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SaaS applications are the backbone of modern businesses, constituting a staggering 70% of total software usage. Applications like Box, Google Workplace, and Microsoft 365 are integral to daily operations. This widespread adoption has transformed them into potential breeding grounds for cyber threats. Each SaaS application presents unique security challenges, and the landscape constantly evolves as vendors enhance their security features. Moreover, the dynamic nature of user governance, including onboarding, deprovisioning, and role adjustments, further complicates the security equation. With great convenience comes great responsibility, as securing these SaaS applications has become a top priority for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and IT teams worldwide. Effectively securing SaaS applications requires a delicate balance between robust security measures and enabling users to perform their tasks efficiently. To navigate this complex terrain, this article excerpts a  ...

A threat actor called  Redfly  has been linked to a compromise of a national grid located in an unnamed Asian country for as long as six months earlier this year using a known malware referred to as  ShadowPad . "The attackers managed to steal credentials and compromise multiple computers on the organization's network," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The attack is the latest in a series of espionage intrusions against [critical national infrastructure] targets." ShadowPad, also known as PoisonPlug, is a follow-up to the PlugX remote access trojan and is a modular implant capable of loading additional plugins dynamically from a remote server as required to harvest sensitive data from breached networks. It has been  widely used  by a growing list of  China-nexus   nation-state groups  since at least 2019 in attacks aimed at organizations in various industry verticals....

A sophisticated phishing campaign is using a Microsoft Word document lure to distribute a trifecta of threats, namely Agent Tesla, OriginBotnet, and RedLine Clipper, to gather a wide range of information from compromised Windows machines. "A phishing email delivers the Word document as an attachment, presenting a deliberately blurred image and a counterfeit reCAPTCHA to lure the recipient into clicking on it," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . Clicking on the image leads to the delivery of a loader from a remote server that, in turn, is designed to distribute OriginBotnet for keylogging and password recovery, RedLine Clipper for cryptocurrency theft, and Agent Tesla for harvesting sensitive information. The loader, written in .NET, employs a technique called binary padding by adding null bytes to increase the file's size to 400 MB in an attempt to evade detection by security software. The activation of the loader triggers a multi-stage process to ...

While phishing and ransomware dominate headlines, another critical risk quietly persists across most enterprises: exposed Git repositories leaking sensitive data. A risk that silently creates shadow access into core systems Git is the backbone of modern software development, hosting millions of repositories and serving thousands of organizations worldwide. Yet, amid the daily hustle of shipping code, developers may inadvertently leave behind API keys, tokens, or passwords in configuration files and code files, effectively handing attackers the keys to the kingdom. This isn't just about poor hygiene; it's a systemic and growing supply chain risk. As cyber threats become more sophisticated, so do compliance requirements. Security frameworks like NIS2, SOC2, and ISO 27001 now demand proof that software delivery pipelines are hardened and third-party risk is controlled. The message is clear: securing your Git repositories is no longer optional, it's essential. Below, we look at the ris...

A new information stealer malware called MetaStealer has set its sights on Apple macOS, making the latest in a growing list of stealer families focused on the operating system after MacStealer , Pureland , Atomic Stealer , and  Realst . "Threat actors are proactively targeting macOS businesses by posing as fake clients in order to socially engineer victims into launching malicious payloads," SentinelOne security researcher Phil Stokes  said  in a Monday analysis. In these attacks, MetaStealer is distributed in the form of rogue application bundles in the disk image format (DMG), with targets approached through threat actors posing as prospective design clients in order to share a password-protected ZIP archive containing the DMG file. Other instances have involved the malware masquerading as Adobe files or installers for Adobe Photoshop. Evidence gathered so far shows that MetaStealer artifacts began appearing in the wild in March 2023. The most recent sample was upl...

Google on Monday rolled out out-of-band security patches to address a critical security flaw in its Chrome web browser that it said has been exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2023-4863 , the issue has been described as a case of  heap buffer overflow  that resides in the  WebP image format  that could result in arbitrary code execution or a crash. Apple Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw on September 6, 2023. The tech giant has yet to disclose additional details about the nature of the attacks, but noted that it's "aware that an exploit for CVE-2023-4863 exists in the wild." With the latest fix, Google has addressed a total of four zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome since the start of the year - CVE-2023-2033  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Type Confusion in V8 CVE-2023-2136  (CVSS score: 9.6) - Integer overflow in Skia...

A new phishing attack is leveraging Facebook Messenger to propagate messages with malicious attachments from a "swarm of fake and hijacked personal accounts" with the ultimate goal of taking over the targets' Business accounts. "Originating yet again from a Vietnamese-based group, this campaign uses a tiny compressed file attachment that packs a powerful Python-based stealer dropped in a multi-stage process full of simple yet effective obfuscation methods," Guardio Labs researcher Oleg Zaytsev  said  in an analysis published over the weekend. In these attacks, dubbed MrTonyScam, potential victims are sent messages that entice them into clicking on the RAR and ZIP archive attachments, leading to the deployment of a dropper that fetches the next-stage from a GitHub or GitLab repository. This payload is another archive file that contains a CMD file, which, in turn, harbors an obfuscated Python-based stealer to exfiltrate all cookies and login credentials from d...

The Iranian threat actor known as  Charming Kitten  has been linked to a new wave of attacks targeting different entities in Brazil, Israel, and the U.A.E. using a previously undocumented backdoor named Sponsor. Slovak cybersecurity firm is tracking the cluster under the name  Ballistic Bobcat . Victimology patterns suggest that the group primarily singles out education, government, and healthcare organizations, as well as human rights activists and journalists. At least 34 victims of Sponsor have been detected to date, with the earliest instances of deployment dating back to September 2021. "The Sponsor backdoor uses configuration files stored on disk," ESET researcher Adam Burgher  said  in a new report published today. "These files are discreetly deployed by batch files and deliberately designed to appear innocuous, thereby attempting to evade detection by scanning engines." The campaign, dubbed Sponsoring Access, involves obtaining initial access by op...

With the growing reliance on web applications and digital platforms, the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) has become increasingly popular. If you aren't familiar with the term, APIs allow applications to communicate with each other and they play a vital role in modern software development. However, the rise of API use has also led to an increase in the number of API breaches. These breaches occur when unauthorized individuals or systems gain access to an API and the data it contains. And as victims can attest, breaches can have devastating consequences for both businesses and individuals. One of the primary concerns with API breaches is the exposure of sensitive data. APIs often contain or provide access to personal or financial information, and if this data falls into the wrong hands, it can be used for fraudulent activities or identity theft. API breaches can also lead to severe reputational damage for businesses. Customers and stakeholders expect their informatio...

Google has officially begun its rollout of Privacy Sandbox in the Chrome web browser to a majority of its users, nearly four months after it  announced the plans . "We believe it is vital to both improve privacy and preserve access to information, whether it's news, a how-to-guide, or a fun video," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox initiatives at Google,  said . "Without viable privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies, such as the Privacy Sandbox, we risk reducing access to information for all users, and incentivizing invasive tactics such as fingerprinting." To that end, the search giant is initially leaving nearly three percent of users unaffected by the change in order to conduct sufficient tests. General availability is expected to encompass all users in the coming months. Privacy Sandbox is Google's  umbrella term  for a set of technologies that aim to eliminate third-party tracking cookies on the web and replace them...

A new cyber attack campaign is leveraging the PowerShell script associated with a legitimate red teaming tool to plunder  NTLMv2 hashes  from compromised Windows systems primarily located in Australia, Poland, and Belgium. The activity has been codenamed Steal-It by Zscaler ThreatLabz. "In this campaign, the threat actors steal and exfiltrate NTLMv2 hashes using customized versions of Nishang's  Start-CaptureServer PowerShell script , executing various system commands, and exfiltrating the retrieved data via Mockbin APIs," security researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Avinash Kumar said. Nishang  is a framework and collection of PowerShell scripts and payloads for offensive security, penetration testing, and red teaming. The attacks leverage as many as five different infection chains, although they all leverage phishing emails containing ZIP archives as the starting point to infiltrate specific targets using geofencing techniques - NTLMv2 hash stealing infection...

A new malware loader called HijackLoader is gaining traction among the cybercriminal community to deliver various payloads such as  DanaBot ,  SystemBC , and  RedLine Stealer . "Even though HijackLoader does not contain advanced features, it is capable of using a variety of modules for code injection and execution since it uses a modular architecture, a feature that most loaders do not have," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Nikolaos Pantazopoulos  said . First observed by the company in July 2023, the malware employs a number of techniques to fly under the radar. This involves using syscalls to evade monitoring from security solutions, monitoring processes associated with security software based on an embedded blocklist, and putting off code execution by as much as 40 seconds at different stages. The exact initial access vector used to infiltrate targets is currently not known. The anti-analysis aspects notwithstanding, the loader packs in a main instrumentation mo...

Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that's designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. According to Kaspersky security researcher Igor Golovin, the apps come with  nefarious features  to capture and exfiltrate names, user IDs, contacts, phone numbers, and chat messages to an actor-controlled server. The activity has been codenamed  Evil Telegram  by the Russian cybersecurity company. The apps have been collectively downloaded millions of times before they were taken down by Google. Their details are as follows - 電報,紙飛機-TG繁體中文版 or 電報,小飛機-TG繁體中文版 (org.telegram.messenger.wab) - 10 million+ downloads TG繁體中文版-電報,紙飛機 (org.telegram.messenger.wab) - 50,000+ downloads 电报,纸飞机-TG简体中文版 (org.telegram.messenger.wob) - 50,000+ downloads 电报,纸飞机-TG简体中文版 (org.tgcn.messenger.wob) - 10,000+ downloads ئۇيغۇر تىلى TG - تېلېگرامما (org.telegram.messenger.wcb) - 100+ downloads The last a...