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Threat actors are evolving, yet Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) remains confined to each isolated point solution. Organizations require a holistic analysis across external data, inbound and outbound threats and network activity. This will enable evaluating the true state of cybersecurity in the enterprise. Cato's Cyber Threat Research Lab (Cato CTRL, see more details below) has recently released its first SASE threat report , offering a comprehensive view of and insights into enterprise and network threats. This is based on Cato's capabilities to analyze networks extensively and granularly (see report sources below).  About the Report The SASE Threat Report covers threats across a strategic, tactical and operational standpoint, utilizing the MITRE ATT&CK framework. It includes malicious and suspicious activities, as well as the applications, protocols and tools running on the networks. The report is based on: Granular data on every traffic flow from every endpoint commu...

Now-patched authorization bypass issues impacting Cox modems could have been abused as a starting point to gain unauthorized access to the devices and run malicious commands. "This series of vulnerabilities demonstrated a way in which a fully external attacker with no prerequisites could've executed commands and modified the settings of millions of modems, accessed any business customer's PII, and gained essentially the same permissions of an ISP support team," security researcher Sam Curry said in a new report published today. Following responsible disclosure on March 4, 2024, the authorization bypass issues were addressed by the U.S. broadband provider within 24 hours. There is no evidence that these shortcomings were exploited in the wild. "I was really surprised by the seemingly unlimited access that ISPs had behind the scenes to customer devices," Curry told The Hacker News via email. "It makes sense in retrospect that an ISP should be able ...

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Andariel has been observed using a new Golang-based backdoor called Dora RAT in its attacks targeting educational institutes, manufacturing firms, and construction businesses in South Korea. "Keylogger, Infostealer, and proxy tools on top of the backdoor were utilized for the attacks," the AhnLab Security Intelligence Center (ASEC) said in a report published last week. "The threat actor probably used these malware strains to control and steal data from the infected systems." The attacks are characterized by the use of a vulnerable Apache Tomcat server to distribute the malware, the South Korean cybersecurity firm added, noting the system in question ran the 2013 version of Apache Tomcat, making it susceptible to several vulnerabilities. Andariel, also known by the names Nickel Hyatt, Onyx Sleet, and Silent Chollima, is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that operates on behalf of North Korea's strategic...

Fake web browser updates are being used to deliver remote access trojans (RATs) and information stealer malware such as BitRAT and Lumma Stealer (aka LummaC2). "Fake browser updates have been responsible for numerous malware infections, including those of the well-known SocGholish malware," cybersecurity firm eSentire said in a new report. "In April 2024, we observed FakeBat being distributed via similar fake update mechanisms." The attack chain commences when prospective targets visits a booby-trapped website that contains JavaScript code designed to redirect users to a bogus browser update page ("chatgpt-app[.]cloud"). The redirected web page comes embedded with a download link to a ZIP archive file ("Update.zip") that's hosted on Discord and downloaded automatically to the victim's device. It's worth pointing out that threat actors often use Discord as an attack vector, with a recent analysis from Bitdefender uncovering m...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) company Hugging Face on Friday disclosed that it detected unauthorized access to its Spaces platform earlier this week. "We have suspicions that a subset of Spaces' secrets could have been accessed without authorization," it said in an advisory. Spaces offers a way for users to create, host, and share AI and machine learning (ML) applications. It also functions as a discovery service to look up AI apps made by other users on the platform. In response to the security event, Hugging Space said it is taking the step of revoking a number of HF tokens present in those secrets and that it's notifying users who had their tokens revoked via email. "We recommend you refresh any key or token and consider switching your HF tokens to fine-grained access tokens which are the new default," it added. Hugging Face, however, did not disclose how many users are impacted by the incident, which is currently under further investigation. It has...

More than 600,000 small office/home office (SOHO) routers are estimated to have been bricked and taken offline following a destructive cyber attack staged by unidentified cyber actors, disrupting users' access to the internet. The mysterious event, which took place between October 25 and 27, 2023, and impacted a single internet service provider (ISP) in the U.S., has been codenamed Pumpkin Eclipse by the Lumen Technologies Black Lotus Labs team. It specifically affected three router models issued by the ISP: ActionTec T3200, ActionTec T3260, and Sagemcom. "The incident took place over a 72-hour period between October 25-27, rendered the infected devices permanently inoperable, and required a hardware-based replacement," the company said in a technical report. The blackout is significant, not least because it led to the abrupt removal of 49% of all modems from the impacted ISP's autonomous system number (ASN) during the time-frame. While the name of the ISP was...

Microsoft has emphasized the need for securing internet-exposed operational technology (OT) devices following a spate of cyber attacks targeting such environments since late 2023. "These repeated attacks against OT devices emphasize the crucial need to improve the security posture of OT devices and prevent critical systems from becoming easy targets," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said . The company noted that a cyber attack on an OT system could allow malicious actors to tamper with critical parameters used in industrial processes, either programmatically via the programmable logic controller (PLC) or using the graphical controls of the human-machine interface (HMI), resulting in malfunctions and system outages. It further said that OT systems often lack adequate security mechanisms, making them ripe for exploitation by adversaries and carry out attacks that are "relatively easy to execute," a fact compounded by the additional risks introduced by direc...

Digital content is a double-edged sword, providing vast benefits while simultaneously posing significant threats to organizations across the globe. The sharing of digital content has increased significantly in recent years, mainly via email, digital documents, and chat. In turn, this has created an expansive attack surface and has made 'digital content' the preferred carrier for cybercriminals and nation-state threat actors. Digital content is the easy way in for attackers, whether it be to launch sophisticated attacks, malware distribution and phishing or ransomware attacks.  Governments and highly regulated industries are particularly vulnerable due to the notoriety attackers can receive and the "prize" or impact that can come in compromising their networks. For Governments and defense agencies, this could mean losing access to sensitive and classified information. For critical infrastructure and highly regulated industries that could mean disruption to services or physical dam...

The Russian GRU-backed threat actor APT28 has been attributed as behind a series of campaigns targeting networks across Europe with the HeadLace malware and credential-harvesting web pages. APT28, also known by the names BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, ITG05, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422, is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group affiliated with Russia's strategic military intelligence unit, the GRU. The hacking crew operates with a high level of stealth and sophistication, often demonstrating their adaptability through deep preparedness and custom tooling, and relying on legitimate internet services (LIS) and living off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) to conceal their operations within regular network traffic. "From April to December 2023, BlueDelta deployed Headlace malware in three distinct phases using geofencing techniques to target networks throughout Europe with a heavy focus on Ukraine," Recorded Future's Insikt ...

OpenAI on Thursday disclosed that it took steps to cut off five covert influence operations (IO) originating from China, Iran, Israel, and Russia that sought to abuse its artificial intelligence (AI) tools to manipulate public discourse or political outcomes online while obscuring their true identity. These activities, which were detected over the past three months, used its AI models to generate short comments and longer articles in a range of languages, cook up names and bios for social media accounts, conduct open-source research, debug simple code, and translate and proofread texts. The AI research organization said two of the networks were linked to actors in Russia, including a previously undocumented operation codenamed Bad Grammar that primarily used at least a dozen Telegram accounts to target audiences in Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltic States and the United States (U.S.) with sloppy content in Russian and English. "The network used our models and accounts on Telegram t...