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A variant of the Mirai botnet called Beastmode has been observed adopting newly disclosed vulnerabilities in TOTOLINK routers between February and March 2022 to infect unpatched devices and expand its reach potentially. "The Beastmode (aka B3astmode) Mirai-based DDoS campaign has aggressively updated its arsenal of exploits," Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs Research team  said . "Five new exploits were added within a month, with three targeting various models of TOTOLINK routers." The list of exploited vulnerabilities in TOTOLINK routers is as follows - CVE-2022-26210  (CVSS score: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability that could be exploited to gain arbitrary code execution CVE-2022-26186  (CVSS score: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability affecting TOTOLINK N600R and A7100RU routers, and CVE-2022-25075 to CVE-2022-25084  (CVSS scores: 9.8) - A command injection vulnerability impacting multiple TOTOLINK routers, leading to code execution The other e...

A 15-year-old security vulnerability has been disclosed in the PEAR PHP repository that could permit an attacker to carry out a supply chain attack, including obtaining unauthorized access to publish rogue packages and execute arbitrary code. "An attacker exploiting the first one could take over any developer account and publish malicious releases, while the second bug would allow the attacker to gain persistent access to the central PEAR server," SonarSource vulnerability researcher Thomas Chauchefoin  said  in a write-up published this week. PEAR, short for PHP Extension and Application Repository, is a framework and distribution system for reusable PHP components. One of the issues, introduced in a  code commit  made in March 2007 when the feature was originally implemented, relates to the use of the cryptographically insecure  mt_rand()  PHP function in the password reset functionality that could allow an attacker to "discover a valid password rese...

The City of London Police on Friday disclosed that it has charged two of the seven teenagers, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, who were arrested last week for their alleged connections to the LAPSUS$ data extortion gang. "Both teenagers have been charged with: three counts of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to impair the reliability of data; one count of fraud by false representation and one count of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to hinder access to data," Detective Inspector Michael O'Sullivan, from the City of London Police,  said  in a statement. In addition, the unnamed 16-year-old minor has been charged with one count of causing a computer to perform a function to secure unauthorized access to a program. The charges come as the City of London Police moved to arrest seven suspected LAPSUS$ gang members aged between 16 and 21 on March 25, with the agency  telling  The Hacker News that all the individuals had been subsequently "re...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

DevOps platform GitLab has released software updates to address a critical security vulnerability that, if potentially exploited, could permit an adversary to seize control of accounts. Tracked as  CVE-2022-1162 , the issue has a CVSS score of 9.1 and is said to have been discovered internally by the GitLab team. "A hardcoded password was set for accounts registered using an  OmniAuth provider  (e.g., OAuth, LDAP, SAML) in GitLab CE/EE versions 14.7 prior to 14.7.7, 14.8 prior to 14.8.5, and 14.9 prior to 14.9.2 allowing attackers to potentially take over accounts," the company  said  in an advisory published on March 31. GitLab, which has addressed the bug with the latest release of versions 14.9.2, 14.8.5, and 14.7.7 for GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE), also said it took the step of resetting the password of an unspecified number of users out of an abundance of caution. "Our investigation shows no indication that users or accou...

The cyberattack aimed at Viasat that temporarily knocked KA-SAT modems offline on February 24, 2022, the same day Russian military forces invaded Ukraine, is believed to have been the consequence of wiper malware, according to the  latest research  from SentinelOne. The findings come a day after the U.S. telecom company  disclosed  that it was the target of a multifaceted and deliberate" cyberattack against its KA-SAT network, linking it to a "ground-based network intrusion by an attacker exploiting a misconfiguration in a VPN appliance to gain remote access to the trusted management segment of the KA-SAT network." Upon gaining access, the adversary issued "destructive commands" on tens of thousands of modems belonging to the satellite broadband service that "overwrote key data in flash memory on the modems, rendering the modems unable to access the network, but not permanently unusable." But SentinelOne said it uncovered a new piece of malware (...

Two new security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Rockwell Automation's programmable logic controllers ( PLCs ) and engineering workstation software that could be exploited by an attacker to inject malicious code on affected systems and stealthily modify automation processes. The flaws have the potential to disrupt industrial operations and cause physical damage to factories in a manner similar to that of Stuxnet and the  Rogue7 attacks , operational technology security company Claroty said. "Programmable logic and predefined variables drive these [automation] processes, and changes to either will alter normal operation of the PLC and the process it manages," Claroty's Sharon Brizinov  noted  in a write-up published Thursday. The list of two flaws is below – CVE-2022-1161  (CVSS score: 10.0) – A remotely exploitable flaw that allows a malicious actor to write user-readable "textual" program code to a separate memory location from the executed c...

A Chinese advanced persistent threat tracked as Deep Panda has been observed exploiting the  Log4Shell vulnerability  in VMware Horizon servers to deploy a backdoor and a novel rootkit on infected machines with the goal of stealing sensitive data. "The nature of targeting was opportunistic insofar that multiple infections in several countries and various sectors occurred on the same dates,"  said  Rotem Sde-Or and Eliran Voronovitch, researchers with Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs, in a report released this week. "The victims belong to the financial, academic, cosmetics, and travel industries." Deep Panda , also known by the monikers Shell Crew, KungFu Kittens, and Bronze Firestone, is said to have been active since at least 2010, with recent attacks "targeting legal firms for data exfiltration and technology providers for command-and-control infrastructure building,"  according  to Secureworks. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which assigned the panda...

Threat actor groups like Wizard Spider and Sandworm have been wreaking havoc over the past few years – developing and deploying cybercrime tools like Conti, Trickbot, and Ryuk ransomware. Most recently, Sandworm (suspected to be a Russian cyber-military unit) unleashed cyberattacks against Ukranian infrastructure targets. To ensure cybersecurity providers are battle ready, MITRE Engenuity uses real-world attack scenarios and tactics implemented by threat groups to test security vendors' capabilities to protect against threats – the MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation. Each vendor's detections and capabilities are assessed within the context of the  MITRE ATT&CK Framework. This year, they used the tactics seen in Wizard Spider and Sandworm's during their evaluation simulations. And MITRE Engenuity didn't go easy on these participating vendors. As mentioned before – the stakes are too high, and risk is growing. The 2022 results overview To think about it simply, this MITRE ATT&C...

The North Korean state-backed hacking crew, otherwise known as the  Lazarus Group , has been attributed to yet another financially motivated campaign that leverages a trojanized decentralized finance (DeFi) wallet app to distribute a fully-featured backdoor onto compromised Windows systems. The app, which is equipped with functionalities to save and manage a cryptocurrency wallet, is also designed to trigger the launch of the implant that can take control of the infected host. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky  said  it first encountered the rogue application in mid-December 2021. The infection scheme initiated by the app also results in the deployment of the installer for a legitimate application, which gets overwritten with a trojanized version in an effort to cover its tracks. That said, the initial access avenue is unclear, although it's suspected to be a case of social engineering. The spawned malware, which masquerades as Google's Chrome web browser, subsequ...

Networking equipment maker Zyxel has pushed security updates for a critical vulnerability affecting some of its business firewall and VPN products that could enable an attacker to take control of the devices. "An authentication bypass vulnerability caused by the lack of a proper access control mechanism has been found in the CGI program of some firewall versions," the company  said  in an advisory published this week. "The flaw could allow an attacker to bypass the authentication and obtain administrative access to the device." The flaw has been assigned the identifier  CVE-2022-0342  and is rated 9.8 out of 10 for severity. Credited with reporting the bug are Alessandro Sgreccia from Tecnical Service Srl and Roberto Garcia H and Victor Garcia R from Innotec Security. The following Zyxel products are impacted – USG/ZyWALL running firmware versions ZLD V4.20 through ZLD V4.70 (fixed in ZLD V4.71) USG FLEX running firmware versions ZLD V4.50 through ZLD V5.20 ...

Apple on Thursday rolled out emergency patches to address two zero-day flaws in its  mobile  and  desktop operating systems  that it said may have been exploited in the wild. The shortcomings have been fixed as part of updates to iOS and iPadOS 15.4.1, macOS Monterey 12.3.1, tvOS 15.4.1, and watchOS 8.5.1. Both the vulnerabilities have been reported to Apple anonymously. Tracked as  CVE-2022-22675 , the issue has been described as an  out-of-bounds write  vulnerability in an audio and video decoding component called AppleAVD that could allow an application to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. Apple said the defect was resolved with improved bounds checking, adding it's aware that "this issue may have been actively exploited." The latest version of macOS Monterey, besides fixing CVE-2022-22675, also includes remediation for  CVE-2022-22674 , an  out-of-bounds read  issue in the Intel Graphics Driver module that could en...

The maintainers of Spring Framework have released an emergency patch to address a newly disclosed  remote code execution flaw  that, if successfully exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to take control of a targeted system. Tracked as  CVE-2022-22965 , the high-severity flaw impacts Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 to 5.3.17, 5.2.0 to 5.2.19, and other older, unsupported versions. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 5.3.18 or later and 5.2.20 or later. The Spring Framework is a Java framework that offers infrastructure support to develop web applications. "The vulnerability impacts Spring  MVC  [model–view–controller] and Spring WebFlux applications running on [Java Development Kit] 9+," Rossen Stoyanchev of Spring.io  said  in an advisory published Thursday. "The specific exploit requires the application to run on Tomcat as a WAR deployment. If the application is deployed as a Spring Boot executable jar, i.e., the default, ...