The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed an advanced version of the SolarMarker malware that packs in new improvements with the goal of updating its defense evasion abilities and staying under the radar. "The recent version demonstrated an evolution from Windows Portable Executables (EXE files) to working with Windows installer package files (MSI files)," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers  said  in a report published this month. "This campaign is still in development and going back to using executables files (EXE) as it did in its earlier versions." SolarMarker, also called Jupyter, leverages manipulated search engine optimization (SEO) tactics as its primary infection vector. It's known for its information stealing and backdoor features, enabling the attackers to steal data stored in web browsers and execute arbitrary commands retrieved from a remote server. In February 2022, the operators of SolarMarker were  observed  using stealthy Windows Registry...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new wave of social engineering campaigns delivering IcedID malware and leveraging Zimbra exploits with the goal of stealing sensitive information. Attributing the IcedID phishing attacks to a threat cluster named UAC-0041, the agency  said  the infection sequence begins with an email containing a Microsoft Excel document (Мобілізаційний реєстр.xls or Mobilization Register.xls) that, when opened, prompts the users to enable macros, leading to the deployment of IcedID. The  information-stealing malware , also known as BokBot, has followed a similar trajectory to that of TrickBot, Emotet, and ZLoader, evolving from its earlier roots as a banking trojan to a full-fledged crimeware service that facilities the retrieval of next-stage implants such as ransomware. The  second set of targeted intrusions  relate to a new threat group dubbed UAC-0097, with the email including a number of image ...

Elementor, a WordPress website builder plugin with over five million active installations, has been found to be vulnerable to an authenticated remote code execution flaw that could be abused to take over affected websites. Plugin Vulnerabilities, which  disclosed  the flaw last week, said the bug was introduced in version 3.6.0 that was released on March 22, 2022. Roughly  37% of users  of the plugin are on version 3.6.x. "That means that malicious code provided by the attacker can be run by the website," the researchers said. "In this instance, it is possible that the vulnerability might be exploitable by someone not logged in to WordPress, but it can easily be exploited by anyone logged in to WordPress who has access to the WordPress admin dashboard." In a nutshell, the issue relates to a case of arbitrary file upload to affected websites, potentially leading to code execution. The bug has been addressed in the latest version of Elementor, with Patchstack...

The U.S. Treasury Department has implicated the North Korea-backed Lazarus Group (aka Hidden Cobra) in the theft of $540 million from video game Axie Infinity's Ronin Network last month. On Thursday, the Treasury  tied  the Ethereum  wallet address  that received the stolen digital currency to the threat actor and sanctioned the funds by adding the address to the Office of Foreign Assets Control's (OFAC) Specially Designated Nationals ( SDN ) List. "The FBI, in coordination with Treasury and other U.S. government partners, will continue to expose and combat the DPRK's use of illicit activities – including cybercrime and cryptocurrency theft – to generate revenue for the regime," the intelligence and law enforcement agency  said  in a statement. The cryptocurrency heist, the second-largest cyber-enabled theft to date, involved the siphoning of 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coins from the Ronin cross-chain bridge, which allows users to transfe...

Java  is a very versatile programming language. From Android apps to Oracle databases, it can be used to power a wide range of software and systems. As with most  technical skills , the best way to learn Java is through building your own projects. But you can definitely speed things up with high-quality training. The Complete 2022 Java Coder Bundle  provides plenty of that — nine full-length video courses, in fact. The training comes from top-rated instructors, and you get plenty of hands-on projects to try. The included training is worth $1,791. But in a special deal for loyal readers of The Hacker News, you can pick up the bundle for just $39.99.  Special Offer — For a limited time, you can get unlimited lifetime access to over 60 hours of Java training for  just $39.99 . That’s an unmissable deal! According to Indeed, the average salary for a Java developer in the US is around $115,000 a year. But even if you don’t plan on becoming a specialist, learning...

Cloud-based repository hosting service GitHub on Friday revealed that it discovered evidence of an unnamed adversary capitalizing on stolen OAuth user tokens to unauthorizedly download private data from several organizations. "An attacker abused stolen OAuth user tokens issued to two third-party OAuth integrators, Heroku and Travis CI, to download data from dozens of organizations, including NPM," GitHub's Mike Hanley  disclosed  in a report. OAuth access tokens are often  used  by apps and services to authorize access to specific parts of a user's data and communicate with each other without having to share the actual credentials. It's one of the most common methods used to pass authorization from a single sign-on ( SSO ) service to another application. As of April 15, 2022, the list of affected OAuth applications is as follows - Heroku Dashboard (ID: 145909) Heroku Dashboard (ID: 628778) Heroku Dashboard – Preview (ID: 313468) Heroku Dashboard – Classi...

As many as five security vulnerabilities have been addressed in Aethon Tug hospital robots that could enable remote attackers to seize control of the devices and interfere with the timely distribution of medication and lab samples. "Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could cause a denial-of-service condition, allow full control of robot functions, or expose sensitive information," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)  said  in an advisory published this week. Aethon TUG smart autonomous mobile robots are used in hospitals around the world to deliver medication, transport clinical supplies, and independently navigate around to perform different tasks such as cleaning floors and collecting meal trays. Collectively dubbed " JekyllBot:5 " by Cynerio, the flaws reside in the TUG Homebase Server component, effectively allowing attackers to impede the delivery of medications, surveil patients, staff, and hospital interiors thr...

A crimeware-related threat actor known as Haskers Gang has released an  information-stealing malware  called ZingoStealer for free on, allowing other criminal groups to leverage the tool for nefarious purposes. "It features the ability to steal sensitive information from victims and can download additional malware to infected systems," Cisco Talos researchers Edmund Brumaghin and Vanja Svajcer  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "In many cases, this includes the  RedLine Stealer  and an XMRig-based cryptocurrency mining malware that is internally referred to as 'ZingoMiner.'" But in an interesting twist, the criminal group announced on Thursday that the ownership of the ZingoStealer project is changing hands to a new threat actor, in addition to offering to sell the source code for a negotiable price of $500. Since its inception last month, ZingoStealer is said to be undergoing consistent development and deployed specifically against Russ...

Cisco has released patches to contain a critical security vulnerability affecting the Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) that could be abused by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to take control of an affected system. Tracked as  CVE-2022-20695 , the issue has been rated 10 out of 10 for severity and enables an adversary to bypass authentication controls and log in to the device through the management interface of WLC. "This vulnerability is due to the improper implementation of the password validation algorithm," the company said in an advisory. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by logging in to an affected device with crafted credentials." Successful exploitation of the flaw could permit an attacker to gain administrator privileges and carry out malicious actions in a manner that allows a complete takeover of the vulnerable system. The company stressed that the issue only affects the following products if running Cisco WLC Software Release 8.10.151....

With the ongoing conflict in Eurasia, cyberwarfare is inevitably making its presence felt. The fight is not only being fought on the fields. There is also a big battle happening in cyberspace. Several cyber-attacks have been reported over the past months. Notably, cyber attacks backed by state actors are becoming prominent. There have been reports of a rise of ransomware and other malware attacks such as  Cyclops Blink ,  HermeticWiper , and  BlackCat . These target businesses as well as government institutions and nonprofit organizations. There have been cases of several attempts to shut down online communications and IT infrastructure. The ongoing list of  significant cyber incidents  curated by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows that the number of major incidents in January 2022 is 100% higher compared to the same period in the previous year. With the recent activities in cyberspace impacted by the emergence of the geopolitical...

Cloud computing and virtualization technology firm VMWare on Thursday rolled out an update to resolve a critical security flaw in its Cloud Director product that could be weaponized to launch remote code execution attacks. The issue, assigned the identifier  CVE-2022-22966 , has a CVSS score of 9.1 out of a maximum of 10. VMware credited security researcher Jari Jääskelä with reporting the flaw. "An authenticated, high privileged malicious actor with network access to the VMware Cloud Director tenant or provider may be able to exploit a remote code execution vulnerability to gain access to the server," VMware  said  in an advisory. VMware Cloud Director, formerly known as vCloud Director, is used by many well-known cloud providers to operate and manage their cloud infrastructures and gain visibility into datacenters across sites and geographies. The vulnerability could, in other words, end up allowing attackers to gain access to sensitive data and take over private ...

Google on Thursday shipped emergency patches to address two security issues in its Chrome web browser, one of which it says is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2022-1364 , the tech giant described the high-severity bug as a case of type confusion in the V8 JavaScript engine. Clément Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group has been credited with reporting the flaw on April 13, 2022. As is typically the case with actively exploited zero-day flaws, the company acknowledged it's "aware that an exploit for CVE-2022-1364 exists in the wild." Additional details about the flaw and the identity of the threat actors have been withheld to prevent further abuse. With the latest fix, Google has patched a total of three zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome since the start of the year. It's also the second type confusion-related bug in V8 to be squashed in less than a month - CVE-2022-0609  - Use-after-free in Animation CVE-2022-1096  - Type confusio...

A U.S. court has sentenced former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith to five years and three months in prison and pay a $100,000 fine for conspiring with North Korea to help use cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions imposed on the country. "There is no question North Korea poses a national security threat to our nation, and the regime has shown time and again it will stop at nothing to ignore our laws for its own benefit," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams  said  in a statement. The sentencing comes more than six months after Griffith  pleaded guilty  to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act ( IEEPA ) by offering technical advice to the hermit kingdom with regards to the use of digital currency to bypass economic restrictions. Griffith was arrested in November 2019. North Korea is known to  rely on   cryptocurrency heists  to get around international sanctions and use it to help fund programs to build weapons of mass destructio...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a now-fixed security flaw in the Rarible non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that, if successfully exploited, could have led to account takeover and theft of cryptocurrency assets. "By luring victims to click on a malicious NFT, an attacker can take full control of the victim's crypto wallet to steal funds," Check Point researchers Roman Zaikin, Dikla Barda, and Oded Vanunu  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Rarible, an NFT marketplace that enables users to create, buy, and sell digital NFT art like photographs, games, and memes, has over 2.1 million active users. "There is still a huge gap between, in terms of security, between Web2 and Web3 infrastructure," Vanunu, head of products vulnerabilities research at Check Point, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "Any small vulnerability can possibly allow cyber criminals to hijack crypto wallets behind the scenes. We are still in a state...

A threat group that pursues crypto mining and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks has been linked to a new botnet called Enemybot, which has been discovered enslaving routers and Internet of Things (IoT) devices since last month. "This botnet is mainly derived from  Gafgyt 's source code but has been observed to borrow several modules from  Mirai 's original source code," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs  said  in a report this week. The botnet has been attributed to an actor named Keksec (aka  Kek Security , Necro, and  FreakOut ), which has been linked to multiple botnets such as  Simps ,  Ryuk  (not to be confused with the ransomware of the same name), and  Samael , and has a history of targeting cloud infrastructure to carry out crypto mining and DDoS operations. Primarily targeting routers from Seowon Intech, D-Link, and iRZ to propagate its infections and grow in volume, an analysis of the malware specimen has highlighted En...

Microsoft and a consortium of cybersecurity companies took legal and technical steps to disrupt the ZLoader botnet , seizing control of 65 domains that were used to control and communicate with the infected hosts. "ZLoader is made up of computing devices in businesses, hospitals, schools, and homes around the world and is run by a global internet-based organized crime gang operating malware as a service that is designed to steal and extort money," Amy Hogan-Burney, general manager of Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU),  said . The operation, Microsoft said, was undertaken in collaboration with ESET, Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, Avast, Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), and Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (H-ISAC). As a result of the disruption, the domains are now redirected to a sinkhole, effectively preventing the botnet's criminal operators from contacting the compromised devices....

The U.S. government on Wednesday warned of nation-state actors deploying specialized malware to maintain access to industrial control systems (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices. "The APT actors have developed custom-made tools for targeting ICS/SCADA devices," multiple U.S. agencies  said  in an alert. "The tools enable them to scan for, compromise, and control affected devices once they have established initial access to the operational technology (OT) network." The joint federal advisory comes courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The custom-made tools are specifically designed to single out Schneider Electric programmable logic controllers (PLCs), OMRON Sysmac NEX PLCs, and Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers. On top of that, the unnamed actors...

A week after VMware released patches to remediate eight security vulnerabilities in VMware Workspace ONE Access, threat actors have begun to actively exploit one of the critical flaws in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2022-22954 , the security shortcoming relates to a remote code execution vulnerability that stems from server-side template injection in VMware Workspace ONE Access and Identity Manager. The bug is rated 9.8 in severity. "A malicious actor with network access can trigger a server-side  template injection  that may result in remote code execution," the company  noted  in its advisory. The virtualization services provider has since revised its bulletin to warn customers of confirmed exploitation of CVE-2022-22954 occurring in the wild. Cybersecurity firm Bad Packets also  corroborated  that it detected attempts to weaponize the vulnerability. Source:  Bad Packets It's worth noting that the patches shipped last week address seven...

Extended detection and response (XDR) is expected to be the future of cybersecurity, merging security technologies with the evolving approach to the way we do cybersecurity. And while many organizations are scrambling to integrate XDR into their cybersecurity strategies – even more are still trying to figure out what XDR really is and if it’s even the right solution for their organization.  But there are some organizations that are getting lost in the debate and are wondering if there is a place for them in this new frontier of cybersecurity: organizations with lean security teams and limited resources.  Fortunately, Cynet, a cybersecurity company, is hosting an upcoming webinar in partnership with Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) that will explore how choosing the right XDR can be impactful for companies lean security teams [ register here ]. During the webinar, Jon Oltsik, Senior Principal Analyst with ESG, and George Tubin, Director of Product Strategy at Cynet, will cove...

The Chinese-backed Hafnium hacking group has been linked to a piece of a new malware that's used to maintain persistence on compromised Windows environments. The threat actor is said to have targeted entities in the telecommunication, internet service provider and data services sectors from August 2021 to February 2022, expanding from the initial victimology patterns observed during its attacks exploiting the then zero-day flaws in  Microsoft Exchange Servers  in March 2021. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), which dubbed the defense evasion malware " Tarrask ," characterized it as a tool that creates "hidden" scheduled tasks on the system. "Scheduled task abuse is a very common method of persistence and defense evasion — and an enticing one, at that," the researchers  said . Hafnium, while most notable for Exchange Server attacks, has since leveraged unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities as initial vectors to drop web shells and other mal...