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Threat hunters have disclosed a new "widespread timing-based vulnerability class" that leverages a double-click sequence to facilitate clickjacking attacks and account takeovers in almost all major websites. The technique has been codenamed DoubleClickjacking by security researcher Paulos Yibelo. "Instead of relying on a single click, it takes advantage of a double-click sequence," Yibelo said . "While it might sound like a small change, it opens the door to new UI manipulation attacks that bypass all known clickjacking protections, including the X-Frame-Options header or a SameSite: Lax/Strict cookie." Clickjacking , also called UI redressing, refers to an attack technique in which users are tricked into clicking on a seemingly innocuous web page element (e.g., a button), leading to the deployment of malware or exfiltration of sensitive data. DoubleClickjacking is a variation of this theme that exploits the gap between the start of a click and the...

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday leveled sanctions against two entities in Iran and Russia for their attempts to interfere with the November 2024 presidential election. The federal agency said the entities – a subordinate organization of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a Moscow-based affiliate of Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) – sought to influence the electoral outcome and divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns. "As affiliates of the IRGC and GRU, these actors aimed to stoke socio-political tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 U.S. election," it noted in a press release. In August 2024, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) jointly accused Iran of attempting to undermine democratic processes, including b...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a final rule carrying out Executive Order (EO) 14117, which prevents mass transfer of citizens' personal data to countries of concern such as China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. "This final rule is a crucial step forward in addressing the extraordinary national security threat posed of our adversaries exploiting Americans' most sensitive personal data," said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division. "This powerful new national-security program is designed to ensure that Americans' personal data is no longer permitted to be sold to hostile foreign powers, whether through outright purchase or other means of commercial access." Back in February 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order to address the national security risk posed by unauthorized access to Americans' sensitiv...

The United States Treasury Department said it suffered a "major cybersecurity incident" that allowed suspected Chinese threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents.  "On December 8, 2024, Treasury was notified by a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, that a threat actor had gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users," the department said in a letter informing the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. "With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the service's security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users." The federal agency said it has been working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three security weaknesses in Microsoft's Azure Data Factory Apache Airflow integration that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed an attacker to gain the ability to conduct various covert actions, including data exfiltration and malware deployment. "Exploiting these flaws could allow attackers to gain persistent access as shadow administrators over the entire Airflow Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in an analysis published earlier this month. The vulnerabilities, albeit classified as low severity by Microsoft, are listed below - Misconfigured Kubernetes RBAC in Airflow cluster Misconfigured secret handling of Azure's internal Geneva service, and Weak authentication for Geneva Besides obtaining unauthorized access, the attacker could take advantage of the flaws in the Geneva service to potentially tamper with log data or send fake logs to avoid raising suspicion when c...

The United States Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has proposed new cybersecurity requirements for healthcare organizations with an aim to safeguard patients' data against potential cyber attacks. The proposal, which seeks to modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, is part of a broader initiative to bolster the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, the OCR said. The rule is designed to strengthen protections for electronic protected health information (ePHI) by updating the HIPAA Security Rule's standards to "better address ever-increasing cybersecurity threats to the healthcare sector." To that end, the proposal, among other things, requires organizations to conduct a review of the technology asset inventory and network map, identify potential vulnerabilities that could pose a threat to electronic information systems, and establish procedures to restore the loss of certa...

Every week, the digital world faces new challenges and changes. Hackers are always finding new ways to breach systems, while defenders work hard to keep our data safe. Whether it's a hidden flaw in popular software or a clever new attack method, staying informed is key to protecting yourself and your organization. In this week's update, we'll cover the most important developments in cybersecurity. From the latest threats to effective defenses, we've got you covered with clear and straightforward insights. Let's dive in and keep your digital world secure. ⚡ Threat of the Week Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS Flaw Under Attack — Palo Alto Networks has disclosed a high-severity flaw impacting PAN-OS software that could cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on susceptible devices by sending a specially crafted DNS packet. The vulnerability (CVE-2024-3393, CVSS score: 8.7) only affects firewalls that have the DNS Security logging enabled. The company said it's aware of...

News has been making headlines over the weekend of the extensive attack campaign targeting browser extensions and injecting them with malicious code to steal user credentials. Currently, over 25 extensions, with an install base of over two million users, have been found to be compromised, and customers are now working to figure out their exposure (LayerX, one of the companies involved in protecting against malicious extensions is offering a complimentary service to audit and remediate organizations' exposure - to sign-up click here ). While this is not the first attack to target browser extensions, the scope and sophistication of this campaign are a significant step up in terms of the threats posed by browser extensions and the risks they pose to organizations. Now that details of the attack have been publicized, users and organizations need to assess their risk exposure to this attack and to browser extensions in general. This article is aimed at helping organizations understand t...

A new attack campaign has targeted known Chrome browser extensions, leading to at least 35 extensions being compromised and exposing over 2.6 million users to data exposure and credential theft. The attack targeted publishers of browser extensions on the Chrome Web Store via a phishing campaign and used their access permissions to insert malicious code into legitimate extensions in order to steal cookies and user access tokens. The first company to shed light the campaign was cybersecurity firm Cyberhaven, one of whose employees was targeted by a phishing attack on December 24, allowing the threat actors to publish a malicious version of the extension. On December 27, Cyberhaven disclosed that a threat actor compromised its browser extension and injected malicious code to communicate with an external command-and-control (C&C) server located on the domain cyberhavenext[.]pro, download additional configuration files, and exfiltrate user data. The phishing email, which purported...

A high-severity flaw impacting select Four-Faith industrial routers has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to new findings from VulnCheck. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-12856 (CVSS score: 7.2), has been described as an operating system (OS) command injection bug affecting router models F3x24 and F3x36. The severity of the shortcoming is lower due to the fact that it only works if the remote attacker is able to successfully authenticate themselves. However, if the default credentials associated with the routers have not been changed, it could result in unauthenticated OS command execution. In the attack detailed by VulnCheck, the unknown threat actors have been found to leverage the router's default credentials to trigger exploitation of CVE-2024-12856 and launch a reverse shell for persistent remote access. The exploitation attempt originated from the IP address 178.215.238[.]91 , which has been previously used in connection with attacks seeking to...