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Social engineering attacks leveraging a combination of romantic lures and cryptocurrency fraud have been deceiving unsuspecting victims into installing fake apps by taking advantage of legitimate iOS features like TestFlight and Web Clips. Cybersecurity company Sophos, which has named the organized crime campaign " CryptoRom ," characterized it as a wide-ranging global scam. "This style of cyber-fraud, known as sha zhu pan (杀猪盘) — literally 'pig butchering plate' — is a well-organized, syndicated scam operation that uses a combination of often romance-centered social engineering and fraudulent financial applications and websites to ensnare victims and steal their savings after gaining their confidence," Sophos analyst Jagadeesh Chandraiah  said  in a report published last week. The campaign works by approaching potential targets through dating apps like Bumble, Tinder, Facebook Dating, and Grindr, before moving the conversation to messaging apps such as...

Luxury hotels in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau were the target of a malicious spear-phishing campaign from the second half of November 2021 and through mid-January 2022. Cybersecurity firm Trellix  attributed  the campaign with moderate confidence to a suspected South Korean advanced persistent threat (APT) tracked as DarkHotel, building on research previously published by  Zscaler  in December 2021. Believed to be active since 2007, DarkHotel has a history of striking "senior business executives by uploading malicious code to their computers through infiltrated hotel Wi-Fi networks, as well as through spear-phishing and P2P attacks," Zscaler researchers Sahil Antil and Sudeep Singh said. Prominent sectors targeted include law enforcement, pharmaceuticals, and automotive manufacturers. The attack chains involved distributing email messages directed to individuals in executive roles in the hotel, such as the vice president of human resources,...

A financially motivated threat actor has been observed deploying a previously unknown rootkit targeting Oracle Solaris systems with the goal of compromising Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) switching networks and carrying out unauthorized cash withdrawals at different banks using fraudulent cards. Threat intelligence and incident response firm Mandiant is tracking the cluster under the moniker UNC2891, with some of the group's tactics, techniques, and procedures sharing overlaps with that of another cluster dubbed  UNC1945 . The intrusions staged by the actor involve "a high degree of OPSEC and leverage both public and private malware, utilities, and scripts to remove evidence and hinder response efforts," Mandiant researchers  said  in a new report published this week. Even more concerningly, the attacks spanned several years in some cases, during the entirety of which the actor remained undetected by taking advantage of a rootkit called CAKETAP, whic is designed to c...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

An analysis of two ransomware attacks has  identified overlaps  in the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) between BlackCat and BlackMatter, indicating a strong connection between the two groups. While it's typical of ransomware groups to rebrand their operations in response to increased visibility into their attacks,  BlackCat  (aka Alphv) marks a new frontier in that the cyber crime cartel is built out of affiliates of other ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations. BlackCat first emerged in November 2021 and has since targeted several organizations worldwide over the past few months. It has been called out for being similar to  BlackMatter , a short-lived ransomware family that originated from  DarkSide , which, in turn, attracted notoriety for its high-profile attack on  Colonial Pipeline  in May 2021. In an interview with Recorded Future's The Record last month, a BlackCat representative dismissed speculations that it's a rebrand...

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) took the wraps off a new  initial access broker  that it said is closely affiliated to a Russian cyber crime gang notorious for its Conti and Diavol ransomware operations. Dubbed Exotic Lily, the financially motivated threat actor has been observed exploiting a now-patched critical flaw in the Microsoft Windows MSHTML platform ( CVE-2021-40444 ) as part of widespread phishing campaigns that involved sending no fewer than 5,000 business proposal-themed emails a day to 650 targeted organizations globally. "Initial access brokers are the opportunistic locksmiths of the security world, and it's a full-time job," TAG researchers Vlad Stolyarov and Benoit Sevens  said . "These groups specialize in breaching a target in order to open the doors — or the Windows — to the malicious actor with the highest bid." Exotic Lily, first spotted in September 2021, is said to have been involved in data exfiltration and deployment of the...

ASUS routers have emerged as the target of a nascent botnet called Cyclops Blink , almost a month after it was revealed the malware abused WatchGuard firewall appliances as a stepping stone to gain remote access to breached networks. According to a  new report  published by Trend Micro, the botnet's "main purpose is to build an infrastructure for further attacks on high-value targets," given that none of the infected hosts "belong to critical organizations, or those that have an evident value on economic, political, or military espionage." Intelligence agencies from the U.K. and the U.S. have  characterized  Cyclops Blink as a replacement framework for  VPNFilter , another malware that has exploited network devices, primarily small office/home office (SOHO) routers, and network-attached storage (NAS) devices. Both VPNFilter and Cyclops Blink have been attributed to a Russian state-sponsored actor tracked as Sandworm (aka Voodoo Bear), which has also been li...

In what's an act of deliberate sabotage, the developer behind the popular "node-ipc" NPM package shipped a new tampered version to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, raising concerns about security in the open-source and the  software supply chain . Affecting versions 10.1.1 and 10.1.2 of the library, the alterations introduced by its maintainer RIAEvangelist brought about undesirable behavior by targeting users with IP addresses located either in Russia or Belarus, and wiping arbitrary file contents and replacing them with a heart emoji. Node-ipc is a prominent  node module  used for local and remote inter-process communication ( IPC ) with support for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It has over 1.1 million weekly downloads. "A very clear abuse and a critical supply chain security incident will occur for any system on which this NPM package will be called upon, if that matches a geo-location of either Russia or Belarus," Synk researcher Liran Tal  said  ...

The malware known as DirtyMoe has gained new worm-like propagation capabilities that allow it to expand its reach without requiring any user interaction, the latest research has found. "The worming module targets older well-known vulnerabilities, e.g.,  EternalBlue  and  Hot Potato  Windows privilege escalation," Avast researcher Martin Chlumecký  said  in a report published Wednesday. "One worm module can generate and attack hundreds of thousands of private and public IP addresses per day; many victims are at risk since many machines still use unpatched systems or weak passwords." Active since 2016, the  DirtyMoe botnet  is used for carrying out cryptojacking and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and is deployed by means of external exploit kits like  Purple Fox  or injected installers of Telegram Messenger. Also employed as part of the attack sequence is a DirtyMoe service that triggers the launch of two additional p...

As a CSIRT consultant, I cannot overemphasize the importance of effectively managing the first hour in a critical incident. Finding out what to do is often a daunting task in a critical incident. In addition, the feeling of uneasiness often prevents an incident response analyst from making effective decisions. However, keeping a cool head and actions planned out is crucial in successfully handling a security incident. This blog will elaborate on some key points to help readers facilitate better incident response procedures. Preparation is essential Before taking on any incidents, security analysts would need to know a great deal of information. To start off, incident response analysts need to familiarize themselves with their roles and responsibilities. IT infrastructure has evolved rapidly over the past years. For example, we observed increasing movement to cloud computing and data storage. The fast-changing IT environment frequently requires analysts to update their skill sets, ...

Microsoft on Wednesday detailed a previously undiscovered technique put to use by the TrickBot malware that involves using compromised Internet of Things (IoT) devices as a go-between for establishing communications with the command-and-control (C2) servers. "By using MikroTik routers as proxy servers for its C2 servers and redirecting the traffic through non-standard ports, TrickBot adds another persistence layer that helps malicious IPs evade detection by standard security systems," Microsoft's Defender for IoT Research Team and Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  said . TrickBot, which emerged as a banking trojan in 2016, has evolved into a sophisticated and persistent threat, with its modular architecture enabling it to adapt its tactics to suit different networks, environments, and devices as well as offer access-as-a-service for next-stage payloads like Conti ransomware. The expansion to TrickBot's capabilities comes amid reports of its  infrastructure goin...

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it has detained a "hacker" who offered technical assistance to the invading Russian troops by providing mobile communication services inside the Ukrainian territory. The anonymous suspect is said to have broadcasted text messages to Ukrainian officials, including security officers and civil servants, proposing that they surrender and take the side of Russia. The individual has also been accused of routing phone calls from Russia to the mobile phones of Russian troops in Ukraine. "Up to a thousand calls were made through this hacker in one day. Many of them are from the top leadership of the enemy army," the SBU  alleged , adding it confiscated the equipment that was used to pull off the operation. Besides implicating the hacker for helping Russia make anonymous phone calls to its military forces based in Ukraine, the agency said the hacker passed commands and instructions to different groups of "Russian invaders....

A newly disclosed security vulnerability in the Kubernetes container engine CRI-O called  cr8escape  could be exploited by an attacker to break out of containers and obtain root access to the host. "Invocation of CVE-2022-0811 can allow an attacker to perform a variety of actions on objectives, including execution of malware, exfiltration of data, and lateral movement across pods," CrowdStrike researchers John Walker and Manoj Ahuje  said  in an analysis published this week. A lightweight alternative to Docker,  CRI-O  is a  container runtime  implementation of the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI) that's used to pull container images from registries and launch an Open Container Initiative ( OCI )-compatible runtime such as runC to spawn and run container processes. The vulnerability is rated 8.8 on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system and affects CRI-O versions 1.19 and later. Following responsible disclosure, patches have been r...

A previously undocumented backdoor has been observed targeting Linux systems with the goal of corralling the machines into a botnet and acting as a conduit for downloading and installing rootkits. Qihoo 360's Netlab security team called it  B1txor20  "based on its propagation using the file name 'b1t,' the XOR encryption algorithm, and the RC4 algorithm key length of 20 bytes." First observed propagating through the  Log4j vulnerability  on February 9, 2022, the malware leverages a technique called DNS tunneling to build communication channels with command-and-control (C2) servers by encoding data in DNS queries and responses. B1txor20, while also buggy in some ways, currently supports the ability to obtain a shell, execute arbitrary commands, install a rootkit, open a  SOCKS5 proxy , and functions to upload sensitive information back to the C2 server. Once a machine is successfully compromised, the malware utilizes the DNS tunnel to retrieve and execute ...

The maintainers of OpenSSL have  shipped patches  to resolve a high-severity security flaw in its software library that could lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition when parsing certificates. Tracked as  CVE-2022-0778  (CVSS score: 7.5), the issue stems from parsing a malformed certificate with invalid explicit  elliptic-curve  parameters, resulting in what's called an "infinite loop." The flaw resides in a function called BN_mod_sqrt() that's used to compute the modular square root. "Since certificate parsing happens prior to verification of the certificate signature, any process that parses an externally supplied certificate may thus be subject to a denial-of-service attack," OpenSSL said in an advisory published on March 15, 2022. "The infinite loop can also be reached when parsing crafted private keys as they can contain explicit elliptic-curve parameters." While there is no evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited in the w...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have released a joint advisory warning that Russia-backed threat actors hacked the network of an unnamed non-governmental entity by exploiting a combination of flaws. "As early as May 2021, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors took advantage of a misconfigured account set to default [multi-factor authentication] protocols at a non-governmental organization (NGO), allowing them to enroll a new device for MFA and access the victim network," the agencies  said . "The actors then exploited a critical Windows Print Spooler vulnerability, 'PrintNightmare' ( CVE-2021-34527 ) to run arbitrary code with system privileges." The attack was pulled off by gaining initial access to the victim organization via compromised credentials – obtained by means of a brute-force password guessing attack – and enrolling a new device in the organization's  Duo MFA ....

Researchers have disclosed an unpatched security vulnerability in " dompdf ," a PHP-based HTML to PDF converter, that, if successfully exploited, could lead to remote code execution in certain configurations. "By injecting CSS into the data processed by dompdf, it can be tricked into storing a malicious font with a .php file extension in its font cache, which can later be executed by accessing it from the web," Positive Security researchers Maximilian Kirchmeier and Fabian Bräunlein  said  in a report published today. In other words, the flaw  allows  a malicious party to upload font files with a .php extension to the web server, which can then be activated by using an  XSS vulnerability  to inject HTML into a web page before it's rendered as a PDF. This meant that the attacker could potentially navigate to the uploaded .php script, effectively permitting remote code execution on the server. This can have significant consequences on websites that req...

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky on Tuesday responded to an advisory released by Germany's Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) against using the company's security solutions in the country over "doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer." Calling that the decision was made on "political grounds," the company  said  it will "continue to assure our partners and customers of the quality and integrity of our products, and we will be working with the BSI for clarification on its decision and for the means to address its and other regulators' concerns." The statement from Kaspersky follows a warning from Germany's cybersecurity authority, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik aka BSI, which recommended "replacing applications from Kaspersky's portfolio of antivirus software with alternative products" due to risks that they could be exploited by Russia for a cyber attack. "Companies and...

The end of the year is coming, and it's time for security decision-makers to make plans for 2022 and get management approval. Typically, this entails making a solid case regarding why current resources, while yielding significant value, need to be reallocated and enhanced. The Definitive 2022 Security Plan PPT Template is built to simplify this task, providing security decision-makers with an off-the-shelf tool to clearly and easily present their plans and insights to management. While many security decision-makers have the tools and expertise to build their case technologically, effectively communicating their conclusions to the organization's management is a different challenge. Management doesn't think in terms of malware, identity compromise, or zero-day exploits, but in terms of monetary loss and gain: Would investment A in a security product reduce the likelihood of cyberattack derived downtime? Would outsourcing a certain security functionality to a service p...

Researchers have disclosed seven new security vulnerabilities in an open-source database management system solution called ClickHouse that could be weaponized to crash the servers, leak memory contents, and even lead to the execution of arbitrary code. "The vulnerabilities require authentication, but can be triggered by any user with read permissions," Uriya Yavnieli and Or Peles, researchers from DevSecOps firm JFrog,  said  in a report published Tuesday. "This means the attacker must perform reconnaissance on the specific ClickHouse server target to obtain valid credentials. Any set of credentials would do, since even a user with the lowest privileges can trigger all of the vulnerabilities." The list of seven flaws is below – CVE-2021-43304 and CVE-2021-43305  (CVSS scores: 8.8) – Heap buffer overflow flaws in the LZ4 compression codec that could lead to remote code execution CVE-2021-42387 and CVE-2021-42388  (CVSS scores: 7.1) – Heap out-of-bounds read ...

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) on Tuesday slapped Facebook and WhatsApp owner Meta Platforms a fine of €17 million (~$18.6 million) for a series of security lapses that occurred in violation of the European Union's  GDPR laws  in the region. "The DPC found that Meta Platforms failed to have in place appropriate technical and organizational measures which would enable it to readily demonstrate the security measures that it implemented in practice to protect EU users' data, in the context of the twelve personal data breaches," the watchdog  said  in a press release. The decision follows the regulator's investigation into 12  data   breach   notifications  it received over the course of a six-month period between June 7 and December 4, 2018. "This fine is about record keeping practices from 2018 that we have since updated, not a failure to protect people's information," Meta  said  in a statement shared with the Associated ...