat actor known as  ScarCruft  in December 2023. "ScarCruft has been experimenting with new infection chains, including the use of a technical threat research report as a decoy, likely targeting consumers of threat intelligence like cybersecurity professionals," SentinelOne researchers Aleksandar Milenkoski and Tom Hegel  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The North Korea-linked adversary, also known by the name APT37, InkySquid, RedEyes, Ricochet Chollima, and Ruby Sleet, is  assessed  to be part of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), placing it apart from Lazarus Group and Kimsuky, which are elements within the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). The group is  known  for its targeting of governments and defectors, leveraging  spear-phishing lures  to deliver  RokRAT and othe...

Several public and popular libraries abandoned but still used in Java and Android applications have been found susceptible to a new software supply chain attack method called MavenGate. "Access to projects can be hijacked through domain name purchases and since most default build configurations are vulnerable, it would be difficult or even impossible to know whether an attack was being performed," Oversecured  said  in an analysis published last week. Successful exploitation of these shortcomings could allow nefarious actors to hijack artifacts in dependencies and inject malicious code into the application, and worse, even compromise the build process through a malicious plugin. The mobile security firm added that all Maven-based technologies, including Gradle, are vulnerable to the attack, and that it sent reports to more than 200 companies, including Google, Facebook, Signal, Amazon, and others. Apache Maven is  chiefly used  for building and managing Java-bas...

We analyzed 2,5 million vulnerabilities we discovered in our customer's assets. This is what we found. Digging into the data The dataset we analyze here is representative of a subset of clients that subscribe to our vulnerability scanning services. Assets scanned include those reachable across the Internet, as well as those present on internal networks. The data includes findings for network equipment, desktops, web servers, database servers, and even the odd document printer or scanning device. The number of organizations in this dataset is smaller (3 less) than the previous dataset used in last year's Security Navigator 2023 and some organizations were replaced by new additions. With the change of organizations comes a different mix of assets, which leaves comparing the previous results akin to comparing apples to oranges (we might be biased), but it's still worth noting similar patterns where possible. This year, we revisit the menacing vulnerability theme with an eye on ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Java-based "sophisticated" information stealer that uses a Discord bot to exfiltrate sensitive data from compromised hosts. The malware, named  NS-STEALER , is propagated via ZIP archives masquerading as cracked software, Trellix security researcher Gurumoorthi Ramanathan  said  in an analysis published last week. The ZIP file contains within it a rogue Windows shortcut file ("Loader GAYve"), which acts as a conduit to deploy a malicious JAR file that first creates a folder called "NS-<11-digit_random_number>" to store the harvested data. To this folder, the malware subsequently saves screenshots, cookies, credentials, and autofill data stolen from over two dozen web browsers, system information, a list of installed programs, Discord tokens, Steam and Telegram session data. The captured information is then exfiltrated to a Discord Bot channel. "Considering the highly sophisticated functio...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is continuing to clamp down on data brokers by prohibiting InMarket Media from selling or licensing precise location data. The settlement is part of allegations that the Texas-based company did not inform or seek consent from consumers before using their location information for advertising and marketing purposes. "InMarket will also be prohibited from selling, licensing, transferring, or sharing any product or service that categorizes or targets consumers based on sensitive location data," the FTC  said  last week. In addition, it has been ordered to destroy all the location data it previously collected subject to users' assent, as well as provide a mechanism for consumers to withdraw their consent and request for deletion of the information previously collected. The development makes InMarket the second data aggregator to face a ban in as many weeks after Outlogic (formerly X-Mode Social), which  faced accusations  tha...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a "notable increase" in threat actor activity actively exploiting a now-patched flaw in Apache ActiveMQ to deliver the Godzilla web shell on compromised hosts. "The web shells are concealed within an unknown binary format and are designed to evade security and signature-based scanners," Trustwave  said . "Notably, despite the binary's unknown file format, ActiveMQ's JSP engine continues to compile and execute the web shell." CVE-2023-46604 (CVSS score: 10.0) refers to a  severe vulnerability  in Apache ActiveMQ that enables remote code execution. Since its public disclosure in late October 2023, it has come under active exploitation by multiple adversaries to deploy  ransomware ,  rootkits, cryptocurrency miners , and  DDoS botnets . In the latest intrusion set observed by Trustwave, susceptible instances have been targeted by JSP-based web shells that are planted within the "admin" folder ...

An advanced China-nexus cyber espionage group previously linked to the exploitation of security flaws in VMware and Fortinet appliances has been attributed to the abuse of a critical vulnerability in VMware vCenter Server as a zero-day since late 2021. "UNC3886 has a track record of utilizing zero-day vulnerabilities to complete their mission without being detected, and this latest example further demonstrates their capabilities," Google-owned Mandiant said in a Friday report. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2023-34048 (CVSS score: 9.8), an out-of-bounds write that could be put to use by a malicious actor with network access to vCenter Server to achieve remote code execution. It was fixed by the Broadcom-owned company on October 24, 2023. The virtualization services provider, earlier this week, updated its advisory to acknowledge that "exploitation of CVE-2023-34048 has occurred in the wild." UNC3886 first came to light in September 2022 when it was ...