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A China-linked nation-state group called TAG-112 compromised Tibetan media and university websites in a new cyber espionage campaign designed to facilitate the delivery of the Cobalt Strike post-exploitation toolkit for follow-on information collection. "The attackers embedded malicious JavaScript in these sites, which spoofed a TLS certificate error to trick visitors into downloading a disguised security certificate," Recorded Future's Insikt Group said . "This malware, often used by threat actors for remote access and post-exploitation, highlights a continued cyber-espionage focus on Tibetan entities." The compromises have been pinned on a state-sponsored threat group called TAG-112, which has been described as a possible sub-group of another cluster tracked as Evasive Panda (aka Bronze Highland, Daggerfly, StormBamboo, and TAG-102) owing to tactical overlaps and their historical targeting of Tibetan entities. The two Tibetan community websites that wer...

Google Workspace has quickly become the productivity backbone for businesses worldwide, offering an all-in-one suite with email, cloud storage and collaboration tools. This single-platform approach makes it easy for teams to connect and work efficiently, no matter where they are, enabling seamless digital transformation that's both scalable and adaptable. As companies shift from traditional, on-premises setups focused on device security, to more user-centered, hybrid models, Google Workspace is perfectly positioned to support this evolution. Now, the user account itself is the central hub, allowing access from any device or location — a game changer in today's remote and distributed work environments. However, with all this connectivity and flexibility comes a challenge. Google Workspace connects to countless apps and touches every user in the organization, making it an appealing target for cybercriminals. The platform's internet accessibility opens up additional entry points, raisi...

Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) have announced independent actions to tackle cybercrime and disrupt services that enable scams, fraud, and phishing attacks. To that end, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) said it seized 240 fraudulent websites associated with an Egypt-based cybercrime facilitator named Abanoub Nady (aka MRxC0DER and mrxc0derii), who advertised for sale a phishing kit called ONNX. Nady's criminal operation is said to date as far back as 2017. "Numerous cybercriminal and online threat actors purchased these kits and used them in widespread phishing campaigns to bypass additional security measures and break into Microsoft customer accounts," Microsoft DCU's Steven Masada said . "While all sectors are at risk, the financial services industry has been heavily targeted given the sensitive data and transactions they handle. In these instances, a successful phish can have devastating real-world consequences...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two malicious packages uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that impersonated popular artificial intelligence (AI) models like OpenAI ChatGPT and Anthropic Claude to deliver an information stealer called JarkaStealer. The packages, named gptplus and claudeai-eng , were uploaded by a user named " Xeroline " in November 2023, attracting 1,748 and 1,826 downloads, respectively. Both libraries are no longer available for download from PyPI. "The malicious packages were uploaded to the repository by one author and, in fact, differed from each other only in name and description," Kaspersky said in a post. The packages purported to offer a way to access GPT-4 Turbo API and Claude AI API, but harbored malicious code that initiated the deployment of the malware upon installation. Specifically, the "__init__.py" file in these packages contained Base64-encoded data that incorporated code to download ...

As many as 2,000 Palo Alto Networks devices are estimated to have been compromised as part of a campaign abusing the newly disclosed security flaws that have come under active exploitation in the wild. According to statistics shared by the Shadowserver Foundation, a majority of the infections have been reported in the U.S. (554) and India (461), followed by Thailand (80), Mexico (48), Indonesia (43), Turkey (41), the U.K. (39), Peru (36), and South Africa (35). Earlier this week, Censys revealed that it had identified 13,324 publicly exposed next-generation firewall (NGFW) management interfaces, with 34% of these exposures located in the U.S. However, it's important to note that not all of these exposed hosts are necessarily vulnerable. The flaws in question , CVE-2024-0012 (CVSS score: 9.3) and CVE-2024-9474 (CVSS score: 6.9), are a combination of authentication bypass and privilege escalation that could allow a bad actor to perform malicious actions, including modifying c...

The China-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as Gelsemium has been observed using a new Linux backdoor dubbed WolfsBane as part of cyber attacks likely targeting East and Southeast Asia. That's according to findings from cybersecurity firm ESET based on multiple Linux samples uploaded to the VirusTotal platform from Taiwan, the Philippines, and Singapore in March 2023. WolfsBane has been assessed to be a Linux version of the threat actor's Gelsevirine backdoor, a Windows malware put to use as far back as 2014. Also discovered by the company is another previously undocumented implant named FireWood that's connected to a different malware toolset known as Project Wood . FireWood has been attributed to Gelsemium with low confidence, given the possibility that it could be shared by multiple China-linked hacking crews. "The goal of the backdoors and tools discovered is cyber espionage targeting sensitive data such as system information, user crede...

Privileged access management (PAM) plays a pivotal role in building a strong security strategy. PAM empowers you to significantly reduce cybersecurity risks, gain tighter control over privileged access, achieve regulatory compliance, and reduce the burden on your IT team.  As an established provider of a PAM solution , we've witnessed firsthand how PAM transforms organizational security. In this article, we aim to show you how PAM can secure your company in real, impactful ways.  1. Enforcing the principle of least privilege Giving users just enough access to perform their duties is fundamental to maintaining a robust security posture. PAM solutions enable you to grant minimum permissions to employees essential for their work, helping you prevent privilege misuse and potential security incidents. For example, with PAM, you can securely grant access to sensitive payment systems exclusively for your finance department. When you enforce the principle of least privilege at t...

Threat actors with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are impersonating U.S.-based software and technology consulting businesses in order to further their financial objectives as part of a broader information technology (IT) worker scheme. "Front companies, often based in China, Russia, Southeast Asia, and Africa, play a key role in masking the workers' true origins and managing payments," SentinelOne security researchers Tom Hegel and Dakota Cary said in a report shared with The Hacker News. North Korea's network of IT workers, both in an individual capacity and under the cover of front companies, is seen as a technique to evade international sanctions imposed on the country and generate illicit revenues. The global campaign, which is also tracked as Wagemole by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, entails using forged identities to obtain employment at various companies in the U.S. and elsewhere, and send back a huge portion of their wages bac...

As a relatively new security category, many security operators and executives I've met have asked us "What are these Automated Security Validation (ASV) tools?" We've covered that pretty extensively in the past, so today, instead of covering the " What is ASV?" I wanted to address the " Why ASV?" question. In this article, we'll cover some common use cases and misconceptions of how people misuse and misunderstand ASV tools daily (because that's a lot more fun). To kick things off, there's no place to start like the beginning. Automated security validation tools are designed to provide continuous, real-time assessment of an organization's cybersecurity defenses. These tools are continuous and use exploitation to validate defenses like EDR, NDR, and WAFs. They're more in-depth than vulnerability scanners because they use tactics and techniques that you'll see in manual penetration tests. Vulnerability scanners won't relay hashes or combine vulnerabilities to further attacks, whic...

New research has uncovered more than 145,000 internet-exposed Industrial Control Systems (ICS) across 175 countries, with the U.S. alone accounting for over one-third of the total exposures. The analysis , which comes from attack surface management company Censys, found that 38% of the devices are located in North America, 35.4% in Europe, 22.9% in Asia, 1.7% in Oceania, 1.2% in South America, and 0.5% in Africa. The countries with the most ICS service exposures include the U.S. (more than 48,000), Turkey, South Korea, Italy, Canada, Spain, China, Germany, France, the U.K., Japan, Sweden, Taiwan, Poland, and Lithuania. The metrics are derived from the exposure of several commonly-used ICS protocols like Modbus, IEC 60870-5-104, CODESYS, OPC UA, and others. One important aspect that stands out is that the attack surfaces are regionally unique: Modbus, S7, and IEC 60870-5-104 are more widely observed in Europe, while Fox, BACnet, ATG, and C-more are more commonly found in North Ame...