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Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday took the wraps off a new, ongoing espionage campaign targeting corporate networks in Spanish-speaking countries, specifically Venezuela, to spy on its victims. Dubbed " Bandidos " by ESET owing to the use of an upgraded variant of Bandook malware, the primary targets of the threat actor are corporate networks in the South American country spanning across manufacturing, construction, healthcare, software services, and retail sectors. Written in both Delphi and C++,  Bandook  has a history of being sold as a commercial remote access trojan (RAT) dating all the way back to 2005. Since then, numerous variants have emerged on the threat landscape and put to use in different surveillance campaigns in 2015 and 2017, allegedly by a cyber-mercenary group known as Dark Caracal on behalf of government interests in Kazakhstan and Lebanon. In a continuing resurgence of the Bandook Trojan, Check Point last year  disclosed  three new sampl...

Humans are an organization's strongest defence against evolving cyber threats, but security awareness training alone often isn't enough to transform user behaviour. In this guide, usecure looks at why Human Risk Management (HRM) is the new fix for building a security-savvy workforce. Don't be fooled... Businesses are investing more than ever into strengthening their employee security awareness efforts, but a big problem still plagues SMBs and enterprises in every sector —  human-related data breaches . Even with more businesses rolling out staff security awareness training programs to combat evolving cyber threats, over 90% of data breaches still stem from human error. So, why are human-related data breaches still so prevalent? Access Now: Security Awareness Training is Broken. HRM is the Fix [Free eBook] → Security awareness training often isn't enough It's easy to think that rolling out some security awareness courses and sending a few email bulletins fro...

This week, PrintNightmare - Microsoft's Print Spooler vulnerability (CVE-2021-34527) was upgraded from a 'Low' criticality to a 'Critical' criticality. This is due to a Proof of Concept published on GitHub, which attackers could potentially leverage for gaining access to Domain Controllers. As we reported earlier , Microsoft already released a patch in June 2021, but it wasn't enough to stop exploits. Attackers can still use Print Spooler when connecting remotely. You can find all you need to know about this vulnerability in this article and how you can mitigate it (and you can).  Print Spooler in a nutshell:  Print Spooler is Microsoft's service for managing and monitoring files printing. This service is among Microsoft's oldest and has had minimal maintenance updates since it was released.  Every Microsoft machine (servers and endpoints) has this feature enabled by default. PrintNightmare vulnerability:  As soon as an attacker gains limited user...

A cyber-espionage group has been observed increasingly targeting Indian government personnel as part of a broad campaign to infect victims with as many as four new custom remote access trojans (RATs), signaling a "boost in their development operations." Attributed to a group tracked as SideCopy, the intrusions culminate in the deployment of a variety of modular plugins, ranging from file enumerators to browser credential stealers and keyloggers (Xeytan and Lavao), Cisco Talos said in a report published Wednesday. "Targeting tactics and themes observed in SideCopy campaigns indicate a high degree of similarity to the Transparent Tribe APT (aka APT36) also targeting India," researchers Asheer Malhotra and Justin Thattil  said . "These include using decoys posing as operational documents belonging to the military and think tanks and honeytrap-based infections." First documented in September 2020 by Indian cybersecurity firm Quick Heal,  SideCopy  has a  ...

Even as Microsoft  expanded patches  for the so-called PrintNightmare vulnerability for Windows 10 version 1607, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2016, it has come to light that the fix for the remote code execution exploit in the Windows Print Spooler service can be bypassed in certain scenarios, effectively defeating the security protections and permitting attackers to run arbitrary code on infected systems. On Tuesday, the Windows maker issued an  emergency out-of-band update  to address  CVE-2021-34527  (CVSS score: 8.8) after the flaw was accidentally disclosed by researchers from Hong Kong-based cybersecurity firm Sangfor late last month, at which point it emerged that the issue was different from another bug — tracked as  CVE-2021-1675  — that was patched by Microsoft on June 8. "Several days ago, two security vulnerabilities were found in Microsoft Windows' existing printing mechanism," Yaniv Balmas, head of cyber research at C...

A malicious campaign that has set its sights on industrial-related entities in the Middle East since 2019 has resurfaced with an upgraded malware toolset to strike both Windows and macOS operating systems, symbolizing an expansion in both its targets and its strategy around distributing threats. Russian cybersecurity firm attributed the attacks to an advanced persistent threat (APT) it tracks as " WildPressure ," with victims believed to be in the oil and gas industry.  WildPressure first came to light in March 2020 based off of a malware operation distributing a fully-featured C++ Trojan dubbed "Milum" that enabled the threat actor to gain remote control of the compromised device. The attacks were said to have begun as early as August 2019. "For their campaign infrastructure, the operators used rented OVH and Netzbetrieb virtual private servers (VPS) and a domain registered with the Domains by Proxy anonymization service," Kaspersky researcher Denis ...

An analysis of off-the-shelf packages hosted on the NuGet repository has revealed 51 unique software components to be vulnerable to actively exploited, high-severity vulnerabilities, once again underscoring the threat posed by third-party dependencies to the software development process. In light of the growing number of cyber incidents that target the software supply chain, there is an urgent need to assess such third-party modules for any security risks and minimize the attack surface, ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report shared with The Hacker News. NuGet  is a Microsoft-supported mechanism for the .NET platform and functions as a package manager designed to enable developers to share reusable code. The framework maintains a central repository of over 264,000 unique packages that have collectively produced more than 109 billion package downloads. "All identified precompiled software components in our research were different versions of 7Zip, WinSCP and PuT...

Security teams whose organizations are outside the Fortune 500 are faced with a dilemma. Most teams will have to choose between deploying either a network traffic analysis (NTA) or network detection and response (NDR) tool or an endpoint detection and response (EDR) tool to supplement their existing stacks. On the other hand, some organizations are getting the best of both options by switching to extended detection and response (XDR) tools which often provide all these tools in one solution. This is the key takeaway of a new whitepaper by security provider Cynet ( download it here ). NDR tools have become more popular, and for a good reason. They offer organizations a variety of benefits and can help further secure an environment from lateral movement attacks and further infiltration if an initial attack succeeds. NDR tools can detect a wide range of malicious activities and anomalous behaviors.  The question is whether the strengths of an NDR tool outweigh its limitations....

Microsoft has shipped an  emergency out-of-band security update  to address a critical zero-day vulnerability — known as "PrintNightmare" — that affects the Windows Print Spooler service and can permit remote threat actors to run arbitrary code and take over vulnerable systems. Tracked as  CVE-2021-34527  (CVSS score: 8.8), the remote code execution flaw impacts all supported editions of Windows. Last week, the company warned it had detected active exploitation attempts targeting the vulnerability. "The Microsoft Windows Print Spooler service fails to restrict access to functionality that allows users to add printers and related drivers, which can allow a remote authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges on a vulnerable system," the CERT Coordination Center said of the issue. It's worth noting that PrintNightmare includes both remote code execution and a local privilege escalation vector that can be abused in attacks to run com...

Law enforcement authorities with the Interpol have apprehended a threat actor responsible for targeting thousands of unwitting victims over several years and staging malware attacks on telecom companies, major banks, and multinational corporations in France as part of a global phishing and credit card fraud scheme. The two-year investigation, dubbed  Operation Lyrebird  by the international, intergovernmental organization, resulted in the arrest of a Moroccan citizen nicknamed Dr HeX, cybersecurity firm Group-IB disclosed today in a report shared with The Hacker News. Dr HeX is said to have been "active since at least 2009 and is responsible for a number of cybercrimes, including phishing, defacing, malware development, fraud, and carding that resulted in thousands of unsuspecting victims," the Singapore-headquartered company said . The cyber attacks involved deploying a phishing kit consisting of web pages that spoofed banking entities in the country, followed by sendin...

U.S. technology firm Kaseya, which is firefighting the largest ever  supply-chain ransomware strike  on its VSA on-premises product, ruled out the possibility that its codebase was unauthorizedly tampered with to distribute malware. While initial reports raised speculations that REvil, the ransomware gang behind the attack, might have gained access to Kaseya's backend infrastructure and abused it to deploy a malicious update to VSA servers running on client premises, in a modus operandi similar to that of the devastating SolarWinds hack, it has since emerged that a never-before-seen security vulnerability ( CVE-2021-30116 ) in the software was leveraged to push ransomware to Kaseya's customers. "The attackers were able to exploit zero-day vulnerabilities in the VSA product to bypass authentication and run arbitrary command execution," the Miami-headquartered company  noted  in the incident analysis. "This allowed the attackers to leverage the standard VSA pro...

A common misconception among startup founders is that cybercriminals won't waste time on them, because they're not big or well known enough yet. But just because you are small doesn't mean  you're not in the firing line . The size of a startup does not exempt it from cyber-attacks – that's because hackers constantly scan the internet looking for flaws that they can exploit; one slip up, and your business can become front-page news, for the wrong reasons. Fortunately, buyers are also becoming increasingly aware of the importance of cybersecurity and are commonly asking startups about the processes they use to secure their data - meaning cybersecurity is now becoming an important business enabler. So if you're a CTO thinking about ramping up your web or mobile apps' cybersecurity posture, then you are already on the right track, but with so many options, where should you start? To help you get going, we created this guide that covers the following crucial...

Threat actors behind the infamous  TrickBot  malware have been linked to a new ransomware strain named "Diavol," according to the latest research. Diavol and Conti ransomware payloads were deployed on different systems in a case of an unsuccessful attack targeting one of its customers earlier this month, researchers from Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs said last week. TrickBot, a banking Trojan first detected in 2016, has been traditionally a Windows-based crimeware solution, employing different modules to perform a wide range of malicious activities on target networks, including credential theft and conduct ransomware attacks.  Despite efforts by law enforcement to neutralize the bot network, the ever-evolving malware has proven to be a  resilient threat , what with the Russia-based operators — dubbed " Wizard Spider " — quickly adapting new tools to carry out further attacks. Diavol is said to have been deployed in the wild in one incident to date. The sourc...

Microsoft is urging Azure users to  update  the PowerShell command-line tool as soon as possible to protect against a critical remote code execution vulnerability impacting .NET Core. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2021-26701  (CVSS score: 8.1), affects PowerShell versions 7.0 and 7.1 and have been remediated in versions 7.0.6 and 7.1.3, respectively. Windows PowerShell 5.1 isn't impacted by the flaw. Built on the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR),  PowerShell  is a cross-platform task automation utility that consists of a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a configuration management framework. "A remote code execution vulnerability exists in .NET 5 and .NET Core due to how text encoding is performed," the company  noted in an advisory  published earlier this April, adding that the problem resides in the " System.Text.Encodings.Web " package, which provides types for encoding and escaping strings for use in JavaScript, HTML, and URLs....

Amidst the massive  supply-chain ransomware attack  that triggered an infection chain compromising thousands of businesses on Friday, new details have emerged about how the notorious Russia-linked REvil cybercrime gang may have pulled off the unprecedented hack. The Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD) on Sunday  revealed  it had alerted Kaseya to a number of zero-day vulnerabilities in its VSA software (CVE-2021-30116) that it said were being exploited as a conduit to deploy ransomware. The non-profit entity said the company was in the process of resolving the issues as part of a coordinated vulnerability disclosure when the July 2 attacks took place. More specifics about the flaws were not shared, but DIVD chair Victor Gevers  hinted  that the zero-days are trivial to exploit. At least 1,000 businesses are said to have been affected by the attacks, with victims identified in no less than 17 countries, including the U.K., South Africa, Ca...

Google intervened to remove nine Android apps downloaded more than 5.8 million times from the company's Play Store after the apps were caught furtively stealing users' Facebook login credentials. "The applications were fully functional, which was supposed to weaken the vigilance of potential victims. With that, to access all of the apps' functions and, allegedly, to disable in-app ads, users were prompted to log into their Facebook accounts," researchers from Dr. Web  said . "The advertisements inside some of the apps were indeed present, and this maneuver was intended to further encourage Android device owners to perform the required actions." The offending apps masked their malicious intent by disguising as photo-editing, optimizer, fitness, and astrology programs, only to trick victims into logging into their Facebook accounts and hijack the entered credentials via a piece of JavaScript code received from an adversary-controlled server. The list...