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North Korean Hackers Deploy OtterCookie Malware in Contagious Interview Campaign

North Korean Hackers Deploy OtterCookie Malware in Contagious Interview Campaign

Dec 27, 2024 Cryptocurrency / Cyber Espionage
North Korean threat actors behind the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign have been observed dropping a new JavaScript malware called OtterCookie . Contagious Interview (aka DeceptiveDevelopment ) refers to a persistent attack campaign that employs social engineering lures, with the hacking crew often posing as recruiters to trick individuals looking for potential job opportunities into downloading malware under the guise of an interview process. This involves distributing malware-laced videoconferencing apps or npm packages either hosted on GitHub or the official package registry, paving the way for the deployment of malware such as BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which first exposed the activity in November 2023, is tracking the cluster under the moniker CL-STA-0240. It's also referred to as Famous Chollima and Tenacious Pungsan. In September 2024, Singaporean cybersecurity company Group-IB documented the first major revision to the attack c...
Cloud Atlas Deploys VBCloud Malware: Over 80% of Targets Found in Russia

Cloud Atlas Deploys VBCloud Malware: Over 80% of Targets Found in Russia

Dec 27, 2024 Cyber Attack / Data Theft
The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting "several dozen users" in 2024. "Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula editor (CVE-2018-0802) to download and execute malware code," Kaspersky researcher Oleg Kupreev said in an analysis published this week. More than 80% of the targets were located in Russia. A lesser number of victims have been reported from Belarus, Canada, Moldova, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Vietnam. Also referred to as Clean Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Red October, Cloud Atlas is an unattributed threat activity cluster that has been active since 2014. In December 2022, the group was linked to cyber attacks aimed at Russia, Belarus, and Transnistria that deployed a PowerShell-based backdoor called PowerShower. Then exactly a year later, Russian cy...
Palo Alto Releases Patch for PAN-OS DoS Flaw — Update Immediately

Palo Alto Releases Patch for PAN-OS DoS Flaw — Update Immediately

Dec 27, 2024 Firewall Security / Vulnerability
Palo Alto Networks has disclosed a high-severity vulnerability impacting PAN-OS software that could cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on susceptible devices. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-3393 (CVSS score: 8.7), impacts PAN-OS versions 10.X and 11.X, as well as Prisma Access running PAN-OS versions 10.2.8 and later or prior to 11.2.3. It has been addressed in PAN-OS 10.1.14-h8, PAN-OS 10.2.10-h12, PAN-OS 11.1.5, PAN-OS 11.2.3, and all later PAN-OS versions. "A denial-of-service vulnerability in the DNS Security feature of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software allows an unauthenticated attacker to send a malicious packet through the data plane of the firewall that reboots the firewall," the company said in a Friday advisory. "Repeated attempts to trigger this condition will cause the firewall to enter maintenance mode." Palo Alto Networks said it discovered the flaw in production use, and that it's aware of customers "experiencing this denial-of-...
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New Webinar: Identity Attacks Have Changed — Have Your IR Playbooks?

websitePush SecurityThreat Detection / Identity Security
With modern identity sprawl, the blast radius of a breach is bigger than ever. Are you prepared? Sign up now.
Securing Agentic AI: How to Protect the Invisible Identity Access

Securing Agentic AI: How to Protect the Invisible Identity Access

Jul 15, 2025Automation / Risk Management
AI agents promise to automate everything from financial reconciliations to incident response. Yet every time an AI agent spins up a workflow, it has to authenticate somewhere; often with a high-privilege API key, OAuth token, or service account that defenders can't easily see. These "invisible" non-human identities (NHIs) now outnumber human accounts in most cloud environments, and they have become one of the ripest targets for attackers. Astrix's Field CTO Jonathan Sander put it bluntly in a recent Hacker News webinar : "One dangerous habit we've had for a long time is trusting application logic to act as the guardrails. That doesn't work when your AI agent is powered by LLMs that don't stop and think when they're about to do something wrong. They just do it." Why AI Agents Redefine Identity Risk Autonomy changes everything: An AI agent can chain multiple API calls and modify data without a human in the loop. If the underlying credential is exposed or overprivileged, each addit...
FICORA and Kaiten Botnets Exploit Old D-Link Vulnerabilities for Global Attacks

FICORA and Kaiten Botnets Exploit Old D-Link Vulnerabilities for Global Attacks

Dec 27, 2024 Botnet / DDoS Attack
Cybersecurity researchers are warning about a spike in malicious activity that involves roping vulnerable D-Link routers into two different botnets, a Mirai variant dubbed FICORA and a Kaiten (aka Tsunami) variant called CAPSAICIN. "These botnets are frequently spread through documented D-Link vulnerabilities that allow remote attackers to execute malicious commands via a GetDeviceSettings action on the HNAP (Home Network Administration Protocol) interface," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Vincent Li said in a Thursday analysis. "This HNAP weakness was first exposed almost a decade ago, with numerous devices affected by a variety of CVE numbers, including CVE-2015-2051 , CVE-2019-10891 , CVE-2022-37056 , and CVE-2024-33112 ." According to the cybersecurity company's telemetry data, attacks involving FICORA have targeted various countries globally, whereas those related to CAPSAICIN primarily singled out East Asian territories like Japan and Taiwan. T...
Apache MINA CVE-2024-52046: CVSS 10.0 Flaw Enables RCE via Unsafe Serialization

Apache MINA CVE-2024-52046: CVSS 10.0 Flaw Enables RCE via Unsafe Serialization

Dec 27, 2024 Vulnerability / Software Security
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released patches to address a maximum severity vulnerability in the MINA Java network application framework that could result in remote code execution under specific conditions. Tracked as CVE-2024-52046 , the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 10.0. It affects versions 2.0.X, 2.1.X, and 2.2.X. "The ObjectSerializationDecoder in Apache MINA uses Java's native deserialization protocol to process incoming serialized data but lacks the necessary security checks and defenses," the project maintainers said in an advisory released on December 25, 2024. "This vulnerability allows attackers to exploit the deserialization process by sending specially crafted malicious serialized data, potentially leading to remote code execution (RCE) attacks." However, it bears noting that the vulnerability is exploitable only if the "IoBuffer#getObject()" method is invoked in combination with certain classes such as ProtocolC...
Brazilian Hacker Charged for Extorting $3.2M in Bitcoin After Breaching 300,000 Accounts

Brazilian Hacker Charged for Extorting $3.2M in Bitcoin After Breaching 300,000 Accounts

Dec 26, 2024 Cybercrime / Ransomware
A Brazilian citizen has been charged in the United States for allegedly threatening to release data stolen by hacking into a company's network in March 2020. Junior Barros De Oliveira , 29, of Curitiba, Brazil has been charged with four counts of extortionate threats involving information obtained from protected computers and four counts of threatening communications, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in an unsealed indictment earlier this week. The said victim, a Brazilian subsidiary of a New Jersey-based company, had its computers breached by the defendant, who then exploited the access to steal confidential customer information from about 300,000 customers on at least three occasions. De Oliveira is alleged to have subsequently sent the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company an email message in September 2020 using an alias, demanding a payment of 300 bitcoin (valued at about $3.2 million at the time) in return for not selling the data. A month later, the de...
Ruijie Networks' Cloud Platform Flaws Could've Exposed 50,000 Devices to Remote Attacks

Ruijie Networks' Cloud Platform Flaws Could've Exposed 50,000 Devices to Remote Attacks

Dec 25, 2024 Cloud Security / Vulnerability
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered several security flaws in the cloud management platform developed by Ruijie Networks that could permit an attacker to take control of the network appliances. "These vulnerabilities affect both the Reyee platform, as well as Reyee OS network devices," Claroty researchers Noam Moshe and Tomer Goldschmidt said in a recent analysis. "The vulnerabilities, if exploited, could allow a malicious attacker to execute code on any cloud-enabled device, giving them the ability to control tens of thousands of devices." The operational technology (OT) security company, which carried out an in-depth research of the Internet of Things (IoT) vendor, said it not only identified 10 flaws but also devised an attack called "Open Sesame" that can be used to hack into an access point in close physical proximity over the cloud and gain unauthorized access to its network. Of the 10 vulnerabilities , three of them are rated Critical in...
Critical SQL Injection Vulnerability in Apache Traffic Control Rated 9.9 CVSS — Patch Now

Critical SQL Injection Vulnerability in Apache Traffic Control Rated 9.9 CVSS — Patch Now

Dec 25, 2024 Server Security / Vulnerability
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has shipped security updates to address a critical security flaw in Traffic Control that, if successfully exploited, could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary Structured Query Language (SQL) commands in the database. The SQL injection vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-45387 , is rated 9.9 out of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. "An SQL injection vulnerability in Traffic Ops in Apache Traffic Control <= 8.0.1, >= 8.0.0 allows a privileged user with role 'admin,' 'federation,' 'operations,' 'portal,' or 'steering' to execute arbitrary SQL against the database by sending a specially-crafted PUT request," project maintainers said in an advisory. Apache Traffic Control is an open-source implementation of a Content Delivery Network (CDN). It was announced as a top-level project (TLP) by the AS in June 2018. Tencent YunDing Security Lab researcher Yuan Luo has been credited with discoveri...
Iran's Charming Kitten Deploys BellaCPP: A New C++ Variant of BellaCiao Malware

Iran's Charming Kitten Deploys BellaCPP: A New C++ Variant of BellaCiao Malware

Dec 25, 2024 Cyber Attack / Malware
The Iranian nation-state hacking group known as Charming Kitten has been observed deploying a C++ variant of a known malware called BellaCiao. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, which dubbed the new version BellaCPP , said it discovered the artifact as part of a "recent" investigation into a compromised machine in Asia that was also infected with the BellaCiao malware. BellaCiao was first documented by Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender in April 2023, describing it as a custom dropper capable of delivering additional payloads. The malware has been deployed by the hacking group in cyber attacks targeting the United States, the Middle East, and India. It's also one of the many bespoke malware families the Charming Kitten actor has developed over the years. Affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the advanced persistent threat (APT) group is also known by the monikers APT35, CALANQUE, CharmingCypress, Educated Manticore, ITG18,Mi...
Researchers Uncover PyPI Packages Stealing Keystrokes and Hijacking Social Accounts

Researchers Uncover PyPI Packages Stealing Keystrokes and Hijacking Social Accounts

Dec 24, 2024 Malware / Data Exfiltration
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged two malicious packages that were uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository and came fitted with capabilities to exfiltrate sensitive information from compromised hosts, according to new findings from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs. The packages, named zebo and cometlogger , attracted 118 and 164 downloads each, prior to them being taken down. According to ClickPy statistics, a majority of these downloads came from the United States, China, Russia, and India.  Zebo is a "typical example of malware, with functions designed for surveillance, data exfiltration, and unauthorized control," security researcher Jenna Wang said, adding cometlogger "also shows signs of malicious behavior, including dynamic file manipulation, webhook injection, stealing information, and anti-[virtual machine] checks." The first of the two packages, zebo, uses obfuscation techniques, such as hex-encoded strings, to conceal the URL of the co...
North Korean Hackers Pull Off $308M Bitcoin Heist from Crypto Firm DMM Bitcoin

North Korean Hackers Pull Off $308M Bitcoin Heist from Crypto Firm DMM Bitcoin

Dec 24, 2024 Cybercrime / Malware
Japanese and U.S. authorities have formerly attributed the theft of cryptocurrency worth $308 million from cryptocurrency company DMM Bitcoin in May 2024 to North Korean cyber actors. "The theft is affiliated with TraderTraitor threat activity, which is also tracked as Jade Sleet, UNC4899, and Slow Pisces," the agencies said . "TraderTraitor activity is often characterized by targeted social engineering directed at multiple employees of the same company simultaneously." The alert comes courtesy of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center, and the National Police Agency of Japan. It's worth noting that DMM Bitcoin shut down its operations earlier this month in the aftermath of the hack. TraderTraitor refers to a North Korea-linked persistent threat activity cluster that has a history of targeting companies in the Web3 sector, luring victims into downloading malware-laced cryptocurrency apps and ultimately ...
CISA Adds Acclaim USAHERDS Vulnerability to KEV Catalog Amid Active Exploitation

CISA Adds Acclaim USAHERDS Vulnerability to KEV Catalog Amid Active Exploitation

Dec 24, 2024 Vulnerability / Software Security
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a now-patched high-severity security flaw impacting Acclaim Systems USAHERDS to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2021-44207 (CVSS score: 8.1), a case of hard-coded, static credentials in Acclaim USAHERDS that could allow an attacker to ultimately execute arbitrary code on susceptible servers. Specifically, it concerns the use of static ValidationKey and DecryptionKey values in version 7.4.0.1 and prior that could be weaponized to achieve remote code execution on the server that runs the application. That said, an attacker would have to leverage some other means to obtain the keys in the first place. "These keys are used to provide security for the application ViewState," Google-owned Mandiant said in advisory for the flaw back in December 2021. "A threat actor with knowledge ...
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