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Microsoft on Friday attributed a string of service outages aimed at Azure, Outlook, and OneDrive earlier this month to an uncategorized cluster it tracks under the name  Storm-1359 . "These attacks likely rely on access to multiple virtual private servers (VPS) in conjunction with rented cloud infrastructure, open proxies, and DDoS tools," the tech giant  said  in a post on Friday. Storm-#### (previously DEV-####) is a temporary designation the Windows maker assigns to unknown, emerging, or developing groups whose identity or affiliation hasn't been definitively established yet. While there is no evidence that any customer data was accessed or compromised, the company noted the attacks "temporarily impacted availability" of some services. Redmond said it further observed the threat actor launching  layer 7 DDoS attacks  from multiple cloud services and open proxy infrastructures. This includes HTTP(S) flood attacks, which bombard the target services with a ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered previously undocumented payloads associated with a Romanian threat actor named  Diicot , revealing its potential for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. "The Diicot name is significant, as it's also the name of the  Romanian organized crime and anti-terrorism policing unit ," Cado Security  said  in a technical report. "In addition, artifacts from the group's campaigns contain messaging and imagery related to this organization." Diicot (née Mexals) was  first documented  by Bitdefender in July 2021, uncovering the actor's use of a Go-based SSH brute-forcer tool called Diicot Brute to breach Linux hosts as part of a cryptojacking campaign. Then earlier this April, Akamai  disclosed  what it described as a "resurgence" of the 2021 activity that's believed to have started around October 2022, netting the actor about $10,000 in illicit profits. "The attackers use a long ch...

The threat actor known as  ChamelGang  has been observed using a previously undocumented implant to backdoor Linux systems, marking a new expansion of the threat actor's capabilities. The malware, dubbed  ChamelDoH  by Stairwell, is a C++-based tool for communicating via DNS-over-HTTPS ( DoH ) tunneling. ChamelGang was  first outed  by Russian cybersecurity firm Positive Technologies in September 2021, detailing its attacks on fuel, energy, and aviation production industries in Russia, the U.S., India, Nepal, Taiwan, and Japan. Attack chains mounted by the actor have leveraged vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange servers and Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application to gain initial access and carry out data theft attacks using a passive backdoor called DoorMe. "This is a native  IIS module  that is registered as a filter through which HTTP requests and responses are processed," Positive Technologies said at the time. "Its principle of operation ...

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...

As Threat Actors Continuously Adapt their TTPs in Today's Threat Landscape, So Must You Earlier this year, threat researchers at Cybersixgill released the annual report,  The State of the Cybercrime Underground .  The research stems from an analysis of Cybersixgill's collected intelligence items throughout 2022, gathered from the deep, dark and clear web. The report examines the continuous evolution of threat actors' tactics, tools, and procedures (TTPs) in the Digital Age – and how organizations can adapt to reduce risk and maintain business resilience. This article summarizes a few of the report's findings, including trends in credit card fraud, observations about cryptocurrency, AI developments and how they're lowering barriers to entry to cybercrime, and the rise of cybercriminal "as-a-service" activities. Further below, I also discuss the need for a new security approach, combining attack surface management (ASM) and cyber threat intelligence (CTI) to ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday unveiled charges against a Russian national for his alleged involvement in deploying LockBit ransomware to targets in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and Africa. Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov, 20, of Chechen Republic has been accused of perpetrating at least five attacks between August 2020 and March 2023. He was arrested in the state of Arizona last month. "Astamirov allegedly participated in a conspiracy with other members of the LockBit ransomware campaign to commit wire fraud and to intentionally damage protected computers and make ransom demands through the use and deployment of ransomware," the DoJ  said . Astamirov, as part of his LockBit-related activities, managed various email addresses, IP addresses, and other online accounts to deploy the ransomware and communicate with the victims. Law enforcement agencies said they were able to trace a chunk of an unnamed victim's ransom payment to a virtual currency address operated by A...

Progress Software on Thursday  disclosed  a third vulnerability impacting its MOVEit Transfer application, as the Cl0p cybercrime gang deployed extortion tactics against affected companies. The  new flaw , which is being tracked as CVE-2023-35708 , also concerns an SQL injection vulnerability that "could lead to escalated privileges and potential unauthorized access to the environment." The company is urging its customers to disable all HTTP and HTTPs traffic to MOVEit Transfer on ports 80 and 443 to safeguard their environments while a fix is being prepared to address the weakness. The cloud managed file transfer solution has been fully patched. The revelation comes a week after Progress  divulged  another set of SQL injection vulnerabilities ( CVE-2023-35036 ) that it said could be weaponized to access the application's database content. The vulnerabilities join  CVE-2023-34362 , which was  exploited  as a zero-day by the Clop ransomware g...

Ransomware actors and cryptocurrency scammers have joined nation-state actors in abusing cloud mining services to launder digital assets, new findings reveal. "Cryptocurrency mining is a crucial part of our industry, but it also holds special appeal to bad actors, as it provides a means to acquire money with a totally clean on-chain original source," blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Earlier this March, Google Mandiant  disclosed  North Korea-based APT43's use of the hash rental and cloud mining services to obscure the forensic trail and wash the stolen cryptocurrency "clean." Cloud mining services  allow users to rent a computer system and use that computer's hash power to mine cryptocurrencies without having to manage the mining hardware themselves. But according to Chainalysis, it's not just nation-state hacking crews who are leveraging such services in the wild. In one example highlighted by ...

A suspected China-nexus threat actor dubbed UNC4841 has been linked to the exploitation of a recently patched zero-day flaw in Barracuda Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances since October 2022. "UNC4841 is an espionage actor behind this wide-ranging campaign in support of the People's Republic of China," Google-owned Mandiant said in a new report published today, describing the group as "aggressive and skilled." The flaw in question is CVE-2023-2868 (CVSS score: 9.8), which relates to a remote code injection affecting versions 5.1.3.001 through 9.2.0.006 that arises as a result of an incomplete validation of attachments contained within incoming emails. Barracuda addressed the problem on May 20 and 21, 2023, but the company has since urged affected customers to immediately replace the devices "regardless of patch version level." Now according to the incident response and threat intelligence firm, which was appointed to probe the hack, UNC...

The threat actors behind the  Vidar malware  have made changes to their backend infrastructure, indicating attempts to retool and conceal their online trail in response to public disclosures about their modus operandi. "Vidar threat actors continue to rotate their backend IP infrastructure, favoring providers in Moldova and Russia," cybersecurity company Team Cymru said in a new analysis shared with The Hacker News. Vidar  is a commercial information stealer that's known to be active since late 2018. It's also a fork of another stealer malware called  Arkei  and is offered for sale between $130 and $750 depending on the subscription tier. Typically delivered through phishing campaigns and sites advertising cracked software, the malware comes with a wide range of capabilities to harvest sensitive information from infected hosts. Vidar has also been  observed  to be distributed via rogue Google Ads and a malware loader dubbed Bumblebee. Team Cymru...

An updated version of an Android remote access trojan dubbed  GravityRAT  has been found masquerading as messaging apps BingeChat and Chatico as part of a narrowly targeted campaign since June 2022. "Notable in the newly discovered campaign, GravityRAT can exfiltrate WhatsApp backups and receive commands to delete files," ESET researcher Lukáš Štefanko  said  in a new report published today. "The malicious apps also provide legitimate chat functionality based on the open-source  OMEMO  Instant Messenger app." GravityRAT is the name given to a  cross-platform malware  that's capable of targeting Windows, Android, and macOS devices. The Slovak cybersecurity firm is tracking the activity under the name SpaceCobra. The threat actor is suspected to be based in Pakistan, with recent attacks involving GravityRAT targeting military personnel in India and among the Pakistan Air Force by camouflaging it as cloud storage and entertainment apps, as...

The revolutionary technology of GenAI tools, such as ChatGPT, has brought significant risks to organizations' sensitive data. But what do we really know about this risk? A  new research  by Browser Security company LayerX sheds light on the scope and nature of these risks. The report titled "Revealing the True GenAI Data Exposure Risk" provides crucial insights for data protection stakeholders and empowers them to take proactive measures. The Numbers Behind the ChatGPT Risk By analyzing the usage of ChatGPT and other generative AI apps among 10,000 employees, the report has identified key areas of concern. One alarming finding reveals that 6% of employees have pasted sensitive data into GenAI, with 4% engaging in this risky behavior on a weekly basis. This recurring action poses a severe threat of data exfiltration for organizations. The report addresses vital risk assessment questions, including the actual scope of GenAI usage across enterprise workforces, the relati...

In what's a new kind of software supply chain attack aimed at open source projects, it has emerged that threat actors could seize control of expired Amazon S3 buckets to serve rogue binaries without altering the modules themselves. "Malicious binaries steal the user IDs, passwords, local machine environment variables, and local host name, and then exfiltrates the stolen data to the hijacked bucket," Checkmarx researcher Guy Nachshon said. The attack was first observed in the case of an npm package called  bignum , which, until version 0.13.0, relied on an Amazon S3 bucket to download pre-built binary versions of an addon named node-pre-gyp during installation. "These binaries were published on a now-expired S3 bucket which has since been claimed by a malicious third party which is now serving binaries containing malware that exfiltrates data from the user's computer," according to a  GitHub advisory  published on May 24, 2023. An unknown threat actor ...