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Spanish language victims are the target of an email phishing campaign that delivers a new remote access trojan (RAT) called Poco RAT since at least February 2024. The attacks primarily single out mining, manufacturing, hospitality, and utilities sectors, according to cybersecurity company Cofense. "The majority of the custom code in the malware appears to be focused on anti-analysis, communicating with its command-and-control center (C2), and downloading and running files with a limited focus on monitoring or harvesting credentials," it said . Infection chains begin with phishing messages bearing finance-themed lures that trick recipients into clicking on an embedded URL pointing to a 7-Zip archive file hosted on Google Drive. Other methods observed include the use of HTML or PDF files directly attached to the emails or downloaded via another embedded Google Drive link. The abuse of legitimate services by threat actors is not a new phenomenon as it allows them to bypass...

Multiple threat actors have been observed exploiting a recently disclosed security flaw in PHP to deliver remote access trojans, cryptocurrency miners, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnets. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-4577 (CVSS score: 9.8), which allows an attacker to remotely execute malicious commands on Windows systems using Chinese and Japanese language locales. It was publicly disclosed in early June 2024. "CVE-2024-4577 is a flaw that allows an attacker to escape the command line and pass arguments to be interpreted directly by PHP," Akamai researchers Kyle Lefton, Allen West, and Sam Tinklenberg said in a Wednesday analysis. "The vulnerability itself lies in how Unicode characters are converted into ASCII." The web infrastructure company said it began observing exploit attempts against its honeypot servers targeting the PHP flaw within 24 hours of it being public knowledge. This included exploits designed to deliver a remote...

GitLab has shipped another round of updates to close out security flaws in its software development platform, including a critical bug that allows an attacker to run pipeline jobs as an arbitrary user. Tracked as CVE-2024-6385, the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 9.6 out of a maximum of 10.0. "An issue was discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting versions 15.8 prior to 16.11.6, 17.0 prior to 17.0.4, and 17.1 prior to 17.1.2, which allows an attacker to trigger a pipeline as another user under certain circumstances," the company said in a Wednesday advisory. It's worth noting that the company patched a similar bug late last month ( CVE-2024-5655 , CVSS score: 9.6) that could also be weaponized to run pipelines as other users. Also addressed by GitLab is a medium-severity issue (CVE-2024-5257, CVSS score: 4.9) that allows a Developer user with admin_compliance_framework permissions to modify the URL for a group namespace. All the security shortcomings have been fi...

A now-patched security flaw in Veeam Backup & Replication software is being exploited by a nascent ransomware operation known as EstateRansomware. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB, which discovered the threat actor in early April 2024, said the modus operandi involved the exploitation of CVE-2023-27532 (CVSS score: 7.5) to carry out the malicious activities. Initial access to the target environment is said to have been facilitated by means of a Fortinet FortiGate firewall SSL VPN appliance using a dormant account. "The threat actor pivoted laterally from the FortiGate Firewall through the SSL VPN service to access the failover server," security researcher Yeo Zi Wei said in an analysis published today. "Before the ransomware attack, there were VPN brute-force attempts noted in April 2024 using a dormant account identified as 'Acc1.' Several days later, a successful VPN login using 'Acc1' was traced back to the remote IP address 149.28.106[.]25...

The Problem The "2024 Attack Intelligence Report" from the staff at Rapid7 [1] is a well-researched, well-written report that is worthy of careful study. Some key takeaways are:  53% of the over 30 new vulnerabilities that were widely exploited in 2023 and at the start of 2024 were zero-days . More mass compromise events arose from zero-day vulnerabilities than from n-day vulnerabilities. Nearly a quarter of widespread attacks were zero-day attacks where a single adversary compromised dozens to hundreds of organizations simultaneously. Attackers are moving from initial access to exploitation in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. So the conventional patch and put strategy is as effective as a firetruck showing up after a building has burned to the ground! Of course, patch and put could prevent future attacks, but taking into account that patch development takes from days to weeks [2] and that the average time to apply critical patches is 16 days [3], devices are vu...

Microsoft has released patches to address a total of 143 security flaws as part of its monthly security updates, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Five out of the 143 flaws are rated Critical, 136 are rated Important, and four are rated Moderate in severity. The fixes are in addition to 33 vulnerabilities that have been addressed in the Chromium-based Edge browser over the past month. The two security shortcomings that have come under exploitation are below - CVE-2024-38080 (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2024-38112 (CVSS score: 7.5) - Windows MSHTML Platform Spoofing Vulnerability "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to take additional actions prior to exploitation to prepare the target environment," Microsoft said of CVE-2024-38112. "An attacker would have to send the victim a malicious file that the victim would have to execute." Check Point securi...

It's the age of identity security. The explosion of driven ransomware attacks has made CISOs and security teams realize that identity protection lags 20 years behind their endpoints and networks. This realization is mainly due to the transformation of lateral movement from fine art, found in APT and top cybercrime groups only, to a commodity skill used in almost every ransomware attack. The lateral movement uses compromised credentials for malicious access – a critical blind spot that existing XDR, network, and SIEM solutions fail to block.  Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) has emerged in the last couple of years to close this gap. This article breaks down the top five ITDR capabilities and provides the key questions to ask your ITDR vendor. Only a definitive 'YES' to these questions can ensure that the solution you evaluate can indeed deliver its identity security promise.  Coverage For All Users, Resources, and Access Methods  Why is it important? Par...

Google on Wednesday announced that it's making available passkeys for high-risk users to enroll in its Advanced Protection Program ( APP ). "Users traditionally needed a physical security key for APP — now they can choose a passkey to secure their account," Shuvo Chatterjee, product lead of APP, said . Passkeys are considered a more secure and phishing-resistant alternative to passwords. Based on the FIDO Authentication standard, the technology is designed to secure online accounts against potential takeover attacks by ditching passwords in favor of biometrics or a PIN. Passkeys can simultaneously act as a first- and second-factor, entirely obviating the need for a password. Earlier this May, the tech giant revealed that passkeys are being used by over 400 million Google accounts. High-risk users , who are at an elevated exposure to cyber-attacks because of who they are and what they do (e.g., journalists, elected officials, political campaign staff, human rights ...

Cryptocurrency analysts have shed light on an online marketplace called HuiOne Guarantee that's widely used by cybercriminals in Southeast Asia, particularly those linked to pig butchering scams. "Merchants on the platform offer technology, data, and money laundering services, and have engaged in transactions totaling at least $11 billion," Elliptic said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The British blockchain analytics firm said that the marketplace is part of HuiOne Group, a Cambodian conglomerate with links to Cambodia's ruling Hun family and that another HuiOne business, HuiOne International Payments, is actively involved in laundering scam proceeds globally. According to its website , HuiOne's financial services arm is said to have 500,000 registered users. It also touts Alipay, Huawei, PayGo Wallet, UnionPay, and Yes Seatel as its customers. Southeast Asian countries like Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, and the Philippines have become...

The sophisticated malware known as ViperSoftX has been observed being distributed as eBooks over torrents. "A notable aspect of the current variant of ViperSoftX is that it uses the Common Language Runtime ( CLR ) to dynamically load and run PowerShell commands, thereby creating a PowerShell environment within AutoIt for operations," Trellix security researchers Mathanraj Thangaraju and Sijo Jacob said . "By utilizing CLR, ViperSoftX can seamlessly integrate PowerShell functionality, allowing it to execute malicious functions while evading detection mechanisms that might otherwise flag standalone PowerShell activity." Initially detected by Fortinet in 2020, ViperSoftX is known for its ability to exfiltrate sensitive information from compromised Windows hosts. Over the years, the malware has become a relevant example of threat actors continuously innovating their tactics in an attempt to stay stealthy and circumvent defenses. This is exemplified by the increas...