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Government and diplomatic entities in the Middle East and South Asia are the target of a new advanced persistent threat actor named  GoldenJackal . Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which has been  keeping tabs  on the group's activities since mid-2020, characterized the adversary as both capable and stealthy. The targeting scope of the campaign is focused on Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey, infecting victims with tailored malware that steals data, propagates across systems via removable drives, and conducts surveillance. GoldenJackal is suspected to have been active for at least four years, although little is known about the group. Kaspersky said it has been unable to determine its origin or affiliation with known threat actors, but the actor's modus operandi suggests an espionage motivation. What's more, the threat actor's attempts to maintain a low profile and disappear into the shadows bears all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored g...

The North Korean advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Kimsuky has been observed using a piece of custom malware called RandomQuery as part of a reconnaissance and information exfiltration operation. "Lately, Kimsuky has been consistently distributing custom malware as part of reconnaissance campaigns to enable subsequent attacks," SentinelOne researchers Aleksandar Milenkoski and Tom Hegel said in a report published today. The ongoing targeted campaign, per the cybersecurity firm, is primarily geared towards information services as well as organizations supporting human rights activists and North Korean defectors. Kimsuky, active since 2012, has exhibited targeting patterns that align with North Korea's operational mandates and priorities. The intelligence collection missions have involved the use of a diverse set of malware, including another reconnaissance program called ReconShark , as detailed by SentinelOne earlier this month. The latest activity ...

The most precious asset in today's information age is the secret safeguarded under lock and key. Regrettably, maintaining secrets has become increasingly challenging, as highlighted by the  2023 State of Secrets Sprawl  report, the largest analysis of public GitHub activity.  The report shows a  67% year-over-year increase  in the number of secrets found, with 10 million hard-coded secrets detected in 2022 alone. This alarming surge in secrets sprawl highlights  the need for action  and underscores the importance of secure software development. Secrets sprawl refers to secrets appearing in plaintext in various sources, such as source code, build scripts, infrastructure as code, logs, etc. While secrets like API tokens and private keys securely connect the components of the modern software supply chain, their widespread distribution among developers, machines, applications, and infrastructure systems heightens the likelihood of leaks. Cybersecurity ...

An unknown threat actor has been observed leveraging a malicious Windows kernel driver in attacks likely targeting the Middle East since at least May 2020. Fortinet Fortiguard Labs, which dubbed the artifact WINTAPIX (WinTapix.sys), attributed the malware with low confidence to an Iranian threat actor. "WinTapix.sys is essentially a loader," security researchers Geri Revay and Hossein Jazi said in a report published on Monday. "Thus, its primary purpose is to produce and execute the next stage of the attack. This is done using a shellcode." Samples and telemetry data analyzed by Fortinet show that the campaign's primary focus is on Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The activity has not been tied to a known threat actor or group. By using a malicious kernel mode driver, the idea is to subvert or disable security mechanisms and gain entrenched access to the targeted host. Such drivers run within the kernel memory and can, there...

China has banned U.S. chip maker Micron from selling its products to Chinese companies working on key infrastructure projects, citing national security risks. The development comes nearly two months after the country's cybersecurity authority  initiated a probe  in late March 2023 to assess potential network security risks. "The purpose of this network security review of Micron's products is to prevent product network security problems from endangering the security of national critical information infrastructure, which is a necessary measure to maintain national security," the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)  said . The CAC further said the investigation found "serious cybersecurity problems" in Micron's products, endangering the country's critical information infrastructure supply chain. As a result, operators involved in such critical information infrastructure projects should stop purchasing products from Micron, it added. The autho...

Facebook's parent company Meta has been fined a record $1.3 billion by European Union data protection regulators for transferring the personal data of users in the region to the U.S. In a binding decision taken by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), the social media giant has been ordered to bring its data transfers into compliance with the GDPR and delete unlawfully stored and processed data within six months. Additionally, Meta has been given five months to suspend any future transfer of Facebook users' data to the U.S. Instagram and WhatsApp, which are also owned by the company, are not subject to the order. "The EDPB found that Meta IE's infringement is very serious since it concerns transfers that are systematic, repetitive, and continuous," Andrea Jelinek, EDPB Chair,  said  in a statement. "Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the volume of personal data transferred is massive. The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organizati...

A financially motivated threat actor of Indonesian origin has been observed leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances to carry out illicit crypto mining operations. Cloud security company's Permiso P0 Labs, which first detected the group in November 2021, has assigned it the moniker  GUI-vil  (pronounced Goo-ee-vil). "The group displays a preference for Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools, specifically S3 Browser (version 9.5.5) for their initial operations," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Upon gaining AWS Console access, they conduct their operations directly through the web browser." Attack chains mounted by GUI-vil entail obtaining initial access by weaponizing AWS keys in publicly exposed source code repositories on GitHub or scanning for GitLab instances that are vulnerable to remote code execution flaws (e.g.,  CVE-2021-22205 ). A successful ingress is followed by privilege escalation and...

New findings about a hacker group linked to cyber attacks targeting companies in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict area reveal that it may have been around for much longer than previously thought. The threat actor, tracked as  Bad Magic  (aka Red Stinger), has not only been linked to a fresh sophisticated campaign, but also to an activity cluster that first came to light in May 2016. "While the previous targets were primarily located in the Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea regions, the scope has now widened to include individuals, diplomatic entities, and research organizations in Western and Central Ukraine," Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky  said  in a technical report published last week. The campaign is characterized by the use of a novel modular framework codenamed CloudWizard, which features capabilities to take screenshots, record microphone, log keystrokes, grab passwords, and harvest Gmail inboxes. Bad Magic was  first documented  by the company in...

It's no secret that data leaks have become a major concern for both citizens and institutions across the globe. They can cause serious damage to an organization's reputation, induce considerable financial losses, and even have serious legal repercussions. From the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal to the Equifax data breach, there have been some pretty high-profile leaks resulting in massive consequences for the world's biggest brands. Breaches can also have a huge impact on individuals as well – ultimately leading to the loss of personal information, such as passwords or credit card details, which could be used by criminals for malicious purposes. Most notably victims are left vulnerable to identity theft or financial fraud.  When you think about the sheer volume of these leaks, one would imagine that the world would stop and focus on the attack vector(s) being exploited. The unfortunate reality is the world didn't stop. To make things more interesting, the most ...

A U.K. national responsible for his role as the administrator of the now-defunct  iSpoof  online phone number spoofing service has been sentenced to 13 years and 4 months in prison. Tejay Fletcher, 35, of Western Gateway, London, was awarded the sentence on May 18, 2023. He  pleaded guilty  last month to a number of cyber offenses, including facilitating fraud and possessing and transferring criminal property. iSpoof , which was available as a paid service, allowed fraudsters to mask their phone numbers and masquerade as representatives from banks, tax offices, and other official bodies to defraud victims. The help desk scam purported to warn targets of suspicious activity on their accounts and tricked them into disclosing sensitive financial information or transferring money to accounts under the threat actor's control. According to the U.K. Metropolitan Police, the criminals assumed false identities as representatives of various banks such as Barclays, Santan...

A proof-of-concept (PoC) has been made available for a security flaw impacting the KeePass password manager that could be exploited to recover a victim's master password in cleartext under specific circumstances. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-32784 , impacts KeePass versions 2.x for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and is  expected to be patched  in version 2.54, which is likely to be released early next month. "Apart from the first password character, it is mostly able to recover the password in plaintext," security researcher "vdohney," who discovered the flaw and devised a PoC,  said . "No code execution on the target system is required, just a memory dump." "It doesn't matter where the memory comes from," the researcher added, stating, "it doesn't matter whether or not the workspace is locked. It is also possible to dump the password from RAM after KeePass is no longer running, although the chance of that working goes down w...

The maintainers of Python Package Index (PyPI), the official third-party software repository for the Python programming language, have temporarily disabled the ability for users to sign up and upload new packages until further notice. "The volume of malicious users and malicious projects being created on the index in the past week has outpaced our ability to respond to it in a timely fashion, especially with multiple PyPI administrators on leave," the admins  said  in a notice published on May 20, 2023. No additional details about the nature of the malware and the threat actors involved in publishing those rogue packages to PyPI were disclosed. The decision to freeze new user and project registrations comes as software registries such as PyPI have proven time and time again to be a popular target for attackers looking to poison the software supply chain and compromise developer environments. Earlier this week, Israeli cybersecurity startup Phylum  uncovered  an...

The identity of the second threat actor behind the Golden Chickens malware has been uncovered courtesy of a "fatal" operational security blunder, cybersecurity firm eSentire said. The individual in question, who lives in Bucharest, Romania, has been given the codename Jack. He is one of the two criminals operating an account on the Russian-language Exploit.in forum under the name "badbullzvenom," the other being " Chuck from Montreal ." eSentire characterized Jack as the true mastermind behind Golden Chickens. Evidence unearthed by the Canadian company shows that he is also listed as the owner of a vegetable and fruit import and export business. "Like 'Chuck from Montreal,' 'Jack' uses multiple aliases for the underground forums, social media, and Jabber accounts, and he too has gone to great lengths to disguise himself," eSentire researchers Joe Stewart and Keegan Keplinger said . "'Jack' has taken great pa...

The notorious cybercrime group known as FIN7 has been observed deploying  Cl0p  (aka Clop) ransomware, marking the threat actor's first ransomware campaign since late 2021. Microsoft, which detected the activity in April 2023, is tracking the financially motivated actor under its new taxonomy  Sangria Tempest . "In these recent attacks, Sangria Tempest uses the PowerShell script POWERTRASH to load the Lizar post-exploitation tool and get a foothold into a target network," the company's threat intelligence team  said . "They then use OpenSSH and Impacket to move laterally and deploy Clop ransomware." FIN7  (aka Carbanak, ELBRUS, and ITG14) has been linked to other ransomware families such as Black Basta, DarkSide, REvil, and LockBit, with the threat actor acting as a precursor for Maze and Ryuk ransomware attacks.  Active since at least 2012, the group has a  track record  of  targeting  a broad spectrum of organizations spanning so...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned of active exploitation of a medium-severity flaw affecting Samsung devices. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-21492  (CVSS score: 4.4), impacts select Samsung devices running Android versions 11, 12, and 13. The South Korean electronics giant described the issue as an information disclosure flaw that could be exploited by a privileged attacker to bypass address space layout randomization ( ASLR ) protections. ASLR is a  security technique  that's designed to thwart memory corruption and code execution flaws by obscuring the location of an executable in a device's memory. Samsung, in an  advisory  released this month, said it was "notified that an exploit for this issue had existed in the wild," adding it was privately disclosed to the company on January 17, 2023. Other details about how the flaw is being exploited are currently not known, but vulnerabilities in Samsung phones h...

Google has announced plans to officially flip the switch on its twice-delayed  Privacy Sandbox  initiatives as it slowly works its way to deprecate support for third-party cookies in Chrome browser. To that end, the search and advertising giant said it intends to phase out third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users globally in the first quarter of 2024. "This will support developers in conducting real world experiments that assess the readiness and effectiveness of their products without third-party cookies," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox at Google,  said . Prior to rolling this out, Google said it would introduce the ability for third-party developers to simulate the process for a configurable subset of their users (up to 10%) in Q4 2023. Google further emphasized that the plans have been designed and developed with regulatory oversight and input from the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority ( CMA ), which is overseeing the implementation to...

Active Directory (AD) is among the oldest pieces of software still used in the production environment and can be found in most organizations today. This is despite the fact that its historical security gaps have never been amended. For example, because of its inability to apply any security measures beyond checking for a password and username match, AD (as well the resources it manages) is dangerously exposed to the use of compromised credentials. Furthermore, this exposure is not confined to the on-prem environment. The common practice of syncing passwords between AD and the cloud identity provider means any AD breach is a potential risk to the SaaS environment as well. In this article, we'll explore AD's inherent security weaknesses and examine their scope and potential impact. We'll then learn how Silverfort's Unified Identity Protection platform can address these weaknesses at their root and provide organizations using AD with the resiliency they need to thwart identity threa...