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Why Data Exfiltration Detection is Paramount? The world is witnessing an exponential rise in ransomware and data theft employed to extort companies. At the same time, the industry faces numerous critical vulnerabilities in database software and company websites. This evolution paints a dire picture of data exposure and exfiltration that every security leader and team is grappling with. This article highlights this challenge and expounds on the benefits that Machine Learning algorithms and Network Detection & Response (NDR) approaches bring to the table. Data exfiltration often serves as the final act of a cyberattack, making it the last window of opportunity to detect the breach before the data is made public or is used for other sinister activities, such as espionage. However, data leakage isn't only an aftermath of cyberattacks, it can also be a consequence of human error. While prevention of data exfiltration through security controls is ideal, the escalating complexity a...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the WordPress "Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce" plugin that's  installed  on more than 30,000 websites. "This vulnerability makes it possible for an attacker to gain access to the accounts of users who have abandoned their carts, who are typically customers but can extend to other high-level users when the right conditions are met," Defiant's Wordfence  said  in an advisory. Tracked as CVE-2023-2986, the shortcoming has been rated 9.8 out of 10 for severity on the CVSS scoring system. It impacts all versions of the plugin, including and prior to versions 5.14.2. The problem, at its core, is a case of authentication bypass that arises as a result of insufficient encryption protections that are applied when customers are notified when they have abandoned their shopping carts on e-commerce sites without completing the purchase. Specifically, the encryption key is hard-coded in the plugin, thereby allowing ...

Apple on Wednesday released a  slew of updates  for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and Safari browser to address a set of flaws it said were actively exploited in the wild. This includes a pair of zero-days that have been weaponized in a mobile surveillance campaign called  Operation Triangulation  that has been active since 2019. The exact threat actor behind the activity is not known. CVE-2023-32434  - An integer overflow vulnerability in the Kernel that could be exploited by a malicious app to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. CVE-2023-32435  - A memory corruption vulnerability in WebKit that could lead to arbitrary code execution when processing specially crafted web content. The iPhone maker said it's aware that the two issues "may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7," crediting Kaspersky researchers Georgy Kucherin, Leonid Bezvershenko, and Boris Larin for reporting them. The advisory come...

The North Korean threat actor known as ScarCruft has been observed using an information-stealing malware with previously undocumented wiretapping features as well as a backdoor developed using Golang that exploits the Ably real-time messaging service. "The threat actor sent their commands through the Golang backdoor that is using the Ably service," the AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC) said in a technical report. "The API key value required for command communication was saved in a GitHub repository." ScarCruft is a state-sponsored outfit with links to North Korea's Ministry of State Security (MSS). It's known to be active since at least 2012. Attack chains mounted by the group entail the use of spear-phishing lures to deliver RokRAT , although it has leveraged a wide range of other custom tools to harvest sensitive information. In the latest intrusion detected by ASEC in May 2023, the email comes bearing a Microsoft Compiled HTML Help ...

More details have emerged about the spyware implant that's delivered to iOS devices as part of a campaign called Operation Triangulation. Kaspersky, which  discovered the operation  after becoming one of the targets at the start of the year, said the malware has a lifespan of 30 days, after which it gets automatically uninstalled unless the time period is extended by the attackers. The Russian cybersecurity company has codenamed the backdoor  TriangleDB . "The implant is deployed after the attackers obtain root privileges on the target iOS device by exploiting a kernel vulnerability," Kaspersky researchers  said  in a new report published today. "It is deployed in memory, meaning that all traces of the implant are lost when the device gets rebooted. Therefore, if the victim reboots their device, the attackers have to reinfect it by sending an iMessage with a malicious attachment, thus launching the whole exploitation chain again." Operation Triangulation ...

When we do quarterly  planning , my team categorizes our goals within four evergreen outcomes: Reduce the risk of information security incidents Increase trust in Vanta's information security program Reduce the friction caused by information security controls Use security expertise to support the business In this article, I'm going to focus on number three: reducing friction. Declaring your intentions There is value in making "reducing friction" an explicit goal of your security program. It sets the right tone with your counterparts across the organization, and is one step toward building a positive security culture. The first time I presented those outcomes in a company-wide forum, I received a Slack message from a senior leader who had just joined the company: "fantastic to hear about the security's teams focus on removing invisible security controls. Excellent philosophy for the security team [...] its just awesome too many security teams vi...

A security shortcoming in Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) Open Authorization ( OAuth ) process could have been exploited to achieve full account takeover, researchers said. California-based identity and access management service Descope, which discovered and reported the issue in April 2023, dubbed it  nOAuth . "nOAuth is an authentication implementation flaw that can affect Microsoft Azure AD multi-tenant OAuth applications," Omer Cohen, chief security officer at Descope,  said . The misconfiguration has to do with how a malicious actor can modify email attributes under "Contact Information" in the Azure AD account and exploit the "Log in with Microsoft" feature to hijack a victim account. To pull off the attack, all an adversary has to do is to create and access an Azure AD admin account and modify their email address to that of a victim and take advantage of the single sign-on scheme on a vulnerable app or website. "If the app merges u...

Foreign affairs ministries in the Americas have been targeted by a Chinese state-sponsored actor named  Flea  as part of a recent campaign that spanned from late 2022 to early 2023. The cyber attacks, per Broadcom's Symantec, involved a new backdoor codenamed Graphican. Some of the other targets included a government finance department and a corporation that markets products in the Americas as well as one unspecified victim in an European country. "Flea used a large number of tools in this campaign," the company  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News, describing the threat actor as "large and well-resourced." "As well as the new Graphican backdoor, the attackers leveraged a variety of living-off-the-land tools, as well as tools that have been previously linked to Flea." Flea, also called APT15, BackdoorDiplomacy, ke3chang, Nylon Typhoon (formerly Nickel), Playful Taurus, Royal APT, and Vixen Panda, is an advanced persistent threat group tha...

A new malware called  Condi  has been observed exploiting a security vulnerability in TP-Link Archer AX21 (AX1800) Wi-Fi routers to rope the devices into a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet. Fortinet FortiGuard Labs  said  the campaign has ramped up since the end of May 2023. Condi is the work of a threat actor who goes by the online alias zxcr9999 on Telegram and runs a Telegram channel called Condi Network to advertise their warez. "The Telegram channel was started in May 2022, and the threat actor has been monetizing its botnet by providing DDoS-as-a-service and selling the malware source code," security researchers Joie Salvio and Roy Tay said. An analysis of the malware artifact reveals its ability to terminate other competing botnets on the same host. It, however, lacks a persistence mechanism, meaning the program cannot survive a system reboot. To get around this limitation, the malware deletes multiple binaries that are used to shut down or re...

VMware has flagged that a recently patched critical command injection vulnerability in Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight) has come under active exploitation in the wild. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2023-20887 , could  allow  a malicious actor with network access to the product to perform a command injection attack, resulting in remote code execution. It impacts VMware Aria Operations Networks versions 6.x, with fixes released in versions 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5.1, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10 on June 7, 2023. Now according to an update shared by the virtualization services provider on June 20, 2023, the flaw has been weaponized in real-world attacks, although the exact specifics are unknown as yet. "VMware has confirmed that exploitation of CVE-2023-20887 has occurred in the wild," the company  noted . Data gathered by threat intelligence firm GreyNoise  shows  active exploitation of the flaw from two different IP addresses loc...

Three security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in operational technology (OT) products from Wago and Schneider Electric. The flaws, per Forescout, are part of a  broader   set  of  shortcomings  collectively called  OT:ICEFALL , which now comprises a total of 61 issues spanning 13 different vendors. "OT:ICEFALL demonstrates the need for tighter scrutiny of, and improvements to, processes related to secure design, patching and testing in OT device vendors," the company  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The most severe of the flaws is  CVE-2022-46680  (CVSS score: 8.8), which concerns the plaintext transmission of credentials in the ION/TCP protocol used by power meters from Schneider Electric. Successful exploitation of the bug could enable threat actors to gain control of vulnerable devices. It's worth noting that CVE-2022-46680 is one among the 56 flaws  originally unearthed  by Forescout in June 2022. ...

Zyxel has rolled out security updates to address a critical security flaw in its network-attached storage (NAS) devices that could result in the execution of arbitrary commands on affected systems. Tracked as  CVE-2023-27992  (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a pre-authentication command injection vulnerability. "The pre-authentication command injection vulnerability in some Zyxel NAS devices could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute some operating system (OS) commands remotely by sending a crafted HTTP request," Zyxel  said  in an advisory published today. Andrej Zaujec, NCSC-FI, and Maxim Suslov have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. The following versions are impacted by CVE-2023-27992 - NAS326 (V5.21(AAZF.13)C0 and earlier, patched in V5.21(AAZF.14)C0), NAS540 (V5.21(AATB.10)C0 and earlier, patched in V5.21(AATB.11)C0), and NAS542 (V5.21(ABAG.10)C0 and earlier, patched in V5.21(ABAG.11)C0) The alert comes ...

The Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR) industry is built on consistency and shared resources. National chains like McDonald's and regional ones like Cracker Barrel grow faster by reusing the same business model, decor, and menu, with little change from one location to the next.  QSR technology stacks mirror the consistency of the front end of each store. Despite each franchise being independently owned and operated, they share subscriptions to SaaS applications, or use multiple tenants of the same application. Each app is typically segmented by store. Corporate IT and Security has access to the entire database, while each franchise has visibility into its own data.  These SaaS apps cover everything from CRMs to supply chains to marketing and HR. The data within is used to understand consumer habits, improve marketing campaigns, and manage employees. Like every other industry, QSR SaaS apps contain a wealth of data that needs to be secured.  At the same time, we're seeing fo...