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An adversary known for targeting the fintech sector at least since 2018 has switched up its tactics to include a new Python-based remote access Trojan (RAT) that can steal passwords, documents, browser cookies, email credentials, and other sensitive information. In an analysis published by Cybereason researchers yesterday, the Evilnum group has not only tweaked its infection chain but has also deployed a Python RAT called "PyVil RAT," which possesses abilities to gather information, take screenshots, capture keystrokes data, open an SSH shell and deploy new tools. "Since the first reports in 2018 through today, the group's TTPs have evolved with different tools while the group has continued to focus on fintech targets," the cybersecurity firm said . "These variations include a change in the chain of infection and persistence, new infrastructure that is expanding over time, and the use of a new Python-scripted Remote Access Trojan (RAT)" to spy...

Anyone paying attention to the cybersecurity technology market has heard the term XDR - Extended Detection and Response. XDR is a new technology approach that combines multiple protection technologies into a single platform. All the analyst firms are writing about it, and many of the top cybersecurity companies are actively moving into this space. Why is XDR receiving all the buzz? Combining (or orchestrating) security technologies in a usable manner has become the bane of cybersecurity as technology spread has overwhelmed the space. There's a massive market for cybersecurity technologies that combine and rationalize other cybersecurity technologies (see SIEM and SOAR). However, most companies find selecting, implementing, integrating, normalizing, operating, and maintaining a fully combined set of cybersecurity technologies far too daunting and only within reach of the largest companies with the deepest pockets. XDR Insights Next week, Senior Analyst Dave Gruber of E...

Networking equipment maker Cisco has released a new version of its Jabber video conferencing and messaging app for Windows that includes patches for multiple vulnerabilities—which, if exploited, could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. The flaws, which were uncovered by Norwegian cybersecurity firm Watchcom during a pentest, affect all currently supported versions of the Jabber client (12.1-12.9) and has since been fixed by the company. Two of the four flaws can be exploited to gain remote code execution (RCE) on target systems by sending specially crafted chat messages in group conversations or specific individuals. The most severe of the lot is a flaw (CVE-2020-3495, CVSS score 9.9) that's caused by improper validation of message contents, which could be leveraged by an attacker by sending maliciously-crafted Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ( XMPP ) messages to the affected software. "A successful exploit could allow the...

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Cybercriminal groups are constantly evolving to find new ways to pilfer financial information, and the latest trick in their arsenal is to leverage the messaging app Telegram to their benefit. In what's a new tactic adopted by Magecart groups, the encrypted messaging service is being used to send stolen payment details from compromised websites back to the attackers. "For threat actors, this data exfiltration mechanism is efficient and doesn't require them to keep up infrastructure that could be taken down or blocked by defenders," Jérôme Segura of Malwarebytes said in a Monday analysis . "They can even receive a notification in real time for each new victim, helping them quickly monetize the stolen cards in underground markets." The TTP was first publicly documented by security researcher @AffableKraut in a Twitter thread last week using data from Dutch cybersecurity firm Sansec. Injecting e-skimmers on shopping websites by exploiting a known...

Starting today, the lifespan of new TLS certificates will be limited to 398 days, a little over a year, from the previous maximum certificate lifetime of 27 months (825 days). In a move that's meant to boost security, Apple, Google, and Mozilla are set to reject publicly rooted digital certificates in their respective web browsers that expire more than 13 months (or 398 days) from their creation date. The lifespan of SSL/TLS certificates has shrunk significantly over the last decade. In 2011, the Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser Forum), a consortium of certification authorities and vendors of browser software, imposed a limit of five years, bringing down the certificate validity period from 8-10 years. Subsequently, in 2015, it was cut short to three years and to two years again in 2018. Although the proposal to reduce certificate lifetimes to one year was shot down in a ballot last September , the measure has been overwhelmingly supported by the browser...

Cisco has warned of an active zero-day vulnerability in its router software that's being exploited in the wild and could allow a remote, authenticated attacker to carry out memory exhaustion attacks on an affected device. "An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities by sending crafted IGMP traffic to an affected device," Cisco said in an advisory posted over the weekend. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause memory exhaustion, resulting in instability of other processes. These processes may include, but are not limited to, interior and exterior routing protocols." Although the company said it will release software fixes to address the flaw, it did not share a timeline for when it plans to make it available. The networking equipment maker said it became aware of attempts to exploit the flaw on August 28. Tracked as CVE-2020-3566 , the severity of the vulnerability has been rated "high" with a Common Vulnerability Scoring...

An Iranian cyberespionage group known for targeting government, defense technology, military, and diplomacy sectors is now impersonating journalists to approach targets via LinkedIn and WhatsApp and infect their devices with malware. Detailing the new tactics of the "Charming Kitten" APT group, Israeli firm Clearsky said, "starting July 2020, we have identified a new TTP of the group, impersonating 'Deutsche Welle' and the 'Jewish Journal' using emails alongside WhatsApp messages as their main platform to approach the target and convince them to open a malicious link." This development is the first time the threat actor is said to have carried out a watering hole attack through WhatsApp and LinkedIn, which also includes making phone calls to victims, Clearsky noted in a Thursday analysis. After the company alerted Deutsche Welle about the impersonation and the watering hole in their website, the German broadcaster confirmed, "the repor...

A notorious banking trojan aimed at stealing bank account credentials and other financial information has now come back with new tricks up its sleeve to target government, military, and manufacturing sectors in the US and Europe, according to new research. In an analysis released by Check Point Research today, the latest wave of Qbot activity appears to have dovetailed with the return of Emotet — another email-based malware behind several botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks — last month, with the new sample capable of covertly gathering all email threads from a victim's Outlook client and using them for later malspam campaigns. "These days Qbot is much more dangerous than it was previously — it has an active malspam campaign which infects organizations, and it manages to use a 'third-party' infection infrastructure like Emotet's to spread the threat even further," the cybersecurity firm said . Using Hijacked Email Threads as Lures ...

Hackers always find a way in, even if there's no software vulnerability to exploit. The FBI has arrested a Russian national who recently traveled to the United States and offered $1 million in bribe to an employee of a targeted company for his help in installing malware into the company's computer network manually. Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov , 27-year-old, entered the United States as a tourist and was arrested in Los Angeles after meeting with the unnamed employee of an undisclosed Nevada-based company numerous times, between August 1 to August 21, to discuss the conspiracy. "On or about July 16, EGOR IGOREVICH KRIUCHKOV used his WhatsApp account to contact the employee of victim company and arranged to visit in person in the District of Nevada," the court documents say. "On or about July 28, EGOR IGOREVICH KRIUCHKOV entered the United States using his Russian Passport and a B1/B2 tourist visa." Kriuchkov also asked the employee to participate in...

It's one thing for APT groups to conduct cyber espionage to meet their own financial objectives. But it's an entirely different matter when they are used as "hackers for hire" by competing private companies to make away with confidential information. Bitdefender's Cyber Threat Intelligence Lab discovered yet another instance of an espionage attack targeting an unnamed international architectural and video production company that had all the hallmarks of a carefully orchestrated campaign. "The cybercriminal group infiltrated the company using a tainted and specially crafted plugin for Autodesk 3ds Max," Bitdefender researchers said in a report released today. "The investigation also found that the Command and Control infrastructure used by the cybercriminal group to test their malicious payload against the organization's security solution, is located in South Korea." Although there have been previous instances of APT mercenary gr...

A popular iOS software development kit (SDK) used by over 1,200 apps—with a total of more than a billion mobile users—is said to contain malicious code with the goal of perpetrating mobile ad-click fraud and capturing sensitive information. According to a report published by cybersecurity firm Snyk , Mintegral — a mobile programmatic advertising platform owned by Chinese mobile ad tech company Mobvista — includes an SDK component that allows it to collect URLs, device identifiers, IP Address, operating system version, and other user sensitive data from compromised apps to a remote logging server. The malicious iOS SDK has been named "SourMint" by Snyk researchers. "The malicious code can spy on user activity by logging URL-based requests made through the app," Snyk's Alyssa Miller said in a Monday analysis. "This activity is logged to a third-party server and could potentially include personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive in...

"In today's knowledge economy, continual learning is an imperative." — Those words from Aytekin Tank, the founder of JotForm, are particularly important for anyone working in IT or development. With over 1,000 premium courses ( complete list ) from top instructors, StackSkills Unlimited provides endless learning opportunities. Right now, you can grab lifetime membership for $59 . Categories of courses include: Animation and 3D Audio Bundles Business Applications CAD Databases Game Design and Development Graphics and Page Layout Internet and Web Design Multimedia and Video Networking and Security Operating Systems Programming, and Project Management Wondering what these courses cover? Here are five top skills: Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Finding the weaknesses in software, websites, and networks is an important task. For this reason, white hat hackers are in demand, with top pros earning over $100k a year. StackSkills Unlimite...

If your web-server runs on Apache, you should immediately install the latest available version of the server application to prevent hackers from taking unauthorized control over it. Apache recently fixed multiple vulnerabilities in its web server software that could have potentially led to the execution of arbitrary code and, in specific scenarios, even could allow attackers to cause a crash and denial of service. The flaws, tracked as CVE-2020-9490, CVE-2020-11984, CVE-2020-11993, were uncovered by Felix Wilhelm of Google Project Zero, and have since been addressed by the Apache Foundation in the latest version of the software ( 2.4.46 ). The first of the three issues involve a possible remote code execution vulnerability due to a buffer overflow with the "mod_uwsgi" module (CVE-2020-11984), potentially allowing an adversary to view, change, or delete sensitive data depending on the privileges associated with an application running on the server. "[A] Malici...

An unpatched security weakness in Google Drive could be exploited by malware attackers to distribute malicious files disguised as legitimate documents or images, enabling bad actors to perform spear-phishing attacks comparatively with a high success rate. The latest security issue—of which Google is aware but, unfortunately, left unpatched—resides in the " manage versions " functionality offered by Google Drive that allows users to upload and manage different versions of a file, as well as in the way its interface provides a new version of the files to the users. Logically, the manage versions functionally should allow Google Drive users to update an older version of a file with a new version having the same file extension, but it turns out that it's not the case. According to A. Nikoci, a system administrator by profession who reported the flaw to Google and later disclosed it to The Hacker News, the affected functionally allows users to upload a new version wit...

The federal prosecutors in the United States have charged Uber's former chief security officer, Joe Sullivan , for covering up a massive data breach that the ride-hailing company suffered in 2016. According to the press release published by the U.S. Department of Justice, Sullivan "took deliberate steps to conceal, deflect, and mislead the Federal Trade Commission about the breach" that also involved paying hackers $100,000 ransom to keep the incident secret. "A criminal complaint was filed today in federal court charging Joseph Sullivan with obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony in connection with the attempted cover-up of the 2016 hack of Uber Technologies," it says. The 2016 Uber's data breach exposed names, email addresses, phone numbers of 57 million Uber riders and drivers, and driver license numbers of around 600,000 drivers. The company revealed this information to the public almost a year later in 2017, immediately after Su...

The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a new report warning companies about a new in-the-wild malware that North Korean hackers are reportedly using to spy on key employees at government contracting companies. Dubbed ' BLINDINGCAN ,' the advanced remote access trojan acts as a backdoor when installed on compromised computers. According to the FBI and CISA, North Korean state-sponsored hackers Lazarus Group , also known as Hidden Cobra , are spreading BLINDINGCAN to "gather intelligence surrounding key military and energy technologies." To achieve this, attackers first identify high-value targets, perform extensive research on their social and professional networks, and then pose as recruiters to send malicious documents loaded with the malware, masquerading as job advertisements and offerings. However, such employment scams and social engineering strategies are not new and were recently spotted being used in...

The South African arm of one of the world's largest credit check companies Experian yesterday announced a data breach incident that exposed personal information of millions of its customers. While Experian itself didn't mention the number of affect customers, in a report , the South African Banking Risk Information Centre—an anti-fraud and banking non-profit organization who worked with Experian to investigate the breach—disclosed that the attacker had reportedly stolen data of 24 million South Africans and 793,749 business entities. Notably, according to the company, the suspected attacker behind this breach had already been identified, and the stolen data of its customers had successfully been deleted from his/her computing devices. "We have identified the suspect and confirm that Experian South Africa was successful in obtaining and executing an Anton Piller order which resulted in the individual's hardware being impounded and the misappropriated data being...

Microsoft has issued an emergency out-of-band software update for Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 systems to patch two new recently disclosed security vulnerabilities. Tracked as CVE-2020-1530 and CVE-2020-1537 , both flaws reside in the Remote Access Service (RAS) in a way it manages memory and file operations and could let remote attackers gain elevated privileges after successful exploitation. In brief, the Remote Access Service functionality of the Windows operating system allows remote clients to connect to the server and access internal resources from anywhere via the Internet. A patch for both vulnerabilities was first released on August 11 with the batch of August Patch Tuesday updates, but it was for Windows 10, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019, and Windows Server versions 1903, 1909, and 2004 systems. A week later, yesterday, on August 19, the company announced that Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 systems are vulner...