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A threat actor called Water Curupira has been observed actively distributing the  PikaBot  loader malware as part of spam campaigns in 2023. "PikaBot's operators ran phishing campaigns, targeting victims via its two components — a loader and a core module — which enabled unauthorized remote access and allowed the execution of arbitrary commands through an established connection with their command-and-control (C&C) server," Trend Micro  said  in a report published today. The activity began in the first quarter of 2023 that lasted till the end of June, before ramping up again in September. It also overlaps with  prior campaigns  that have used similar tactics to deliver QakBot, specifically those  orchestrated  by  cybercrime groups  known as TA571 and TA577. It's believed that the increase in the number of phishing campaigns related to PikaBot is the result of QakBot's takedown in August, with DarkGate emerging as another replace...

Poorly secured Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers are being targeted in the U.S., European Union, and Latin American (LATAM) regions as part of an ongoing financially motivated campaign to gain initial access. "The analyzed threat campaign appears to end in one of two ways, either the selling of 'access' to the compromised host, or the ultimate delivery of ransomware payloads," Securonix researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The campaign, linked to actors of Turkish origin, has been codenamed  RE#TURGENCE  by the cybersecurity firm. Initial access to the servers entails conducting brute-force attacks, followed by the use of  xp_cmdshell configuration option  to run shell commands on the compromised host. This activity mirrors that of a prior campaign dubbed  DB#JAMMER  that came to light in September 2023. This stage paves the way for the retrieval of a PowerShell script from a remot...

Collaboration is a powerful selling point for SaaS applications. Microsoft, Github, Miro, and others promote the collaborative nature of their software applications that allows users to do more. Links to files, repositories, and boards can be shared with anyone, anywhere. This encourages teamwork that helps create stronger campaigns and projects by encouraging collaboration among employees dispersed across regions and departments.  At the same time, the openness of data SaaS platforms can be problematic. A  2023 survey  by the Cloud Security Alliance and Adaptive Shield found that 58% of security incidents over the last two years involved data leakage. Clearly, sharing is good, but data sharing must be put in check. Most SaaS applications have mechanisms to control sharing. These tools are quite effective in ensuring that company resources aren't open for display on the public web. This article will look at three common data leakage scenarios and recommend best practic...

A security flaw has been disclosed in Kyocera's  Device Manager  product that could be exploited by bad actors to carry out malicious activities on affected systems. "This vulnerability allows attackers to coerce authentication attempts to their own resources, such as a malicious SMB share, to capture or relay Active Directory hashed credentials if the 'Restrict NTLM: Outgoing NTLM traffic to remote servers' security policy is not enabled," Trustwave  said . Tracked as  CVE-2023-50916 , Kyocera, in an  advisory  released late last month, described it as a path traversal issue that enables an attacker to intercept and alter a local path pointing to the backup location of the database to a universal naming convention (UNC) path. This, in turn, causes the web application to attempt to authenticate the rogue UNC path, resulting in unauthorized access to clients' accounts and data theft. Furthermore, depending on the configuration of the environment, it cou...

Threat actors are resorting to YouTube videos featuring content related to cracked software in order to entice users into downloading an information stealer malware called Lumma. "These YouTube videos typically feature content related to cracked applications, presenting users with similar installation guides and incorporating malicious URLs often shortened using services like TinyURL and Cuttly," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said  in a Monday analysis. This is not the first time pirated software videos on YouTube have emerged as an effective bait for stealer malware. At least since early 2023, similar attack chains have been observed delivering several kinds of stealers, clippers, and crypto miner malware. In doing so, threat actors can leverage the compromised machines for not only information and cryptocurrency theft, but also abuse the resources for illicit mining. In the latest attack sequence documented by Fortinet, users searching for cracked ver...

Threat actors operating under the name Anonymous Arabic have released a remote access trojan (RAT) called  Silver RAT  that's equipped to bypass security software and stealthily launch hidden applications. "The developers operate on multiple hacker forums and social media platforms, showcasing an active and sophisticated presence," cybersecurity firm Cyfirma  said  in a report published last week. The actors, assessed to be of Syrian origin and linked to the development of another RAT known as S500 RAT, also run a Telegram channel offering various services such as the distribution of cracked RATs, leaked databases, carding activities, and the sale of Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) bots. The social media bots are then utilized by other cyber criminals to promote various illicit services by automatically engaging with and commenting on user content. In-the-wild detections of Silver RAT v1.0 were first observed in November 2023, although the threat actor's plan...

Cybersecurity is an infinite journey in a digital landscape that never ceases to change. According to Ponemon Institute 1 , "only 59% of organizations say their cybersecurity strategy has changed over the past two years." This stagnation in strategy adaptation can be traced back to several key issues. Talent Retention Challenges:  The cybersecurity field is rapidly advancing, requiring a skilled and knowledgeable workforce. However, organizations face a critical shortage of such talent, making it difficult to keep strategies agile and relevant. Leadership Focus : Often, the attention of leadership teams is divided across various priorities, and cybersecurity may not be at the forefront. This can result in strategies becoming outdated and less effective. Board Engagement:  Adequate board support is essential for strategy evolution. A lack of comprehensive understanding of cybersecurity issues at the board level can lead to insufficient resources and support for strategic u...

Digital expansion inevitably increases the external attack surface, making you susceptible to cyberthreats. Threat actors increasingly exploit the vulnerabilities stemming from software and infrastructure exposed to the internet; this ironically includes security tools, particularly firewalls and VPNs, which give attackers direct network access to execute their attacks. In fact,  Gartner  identified attack surface expansion as a major trend to watch. So, it is not surprising that External Attack Surface Management (EASM) is a growing priority for organizations. But traditional castle-and-moat-based security architectures are ineffective at protecting enterprises against today's sophisticated attacks, which increasingly leverage AI and as-a-service models to maximize speed and damage. Zero trust security is the best way to minimize the attack surface, prevent compromise, eliminate lateral movement, and stop data loss. Register here  and join Apoorva Ravikrishnan, Senio...

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is calling attention to the  privacy and security challenges  that arise as a result of increased deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in recent years. "These security and privacy challenges include the potential for adversarial manipulation of training data, adversarial exploitation of model vulnerabilities to adversely affect the performance of the AI system, and even malicious manipulations, modifications or mere interaction with models to exfiltrate sensitive information about people represented in the data, about the model itself, or proprietary enterprise data," NIST  said . As AI systems become integrated into online services at a rapid pace, in part driven by the emergence of generative AI systems like OpenAI ChatGPT and Google Bard, models powering these technologies face a number of threats at various stages of the machine learning operations. These include corrupted training data,...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said it charged 19 individuals worldwide in connection with the now-defunct xDedic Marketplace , which is estimated to have facilitated more than $68 million in fraud. In  wrapping up its investigation  into the dark web portal, the agency said the transnational operation was the result of close cooperation with law enforcement authorities from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Europol. Of the 19 defendants, three have been sentenced to 6.5 years in prison, eight have been awarded jail terms ranging from one year to five years, and one individual has been ordered to serve five years' probation. One among them includes Glib Oleksandr Ivanov-Tolpintsev, a Ukrainian national who was  sentenced to four years in prison  in May 2022 for selling compromised credentials on xDedic and making $82,648 in illegal profits. Dariy Pankov, described by the DoJ as one of the highest sellers by volume, offered credentials of no ...

Threat actors affiliated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (also known as North Korea) have plundered at least $600 million in cryptocurrency in 2023. The DPRK "was responsible for almost a third of all funds stolen in crypto attacks last year, despite a 30% reduction from the USD 850 million haul in 2022," blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs  said  last week. "Hacks perpetrated by the DPRK were on average ten times as damaging as those not linked to North Korea." There are indications that  additional breaches  targeting the crypto sector towards the end of 2023 could push this figure higher to around $700 million. The targeting of cryptocurrency companies is not new for North Korean state-sponsored actors, who have  stolen about $3 billion  since 2017. These financially motivated attacks are seen as a crucial revenue-generation mechanism for the sanctions-hit nation, funding its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile pr...

Telecommunication, media, internet service providers (ISPs), information technology (IT)-service providers, and Kurdish websites in the Netherlands have been targeted as part of a new cyber espionage campaign undertaken by a Türkiye-nexus threat actor known as  Sea Turtle . "The infrastructure of the targets was susceptible to supply chain and island-hopping attacks, which the attack group used to collect politically motivated information such as personal information on minority groups and potential political dissents," Dutch security firm Hunt & Hackett  said  in a Friday analysis. "The stolen information is likely to be exploited for surveillance or intelligence gathering on specific groups and or individuals." Sea Turtle, also known by the names Cosmic Wolf, Marbled Dust (formerly Silicon), Teal Kurma, and UNC1326, was  first documented  by Cisco Talos in April 2019, detailing  state-sponsored attacks  targeting public and private entities i...