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Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed a set of two privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the Linux operating system that could potentially allow threat actors to carry out an array of nefarious activities. Collectively called " Nimbuspwn ," the flaws "can be chained together to gain root privileges on Linux systems, allowing attackers to deploy payloads, like a root backdoor, and perform other malicious actions via arbitrary root code execution," Jonathan Bar Or of the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  said  in a report. On top of that, the defects — tracked as  CVE-2022-29799 and CVE-2022-29800  — could also be weaponized as a vector for root access to deploy more sophisticated threats such as ransomware. The vulnerabilities are rooted in a  systemd  component called  networkd-dispatcher , a  daemon program  for the network manager system service that's designed to dispatch network status changes. Specifically, they relate to a combina...

The threat actor behind the prolific Emotet botnet is testing new attack methods on a small scale before co-opting them into their larger volume malspam campaigns, potentially in response to Microsoft's move to disable Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default across its products. Calling the new activity a "departure" from the group's typical behavior, Proofpoint alternatively  raised the possibility  that the latest set of phishing emails distributing the malware show that the operators are now "engaged in more selective and limited attacks in parallel to the typical massive scale email campaigns." Emotet, the handiwork of a cybercrime group tracked as  TA542  (aka Mummy Spider or  Gold Crestwood ), staged a  revival of sorts  late last year after a 10-month-long hiatus following a coordinated law enforcement operation to take down its attack infrastructure. Since then, Emotet  campaigns  have targeted thousands of custome...

The infamous ransomware group known as Conti has  continued  its onslaught against entities despite suffering a massive data leak of its own earlier this year, according to new research. Conti, attributed to a Russia-based threat actor known as Gold Ulrick , is the second most prevalent malware strain in the ransomware landscape, accounting for  19% of all attacks  during the three-month-period between October and December 2021. One of the most prolific ransomware groups of the last year along the likes of LockBit 2.0, PYSA, and Hive, Conti has locked the networks of hospitals, businesses, and government agencies, while receiving a ransom payment in exchange for sharing the decryption key as part of its name-and-shame scheme. But after the cybercriminal cartel came out in support of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine in February, an anonymous Ukrainian security researcher under the Twitter handle  ContiLeaks  began leaking the source code as well as pr...

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...

A state-backed threat actor with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DRPK) has been attributed to a spear-phishing campaign targeting journalists covering the country with the ultimate goal of deploying a backdoor on infected Windows systems. The intrusions, said to be the work of Ricochet Chollima, resulted in the deployment of a novel malware strain called GOLDBACKDOOR, an artifact that shares technical overlaps with another malware named BLUELIGHT, which has been previously linked to the group. "Journalists are high-value targets for hostile governments," cybersecurity firm Stairwell  said  in a report published last week. "Compromising a journalist can provide access to highly-sensitive information and enable additional attacks against their sources." Ricochet Chollima, also known as  APT37 , InkySquid, and ScarCruft, is a North Korean-nexus targeted intrusion adversary that has been involved in espionage attacks since at least 2016. The ...

An Iranian-linked threat actor known as  Rocket Kitten  has been observed actively exploiting a recently patched VMware vulnerability to gain initial access and deploy the Core Impact penetration testing tool on vulnerable systems. Tracked as  CVE-2022-22954  (CVSS score: 9.8), the critical issue concerns a case of remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability affecting VMware Workspace ONE Access and Identity Manager. While the issue was patched by the virtualization services provider on April 6, 2022, the company  cautioned users  of confirmed exploitation of the flaw occurring in the wild a week later. "A malicious actor exploiting this RCE vulnerability potentially gains an unlimited attack surface," researchers from Morphisec Labs  said  in a new report. "This means highest privileged access into any components of the virtualized host and guest environment." Attack chains exploiting the flaw involve the distribution of a PowerShell-based s...

Security researchers have disclosed a security issue that could have allowed attackers to weaponize the VirusTotal platform as a conduit to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on unpatched third-party sandboxing machines employed antivirus engines. The flaw, now patched, made it possible to "execute commands remotely within [through] VirusTotal platform and gain access to its various scans capabilities," Cysource researchers Shai Alfasi and Marlon Fabiano da Silva said in a report exclusively shared with The Hacker News. VirusTotal , part of Google's Chronicle security subsidiary, is a malware-scanning service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs and checks for viruses using more than 70 third-party antivirus products. The attack method involved uploading a DjVu file via the platform's web user interface that when passed to multiple third-party malware scanning engines could trigger an exploit for a high-severity remote code execution flaw in ExifTool , an op...

A security vulnerability has been disclosed in the web version of the Ever Surf wallet that, if successfully weaponized, could allow an attacker to gain full control over a victim's wallet. "By exploiting the vulnerability, it's possible to decrypt the private keys and seed phrases that are stored in the browser's local storage," Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "In other words, attackers could gain full control over the victim's wallets." Ever Surf  is a cryptocurrency wallet for the Everscale (formerly FreeTON) blockchain that also doubles up as a cross-platform messenger and allows users to access decentralized apps as well as send and receive non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It's said to have an  estimated  669,700 accounts across the world. By means of different attack vectors like malicious browser extensions or phishing links, the flaw makes it possible to obtain a wallet's encr...

A new variant of an IoT botnet called BotenaGo has emerged in the wild, specifically singling out Lilin security camera DVR devices to infect them with Mirai malware. Dubbed " Lilin Scanner " by Nozomi Networks, the  latest version  is designed to exploit a two-year-old critical  command injection vulnerability  in the DVR firmware that was patched by the Taiwanese company in February 2020. BotenaGo , first documented in November 2021 by AT&T Alien Labs, is written in Golang and features over 30 exploits for known vulnerabilities in web servers, routers and other kinds of IoT devices. The botnet's source code has since been uploaded to GitHub, making it ripe for abuse by other criminal actors. "With only 2,891 lines of code, BotenaGo has the potential to be the starting point for many new variants and new malware families using its source code," the researchers  said  this year. The new BotenaGo malware is the  latest  to exploit vulnera...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is sounding the alarm on the BlackCat ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), which it said victimized at least 60 entities worldwide between as of March 2022 since its emergence last November. Also called ALPHV and  Noberus , the malware is notable for being the first-ever ransomware written in the Rust programming language, which is known to be memory safe and offer improved performance. "Many of the developers and money launderers for BlackCat/ALPHV are linked to  DarkSide / BlackMatter , indicating they have extensive networks and experience with ransomware operations," the FBI said in an  advisory  published last week. The disclosure comes weeks after twin reports from  Cisco Talos  and  Kasperksy  uncovered links between BlackCat and BlackMatter ransomware families, including the use of a modified version of a data exfiltration tool dubbed Fendr that's been previously only observed in BlackMatter-r...

Telecom company T-Mobile on Friday confirmed that it was the victim of a security breach in March after the LAPSUS$ mercenary gang managed to gain access to its networks. The acknowledgment came after investigative journalist Brian Krebs  shared  internal chats belonging to the core members of the group indicating that LAPSUS$ breached the company several times in March  prior to the arrest  of its seven members. T-Mobile, in a statement, said that the incident occurred "several weeks ago, with the "bad actor" using stolen credentials to access internal systems. "The systems accessed contained no customer or government information or other similarly sensitive information, and we have no evidence that the intruder was able to obtain anything of value," it added. The VPN credentials for initial access are said to have been obtained from illicit websites like Russian Market with the goal of gaining control of T-Mobile employee accounts, ultimately allowing ...

Atlassian has published a security advisory warning of a critical vulnerability in its Jira software that could be abused by a remote, unauthenticated attacker to circumvent authentication protections. Tracked as  CVE-2022-0540 , the flaw is rated 9.9 out of 10 on the CVSS scoring system and resides in Jira's authentication framework, Jira Seraph. Khoadha of Viettel Cyber Security has been credited with discovering and reporting the security weakness. "A remote, unauthenticated attacker could exploit this by sending a specially crafted HTTP request to bypass authentication and authorization requirements in WebWork actions using an affected configuration," Atlassian  noted . The flaw affects the following Jira products - Jira Core Server, Jira Software Server and Jira Software Data Center: All versions before 8.13.18, 8.14.x, 8.15.x, 8.16.x, 8.17.x, 8.18.x, 8.19.x, 8.20.x before 8.20.6, and 8.21.x Jira Service Management Server and Jira Service Management Data Cent...

A proof-of-concept (PoC) code demonstrating a newly disclosed digital signature bypass vulnerability in Java has been shared online.  The  high-severity flaw  in question,  CVE-2022-21449  (CVSS score: 7.5), impacts the following versions of Java SE and Oracle GraalVM Enterprise Edition - Oracle Java SE: 7u331, 8u321, 11.0.14, 17.0.2, 18 Oracle GraalVM Enterprise Edition: 20.3.5, 21.3.1, 22.0.0.2 The issue resides in Java's implementation of the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm ( ECDSA ), a  cryptographic mechanism  to  digitally sign  messages and data for verifying the authenticity and the integrity of the contents. In a nutshell, the cryptographic blunder — dubbed Psychic Signatures in Java — makes it possible to present a totally blank signature, which would still be perceived as valid by the vulnerable implementation. Successful exploitation of the flaw could permit an attacker to forge signatures and bypass authenti...

LemonDuck, a cross-platform cryptocurrency mining botnet, is targeting Docker to mine cryptocurrency on Linux systems as part of an active malware campaign. "It runs an anonymous mining operation by the use of proxy pools, which hide the wallet addresses," CrowdStrike  said  in a new report. "It evades detection by targeting Alibaba Cloud's monitoring service and disabling it." Known to strike both Windows and Linux environments, LemonDuck is primarily engineered for abusing the system resources to mine Monero. But it's also capable of credential theft, lateral movement, and facilitating the deployment of additional payloads for follow-on activities. "It uses a wide range of spreading mechanisms — phishing emails, exploits, USB devices, brute force, among others — and it has shown that it can quickly take advantage of news, events, or the release of new exploits to run effective campaigns," Microsoft  detailed  in a technical write-up of the ma...

Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker QNAP on Thursday said it's investigating its lineup for potential impact arising from two security vulnerabilities that were addressed in the Apache HTTP server last month. The critical flaws, tracked as  CVE-2022-22721 and CVE-2022-23943 , are rated 9.8 for severity on the CVSS scoring system and impact Apache HTTP Server versions 2.4.52 and earlier - CVE-2022-22721  - Possible buffer overflow with very large or unlimited LimitXMLRequestBody CVE-2022-23943  - Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability in mod_sed of Apache HTTP Server Both the vulnerabilities, alongside CVE-2022-22719 and CVE-2022-22720, were remediated by the project maintainers as part of  version 2.4.53 , which was shipped on March 14, 2022. "While CVE-2022-22719 and CVE-2022-22720 do not affect QNAP products, CVE-2022-22721 affects 32-bit QNAP NAS models, and CVE-2022-23943 affects users who have enabled mod_sed in Apache HTTP Server on their QNAP de...

Networking equipment maker Cisco has released security updates to address three high-severity vulnerabilities in its products that could be exploited to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition and take control of affected systems. The first of the three flaws,  CVE-2022-20783  (CVSS score: 7.5), affects Cisco TelePresence Collaboration Endpoint (CE) Software and Cisco RoomOS Software, and stems from a lack of proper input validation, allowing an unauthenticated, remote attacker to send specially crafted traffic to the devices. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the affected device to either reboot normally or reboot into maintenance mode, which could result in a DoS condition on the device," the company  noted  in an advisory. Credited with discovering and reporting the flaw is the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The issue has been addressed in Cisco TelePresence CE Software versions 9.15.10.8 and 10.11.2.2. CVE-2022-20773  (CVS...

A new set of phishing attacks delivering the more_eggs malware has been observed striking corporate hiring managers with bogus resumes as an infection vector, a year after potential candidates looking for work on LinkedIn were lured with weaponized job offers . "This year the more_eggs operation has flipped the social engineering script, targeting hiring managers with fake resumes instead of targeting jobseekers with fake job offers," eSentire's research and reporting lead, Keegan Keplinger, said in a statement . The Canadian cybersecurity company said it identified and disrupted four separate security incidents, three of which occurred at the end of March. Targeted entities include a U.S.-based aerospace company, an accounting business located in the U.K., a law firm, and a staffing agency, both based out of Canada. The malware, suspected to be the handiwork of a threat actor called Golden Chickens (aka Venom Spider ), is a stealthy, modular backdoor suite capable ...

The "hotpatch" released by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in response to the  Log4Shell  vulnerabilities could be leveraged for container escape and privilege escalation, allowing an attacker to seize control of the underlying host. "Aside from containers, unprivileged processes can also exploit the patch to escalate privileges and gain root code execution," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Yuval Avrahami  said  in a report published this week. The issues —  CVE-2021-3100 ,  CVE-2021-3101 ,  CVE-2022-0070 , and  CVE-2022-0071  (CVSS scores: 8.8) — affect the  hotfix solutions  shipped by AWS, and stem from the fact that they are designed to search for Java processes and patch them against the Log4j flaw on the fly but without ensuring that the new Java processes are run within the restrictions imposed on the container. "Any process running a binary named 'java' – inside or outside of a container – is considered a candidate for...

An unpatched high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in the open-source RainLoop web-based email client that could be weaponized to siphon emails from victims' inboxes. "The code vulnerability [...] can be easily exploited by an attacker by sending a malicious email to a victim that uses RainLoop as a mail client," SonarSource security researcher Simon Scannell  said  in a report published this week. "When the email is viewed by the victim, the attacker gains full control over the session of the victim and can steal any of their emails, including those that contain highly sensitive information such as passwords, documents, and password reset links." Tracked as CVE-2022-29360, the flaw relates to a stored cross-site-scripting (XSS) vulnerability impacting the latest version of RainLoop ( v1.16.0 ) that was released on May 7, 2021. Stored XSS flaws, also called persistent XSS, occur when a malicious script is injected directly into a target web applic...

Three security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the audio decoders of Qualcomm and MediaTek chips that, if left unresolved, could allow an adversary to remotely gain access to media and audio conversations from affected mobile devices. According to Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point , the issues could be used as a launchpad to carry out remote code execution (RCE) attacks simply by sending a specially crafted audio file. "The impact of an RCE vulnerability can range from malware execution to an attacker gaining control over a user's multimedia data, including streaming from a compromised machine's camera," the researchers said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "In addition, an unprivileged Android app could use these vulnerabilities to escalate its privileges and gain access to media data and user conversations." The vulnerabilities, dubbed ALHACK, are rooted in an audio coding format originally developed and open-sourced by Apple i...

A recent Hive ransomware attack carried out by an affiliate involved the exploitation of "ProxyShell" vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange Server that were disclosed last year to encrypt an unnamed customer's network. "The actor managed to achieve its malicious goals and encrypt the environment in less than 72 hours from the initial compromise," Varonis security researcher, Nadav Ovadia,  said  in a post-mortem analysis of the incident.  Hive, which was  first observed  in June 2021, follows the lucrative ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme adopted by other cybercriminal groups in recent years, enabling affiliates to deploy the file-encrypting malware after gaining a foothold into their victims' networks. ProxyShell  — tracked as CVE-2021-31207, CVE-2021-34523, and CVE-2021-34473 — involves a combination of security feature bypass, privilege escalation, and remote code execution in the Microsoft Exchange Server, effectively granting the attacker...