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It is a time when many are thinking of their families and loved ones, time off work, and gift-giving – the holidays. However, while many have their minds outside the realm of work during the holiday season, often, this is when attackers plan their most sinister attacks.  So how can you take precautions to protect your organization during these times? Why holidays put your company at risk of cyberattack Attackers today do not have a soft spot for businesses and give companies a break at any time of the year, especially not during holidays. On the contrary, any time of the year where companies may be less prepared to fend off a cyberattack is an opportunity for successful compromise. As a result, the holidays put your company at a higher risk of cyberattack.  Most end-users do not think about cybersecurity when surfing the web or receiving emails with holiday deals during the season. As a result, many let their guard down to a certain degree and become preoccupied and dis...

At least 17 malware-laced packages have been discovered on the NPM package Registry, adding to a  recent barrage of malicious software  hosted and delivered through open-source software repositories such as PyPi and RubyGems. DevOps firm JFrog said the libraries, now taken down, were designed to grab Discord access tokens and  environment variables  from users' computers as well as gain full control over a victim's system. "The packages' payloads are varied, ranging from infostealers up to full remote access backdoors," researchers Andrey Polkovnychenko and Shachar Menashe said in a  report  published Wednesday. "Additionally, the packages have different infection tactics, including typosquatting,  dependency confusion  and trojan functionality." The list of packages is below - prerequests-xcode (version 1.0.4) discord-selfbot-v14 (version 12.0.3) discord-lofy (version 11.5.1) discordsystem (version 11.5.1) discord-vilao (version 1.0.0)...

Network security vendor SonicWall is  urging  customers to update their SMA 100 series appliances to the latest version following the discovery of multiple security vulnerabilities that could be abused by a remote attacker to take complete control of an affected system. The flaws impact SMA 200, 210, 400, 410, and 500v products running versions 9.0.0.11-31sv and earlier, 10.2.0.8-37sv, 10.2.1.1-19sv, 10.2.1.2-24sv and earlier. The San Jose-based company credited security researchers Jake Baines (Rapid7) and Richard Warren (NCC Group) for discovering and reporting the shortcomings. The list of  eight security vulnerabilities  identified in its remote access products is as follows - CVE-2021-20038  (CVSS score: 9.8) - SMA100 Series unauthenticated stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability CVE-2021-20039  (CVSS score: 7.2) - SMA 100 Series authenticated command injection vulnerability as root CVE-2021-20040  (CVSS score: 6.5) - SMA 100 Series unau...

Google on Tuesday said it took steps to disrupt the operations of a sophisticated "multi-component" botnet called Glupteba that approximately infected more than one million Windows computers across the globe and stored its command-and-control server addresses on Bitcoin's blockchain as a resilience mechanism. As part of the efforts, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said it partnered with the CyberCrime Investigation Group over the past year to terminate around 63 million Google Docs that were observed to have distributed the malware, alongside 1,183 Google Accounts, 908 Cloud Projects, and 870 Google Ads accounts that were associated with its distribution. Google TAG further said it worked with internet infrastructure providers and hosting providers, such as Cloudflare, to dismantle the malware by taking down servers and placing interstitial warning pages in front of the malicious domains. In tandem, the internet giant also announced a lawsuit against two Russ...

The operators of TrickBot malware have infected an estimated 140,000 victims across 149 countries a little over a year after attempts were to dismantle its infrastructure, even as the advanced Trojan is fast becoming an entry point for Emotet, another botnet that was taken down at the start of 2021. Most of the victims detected since November 1, 2020, are from Portugal (18%), the U.S. (14%), and India (5%), followed by Brazil (4%), Turkey (3%), Russia (3%), and China (3%), Check Point Research noted in a report shared with The Hacker News, with government, finance, and manufacturing entities emerging the top affected industry verticals. "Emotet is a strong indicator of future ransomware attacks, as the malware provides ransomware gangs a backdoor into compromised machines," said the researchers, who detected 223 different Trickbot campaigns over the course of the last six months. Both TrickBot and Emotet are botnets, which are a network of internet-connected devices infe...

If there is one thing the past few years have taught the world, it's that cybercrime never sleeps. For organizations of any size and scope, having around-the-clock protection for their endpoints, networks, and servers is no longer optional, but it's also not entirely feasible for many. Attackers are better than ever at slipping in undetected, and threats are constantly evolving.  Teams can't afford to take a minute off, but they also can't manage the massive security necessary to defend most organizations. A new eBook by XDR provider Cynet ( download here ) breaks down this challenge and offers some solutions for lean security teams looking for ways to improve their detection and response capabilities.  The guide strikes an optimistic tone for lean IT security teams. Though the challenges are expansive – including talent shortages, an ever-expanding threat surface, and rising security tool prices – organizations can still find smart and ...

Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker QNAP on Tuesday released a new advisory warning of a cryptocurrency mining malware targeting its devices, urging customers to take preventive steps with immediate effect. "A bitcoin miner has been reported to target QNAP NAS. Once a NAS is infected, CPU usage becomes unusually high where a process named '[oom_reaper]' could occupy around 50% of the total CPU usage," the Taiwanese company  said  in an alert. "This process mimics a kernel process but its [process identifier] is usually greater than 1000." QNAP said it's currently investigating the infections, but did not share more information on the initial access vector that's being used to compromise the NAS devices. Affected users can remove the malware by restarting the appliances. In the interim, the company is recommending that users update their QTS (and QuTS Hero) operating systems to the latest version, enforce strong passwords for administr...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in a third-party driver software developed by Eltima that have been "unwittingly inherited" by cloud desktop solutions like Amazon Workspaces, Accops, and NoMachine and could provide attackers a path to perform an array of malicious activities. "These vulnerabilities allow attackers to escalate privileges enabling them to disable security products, overwrite system components, corrupt the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded," SentinelOne Senior Security Researcher, Kasif Dekel, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The 27 flaws have since been addressed in Amazon Nimble Studio AMI, Amazon NICE DCV, Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon AppStream, NoMachine, Accops HyWorks, Accops HyWorks DVM Tools, Eltima USB Network Gate, Amzetta zPortal Windows zClient, Amzetta zPortal DVM Tools, FlexiHub, and Donglify. At its core, the issues reside in a product developed by Eltima that of...

Nobelium, the threat actor attributed to the massive SolarWinds supply chain compromise, has been once again linked to a series of attacks targeting multiple cloud solution providers, services, and reseller companies, as the hacking group continues to refine and retool its tactics at an alarming pace in response to public disclosures. The intrusions, which are being tracked by Mandiant under two different activity clusters UNC3004 and UNC2652, are both associated with UNC2452, an  uncategorized threat group  that has since been tied to the Russian intelligence service. UNC2652, in particular, has been observed targeting diplomatic entities with phishing emails containing HTML attachments with malicious JavaScript, ultimately dropping a Cobalt Strike Beacon onto the infected devices. "In most instances, post compromise activity included theft of data relevant to Russian interests," Mandiant researchers Luke Jenkins, Sarah Hawley, Parnian Najafi, and Doug Bienstock  said...

Microsoft on Monday announced the seizure of 42 domains used by a China-based cyber espionage group that set its sights on organizations in the U.S. and 28 other countries pursuant to a legal warrant issued by a federal court in the U.S. state of Virginia. The Redmond company attributed the malicious activities to a group it pursues as Nickel , and by the wider cybersecurity industry under the monikers APT15, Bronze Palace, Ke3Chang, Mirage, Playful Dragon, and Vixen Panda. The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor is believed to have been active since at least 2012. "Nickel has targeted organizations in both the private and public sectors, including diplomatic organizations and ministries of foreign affairs in North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa," Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for Customer Security and Trust, Tom Burt, said . "There is often a correlation between Nickel's targets and China's geopolitical int...

Mozilla is beginning to roll out Firefox 95 with a new sandboxing technology called RLBox that prevents untrusted code and other security vulnerabilities from causing "accidental defects as well as supply-chain attacks." Dubbed " RLBox " and implemented in collaboration with researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas, the improved protection mechanism is designed to harden the web browser against potential weaknesses in off-the-shelf libraries used to render audio, video, fonts, images, and other content. To that end, Mozilla is incorporating "fine-grained sandboxing" into five modules, including its  Graphite  font rendering engine,  Hunspell  spell checker,  Ogg  multimedia container format,  Expat  XML parser, and  Woff2  web font compression format. The framework uses  WebAssembly , an open standard that defines a portable binary-code format for executable programs that can be run on m...

Users looking to activate Windows without using a digital license or a product key are being targeted by tainted installers to deploy malware designed to plunder credentials and other information in cryptocurrency wallets. The malware, dubbed " CryptBot ," is an information stealer capable of obtaining credentials for browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, browser cookies, credit cards, and capturing screenshots from the infected systems. Deployed via cracked software, the latest attack involves the malware masquerading as KMSPico. KMSPico is an unofficial tool that's used to illicitly  activate  the full features of pirated copies of software such as Microsoft Windows and Office suite without actually owning a license key. "The user becomes infected by clicking one of the malicious links and downloading either KMSPico, Cryptbot, or another malware without KMSPico," Red Canary researcher Tony Lambert  said  in a report published last week. "The adversaries...

So you've decided to set up a vulnerability scanning programme, great. That's one of the best ways to avoid data breaches. How often you should run your scans, though, isn't such a simple question. The answers aren't the same for every type of organization or every type of system you're scanning. This guide will help you understand the questions you should be asking and help you come up with the answers that are right for you. How often should vulnerability scans be run A lot of the advice below depends on what exactly you're scanning. If you're not sure about that yet - check out this comprehensive  vulnerability scanning guide . Once you've decided which systems should be in scope, and what type of scanner you need, you're ready to start scanning. So how often should you ideally be running vulnerability scans? Here are five strategies to consider, and we'll discuss in which scenarios they work best: Change-based Hygiene-based Complian...

Cryptocurrency trading platform BitMart has disclosed a "large-scale security breach" that it blamed on a stolen private key, resulting in the theft of more than $150 million in various cryptocurrencies. The breach is said to have impacted two of its hot wallets on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain and the Binance smart chain (BSC). The company  noted  that the wallets carried only a "small percentage" of the assets." Hot wallets, as opposed to their cold counterparts, are connected to the internet and allow cryptocurrency owners to receive and send tokens. Blockchain security and data analytics company PeckShield  estimated  the total loss to be around $200 million, calling the whole chain of events as "Pretty straightforward: transfer-out, swap, and wash." "This security breach was mainly caused by a stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised," BitMart's chief executive Sheldon Xia  said  in a series of tweets sent...

Researchers have discovered 14 new types of cross-site data leakage attacks against a number of modern web browsers, including Tor Browser, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, and Opera, among others. Collectively known as "XS-Leaks," the browser bugs enable a malicious website to harvest personal data from its visitors as they interact with other websites in the background without the targets' knowledge. The  findings  are the result of a comprehensive study of cross-site attacks undertaken by a group of academics from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and Niederrhein University. "XS-Leaks bypass the so-called  same-origin policy , one of a browser's main defences against various types of attacks," the researchers  said  in a statement. "The purpose of the same-origin policy is to prevent information from being stolen from a trusted website. In the case of XS-Leaks, attackers can nevertheless recognize individual, small details...