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Cloud computing was the lifeline that kept many companies running during the pandemic. But it was a classic case of medicine that comes with  serious  side effects.  Having anywhere, anytime access to data and apps gives companies tremendous flexibility in a fast-changing world, plus the means to scale and customize IT at will. The cloud is an asset or upgrade in almost every way. With one glaring exception: cybersecurity.  The cloud promised to make companies more secure and security more straightforward. Yet over the same time period that the cloud took over computing, cyber attacks grew steadily worse while security teams felt increasingly overwhelmed.  Why?  We will explain shortly. For lean security teams, the more important question is how to make cloud security work, especially as the cloud footprint grows (a lot) faster than security resources. Will the cloud always cast a shadow on cybersecurity? Not with the strategy outlined in a free eboo...

A recently discovered hacking group known for targeting employees dealing with corporate transactions has been linked to a new backdoor called Danfuan . This hitherto undocumented malware is delivered via another dropper called Geppei, researchers from Symantec, by Broadcom Software,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The dropper "is being used to install a new backdoor and other tools using the novel technique of reading commands from seemingly innocuous Internet Information Services ( IIS ) logs," the researchers said. The toolset has been attributed by the cybersecurity company to a suspected espionage actor called UNC3524, aka Cranefly, which  first came to light  in May 2022 for its focus on bulk email collection from victims who deal with mergers and acquisitions and other financial transactions. One of the group's key malware strains is QUIETEXIT, a backdoor deployed on network appliances that do not support antivirus or endpoint detection, ...

The increased use of information technology in our everyday life and business has led to cyber-attacks becoming more sophisticated and large-scale. For organizations to thrive in this era of technology, they must develop robust security strategies to detect and mitigate attacks. Defense in depth is a strategy in which companies use multiple layers of security measures to safeguard assets. A well-implemented defense in depth can help organizations prevent and mitigate ongoing attacks.  Defense in depth uses various cutting-edge security tools to safeguard a business's endpoints, data, applications, and networks. The objective is to prevent cyber threats, but a robust defense-in-depth approach also thwarts ongoing attacks and prevents further damage. How organizations can implement defense in depth The image above shows the various layers of security that organizations must implement. Below we describe ideas that companies should consider for each layer. Governance and risk mana...

AI agents promise to automate everything from financial reconciliations to incident response. Yet every time an AI agent spins up a workflow, it has to authenticate somewhere; often with a high-privilege API key, OAuth token, or service account that defenders can't easily see. These "invisible" non-human identities (NHIs) now outnumber human accounts in most cloud environments, and they have become one of the ripest targets for attackers. Astrix's Field CTO Jonathan Sander put it bluntly in a recent Hacker News webinar : "One dangerous habit we've had for a long time is trusting application logic to act as the guardrails. That doesn't work when your AI agent is powered by LLMs that don't stop and think when they're about to do something wrong. They just do it." Why AI Agents Redefine Identity Risk Autonomy changes everything: An AI agent can chain multiple API calls and modify data without a human in the loop. If the underlying credential is exposed or overprivileged, each addit...

Google on Thursday rolled out emergency fixes to contain an actively exploited zero-day flaw in its Chrome web browser. The vulnerability , tracked as  CVE-2022-3723 , has been described as a type confusion flaw in the V8 JavaScript engine. Security researchers Jan Vojtěšek, Milánek, and Przemek Gmerek of Avast have been credited with reporting the flaw on October 25, 2022. "Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2022-3723 exists in the wild," the internet giant acknowledged in an advisory without getting into more specifics about the nature of the attacks. CVE-2022-3723 is the third actively exploited type confusion bug in V8 this year after  CVE-2022-1096  and  CVE-2022-1364 . The latest fix also marks the resolution of the seventh zero-day in Google Chrome since the start of 2022 - CVE-2022-0609  - Use-after-free in Animation CVE-2022-1096  - Type confusion in V8 CVE-2022-1364  - Type confusion in V8 CVE-2022-2294  - Hea...

The Raspberry Robin worm is becoming an access-as-a-service malware for deploying other payloads, including  IcedID ,  Bumblebee ,  TrueBot  (aka Silence), and  Clop ransomware . It is "part of a complex and interconnected malware ecosystem, with links to other malware families and alternate infection methods beyond its original USB drive spread," the Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  said  in a detailed write-up. Raspberry Robin , also called QNAP Worm owing to the use of compromised QNAP storage servers for command-and-control, is the name given to a malware by cybersecurity company Red Canary that spreads to Windows systems through infected USB drives. MSTIC is keeping tabs on the activity group behind the USB-based Raspberry Robin infections as  DEV-0856 , adding it's aware of at least four confirmed entry points that all have the likely end goal of deploying ransomware. The tech giant's cybersecurity team said that...

A 34-year-old U.K. national has been arraigned in the U.S. for operating a dark web marketplace called  The Real Deal  that specialized in the sales of hacking tools and stolen login credentials. Daniel Kaye , who went by a litany of pseudonyms Popopret, Bestbuy, UserL0ser, and Spdrman, has been charged with five counts of access device fraud and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Kaye was indicted in April 2021, and subsequently consented to his extradition from Cyprus to the U.S. in September 2022. "While living overseas, this defendant allegedly operated an illegal website that made hacking tools and login credentials available for purchase, including those for U.S. government agencies,"  said  U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. Court documents show that  The Real Deal , until its shutdown in 2016, functioned as a market for illicit items, including stolen account logins for U.S. government computers, bank accounts, and social media platforms such a...

As many as 85 command-and-control (C2) servers have been  discovered  supported by the ShadowPad malware since September 2021, with infrastructure detected as recently as October 16, 2022. That's according to VMware's Threat Analysis Unit (TAU), which  studied  three ShadowPad variants using TCP, UDP, and HTTP(S) protocols for C2 communications. ShadowPad , seen as a successor to  PlugX , is a modular malware platform privately shared among multiple Chinese state-sponsored actors since 2015. Taiwanese cybersecurity firm TeamT5, earlier this May, disclosed details of another China-nexus modular implant named  Pangolin8RAT , which is believed to be the successor of the PlugX and ShadowPad malware families, linking it to a threat group dubbed Tianwu. An analysis of the three ShadowPad artifacts, which have been previously put to use by  Winnti ,  Tonto Team , and an emerging threat cluster codenamed  Space Pirates , made it possible to di...

Automobile, Energy, Media, Ransomware? When thinking about verticals, one may not instantly think of cyber-criminality. Yet, every move made by governments, clients, and private contractors screams toward normalizing those  menaces  as a new vertical. Ransomware has every trait of the classical economical vertical. A thriving ecosystem of insurers, negotiators, software providers, and managed service experts. This cybercrime branch looks at a loot stash that counts for trillions of dollars. The cybersecurity industry is too happy to provide services, software, and insurance to accommodate this new normal.  Intense insurer lobbying in France led the finance ministry to give a positive opinion about reimbursing ransoms, against the very advice of its government's cybersecurity branch. The market is so big and juicy that no one can get in the way of "the development of the cyber insurance market." In the US, Colonial pipeline is seeking tax reductions from the loss incu...

A now-patched security flaw in Apple's iOS and macOS operating systems could have potentially enabled apps with Bluetooth access to eavesdrop on conversations with Siri. Apple said "an app may be able to record audio using a pair of connected AirPods," adding it addressed the Core Bluetooth issue in iOS 16.1 with improved entitlements. Credited with discovering and reporting the bug in August 2022 is app developer Guilherme Rambo. The bug, dubbed  SiriSpy , has been assigned the identifier CVE-2022-32946. "Any app with access to Bluetooth could record your conversations with Siri and audio from the iOS keyboard dictation feature when using AirPods or Beats headsets," Rambo  said  in a write-up. "This would happen without the app requesting microphone access permission and without the app leaving any trace that it was listening to the microphone." The vulnerability, according to Rambo, relates to a service called DoAP that's included in AirPo...

Australian health insurance firm Medibank on Wednesday disclosed that the personal information of all of its customers had been unauthorizedly accessed following a recent ransomware attack. In an update to its ongoing investigation into the incident, the firm  said  the attackers had access to "significant amounts of health claims data" as well as personal data belonging to its  ahm health insurance subsidiary  and international students. Medibank, which is one of the largest Australian private health insurance providers,  serves about 3.9 million customers  across the country. "We have evidence that the criminal has removed some of this data and it is now likely that the criminal has stolen further personal and health claims data," the company further added. "As a result, we expect that the number of affected customers could grow substantially." The company also said it's continuing its probe to determine what specific data has been stolen in th...

A new cryptojacking campaign has been uncovered targeting vulnerable Docker and Kubernetes infrastructures as part of opportunistic attacks designed to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike dubbed the activity  Kiss-a-dog , with its command-and-control infrastructure overlapping with those associated with other groups like  TeamTNT , which are known to  strike   misconfigured  Docker and Kubernetes instances. The intrusions, spotted in September 2022, get their name from a domain named "kiss.a-dog[.]top" that's used to trigger a shell script payload on the compromised container using a Base64-encoded Python command. "The URL used in the payload is obscured with backslashes to defeat automated decoding and regex matching to retrieve the malicious domain," CrowdStrike researcher Manoj Ahuje  said  in a technical analysis. The attack chain subsequently attempts to escape the container and move laterally into the breached n...

A 26-year-old Ukrainian national has been charged in the U.S. for his alleged role in the  Raccoon Stealer  malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operation. Mark Sokolovsky, who was arrested by Dutch law enforcement after leaving Ukraine on March 4, 2022, in what's said to be a Porsche Cayenne, is currently being held in the Netherlands and awaits extradition to the U.S. "Individuals who deployed Raccoon Infostealer to steal data from victims leased access to the malware for approximately $200 per month, paid for by cryptocurrency," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  said . "These individuals used various ruses, such as email phishing, to install the malware onto the computers of unsuspecting victims." Sokolovsky is said to have gone by various online monikers like Photix, raccoonstealer, and black21jack77777 on online cybercrime forums to advertise the service for sale. Raccoon Stealer, mainly distributed under the guise of cracked software, is known to be one o...

If you regularly read The Hacker News, there's a fair chance that you know something about  cybersecurity . It's possible to turn that interest into a six-figure career. But to make the leap, you need to pick up some key skills and professional certifications. Featuring nine in-depth courses,  The 2022 Masters in Cyber Security Certification Bundle  helps you get ready for the next step. And in a special reader offer, you can get lifetime access for only $39.99. Special Offer —  This bundle contains nine courses with a total value of $1,800. But for a limited time, you can  get lifetime on-demand access for only $39.99 . That is a massive 97% off MSRP! From penetration testing to  threat analysis , there are thousands of vacant roles in the cybersecurity industry right now. What's more, this trend is set to continue, with experts predicting a  12% growth  within the industry in the remainder of this decade. The really exciting part is that a...

The North Korean espionage-focused actor known as Kimsuky has been observed using three different Android malware strains to target users located in its southern counterpart. That's according to findings from South Korean cybersecurity company S2W, which named the malware families FastFire, FastViewer, and FastSpy. "The FastFire malware is disguised as a Google security plugin, and the FastViewer malware disguises itself as 'Hancom Office Viewer,' [while] FastSpy is a remote access tool based on  AndroSpy ," researchers Lee Sebin and Shin Yeongjae  said . Kimsuky, also known by the names Black Banshee, Thallium, and Velvet Chollima, is believed to be tasked by the North Korean regime with a global intelligence-gathering mission, disproportionately targeting individuals and organizations in South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. This past August, Kaspersky unearthed a previously undocumented infection chain dubbed  GoldDragon  to deploy a Windows backdoor capable o...

The threat actor behind a remote access trojan called RomCom RAT has been observed targeting Ukrainian military institutions as part of a new spear-phishing campaign that commenced on October 21, 2022.  The development marks a shift in the attacker's modus operandi, which has been previously attributed to spoofing legitimate apps like Advanced IP Scanner and pdfFiller to drop backdoors on compromised systems. "The initial 'Advanced IP Scanner' campaign occurred on July 23, 2022," the BlackBerry research and intelligence team  said . "Once the victim installs a Trojanized bundle, it drops RomCom RAT to the system." While previous iterations of the campaign involved the use of trojanized Advanced IP Scanner, the unidentified adversarial collective has since switched to pdfFiller as of October 20, indicating an active attempt on part of the adversary to refine tactics and thwart detection. These lookalike websites host a rogue installer package that r...

A cybercrime group known as  Vice Society  has been linked to multiple ransomware strains in its malicious campaigns aimed at the education, government, and retail sectors. The Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence team, which is tracking the threat cluster under the moniker DEV-0832, said the group avoids deploying ransomware in some cases and rather likely carries out extortion using exfiltrated stolen data. "Shifting ransomware payloads over time from  BlackCat ,  Quantum Locker , and  Zeppelin , DEV-0832's latest payload is a Zeppelin variant that includes Vice Society-specific file extensions, such as .v-s0ciety, .v-society, and, most recently, .locked," the tech giant's cybersecurity division  said . Vice Society, active since June 2021, has been steadily observed encrypting and exfiltrating victim data, and threatening companies with exposure of siphoned information to pressure them into paying a ransom. "Unlike other RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Ser...

Cisco has warned of active exploitation attempts targeting a pair of two-year-old security flaws in the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client for Windows. Tracked as  CVE-2020-3153  (CVSS score: 6.5) and  CVE-2020-3433  (CVSS score: 7.8), the vulnerabilities could enable local authenticated attackers to perform DLL hijacking and copy arbitrary files to system directories with elevated privileges.  While CVE-2020-3153 was addressed by Cisco in February 2020, a fix for CVE-2020-3433 was shipped in August 2020. "In October 2022, the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team became aware of additional attempted exploitation of this vulnerability in the wild," the networking equipment maker said in an updated advisory. "Cisco continues to strongly recommend that customers upgrade to a fixed software release to remediate this vulnerability." The alert comes as the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) moved to add the two flaws to i...

VMware on Tuesday shipped security updates to address a critical security flaw in its VMware Cloud Foundation product. Tracked as CVE-2021-39144, the issue has been rated 9.8 out of 10 on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system, and relates to a remote code execution vulnerability via XStream open source library. "Due to an unauthenticated endpoint that leverages XStream for input serialization in VMware Cloud Foundation (NSX-V), a malicious actor can get remote code execution in the context of 'root' on the appliance," the company  said  in an advisory. In light of the severity of the flaw and its relatively low bar for exploitation, the Palo Alto-based virtualization services provider has also made available a  patch  for end-of-life products. Also addressed by VMware as part of the update is CVE-2022-31678 (CVSS score: 5.3), an XML External Entity ( XXE ) vulnerability that could be exploited to result in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition or unauthorized inf...

A high-severity vulnerability has been disclosed in the SQLite database library, which was introduced as part of a code change dating all the way back to October 2000 and could enable attackers to crash or control programs. Tracked as  CVE-2022-35737  (CVSS score: 7.5), the 22-year-old issue affects SQLite versions  1.0.12  through 3.39.1, and has been addressed in  version 3.39.2  released on July 21, 2022. "CVE-2022-35737 is  exploitable  on 64-bit systems, and exploitability depends on how the program is compiled," Trail of Bits researcher Andreas Kellas  said  in a technical write-up published today. "Arbitrary code execution is confirmed when the library is compiled without stack canaries, but unconfirmed when stack canaries are present, and denial-of-service is confirmed in all cases." Programmed in C, SQLite is the most widely used database engine , included by default in Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS, as well as popul...