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Threat actors associated with the notorious Emotet malware are continually shifting their tactics and command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to escape detection, according to new research from VMware. Emotet  is the work of a threat actor tracked as Mummy Spider (aka TA542), emerging in June 2014 as a banking trojan before morphing into an all-purpose loader in 2016 that's capable of delivering second-stage payloads such as ransomware. While the botnet's infrastructure was  taken down  as part of a coordinated law enforcement operation in January 2021, Emotet bounced back in November 2021 through another malware known as  TrickBot . Emotet's resurrection, orchestrated by the now-defunct Conti team, has since paved the way for Cobalt Strike infections and, more recently, ransomware attacks involving  Quantum and BlackCat . "The ongoing adaptation of Emotet's execution chain is one reason the malware has been successful for so long," researchers from VMwa...

Chipmaker Intel has confirmed that proprietary source code related to its Alder Lake CPUs has been leaked, following its release by an unknown third-party on 4chan and GitHub last week. The published content contains Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ) code for  Alder Lake , the company's 12th generation processors that was originally launched in November 2021. In a statement shared with Tom's Hardware, Intel  said  the leak doesn't expose "any new security vulnerabilities as we do not rely on obfuscation of information as a security measure." It's also encouraging the broader security research community to report any potential issues through its  bug bounty program , adding it's reaching out to customers to notify them of the matter. Besides the UEFI code, the leaked data dump includes a plethora of files and tools, some of which appear to come from firmware vendor Insyde Software. Exact details surrounding the nature of the hack, inclu...

BNB Chain, a blockchain linked to the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, disclosed an exploit on a cross-chain bridge that drained around $100 million in digital assets. "There was an exploit affecting the native cross-chain bridge between BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Smart Chain (BEP20 or BSC), known as 'BSC Token Hub,'" it  said  last week. "The exploit was through a sophisticated forging of the low level proof into one common library." According to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, the exploit on the cross-chain bridge " resulted in extra BNB ," prompting a  temporary suspension  of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). "BNB, which stands for 'Build and Build' (formerly called Binance Coin), is the blockchain gas token that 'fuels' transactions on BNB Chain," Binance  noted  earlier this February. No user funds are said to have been impacted, since the vulnerability in the BSC Token Hub bridge enabled the unknown threat actor...

A severe remote code execution vulnerability in Zimbra's enterprise collaboration software and email platform is being actively exploited, with no patch currently available to remediate the issue. The shortcoming, assigned  CVE-2022-41352 , carries a critical-severity rating of CVSS 9.8, providing a pathway for attackers to upload arbitrary files and carry out malicious actions on affected installations. "The vulnerability is due to the method ( cpio ) in which Zimbra's antivirus engine ( Amavis ) scans inbound emails," cybersecurity firm Rapid7  said  in an analysis published this week. The issue is said to have been abused since early September 2022, according to  details  shared on Zimbra forums. While a fix is yet to be released, the software services company is urging users to install the "pax" utility and restart the Zimbra services. "If the  pax package  is not installed, Amavis will fall-back to using cpio, unfortunately the fall-back is ...

Microsoft on Friday  disclosed  it has made more improvements to the  mitigation method  offered as a means to prevent exploitation attempts against the newly disclosed unpatched security flaws in Exchange Server. To that end, the tech giant has revised the blocking rule in IIS Manager from ".*autodiscover\.json.*Powershell.*" to "(?=.*autodiscover\.json)(?=.*powershell)." The list of updated steps to add the URL Rewrite rule is below - Open IIS Manager Select Default Web Site In the Feature View, click URL Rewrite In the Actions pane on the right-hand side, click Add Rule(s)… Select Request Blocking and click OK Add the string "(?=.*autodiscover\.json)(?=.*powershell)" (excluding quotes) Select Regular Expression under Using Select Abort Request under How to block and then click OK Expand the rule and select the rule with the pattern: (?=.*autodiscover\.json)(?=.*powershell) and click Edit under Conditions Change the Condition input from {U...

Fortinet has privately warned its customers of a security flaw affecting FortiGate firewalls and FortiProxy web proxies that could potentially allow an attacker to perform unauthorized actions on susceptible devices. Tracked as CVE-2022-40684 (CVSS score: 9.6), the critical flaw relates to an authentication bypass vulnerability that may permit an unauthenticated adversary to carry out arbitrary operations on the administrative interface via a specially crafted HTTP(S) request. The issue impacts the following versions, and has been addressed in FortiOS versions  7.0.7  and  7.2.2 , and FortiProxy versions 7.0.7 and 7.2.1 released this week: FortiOS - From 7.0.0 to 7.0.6 and from 7.2.0 to 7.2.1 FortiProxy - From 7.0.0 to 7.0.6 and 7.2.0 "Due to the ability to exploit this issue remotely, Fortinet is strongly recommending all customers with the vulnerable versions to perform an immediate upgrade," the company  cautioned  in an alert shared by a securit...

Meta Platforms on Friday disclosed that it had identified over 400 malicious apps on Android and iOS that it said targeted online users with the goal of stealing their Facebook login information. "These apps were listed on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store and disguised as photo editors, games, VPN services, business apps, and other utilities to trick people into downloading them," the social media behemoth  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. 42.6% of the rogue apps were photo editors, followed by business utilities (15.4%), phone utilities (14.1%), games (11.7%), VPNs (11.7%), and lifestyle apps (4.4%). Interestingly, a majority of the iOS apps posed as ads manager tools for Meta and its Facebook subsidiary. Besides concealing its malicious nature as a set of seemingly harmless apps, the operators of the scheme also published fake reviews that were designed to offset the negative reviews left by users who may have previously downloaded the apps...

Understanding the connection between GRC and cybersecurity When talking about cybersecurity, Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) is often considered the least exciting part of business protection. However, its importance can't be ignored, and this is why.  While cybersecurity focuses on the technical side of protecting systems, networks, devices, and data, GRC is the tool that will help the entire organization understand and communicate how to do it. What does it mean? GRC tools like StandardFusion help companies  define and implement the best practices, procedures, and governance to ensure everyone understands the risks associated with their actions and how they can affect business security, compliance, and success. In simple words, GRC is the medium for creating awareness around cybersecurity's best practices to reduce risks and achieve business goals. Why is cybersecurity more relevant than ever before Cybersecurity aims to protect sensitive business data, intell...

Multiple campaigns that distributed trojanized and typosquatted packages on the NPM open source repository have been identified as the work of a single threat actor dubbed LofyGang . Checkmarx said it discovered 199 rogue packages totaling thousands of installations, with the group operating for over a year with the goal of stealing credit card data as well as user accounts associated with Discord Nitro, gaming, and streaming services. "LofyGang operators are seen promoting their hacking tools in hacking forums, while some of the tools are shipped with a hidden backdoor," the software security company said in a report shared with The Hacker News prior to its publication. Various pieces of the attack puzzle have already been reported by  JFrog ,  Sonatype , and  Kaspersky  (which called it LofyLife), but the latest analysis pulls the various operations together under one organizational umbrella that Checkmarx is referring to as  LofyGang . Believed to be ...

In what's a new phishing technique, it has been demonstrated that the Application Mode feature in Chromium-based web browsers can be abused to create "realistic desktop phishing applications." Application Mode is designed to offer native-like experiences in a manner that causes the website to be launched in a separate browser window, while also displaying the website's favicon and hiding the address bar. According to security researcher mr.d0x – who also devised the browser-in-the-browser ( BitB ) attack method earlier this year – a bad actor can leverage this behavior to resort to some HTML/CSS trickery and display a fake address bar on top of the window and fool users into giving up their credentials on rogue login forms. "Although this technique is meant more towards internal phishing, you can technically still use it in an external phishing scenario," mr.d0x  said . "You can deliver these fake applications independently as files." This is...

In yet another case of bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) attack, the operators of the BlackByte ransomware are leveraging a flaw in a legitimate Windows driver to bypass security solutions. "The evasion technique supports disabling a whopping list of over 1,000 drivers on which security products rely to provide protection," Sophos threat researcher Andreas Klopsch  said  in a new technical write-up. BYOVD is an  attack technique  that involves threat actors abusing vulnerabilities in legitimate, signed drivers to achieve successful kernel-mode exploitation and seize control of compromised machines. Weaknesses in signed drivers have been increasingly co-opted by nation-state threat groups in recent years, including  Slingshot ,  InvisiMole ,  APT28 , and most recently, the  Lazarus Group . BlackByte, believed to be an offshoot of the  now-discontinued Conti group , is part of the big game cybercrime crews, which zeroes in on larg...

The threat actor behind the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) known as Eternity Group has been linked to new piece of malware called LilithBot . "It has advanced capabilities to be used as a miner, stealer, and a clipper along with its persistence mechanisms," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Shatak Jain and Aditya Sharma  said  in a Wednesday report. "The group has been continuously enhancing the malware, adding improvements such as anti-debug and anti-VM checks." Eternity Project  came on the scene earlier this year, advertising its warez and product updates on a Telegram channel. The services provided include a stealer, miner, clipper, ransomware, USB worm, and a DDoS bot. LilithBot is the latest addition to this list. Like its counterparts, the multifunctional malware bot is sold on a subscription basis to other cybercriminals in return for a cryptocurrency payment. Upon a successful compromise, the information gathered through the bot – browser history, cooki...

Security researchers have shared details about a now-addressed security flaw in Apple's macOS operating system that could be potentially exploited to run malicious applications in a manner that can bypass Apple's security measures. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2022-32910 , is rooted in the built-in Archive Utility and "could lead to the execution of an unsigned and unnotarized application without displaying security prompts to the user, by using a specially crafted archive," Apple device management firm Jamf said in an analysis. Following responsible disclosure on May 31, 2022, Apple addressed the issue as part of  macOS Big Sur 11.6.8  and  Monterey 12.5  released on July 20, 2022. The tech giant, for its part, also revised the earlier-issued advisories as of October 4 to add an entry for the flaw. Apple described the bug as a logic issue that could allow an archive file to get around Gatekeeper checks, which is designed so as to ascertain that...

It's been a year since the release of The Ultimate SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) Checklist. If SSPM is on your radar, here's the 2023 checklist edition, which covers the critical features and capabilities when evaluating a solution. The ease with which SaaS apps can be deployed and adopted today is remarkable, but it has become a double-edged sword. On the one hand, apps are quickly onboarded, employees can work from anywhere, and there is little need for operational management. On the other hand, there are pain points that stem from the explosion of SaaS app usage, explained by the "3 V" s: Volume:  Each app can have hundreds of global settings. Multiply this number by thousands – or tens (or even hundreds) of thousands – of employees. Security teams must first be able to discover all the users who are using each application, as well as familiarize themselves with  every  application's specific set of rules and configurations, and ensure they are co...

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has arrested a 19-year-old teen from Sydney for allegedly attempting to leverage the data leaked following the Optus data breach late last month to extort victims. The suspect is said to have carried out a text message blackmail scam, demanding that the recipients transfer $2,000 to a bank account or risk getting their personal information misused for fraudulent activities. The source of the data, the agency said, was a sample database of 10,200 records that was posted briefly on a cybercrime forum accessible on the clearnet by an actor named "optusdata," before taking it down. Details of the scam were  previously shared  by 9News Australia reporter Chris O'Keefe on September 27, 2022. The AFP further said it executed a search warrant at the home of the offender, leading to the seizure of a mobile phone used to send the text messages to about 93 Optus customers. "At this stage it appears none of the individuals who received t...

A U.S. federal court jury has found former Uber Chief Security Officer Joseph Sullivan guilty of not disclosing a 2016 breach of customer and driver records to regulators and attempting to cover up the incident. Sullivan has been convicted on two counts: One for obstructing justice by not reporting the incident and another for misprision. He faces a maximum of five years in prison for the obstruction charge, and a maximum of three years for the latter. "Technology companies in the Northern District of California collect and store vast amounts of data from users," U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds  said  in a press statement. "We expect those companies to protect that data and to alert customers and appropriate authorities when such data is stolen by hackers. Sullivan affirmatively worked to hide the data breach from the Federal Trade Commission and took steps to prevent the hackers from being caught." The 2016 breach of Uber occurred as a result of two hackers ...

A novel Android malware called RatMilad has been observed targeting a Middle Eastern enterprise mobile device by concealing itself as a VPN and phone number spoofing app. The mobile trojan functions as advanced spyware with capabilities that receives and executes commands to collect and exfiltrate a wide variety of data from the infected mobile endpoint, Zimperium  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Evidence gathered by the mobile security company shows that the malicious app is distributed through links on social media and communication tools like Telegram, tricking unsuspecting users into sideloading the app and granting it extensive permissions. The idea behind embedding the malware within a fake VPN and phone number spoofing service is also clever in that the app claims to enable users to verify social media accounts via phone, a technique popular in countries where access is restricted. "Once installed and in control, the attackers could access the camer...