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The Chinese state-sponsored threat actor known as Stone Panda has been observed employing a new stealthy infection chain in its attacks aimed at Japanese entities. Targets include media, diplomatic, governmental and public sector organizations, and think-tanks in Japan, according to  twin   reports  published by Kaspersky. Stone Panda , also called  APT10 , Bronze Riverside, Cicada, and Potassium, is a cyber  espionage group  known for its intrusions against organizations identified as strategically significant to China. The threat actor is believed to have been active since at least 2009. The group has also been linked to attacks using malware families like SigLoader, SodaMaster , and a web shell called Jackpot against multiple Japanese domestic organizations since April 2021, per cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, which is tracking the group under the name Earth Tengshe . The latest set of attacks, observed between March and June 2022, involve the use...

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and Git, has his own law in software development, and it goes like this: " given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow ." This phrase puts the finger on the very principle of open source: the more, the merrier - if the code is easily available for anyone and everyone to fix bugs, it's pretty safe. But is it? Or is the saying "all bugs are shallow" only true for  shallow  bugs and not ones that lie deeper? It turns out that security flaws in open source can be harder to find than we thought. Emil Wåreus, Head of R&D at  Debricked , took it upon himself to look deeper into the community's performance. As the data scientist he is, he, of course, asked the data:  how good is the open source community at finding vulnerabilities in a timely manner ? The thrill of the (vulnerability) hunt Finding open source vulnerabilities is typically done by the maintainers of the open source project, users, auditors, or external secur...

IT service management software platform ConnectWise has released Software patches for a critical security vulnerability in Recover and R1Soft Server Backup Manager (SBM). The issue,  characterized  as a "neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component," could be abused to result in the execution of remote code or disclosure of sensitive information. ConnectWise's advisory notes that the flaw affects Recover v2.9.7 and earlier, as well as R1Soft SBM v6.16.3 and earlier, are impacted by the critical flaw. At its core, the issue is tied to an upstream authentication bypass vulnerability in the ZK open source Ajax web application framework ( CVE-2022-36537 ), which was initially patched in May 2022. "Affected ConnectWise Recover SBMs have automatically been updated to the latest version of Recover (v2.9.9)," the company  said , urging customers to upgrade to  SBM v6.16.4  shipped on October 28, 2022. Cybersecurity firm Huntress...

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The threat actor behind the Fodcha distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet has resurfaced with new capabilities, researchers reveal. This includes changes to its communication protocol and the ability to extort cryptocurrency payments in exchange for stopping the DDoS attack against a target, Qihoo 360's Network Security Research Lab  said  in a report published last week. Fodcha  first came to light  earlier this April, with the malware propagating through known vulnerabilities in Android and IoT devices as well as weak Telnet or SSH passwords. The cybersecurity company said that Fodcha has evolved into a large-scale botnet with over 60,000 active nodes and 40 command-and-control (C2) domains that can "easily generate more than 1 Tbps traffic." Peak activity is said to have occurred on October 11, 2022, when the malware targeted 1,396 devices in a single day. The top countries singled out by the botnet since late June 2022 comprises China, the U.S., Singa...

In today's world of automated hacking systems, frequent data breaches and consumer protection regulations such as GDPR and PCI DSS, penetration testing is now an essential security requirement for organisations of all sizes. But what should you look for when choosing the right provider? The sheer number of providers can be daunting, and finding one which can deliver a high-quality test at a reasonable price is not easy. How do you know if they're any good? What level of security expertise was included in the report? Is your application secure, or did the supplier simply not find the weaknesses? There are no easy answers, but you can make it easier by asking the right questions up front. The most important considerations fall into three categories: certifications, experience, and price. Certifications Certifications are the best place to start, as they provide a quick shortcut for building trust. There's no shortage of professional certifications available, but one of t...

An unofficial patch has been made available for an actively exploited security flaw in Microsoft Windows that makes it possible for files signed with malformed signatures to sneak past Mark-of-the-Web ( MotW ) protections. The fix,  released  by 0patch, arrives weeks after HP Wolf Security  disclosed  a Magniber ransomware campaign that targets users with fake security updates which employ a JavaScript file to proliferate the file-encrypting malware. While files downloaded from the internet in Windows are tagged with a MotW flag to prevent unauthorized actions, it has since been found that corrupt Authenticode signatures can be used to allow the execution of arbitrary executables without any  SmartScreen warning . Authenticode  is a Microsoft code-signing technology that authenticates the identity of the publisher of a particular piece of software and verifies whether the software was tampered with after it was signed and published. "The [JavaScript] ...

A now-patched security flaw has been disclosed in the Galaxy Store app for Samsung devices that could potentially trigger remote command execution on affected phones. The vulnerability, which affects Galaxy Store version 4.5.32.4, relates to a cross-site scripting (XSS) bug that occurs when handling certain  deep links . An independent security researcher has been credited with reporting the issue. "Here, by not checking the deep link securely, when a user accesses a link from a website containing the deeplink, the attacker can execute JS code in the webview context of the Galaxy Store application," SSD Secure Disclosure  said  in an advisory posted last week. XSS attacks  allow an adversary to inject and execute malicious JavaScript code when visiting a website from a browser or another application. The issue identified in the Galaxy Store app has to do with how deep links are configured for Samsung's Marketing & Content Service ( MCS ), potentially leadi...

Cloud-based repository hosting service GitHub has addressed a high-severity security flaw that could have been exploited to create malicious repositories and mount supply chain attacks. The RepoJacking technique,  disclosed  by Checkmarx, entails a bypass of a protection mechanism called  popular repository namespace retirement , which aims to prevent developers from pulling unsafe repositories with the same name. The issue was addressed by the Microsoft-owned subsidiary on September 19, 2022 following responsible disclosure. RepoJacking  occurs  when a creator of a repository opts to change the username, potentially enabling a threat actor to claim the old username and publish a rogue repository with the same name in an attempt to trick users into downloading them. While Microsoft's countermeasure "retire[s] the namespace of any open source project that had more than 100 clones in the week leading up to the owner's account being renamed or deleted," Che...

Communication services provider Twilio this week disclosed that it experienced another "brief security incident" in June 2022 perpetrated by the same threat actor behind the  August hack  that resulted in unauthorized access of customer information. The security event occurred on June 29, 2022, the company said in an updated advisory shared this week, as part of its probe into the digital break-in. "In the June incident, a Twilio employee was socially engineered through voice phishing (or 'vishing') to provide their credentials, and the malicious actor was able to access customer contact information for a limited number of customers," Twilio  said . It further said the access gained following the successful attack was identified and thwarted within 12 hours, and that it had alerted impacted customers on July 2, 2022. The San Francisco-based firm did not reveal the exact number of customers impacted by the June incident, and why the disclosure was made ...

Multiple high-severity security flaws have been disclosed as affecting Juniper Networks devices, some of which could be exploited to achieve code execution. Chief among them is a remote pre-authenticated PHP archive file deserialization vulnerability (CVE-2022-22241, CVSS score: 8.1) in the J-Web component of Junos OS, according to Octagon Networks researcher Paulos Yibelo. "This vulnerability can be exploited by an unauthenticated remote attacker to get remote phar files deserialized, leading to arbitrary file write, which leads to a remote code execution (RCE)," Yibelo  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Also identified are five other issues, which are listed as follow - CVE-2022-22242  (CVSS score: 6.1) - A pre-authenticated reflected  XSS  on the error page ("error.php"), allowing a remote adversary to siphon Junos OS admin session and chained with other flaws that require authentication. CVE-2022-22243  (CVSS score: 4.3) &...

Five malicious dropper Android apps with over 130,000 cumulative installations have been discovered on the Google Play Store distributing banking trojans like  SharkBot  and  Vultur , which are capable of stealing financial data and performing on-device fraud. "These droppers continue the unstopping evolution of malicious apps sneaking to the official store," Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric told The Hacker News in a statement. "This evolution includes following newly introduced policies and masquerading as file managers and overcoming limitations by side-loading the malicious payload through the web browser." Targets of these  droppers  include 231 banking and cryptocurrency wallet apps from financial institutions in Italy, the U.K., Germany, Spain, Poland, Austria, the U.S., Australia, France, and the Netherlands. Dropper apps on official app stores like Google Play have  increasingly   become  a popular and efficient technique to d...

Cloud computing was the lifeline that kept many companies running during the pandemic. But it was a classic case of medicine that comes with  serious  side effects.  Having anywhere, anytime access to data and apps gives companies tremendous flexibility in a fast-changing world, plus the means to scale and customize IT at will. The cloud is an asset or upgrade in almost every way. With one glaring exception: cybersecurity.  The cloud promised to make companies more secure and security more straightforward. Yet over the same time period that the cloud took over computing, cyber attacks grew steadily worse while security teams felt increasingly overwhelmed.  Why?  We will explain shortly. For lean security teams, the more important question is how to make cloud security work, especially as the cloud footprint grows (a lot) faster than security resources. Will the cloud always cast a shadow on cybersecurity? Not with the strategy outlined in a free eboo...