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At least three alleged hacktivist groups working in support of Russian interests are likely doing so in collaboration with state-sponsored cyber threat actors, according to Mandiant. The Google-owned threat intelligence and incident response firm  said  with moderate confidence that "moderators of the purported hacktivist Telegram channels 'XakNet Team,' 'Infoccentr,' and 'CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn' are coordinating their operations with Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)-sponsored cyber threat actors." Mandiant's assessment is based on evidence that the leakage of data stolen from Ukrainian organizations occurred within 24 hours of  malicious wiper incidents  undertaken by the Russian nation-state group tracked as  APT28  (aka Fancy Bear, Sofacy, or Strontium). To that end, four of the 16 data leaks from these groups coincided with  disk wiping malware attacks  by APT28 that involved the use of a strain dubbed  CaddyWiper . APT...

A China-aligned advanced persistent threat actor known as TA413 weaponized recently disclosed flaws in Sophos Firewall and Microsoft Office to deploy a never-before-seen backdoor called LOWZERO as part of an espionage campaign aimed at Tibetan entities. Targets primarily consisted of organizations associated with the Tibetan community, including enterprises associated with the Tibetan government-in-exile. The intrusions involved the exploitation of  CVE-2022-1040  and  CVE-2022-30190  (aka "Follina"), two remote code execution vulnerabilities in Sophos Firewall and Microsoft Office, respectively. "This willingness to rapidly incorporate new techniques and methods of initial access contrasts with the group's continued use of well known and reported capabilities, such as the Royal Road RTF weaponizer, and often lax infrastructure procurement tendencies," Recorded Future  said  in a new technical analysis. TA413, also known as LuckyCat, has been linked t...

The  BlackCat ransomware crew  has been spotted fine-tuning their malware arsenal to fly under the radar and expand their reach. "Among some of the more notable developments has been the use of a new version of the Exmatter data exfiltration tool, and the use of Eamfo, information-stealing malware that is designed to steal credentials stored by Veeam backup software," researchers from Symantec  said  in a new report. BlackCat, also known by the names ALPHV and Noberus, is attributed to an adversary tracked as Coreid (aka  FIN7 , Carbanak, or Carbon Spider) and is said to be a  rebranded successor  of  DarkSide  and  BlackMatter , both of which shut shop last year following a string of high-profile attacks, including that of Colonial Pipeline. The threat actor, like other notorious ransomware groups, is known to run a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation, which involves its core developers enlisting the help of affiliates to carr...

Cybersecurity today matters so much because of everyone's dependence on technology, from collaboration, communication and collecting data to e-commerce and entertainment. Every organisation that needs to deliver services to their customers and employees must protect their IT 'network' - all the apps and connected devices from laptops and desktops to servers and smartphones. While traditionally, these would all live on one "corporate network," - networks today are often just made up of the devices themselves, and how they're connected: across the internet, sometimes via VPNs, to the homes and cafes people work from, to the cloud and data centres where services live. So what threats does this modern network face? Let's look at them in more detail. #1 Misconfiguration According to recent research by  Verizon , misconfiguration errors and misuse now make up 14% of breaches. Misconfiguration errors occur when configuring a system or application so that it...

Wearable technology company Fitbit has announced a new clause that requires users to switch to a Google account "sometime" in 2023. "In 2023, we plan to launch Google accounts on Fitbit, which will enable use of Fitbit with a Google account," the Google-owned fitness devices maker  said . The switch will not go live for all users in 2023. Rather, support for Fitbit accounts is expected to continue until at least the beginning of 2025, after which a Google account will be mandatory for using the devices. The deeper integration also means that a Google account will be compulsory to sign up for Fitbit and activate new features, including those that incorporate Google products and services such as Google Assistant. Also necessitated as part of the transition is the consent from the part of users to move their personal data from Fitbit to Google. The internet giant  stressed that  users' personal information will not be used to serve ads. The goal, Fitbit said...

Ukrainian law enforcement authorities on Friday disclosed that it had "neutralized" a hacking group operating from the city of Lviv that it said acted on behalf of Russian interests. The group specialized in the sales of 30 million accounts belonging to citizens from Ukraine and the European Union on the dark web and netted a profit of $372,000 (14 million UAH) through electronic payment systems like YooMoney, Qiwi, and WebMoney that are outlawed in the country. "Their 'wholesale clients' were pro-kremlin propagandists," the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU)  said  in a press release. "It was them who used the received identification data of Ukrainian and foreign citizens to spread fake 'news' from the front and sow panic." The goal behind the campaign was "large-scale destabilization in multiple countries," it stated, adding the hacked accounts were used to propagate false information about the socio-political situation in U...

The City of London Police on Friday revealed that it has arrested a 17-year-old teenager from Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking. "On the evening of Thursday 22 September 2022, the City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking," the agency  said , adding "he remains in police custody." The department said the arrest was made as part of an investigation in partnership with the U.K. National Crime Agency's cyber crime unit. No further details about the nature of the investigation were disclosed, although it's suspected that the law enforcement action may have something to do with the recent string of high-profile hacks aimed at  Uber  and  Rockstar Games . Both the intrusions are alleged to have been committed by the same threat actor, who goes by the name Tea Pot (aka teapotuberhacker). Uber, for its part, has pinned the breach on an attacker (or attackers) that it believes is associated with the LAPSUS$ extortion...

Security software company Sophos has released a patch update for its firewall product after it was discovered that attackers were exploiting a new critical zero-day vulnerability to attack its customers' network. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2022-3236  (CVSS score: 9.8), impacts Sophos Firewall v19.0 MR1 (19.0.1) and older and concerns a code injection vulnerability in the User Portal and Webadmin components that could result in remote code execution. The company  said  it "has observed this vulnerability being used to target a small set of specific organizations, primarily in the South Asia region," adding it directly notified these entities. As a workaround, Sophos is recommending that users take steps to ensure that the User Portal and Webadmin are not exposed to WAN. Alternatively, users can update to the latest supported version - v19.5 GA v19.0 MR2 (19.0.2) v19.0 GA, MR1, and MR1-1 v18.5 MR5 (18.5.5) v18.5 GA, MR1, MR1-1, MR2, MR3, and MR4 v18.0 MR3, ...

GitHub has put out an advisory detailing what may be an ongoing phishing campaign targeting its users to steal credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes by impersonating the CircleCI DevOps platform. The Microsoft-owned code hosting service said it learned of the attack on September 16, 2022, adding the campaign impacted "many victim organizations." The fraudulent messages claim to notify users that their CircleCI sessions have expired and that they should log in using GitHub credentials by clicking on a link. Another bogus email  revealed by CircleCI  prompts users to sign in to their GitHub accounts to accept the company's new Terms of Use and Privacy Policy by following the link embedded in the message. Regardless of the lure, doing so redirects the target to a lookalike GitHub login page designed to steal and exfiltrate the entered credentials as well as the Time-based One Time Password (TOTP) codes in real-time to the attacker, effectively allowing ...

A previously undocumented threat actor of unknown origin has been linked to attacks targeting telecom, internet service providers, and universities across multiple countries in the Middle East and Africa. "The operators are highly aware of operations security, managing carefully segmented infrastructure per victim, and quickly deploying intricate countermeasures in the presence of security solutions," researchers from SentinelOne  said  in a new report. The cybersecurity firm codenamed the "pragmatic" group Metador in reference to a string "I am meta" in one of their malware samples and because of Spanish-language responses from the command-and-control (C2) servers. The threat actor is said to have primarily focused on the development of cross-platform malware in its pursuit of espionage aims. Other hallmarks of the campaign are the limited number of intrusions and long-term access to targets. This includes two different Windows malware platforms ca...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday  added  a recently disclosed security flaw in Zoho ManageEngine to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) Catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. "Zoho ManageEngine PAM360, Password Manager Pro, and Access Manager Plus contain an unspecified vulnerability which allows for remote code execution," the agency said in a notice. The  critical vulnerability , tracked as  CVE-2022-35405 , is rated 9.8 out of 10 for severity on the CVSS scoring system, and was patched by Zoho as part of updates released on June 24, 2022. Although the exact nature of the flaw remains unknown, the India-based enterprise solutions company  said  it addressed the issue by removing the vulnerable components that could lead to the remote execution of arbitrary code. Zoho has also warned of the public availability of a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the vulnerability, making it imperative ...

What on earth were they thinking? That's what we – and other security experts – were wondering when content giant Patreon recently dismissed its entire internal cybersecurity team in exchange for outsourced services. Of course, we don't know the true motivations for this move. But, as outsiders looking in, we can guess the cybersecurity implications of the decision would be inescapable for any organization. Fire the internal team and you take a huge risk Patreon is a content-creator site that handles billions of dollars in revenue. For reasons unknown to us, Patreon fired not just a couple of staff members or someone in middle management. No: the company fired its entire security team.  It's a big decision with significant consequences because it results in an incalculable loss of organizational knowledge. At the technical level, it's a loss of soft knowledge around deep system interdependencies that internal security experts will just "know" about and ac...