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The move to SaaS and other cloud tools has put an emphasis on Identity & Access Management (IAM). After all, user identity is one of the only barriers standing between sensitive corporate data and any unauthorized access.  The tools used to define IAM make up its identity fabric. The stronger the fabric, the more resistant identities are to pressure from threat actors. However, those pressures are only increasing. Decentralized IT, evolving threats, and zero-trust tools are pushing many IAM tools to their limits.  To maintain their effectiveness, IAM are shifting to operating as an agile, interconnected identity fabric rather than just siloed IAM tools. The demands of today's IT operating environment are forcing IAM to support decentralized IT environments while still providing centralized management and governance for its users. Interestingly, many of the identity fabric principles they define are currently found in leading SSPM tools. It's important to note that iden...

The legitimate command-and-control (C2) framework known as Sliver is  gaining   more traction  from threat actors as it emerges as an open source alternative to  Cobalt Strike  and Metasploit. The findings come from Cybereason, which  detailed  its inner workings in an exhaustive analysis last week. Sliver, developed by cybersecurity company BishopFox, is a Golang-based cross-platform post-exploitation framework that's designed to be used by security professionals in their red team operations. Its myriad features for adversary simulation – including dynamic code generation, in-memory payload execution, and process injection – have also made it an appealing tool for threat actors looking to gain elevated access to the target system upon gaining an initial foothold. In other words, the software is used as a second-stage to conduct next steps of the attack chain after already compromising a machine using one of the initial intrusion vectors such as...

Researchers have shut down an "expansive" ad fraud scheme that spoofed more than 1,700 applications from 120 publishers and impacted roughly 11 million devices.  "VASTFLUX was a malvertising attack that injected malicious JavaScript code into digital ad creatives, allowing the fraudsters to stack numerous invisible video ad players behind one another and register ad views," fraud prevention firm HUMAN  said . The operation gets its name from the use of a DNS evasion technique called  Fast Flux  and  VAST , a Digital Video Ad Serving Template that's employed to serve ads to video players. The sophisticated operation particularly exploited the restricted in-app environments that run ads on iOS to place bids for displaying ad banners. Should the auction be won, the hijacked ad slot is leveraged to inject rogue JavaScript that establishes contact with a remote server to retrieve the list of apps to be targeted. This includes the  bundle IDs  that bel...

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Threat actors associated with the Roaming Mantis attack campaign have been observed delivering an updated variant of their patent mobile malware known as Wroba to infiltrate Wi-Fi routers and undertake Domain Name System ( DNS ) hijacking. Kaspersky, which carried out an  analysis  of the malicious artifact, said the feature is designed to target specific Wi-Fi routers located in South Korea. Roaming Mantis, also known as Shaoye, is a long-running financially motivated operation that singles out Android smartphone users with malware capable of stealing bank account credentials as well as harvesting other kinds of sensitive information. Although primarily  targeting the Asian region  since 2018, the hacking crew was detected  expanding  its  victim range  to include France and Germany for the first time in early 2022 by camouflaging the malware as the Google Chrome web browser application. The attacks leverage smishing messages as the initial...

The Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage group known as Gamaredon has continued its digital onslaught against Ukraine, with recent attacks leveraging the popular messaging app Telegram to strike military and law enforcement sectors in the country. "The Gamaredon group's network infrastructure relies on multi-stage Telegram accounts for victim profiling and confirmation of geographic location, and then finally leads the victim to the next stage server for the final payload," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This kind of technique to infect target systems is new." Gamaredon , also known by names such as Actinium, Armageddon, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, Trident Ursa, and Winterflounder, is known for its assaults aimed at Ukrainian entities since at least 2013. Last month, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42  disclosed  the threat actor's unsuccessful attempts to break into an unnamed petrol...

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) on Thursday imposed fresh fines of €5.5 million against Meta's WhatsApp for violating data protection laws when processing users' personal information. At the heart of the ruling is an update to the messaging platform's Terms of Service that was imposed in the days leading to the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ) in May 2018, requiring that users agree to the revised terms in order to continue using the service or risk losing access. The complaint, filed by privacy non-profit NOYB, alleged that WhatsApp breached the regulation by compelling its users to "consent to the processing of their personal data for service improvement and security" by "making the accessibility of its services conditional on users accepting the updated Terms of Service." "WhatsApp Ireland is not entitled to rely on the contract legal basis for the delivery of service improvement and security," th...

A suspected China-nexus threat actor exploited a recently patched vulnerability in Fortinet FortiOS SSL-VPN as a zero-day in attacks targeting a European government entity and a managed service provider (MSP) located in Africa. Telemetry evidence gathered by Google-owned Mandiant indicates that the exploitation occurred as early as October 2022, at least nearly two months before fixes were released. "This incident continues China's pattern of exploiting internet facing devices, specifically those used for managed security purposes (e.g., firewalls, IPS\IDS appliances etc.)," Mandiant researchers  said  in a technical report. The attacks entailed the use of a sophisticated backdoor dubbed  BOLDMOVE , a Linux variant of which is specifically designed to run on Fortinet's FortiGate firewalls. The intrusion vector in question relates to the exploitation of  CVE-2022-42475 , a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in FortiOS SSL-VPN that could result in unauthent...

A new critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw discovered impacting multiple services related to Microsoft Azure could be exploited by a malicious actor to completely take control of a targeted application. "The vulnerability is achieved through  CSRF  (cross-site request forgery) on the ubiquitous SCM service Kudu," Ermetic researcher Liv Matan  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "By abusing the vulnerability, attackers can deploy malicious ZIP files containing a payload to the victim's Azure application." The Israeli cloud infrastructure security firm, which dubbed the shortcoming  EmojiDeploy , said it could further enable the theft of sensitive data and lateral movement to other Azure services. Microsoft has since fixed the vulnerability as of December 6, 2022, following responsible disclosure on October 26, 2022, in addition to awarding a bug bounty of $30,000. The Windows maker  describes  Kudu as the "engine behind a number of...

The threat actor behind the  BlackRock  and  ERMAC  Android banking trojans has unleashed yet another malware for rent called  Hook  that introduces new capabilities to access files stored in the devices and create a remote interactive session. ThreatFabric, in a  report  shared with The Hacker News, characterized Hook as a novel ERMAC fork that's advertised for sale for $7,000 per month while featuring "all the capabilities of its predecessor." "In addition, it also adds to its arsenal Remote Access Tooling (RAT) capabilities, joining the ranks of families such as  Octo  and  Hydra , which are capable performing a full Device Take Over (DTO), and complete a full fraud chain, from PII exfiltration to transaction, with all the intermediate steps, without the need of additional channels," the Dutch cybersecurity firm said. A majority of the financial apps targeted by the malware are located in the U.S., Spain, Australia, Poland, ...

Cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging malicious LNK files as an initial access method to download and execute payloads such as Bumblebee, IcedID, and Qakbot. A recent study by cybersecurity experts has shown that it is possible to identify relationships between different threat actors by analyzing the metadata of malicious LNK files, uncovering information such as the specific tools and techniques used by different groups of cybercriminals, as well as potential links between seemingly unrelated attacks. "With the increasing usage of LNK files in attack chains, it's logical that threat actors have started developing and using tools to create such files," Cisco Talos researcher Guilherme Venere said in a report shared with The Hacker News. This comprises tools like  NativeOne 's  mLNK Builder  and  Quantum Builder , which allow subscribers to generate rogue shortcut files and evade security solutions. Some of the major malware families that have used LNK fil...

An organization's sensitive information is under constant threat. Identifying those security risks is critical to protecting that information. But some risks are bigger than others. Some mitigation options are more expensive than others. How do you make the right decision? Adopting a formal  risk assessment  process gives you the information you need to set priorities. There are many ways to perform a risk assessment, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. We will help you find which of these six risk assessment methodologies works best for your organization. What is Risk Assessment? Risk assessment is the way organizations decide what to do in the face of today's complex security landscape. Threats and vulnerabilities are everywhere. They could come from an external actor or a careless user. They may even be built into the network infrastructure. Decision-makers need to understand the urgency of the organization's risks as well as how much mitigation efforts will cost...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Wednesday announced the arrest of Anatoly Legkodymov (aka Gandalf and Tolik), the cofounder of Hong Kong-registered cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato, for allegedly processing $700 million in illicit funds. The 40-year-old Russian national, who was arrested in Miami, was charged in a U.S. federal court with "conducting a money transmitting business that transported and transmitted illicit funds and that failed to meet U.S. regulatory safeguards, including anti-money laundering requirements," the DoJ  said . According to court documents, Bitzlato is said to have advertised itself as a virtual currency exchange with minimal identification requirements for its users, breaking the rules requiring the vetting of customers. This lack of know your customer (KYC) enforcement led to the service becoming a "haven for criminal proceeds" and facilitating transactions worth more than $700 million on the Hydra darknet marketplace prior...

Popular email marketing and newsletter service Mailchimp has disclosed yet another security breach that enabled threat actors to access an internal support and account admin tool to obtain information about 133 customers. "The unauthorized actor conducted a social engineering attack on Mailchimp employees and contractors, and obtained access to select Mailchimp accounts using employee credentials compromised in that attack," the Intuit-owned company  said  in a disclosure. The development was  first reported  by TechCrunch. Mailchimp said it identified the lapse on January 11, 2023, and noted that there is no evidence the unauthorized party breached Intuit systems or other customer information beyond the 133 accounts. It further said the primary contacts for all those affected accounts were notified within 24 hours, and that it has since assisted those users in regaining access to their accounts. The Atlanta-based company, however, did not reveal the duration ...

An ongoing campaign dubbed  Earth Bogle  is leveraging geopolitical-themed lures to deliver the NjRAT remote access trojan to victims across the Middle East and North Africa. "The threat actor uses public cloud storage services such as files[.]fm and failiem[.]lv to host malware, while compromised web servers distribute NjRAT," Trend Micro  said  in a report published Wednesday. Phishing emails, typically tailored to the victim's interests, are loaded with malicious attachments to activate the infection routine. This takes the form of a Microsoft Cabinet (CAB) archive file containing a Visual Basic Script dropper to deploy the next-stage payload. Alternatively, it's suspected that the files are distributed via social media platforms such as Facebook and Discord, in some cases even creating bogus accounts to serve ads on pages impersonating legitimate news outlets. The CAB files, hosted on cloud storage services, also masquerade as sensitive voice recordings to ...

The threat actor known as  BackdoorDiplomacy  has been linked to a new wave of attacks targeting Iranian government entities between July and late December 2022. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which is tracking the activity under its  constellation-themed  moniker  Playful Taurus , said it observed the government domains attempting to connect to malware infrastructure previously identified as associated with the adversary. Also known by the names APT15, KeChang, NICKEL, and Vixen Panda, the Chinese APT group has a history of cyber espionage campaigns aimed at government and diplomatic entities across North America, South America, Africa, and the Middle East at least since 2010. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, in June 2021,  unpacked  the intrusions mounted by the hacking crew against diplomatic entities and telecommunication companies in Africa and the Middle East using a custom implant known as Turian. Then in December 2021, Microsoft  announc...

Compliance services are emerging as one of the hottest areas of cybersecurity.  While compliance used to be mainly the province of large enterprises, times have changed, and it is now a day-to-day concern for a growing number of small and medium businesses.  Even when these organizations are not regulated, SMEs often aim to follow compliance and/or security frameworks either for their own risk mitigation or in order to comply with the standards required by their customers. The driver is often their customers' supply chain concerns and requirements. As large businesses adopt cybersecurity and compliance frameworks and agree to certain standards, they impose similar demands on their suppliers. This is a major opportunity for providers of virtual CISO (vCISO) services assuming they can broaden their offerings to encompass compliance. MSSPs, MSPs, consultanies and other vCISO service providers perform a vital role in building a comprehensive cybersecurity program for their SME...

Security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Netcomm and TP-Link routers, some of which could be weaponized to achieve remote code execution. The flaws, tracked as  CVE-2022-4873  and  CVE-2022-4874 , concern a case of stack-based buffer overflow and authentication bypass and impact Netcomm router models NF20MESH, NF20, and NL1902 running firmware versions earlier than R6B035 . "The two vulnerabilities, when chained together, permit a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code," the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC)  said  in an advisory published Tuesday. "The attacker can first gain unauthorized access to affected devices, and then use those entry points to gain access to other networks or compromise the availability, integrity, or confidentiality of data being transmitted from the internal network." Security researcher  Brendan Scarvell  has been credited with discovering and reporting the issues in October 2022. In a rel...

The maintainers of the  Git  source code version control system have released updates to remediate two critical vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a malicious actor to achieve remote code execution. The flaws, tracked as  CVE-2022-23521  and  CVE-2022-41903 , impacts the following versions of Git: v2.30.6, v2.31.5, v2.32.4, v2.33.5, v2.34.5, v2.35.5, v2.36.3, v2.37.4, v2.38.2, and v2.39.0. Patched versions include v2.30.7, v2.31.6, v2.32.5, v2.33.6, v2.34.6, v2.35.6, v2.36.4, v2.37.5, v2.38.3, and v2.39.1. X41 D-Sec security researchers Markus Vervier and Eric Sesterhenn as well as GitLab's Joern Schneeweisz have been credited with reporting the bugs. "The most severe issue discovered allows an attacker to trigger a heap-based memory corruption during clone or pull operations, which might result in code execution," the German cybersecurity company  said  of CVE-2022-23521. CVE-2022-41903, also a critical vulnerability, is triggered during...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  published  four Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories, calling out several security flaws affecting products from Siemens, GE Digital, and Contec. The most critical of the issues have been identified in Siemens SINEC INS that could lead to remote code execution via a path traversal flaw ( CVE-2022-45092 , CVSS score: 9.9) and command injection ( CVE-2022-2068 , CVSS score: 9.8). Also patched by Siemens is an authentication bypass vulnerability in llhttp parser ( CVE-2022-35256 , CVSS score: 9.8) as well as an out-of-bounds write bug in the OpenSSL library ( CVE-2022-2274 , CVSS score: 9.8) that could be exploited to trigger remote code execution. The German automation company, in December 2022,  released  Service Pack 2 Update 1 software to mitigate the flaws. Separately, a critical flaw has also been revealed in GE Digital's Proficy Historian solution that could result in code executio...

Four different Microsoft Azure services have been found vulnerable to server-side request forgery ( SSRF ) attacks that could be exploited to gain unauthorized access to cloud resources. The security issues, which were discovered by Orca between October 8, 2022 and December 2, 2022 in Azure API Management, Azure Functions, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure Digital Twins, have since been addressed by Microsoft. "The discovered Azure SSRF vulnerabilities allowed an attacker to scan local ports, find new services, endpoints, and sensitive files - providing valuable information on possibly vulnerable servers and services to exploit for initial entry and the location of sensitive information to target," Orca researcher Lidor Ben Shitrit  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Two of the vulnerabilities affecting Azure Functions and Azure Digital Twins could be abused without requiring any authentication, enabling a threat actor to seize control of a server without eve...