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Defending your organization's security is like fortifying a castle—you need to understand where attackers will strike and how they'll try to breach your walls. And hackers are always searching for weaknesses, whether it's a lax password policy or a forgotten backdoor. To build a stronger defense, you must think like a hacker and anticipate their moves. Read on to learn more about hackers' strategies to crack passwords, the vulnerabilities they exploit, and how you can reinforce your defenses to keep them at bay. Analysis of the worst passwords Weak, commonly used passwords represent the easiest targets for hackers. Every year, experts provide  lists of the most frequently used passwords , with classics like " 123456 " and " password " appearing year after year. These passwords are the low-hanging fruit of a hacker's attack strategy. Despite years of security warnings, users still use simple, easy-to-remember passwords—often based on predictable patterns or personal details ...

Tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) form the foundation of modern defense strategies. Unlike indicators of compromise (IOCs), TTPs are more stable, making them a reliable way to identify specific cyber threats. Here are some of the most commonly used techniques, according to ANY.RUN's Q3 2024 report on malware trends, complete with real-world examples. Disabling of Windows Event Logging (T1562.002) Disrupting Windows Event Logging helps attackers prevent the system from recording crucial information about their malicious actions. Without event logs, important details such as login attempts, file modifications, and system changes go unrecorded, leaving security solutions and analysts with incomplete or missing data. Windows Event Logging can be manipulated in different ways, including by changing registry keys or using commands like "net stop eventlog". Altering group policies is another common method. Since many detection mechanisms rely on log analysis to identify s...

An ongoing phishing campaign is employing copyright infringement-related themes to trick victims into downloading a newer version of the Rhadamanthys information stealer since July 2024. Cybersecurity firm Check Point is tracking the large-scale campaign under the name CopyRh(ight)adamantys . Targeted regions include the United States, Europe, East Asia, and South America. "The campaign impersonates dozens of companies, while each email is sent to a specific targeted entity from a different Gmail account, adapting the impersonated company and the language per targeted entity," the company said in a technical analysis. "Almost 70% of the impersonated companies are from the Entertainment /Media and Technology/Software sectors." The attacks are notable for the deployment of version 0.7 of the Rhadamanthys stealer, which, as detailed by Recorded Future's Insikt Group early last month, incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) for optical character recognition ...

If you invite guest users into your Entra ID tenant, you may be opening yourself up to a surprising risk.  A gap in access control in Microsoft Entra's subscription handling is allowing guest users to create and transfer subscriptions into the tenant they are invited into, while maintaining full ownership of them.  All the guest user needs are the permissions to create subscriptions in their home tenant, and an invitation as a guest user into an external tenant. Once inside, the guest user can create subscriptions in their home tenant, transfer them into the external tenant, and retain full ownership rights. This stealthy privilege escalation tactic allows a guest user to gain a privileged foothold in an environment where they should only have limited access. Many organizations treat guest accounts as low-risk based on their temporary, limited access, but this behavior, which works as designed, opens the door to known attack paths and lateral movement within the resource t...

The China-aligned threat actor known as MirrorFace has been observed targeting a diplomatic organization in the European Union, marking the first time the hacking crew has targeted an entity in the region. "During this attack, the threat actor used as a lure the upcoming World Expo, which will be held in 2025 in Osaka, Japan," ESET said in its APT Activity Report for the period April to September 2024. "This shows that even considering this new geographic targeting, MirrorFace remains focused on Japan and events related to it." MirrorFace, also tracked as Earth Kasha , is assessed to be part of an umbrella group known as APT10, which also comprises clusters tracked as Earth Tengshe and Bronze Starlight. It's known for its targeting of Japanese organizations at least since 2019, although a new campaign observed in early 2023 expanded its operations to include Taiwan and India. Over the years, the hacking crew's malware arsenal has evolved to include bac...

Cisco has released security updates to address a maximum severity security flaw impacting Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul ( URWB ) Access Points that could permit unauthenticated, remote attackers to run commands with elevated privileges. Tracked as CVE-2024-20418 (CVS score: 10.0), the vulnerability has been described as stemming from a lack of input validation to the web-based management interface of the Cisco Unified Industrial Wireless Software. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests to the web-based management interface of an affected system," Cisco said in an advisory released Wednesday. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on the underlying operating system of the affected device." The shortcoming impacts following Cisco products in scenarios where the URWB operating mode is enabled - Catalyst IW9165D Heavy Duty Access Points Catalyst IW9165E Rugge...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) that has racked up thousands of downloads for over three years while stealthily exfiltrating developers' Amazon Web Services (AWS) credentials. The package in question is " fabrice ," which typosquats a popular Python library known as " fabric ," which is designed to execute shell commands remotely over SSH.  While the legitimate package has over 202 million downloads, its malicious counterpart has been downloaded more than 37,100 times to date. As of writing, "fabrice" is still available for download from PyPI. It was first published in March 2021. The typosquatting package is designed to exploit the trust associated with "fabric," incorporating "payloads that steal credentials, create backdoors, and execute platform-specific scripts," security firm Socket said . "Fabrice" is designed to carry out its malicious actions ...

The Canadian government on Wednesday ordered ByteDance-owned TikTok to dissolve its operations in the country, citing national security risks, but stopped short of instituting a ban on the popular video-sharing platform. "The decision was based on the information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada's security and intelligence community and other government partners," François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, said in a statement. The government said it does not intend to block Canadians' access to the app itself or curtail their ability to create new content, stating the use of a social media application is a "personal choice." The use of the app has already been banned on Canadian government devices since February 2023. That having said, it urged Canadians to adopt good cyber security practices and assess the possible risks that could arise from using social media platforms,...

An ongoing threat campaign dubbed VEILDrive has been observed taking advantage of legitimate services from Microsoft, including Teams, SharePoint, Quick Assist, and OneDrive, as part of its modus operandi. "Leveraging Microsoft SaaS services — including Teams, SharePoint, Quick Assist, and OneDrive — the attacker exploited the trusted infrastructures of previously compromised organizations to distribute spear-phishing attacks and store malware," Israeli cybersecurity company Hunters said in a new report. "This cloud-centric strategy allowed the threat actor to avoid detection by conventional monitoring systems." Hunters said it discovered the campaign in September 2024 after it responded to a cyber incident targeting a critical infrastructure organization in the United States. It did not disclose the name of the company, instead giving it the designation "Org C." The activity is believed to have commenced a month prior, with the attack culminating i...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning that a command-and-control (C&C) framework called Winos is being distributed within gaming-related applications like installation tools, speed boosters, and optimization utilities. "Winos 4.0 is an advanced malicious framework that offers comprehensive functionality, a stable architecture, and efficient control over numerous online endpoints to execute further actions," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Rebuilt from Gh0st RAT , it includes several modular components, each handling distinct functions." Campaigns distributing Winos 4.0 were documented back in June by Trend Micro and the KnownSec 404 Team. The cybersecurity companies are tracking the activity cluster under the names Void Arachne and Silver Fox. These attacks have been observed targeting Chinese-speaking users, leveraging black hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics, social media, and messaging platforms like Te...

Budget season is upon us, and everyone in your organization is vying for their slice of the pie. Every year, every department has a pet project that they present as absolutely essential to profitability, business continuity, and quite possibly the future of humanity itself. And no doubt that some of these actually may be mission critical. But as cybersecurity professionals, we understand that the rollout of a viable CTEM ( Continuous Threat Exposure Management ) program actually is . In any year, cybersecurity investments are tough budgetary sells – they're hard to quantify and don't always clearly drive revenues or cut costs. In today's belt-tightening climate, all the more so. Even though cybersecurity budgets will likely grow this year according to Forrester, it's still important to make sure today that CTEM doesn't slip down the budget priority list.  In this article, we'll discuss how to keep CTEM on the budgetary radar. But First – Here are Some Reasons Why CTEM is Obje...