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A Chinese nation-state group targeted an unnamed Taiwanese media organization to deliver an open source red teaming tool known as Google Command and Control ( GC2 ) amid broader abuse of Google's infrastructure for malicious ends. The tech giant's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) attributed the campaign to a threat actor it tracks under the  geological  and  geographical-themed  moniker  HOODOO , which is also known by the names  APT41 , Barium, Bronze Atlas, Wicked Panda, and  Winnti . The starting point of the attack is a phishing email that contains links to a password-protected file hosted on Google Drive, which, in turn, incorporates the Go-based GC2 tool to read commands from Google Sheets and exfiltrate data using the cloud storage service. "After installation on the victim machine, the malware queries Google Sheets to obtain attacker commands," Google's cloud division  said  in its sixth Threat Horizons Report. "In addition to exfiltr...

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Threat actors associated with the Vice Society ransomware gang have been observed using a bespoke PowerShell-based tool to fly under the radar and automate the process of exfiltrating data from compromised networks. "Threat actors (TAs) using built-in  data exfiltration   methods  like [living off the land binaries and scripts] negate the need to bring in external tools that might be flagged by security software and/or human-based security detection mechanisms," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Ryan Chapman  said . "These methods can also hide within the general operating environment, providing subversion to the threat actor." Vice Society , tracked by Microsoft under the name DEV-0832, is an extortion-focused hacking group that emerged on the scene in May 2021. It's known to rely on ransomware binaries sold on the criminal underground to meet its goals. In December 2022, SentinelOne detailed the group's use of a ransomware variant, dubbed  PolyVi...

A novel credential-stealing malware called  Zaraza bot  is being offered for sale on Telegram while also using the  popular   messaging service  as a command-and-control (C2). "Zaraza bot targets a large number of web browsers and is being actively distributed on a Russian Telegram hacker channel popular with threat actors," cybersecurity company Uptycs  said  in a report published last week. "Once the malware infects a victim's computer, it retrieves sensitive data and sends it to a Telegram server where the attackers can access it immediately." A 64-bit binary file compiled using C#, Zaraza bot is designed to target as many as 38 different web browsers, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, AVG Browser, Brave, Vivaldi, and Yandex. It's also equipped to capture screenshots of the active window. It's the latest example of malware that's capable of capturing login credentials associated with online bank accounts, cryptocurrency wallets...

Google on Friday released out-of-band updates to resolve an actively exploited zero-day flaw in its Chrome web browser, making it the first such bug to be addressed since the start of the year. Tracked as  CVE-2023-2033 , the high-severity vulnerability has been described as a  type confusion issue  in the V8 JavaScript engine. Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with reporting the issue on April 11, 2023. "Type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 112.0.5615.121 allowed a remote attacker to potentially exploit heap corruption via a crafted HTML page,"  according  to the NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD). The tech giant  acknowledged  that "an exploit for CVE-2023-2033 exists in the wild," but stopped short of sharing additional technical specifics or indicators of compromise (IoCs) to prevent further exploitation by threat actors. CVE-2023-2033 also appears to share similarities with  CVE...

The Russia-linked  APT29  (aka Cozy Bear) threat actor has been attributed to an ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting foreign ministries and diplomatic entities located in NATO member states, the European Union, and Africa. According to Poland's Military Counterintelligence Service and the CERT Polska team, the observed activity shares tactical overlaps with a cluster tracked by Microsoft as  Nobelium , which is known for its high-profile  attack on SolarWinds  in 2020. Nobelium's operations have been attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service ( SVR ), an organization that's tasked with protecting "individuals, society, and the state from foreign threats." That said, the campaign represents an evolution of the Kremlin-backed hacking group's tactics, indicating  persistent attempts  at improving its cyber weaponry to infiltrate victim systems for intelligence gathering. "New tools were used at the same time and independently of eac...

Open source media player software provider Kodi has confirmed a data breach after threat actors stole the company's MyBB forum database containing user data and private messages. What's more, the unknown threat actors  attempted to sell  the data dump  comprising 400,635 Kodi users  on the now-defunct  BreachForums  cybercrime marketplace. "MyBB admin logs show the account of a trusted but currently inactive member of the forum admin team was used to access the web-based MyBB admin console twice: on 16 February and again on 21 February," Kodi  said  in an advisory. The threat actors then abused the account to create database backups that were then downloaded and deleted. Also downloaded were existing nightly full backups of the database. The account in question has now been disabled. The nightly backups contained all public forum posts, team forum posts, messages sent through the user-to-user messaging system, and user information such as fo...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  two vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The two flaws are listed below - CVE-2023-20963  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Android Framework Privilege Escalation Vulnerability CVE-2023-29492  (CVSS score: TBD) - Novi Survey Insecure Deserialization Vulnerability "Android Framework contains an unspecified vulnerability that allows for privilege escalation after updating an app to a higher Target SDK with no additional execution privileges needed," CISA  said  in an advisory for CVE-2023-20963. Google, in its monthly Android Security Bulletin for March 2023,  acknowledged  "there are indications that CVE-2023-20963 may be under limited, targeted exploitation." The development comes as tech news site Ars Technica  disclosed  late last month that Android apps digitally signed by China's e-commer...

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Google on Thursday outlined a set of initiatives aimed at improving the vulnerability management ecosystem and establishing greater transparency measures around exploitation. "While the notoriety of zero-day vulnerabilities typically makes headlines, risks remain even after they're known and fixed, which is the real story," the company said in an announcement. "Those risks span everything from lag time in OEM adoption, patch testing pain points, end user update issues and more." Security threats also stem from incomplete patches applied by vendors, with a chunk of the zero-days exploited in the wild turning out to be variants of previously patched vulnerabilities. Mitigating such risks requires addressing the root cause of the vulnerabilities and prioritizing modern secure software development practices to eliminate entire classes of threats and block potential attack avenues. Taking these factors into consideration, Google said it's forming a Hacking...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed the tactics of a "rising" cybercriminal gang called "Read The Manual" (RTM) Locker that functions as a private ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) provider and carries out opportunistic attacks to generate illicit profit. "The 'Read The Manual' Locker gang uses affiliates to ransom victims, all of whom are forced to abide by the gang's strict rules," cybersecurity firm Trellix said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The business-like set up of the group, where affiliates are required to remain active or notify the gang of their leave, shows the organizational maturity of the group, as has also been observed in other groups, such as  Conti ." RTM , first documented by ESET in February 2017,  started off  in 2015 as a banking malware targeting businesses in Russia via drive-by downloads, spam, and phishing emails. Attack chains mounted by the group have since  evolved  to deploy a ransomwa...

Popular instant messaging app WhatsApp on Thursday announced a new account verification feature that ensures that malware running on a user's mobile device doesn't impact their account. "Mobile device malware is one of the biggest threats to people's privacy and security today because it can take advantage of your phone without your permission and use your WhatsApp to send unwanted messages," the Meta-owned company said in an announcement. Called  Device Verification , the security measure is designed to help prevent account takeover (ATO) attacks by blocking the threat actor's connection and allowing targets of the malware infection to use the app without any interruption. In other words, the goal is to deter attackers' use of malware to steal WhatsApp authentication keys and hijack victim accounts, and subsequently impersonate them to distribute spam and phishing links to other contacts. This, in turn, is achieved by introducing a security-token th...

An emerging Python-based credential harvester and a hacking tool named Legion is being marketed via Telegram as a way for threat actors to break into various online services for further exploitation. Legion, according to  Cado Labs , includes modules to enumerate vulnerable SMTP servers, conduct remote code execution (RCE) attacks, exploit unpatched versions of Apache, and brute-force cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) accounts. The malware is said to bear similarities to another malware family called AndroxGh0st that was first documented by cloud security services provider Lacework in December 2022. Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, in an analysis published late last month, revealed that AndroxGh0st is part of a comprehensive toolset called AlienFox that's offered to threat actors to steal API keys and secrets from cloud services. "Legion appears to be part of an emerging generation of cloud-focused credential harvester/spam utilities," security researcher Matt Muir...

Shadow APIs are a growing risk for organizations of all sizes as they can mask malicious behavior and induce substantial data loss. For those that aren't familiar with the term, shadow APIs are a type of application programming interface (API) that isn't officially documented or supported.  Contrary to popular belief, it's unfortunately all too common to have APIs in production that no one on your operations or security teams knows about. Enterprises manage thousands of APIs, many of which are not routed through a proxy such as an API gateway or web application firewall. This means they aren't monitored, are rarely audited, and are most vulnerable.  Since they aren't visible to security teams, shadow APIs provide hackers with a defenseless path to exploit vulnerabilities. These APIs can potentially be manipulated by malicious actors to gain access to a range of sensitive information, from customer addresses to company financial records. Considering the potential ...

The  Transparent Tribe  threat actor has been linked to a set of weaponized Microsoft Office documents in intrusions directed against the Indian education sector to deploy a continuously maintained piece of malware called Crimson RAT. While the suspected Pakistan-based threat group is known to target  military and government entities  in the country, the activities have since expanded to include the  education vertical . The hacking group, also called APT36, Operation C-Major, PROJECTM, and Mythic Leopard, has been active as far back as 2013. Educational institutions have been at the receiving end of the adversary's attacks since late 2021. "Crimson RAT is a  consistent   staple  in the group's  malware arsenal  the adversary uses in its campaigns," SentinelOne researcher Aleksandar Milenkoski  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The .NET malware has the functionality to exfiltrate files and system data to an a...

The North Korean threat actor known as the Lazarus Group has been observed shifting its focus and rapidly evolving its tools and tactics as part of a long-running campaign called  DeathNote . While the nation-state adversary is known for persistently singling out the cryptocurrency sector, recent attacks have also targeted automotive, academic, and defense sectors in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, in what's perceived as a "significant" pivot.  "At this point, the actor switched all the decoy documents to job descriptions related to defense contractors and diplomatic services," Kaspersky researcher Seongsu Park  said  in an analysis published Wednesday. The deviation in targeting, along with the use of updated infection vectors, is said to have occurred in April 2020. It's worth noting that the DeathNote cluster is also tracked under the monikers  Operation Dream Job  or  NukeSped . Google-owned Mandiant has also tied a subset of the a...

OpenAI, the company behind the massively popular ChatGPT AI chatbot, has launched a  bug bounty program  in an attempt to ensure its systems are "safe and secure." To that end, it has partnered with the crowdsourced security platform  Bugcrowd  for independent researchers to report vulnerabilities discovered in its product in exchange for rewards ranging from "$200 for low-severity findings to up to $20,000 for exceptional discoveries." It's worth noting that the program does not cover  model safety or hallucination issues , wherein the chatbot is prompted to generate malicious code or other faulty outputs. The company noted that "addressing these issues often involves substantial research and a broader approach." Other prohibited categories are denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, brute-forcing OpenAI APIs, and demonstrations that aim to destroy data or gain unauthorized access to sensitive information beyond what's necessary to highlight the prob...

Threat actors using hacking tools from an Israeli surveillanceware vendor named QuaDream targeted at least five members of civil society in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. According to findings from a group of researchers from the Citizen Lab, the spyware campaign was directed against journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker in 2021. The names of the victims were not disclosed. It's also suspected that the company abused a zero-click exploit dubbed  ENDOFDAYS  in iOS 14 to deploy spyware as a zero-day in version 14.4 and 14.4.2. There is no evidence that the exploit has been used after November 2021. ENDOFDAYS "appears to make use of invisible iCloud calendar invitations sent from the spyware's operator to victims," the researchers said , adding the .ics files contain invites to two backdated and overlapping events so as to not alert the users.  The attacks are suspected to have leveraged a quirk in iO...