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Threat actors using hacking tools from an Israeli surveillanceware vendor named QuaDream targeted at least five members of civil society in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. According to findings from a group of researchers from the Citizen Lab, the spyware campaign was directed against journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker in 2021. The names of the victims were not disclosed. It's also suspected that the company abused a zero-click exploit dubbed  ENDOFDAYS  in iOS 14 to deploy spyware as a zero-day in version 14.4 and 14.4.2. There is no evidence that the exploit has been used after November 2021. ENDOFDAYS "appears to make use of invisible iCloud calendar invitations sent from the spyware's operator to victims," the researchers said , adding the .ics files contain invites to two backdated and overlapping events so as to not alert the users.  The attacks are suspected to have leveraged a quirk in iO...

Here's a hard question to answer: 'How many service accounts do you have in your environment?'. A harder one is: 'Do you know what these accounts are doing?'. And the hardest is probably: 'If any of your service account was compromised and used to access resources would you be able to detect and stop that in real-time?'.  Since most identity and security teams would provide a negative reply, it's no wonder that  one of the immediate actions today's attackers are doing following an initial endpoint compromised is hunting down unwatched service accounts.  And it's even less of a wonder that in most cases, they would succeed in finding one and leveraging it to spread within the entire environment, getting noticed only when it's too late – after workstations and server got encrypted by ransomware or sensitive data was stolen.  In this article, we unfold the reasons that have caused service accounts to become one of the most dangerous weaknesse...

It's the second Tuesday of the month, and Microsoft has released another set of security updates to fix  a total of 97 flaws  impacting its software, one of which has been actively exploited in ransomware attacks in the wild. Seven of the 97 bugs are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. Interestingly, 45 of the shortcomings are remote code execution flaws, followed by 20 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities. The updates also follow fixes for 26 vulnerabilities in its Edge browser that were released over the past month. The security flaw that's come under active exploitation is  CVE-2023-28252  (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege escalation bug in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," Microsoft said in an advisory, crediting researchers Boris Larin, Genwei Jiang, and Quan Jin for reporting the issue. CVE-2023-28252 is the fourth privilege escalatio...

Enterprise communications service provider 3CX confirmed that the  supply chain attack  targeting its desktop application for Windows and macOS was the handiwork of a threat actor with North Korean nexus. The findings are the result of an interim assessment conducted by Google-owned Mandiant, whose services were enlisted after the intrusion came to light late last month. The threat intelligence and incident response unit is tracking the activity under its uncategorized moniker  UNC4736 . It's worth noting that CrowdStrike has tied the attack to a Lazarus sub-group dubbed Labyrinth Chollima , citing tactical overlaps. The cybersecurity firm told The Hacker News the latest findings appear to be consistent with their previous attribution. The  attack chain , based on analyses from multiple security vendors, entailed the use of DLL side-loading techniques to load an information stealer known as ICONIC Stealer, followed by a second-stage called  Gopuram  in...

A "by-design flaw" uncovered in Microsoft Azure could be exploited by attackers to gain access to storage accounts, move laterally in the environment, and even execute remote code. "It is possible to abuse and leverage Microsoft Storage Accounts by manipulating Azure Functions to steal access-tokens of higher privilege identities, move laterally, potentially access critical business assets, and execute remote code (RCE)," Orca said in a new  report  shared with The Hacker News. The exploitation path that underpins this attack is a mechanism called  Shared Key authorization , which is enabled by default on storage accounts. According to Microsoft, Azure generates two 512-bit storage account access keys when creating a storage account. These keys can be used to authorize access to data via Shared Key authorization, or via SAS tokens that are signed with the shared key. "Storage account access keys provide full access to the configuration of a storage accoun...

Malicious loader programs capable of trojanizing Android applications are being traded on the criminal underground for up to $20,000 as a way to evade Google Play Store defenses. "The most popular application categories to hide malware and unwanted software include cryptocurrency trackers, financial apps, QR-code scanners, and even dating apps," Kaspersky  said  in a new report based on messages posted on online forums between 2019 and 2023. Dropper apps  are the primary means for threat actors looking to sneak malware via the Google Play Store. Such apps often masquerade as seemingly innocuous apps, with malicious updates introduced upon clearing the review process and the applications have amassed a significant user base. This is achieved by using a loader program that's responsible for injecting malware into a clean app, which is then made available for download from the app marketplace. Users who install the tampered app are prompted to grant it intrusive permiss...

In today's perilous cyber risk landscape, CISOs and CIOs must defend their organizations against relentless cyber threats, including ransomware, phishing, attacks on infrastructure, supply chain breaches, malicious insiders, and much more. Yet at the same time, security leaders are also under tremendous pressure to reduce costs and invest wisely.  One of the most effective ways for CISOs and CIOs to make the best use of their limited resources to protect their organizations is by conducting a cyber risk assessment. A comprehensive cyber risk assessment can help: Identify vulnerabilities and threats Prioritize security investments Assess cybersecurity maturity Communicate cyber risk to executives Provide the basis for cyber risk quantification A new guide by cybersecurity optimization provider CYE ( download here ) explains how this can be accomplished. The guide outlines several approaches to cyber risk assessments and describes the necessary steps that can yield solid in...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed the inner workings of the cryptocurrency stealer malware that was distributed via 13 malicious NuGet packages as part of a supply chain attack targeting .NET developers. The sophisticated typosquatting campaign, which was uncovered by JFrog late last month, impersonated legitimate packages to execute PowerShell code designed to retrieve a follow-on binary from a hard-coded server. The  two-stage attack  culminates in the deployment of a .NET-based persistent backdoor, called Impala Stealer, which is capable of gaining unauthorized access to users' cryptocurrency accounts. "The payload used a very rare obfuscation technique, called '.NET AoT compilation,' which is a lot more stealthy than using 'off the shelf' obfuscators while still making the binary hard to reverse engineer," JFrog told The Hacker News in a statement. .NET  AoT compilation  is an  optimization technique  that allows apps to be ahead-of-ti...

An Estonian national has been  charged  in the U.S. for purchasing U.S.-made electronics on behalf of the Russian government and military. The 45-year-old individual, Andrey Shevlyakov, was arrested on March 28, 2023, in Tallinn. He has been indicted with 18 counts of conspiracy and other charges. If found guilty, he faces up to 20 years in prison. Court documents allege that Shevlyakov operated front companies that were used to import sensitive electronics from U.S. manufacturers. The goods were then shipped to Russia, bypassing export restrictions. The purchased items included analog-to-digital converters and low-noise pre-scalers and synthesizers that are found in defense systems. Shevlyakov is also accused of attempting to acquire hacking tools like Rapid7 Metasploit Pro, a legitimate penetration testing and adversary simulation software. Although Shevlyakov was placed in Entity List in 2012 by the U.S. government for acting as a procurement agent for Russia, he is s...

Threat actors flooded the npm open source package repository for Node.js with bogus packages that briefly even resulted in a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. "The threat actors create malicious websites and publish empty packages with links to those malicious websites, taking advantage of open-source ecosystems' good reputation on search engines," Checkmarx's Jossef Harush Kadouri  said  in a report published last week. "The attacks caused a denial-of-service (DoS) that made NPM unstable with sporadic 'Service Unavailable' errors." While  similar campaigns  were recently observed propagating phishing links, the latest wave pushed the number of package versions to 1.42 million, a dramatic uptick from the approximate 800,000 packages released on npm. The attack technique leverages the fact that open source repositories are ranked higher on search engine results to create rogue websites and upload empty npm modules with links to those sites in the ...

As technology advances, cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated. With the increasing use of technology in our daily lives, cybercrime is on the rise, as evidenced by the fact that cyberattacks caused  92% of all data breaches  in the first quarter of 2022. Staying current with cybersecurity trends and laws is crucial to combat these threats, which can significantly impact business development.  In 2023, the cybersecurity market is expected to see new trends, and businesses must be adequately prepared for any developments. Andrey Slastenov, Head of Web Security at Gcore, shares his insights on these trends in this article. 1 —  Application security As businesses shifted online to stay afloat during the pandemic, the forecast for application security spending is projected to surpass $7.5 billion, according to  Statista . Source However, every application might be susceptible to hacking, zero-day attacks, and identity theft. Ensuring application security...

Over one million WordPress websites are estimated to have been infected by an ongoing campaign to deploy malware called  Balada Injector   since 2017 . The massive campaign, per GoDaddy's Sucuri, "leverages all known and recently discovered theme and plugin vulnerabilities" to breach WordPress sites. The attacks are known to play out in waves once every few weeks. "This campaign is easily identified by its preference for  String.fromCharCode  obfuscation, the use of freshly registered domain names hosting malicious scripts on random subdomains, and by redirects to various scam sites," security researcher Denis Sinegubko  said . The websites include  fake tech support , fraudulent lottery wins, and rogue CAPTCHA pages urging users to turn on notifications to 'Please Allow to verify, that you are not a robot,' thereby enabling the actors to send spam ads. The report builds on  recent findings  from Doctor Web, which detailed a Linux malware fa...

Today, businesses face a variety of security challenges like cyber attacks, compliance requirements, and endpoint security administration. The threat landscape constantly evolves, and it can be overwhelming for businesses to keep up with the latest security trends. Security teams use processes and security solutions to curb these challenges. These solutions include firewalls, antiviruses, data loss prevention services, and XDRs (Extended Detection and Response). Wazuh is a free and open source security platform that unifies XDR and SIEM (System Information and Event Management) capabilities. It comprises a universal security agent for event data collection from various sources and the central components for event analysis, correlation, and alerting. The central components include the Wazuh server, dashboard, and indexer. Wazuh offers a suite of modules capable of providing extended threat detection and response for on-premises and cloud workloads.  In this article, we emphasize ...