The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

A malicious actor released a fake proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a recently disclosed WinRAR vulnerability on GitHub with an aim to infect users who downloaded the code with Venom RAT malware. "The fake PoC meant to exploit this WinRAR vulnerability was based on a publicly available PoC script that exploited a SQL injection vulnerability in an application called GeoServer, which is tracked as  CVE-2023-25157 ," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Robert Falcone  said . While  bogus PoCs  have become a  well-documented gambit  for targeting the  research community , the cybersecurity firm suspected that the threat actors are opportunistically targeting other crooks who may be adopting the latest vulnerabilities into their arsenal. whalersplonk, the  GitHub account  that hosted the repository, is no longer accessible. The PoC is said to have been committed on August 21, 2023, four days after the vulnerability was publicly announced. ...

Finnish law enforcement authorities have announced the takedown of PIILOPUOTI, a dark web marketplace that specialized in illegal narcotics trade since May 2022. "The site operated as a hidden service in the encrypted TOR network," the Finnish Customs (aka Tulli)  said  in a brief announcement on Tuesday. "The site has been used in anonymous criminal activities such as narcotics trade." The agency said that the drugs sold on the site were smuggled to Finland from abroad, adding a criminal investigation is underway in coordination with international partners from Germany and Lithuania, along with Europol and Eurojust. It's not immediately clear if any arrests were made. Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender said it provided additional support that helped with the seizure of PIILOPUOTI. "We are extremely pleased that PIILOPUOTI has been seized and would like to congratulate law enforcement, Finnish Customs, and everyone involved," Alexandru Catal...

Multiple security flaws have been disclosed in the Nagios XI network monitoring software that could result in privilege escalation and information disclosure. The four security vulnerabilities, tracked from CVE-2023-40931 through CVE-2023-40934, impact Nagios XI versions 5.11.1 and lower. Following responsible disclosure on August 4, 2023, They have been  patched  as of September 11, 2023, with the release of version 5.11.2. "Three of these vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-40931, CVE-2023-40933 and CVE-2023-40934) allow users, with various levels of privileges, to access database fields via SQL Injections," Outpost24 researcher Astrid Tedenbrant  said . "The data obtained from these vulnerabilities may be used to further escalate privileges in the product and obtain sensitive user data such as password hashes and API tokens." CVE-2023-40932, on the other hand, relates to a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in the Custom Logo component that could be used to read sensiti...

Well, you shouldn't. It may already be hiding vulnerabilities. It's the modular nature of modern web applications that has made them so effective. They can call on dozens of third-party web components, JS frameworks, and open-source tools to deliver all the different functionalities that keep their customers happy, but this chain of dependencies is also what makes them so vulnerable. Many of those components in the web application supply chain are controlled by a third party—the company that created them. This means that no matter how rigorous you were with your own static code analysis, code reviews, penetration testing, and other SSDLC processes, most of your supply chain's security is in the hands of whoever built its third-party components. With their huge potential for weak spots, and their widespread use in the lucrative ecommerce, financial and medical industries, web application supply chains present a juicy target for cyber attackers. They can target any one of the doz...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a fresh batch of malicious packages in the npm package registry that are designed to exfiltrate Kubernetes configurations and SSH keys from compromised machines to a remote server. Sonatype said it has discovered 14 different npm packages so far: @am-fe/hooks, @am-fe/provider, @am-fe/request, @am-fe/utils, @am-fe/watermark, @am-fe/watermark-core, @dynamic-form-components/mui, @dynamic-form-components/shineout, @expue/app, @fixedwidthtable/fixedwidthtable, @soc-fe/use, @spgy/eslint-plugin-spgy-fe, @virtualsearchtable/virtualsearchtable, and shineouts. "These packages [...] attempt to impersonate JavaScript libraries and components, such as ESLint plugins and TypeScript SDK tools," the software supply chain security firm  said . "But, upon installation, multiple versions of the packages were seen running obfuscated code to collect and siphon sensitive files from the target machine." Along with Kubernetes config and SSH ke...

Chinese-language speakers have been increasingly targeted as part of multiple email phishing campaigns that aim to distribute various malware families such as Sainbox RAT, Purple Fox, and a new trojan called ValleyRAT. "Campaigns include Chinese-language lures and malware typically associated with Chinese cybercrime activity," enterprise security firm Proofpoint  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity, observed since early 2023, entails sending email messages containing URLs pointing to compressed executables that are responsible for installing the malware. Other infection chains have been found to leverage Microsoft Excel and PDF attachments that embed these URLs to trigger malicious activity. These campaigns demonstrate variation in the use of infrastructure, sender domains, email content, targeting, and payloads, indicating that different threat clusters are mounting the attacks. Over 30 such campaigns have been detected in 2023 that employ malwa...

Encrypted messaging app Signal has announced an update to the Signal Protocol to add support for quantum resistance by upgrading the Extended Triple Diffie-Hellman ( X3DH ) specification to Post-Quantum Extended Diffie-Hellman ( PQXDH ). "With this upgrade, we are adding a layer of protection against the threat of a quantum computer being built in the future that is powerful enough to break current encryption standards," Signal's Ehren Kret  said . The development comes weeks after Google added support for  quantum-resistant encryption algorithms  in its Chrome web browser and announced a  quantum-resilient FIDO2 security key implementation  as part of its OpenSK security keys initiative last month. The  Signal Protocol  is a set of cryptographic specifications that provides end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for private text and voice communications. It's used in various messaging apps like WhatsApp and Google's encrypted RCS messages for Android. Whi...

GitLab has shipped security patches to resolve a critical flaw that allows an attacker to run pipelines as another user. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-5009  (CVSS score: 9.6), impacts all versions of GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) starting from 13.12 and prior to 16.2.7 as well as from 16.3 and before 16.3.4. "It was possible for an attacker to  run pipelines  as an arbitrary user via scheduled security scan policies," GitLab  said  in an advisory. "This was a bypass of  CVE-2023-3932  showing additional impact." Successful exploitation of CVE-2023-5009 could allow a threat actor to access sensitive information or leverage the elevated permissions of the impersonated user to modify source code or run arbitrary code on the system, leading to severe consequences. Security researcher Johan Carlsson (aka joaxcar) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. CVE-2023-3932 was addressed by GitLab in early August 2023. The new vulne...

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro has  released  patches and hotfixes to address a critical security flaw in Apex One and Worry-Free Business Security solutions for Windows that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Tracked as  CVE-2023-41179  (CVSS score: 9.1), it relates to a third-party antivirus uninstaller module that's bundled along with the software. The complete list of impacted products is as follows - Apex One - version 2019 (on-premise), fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) Apex One as a Service - fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) and Agent version 14.0.12637 Worry-Free Business Security - version 10.0 SP1, fixed in 10.0 SP1 Patch 2495 Worry-Free Business Security Services - fixed in July 31, 2023, Monthly Maintenance Release Trend Micro said that a successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to manipulate the component to execute arbitrary commands on an affected installation. However, it requires that the adversary already has ...

Telecommunication service providers in the Middle East are the target of a new intrusion set dubbed  ShroudedSnooper  that employs a stealthy backdoor called HTTPSnoop. "HTTPSnoop is a simple, yet effective, backdoor that consists of novel techniques to interface with Windows HTTP kernel drivers and devices to listen to incoming requests for specific HTTP(S) URLs and execute that content on the infected endpoint," Cisco Talos  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Also part of the threat actor's arsenal is a sister implant codenamed PipeSnoop that can accept arbitrary shellcode from a  named pipe  and execute it on the infected endpoint. It's suspected that ShroudedSnooper exploits internet-facing servers and deploys HTTPSnoop to gain initial access to target environments, with both the malware strains impersonating components of Palo Alto Networks' Cortex XDR application (" CyveraConsole.exe ") to fly under the radar. Three different HTTP...

Targets located in Azerbaijan have been singled out as part of a new campaign that's designed to deploy Rust-based malware on compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct is tracking the operation under the name Operation Rusty Flag. It has not been associated with any known threat actor or group. "The operation has at least two different initial access vectors," security researchers Simon Kenin, Ron Ben Yizhak, and Mark Vaitzman  said  in an analysis published last week. "One of the lures used in the operation is a modified document that was used by the Storm-0978 group. This could be a deliberate 'false flag.'" The attack chain leverages an LNK file named 1.KARABAKH.jpg.lnk as a launchpad to retrieve a second-stage payload, an MSI installer, hosted on Dropbox. The installer file, for its part, drops an implant written in Rust, an XML file for a scheduled task to execute the implant, and a decoy image file that features watermarks of the ...

XWorm is a relatively new representative of the remote access trojan cohort that has already earned its spot among the most persistent threats across the globe.  Since 2022, when it was first observed by researchers, it has undergone a number of major updates that have significantly enhanced its functionality and solidified its staying power.  The analyst team at  ANY.RUN  came across the newest version of the malware and could not refuse the opportunity of taking it apart to examine XWorm mechanics configurations. Here is how they did it and what they found.  The XWorm sample's source  The sample in question was discovered in ANY. RUN's database of malware, a repository containing detailed analysis reports on all files and links that have been uploaded by users of the sandbox in public mode.  A quick look at the results of the analysis revealed that the sample was initially distributed via MediaFire, a file-hosting service. The malware was packa...

The China-linked threat actor known as  Earth Lusca  has been observed targeting government entities using a never-before-seen Linux backdoor called SprySOCKS. Earth Lusca was  first documented  by Trend Micro in January 2022, detailing the adversary's attacks against public and private sector entities across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America. Active since 2021, the group has relied on spear-phishing and watering hole attacks to pull off its cyber espionage schemes. Some activities of the group overlap with another threat cluster tracked by Recorded Future under the name  RedHotel . The latest findings from the cybersecurity firm show that Earth Lusca continues to be an active group, even expanding its operations to target organizations across the world during the first half of 2023. Primary targets include government departments that are involved in foreign affairs, technology, and telecommunications. The attacks are concentrated in Southeast Asia, Ce...

As the adoption of generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, continues to surge, so does the risk of data exposure. According to Gartner's "Emerging Tech: Top 4 Security Risks of GenAI" report, privacy and data security is one of the four major emerging risks within generative AI.  A new webinar  featuring a multi-time Fortune 100 CISO and the CEO of LayerX, a browser extension solution, delves into this critical risk. Throughout the webinar, the speakers will explain why data security is a risk and explore the ability of DLP solutions to protect against them, or lack thereof. Then, they will delineate the capabilities required by DLP solutions to ensure businesses benefit from the productivity GenAI applications have to offer without compromising security.  The Business and Security Risks of Generative AI Applications GenAI security risks occur when employees insert sensitive texts into these applications. These actions warrant careful consideration, because the inserted da...

Microsoft on Monday said it took steps to correct a glaring security gaffe that led to the exposure of 38 terabytes of private data. The leak was discovered on the company's AI GitHub repository and is said to have been inadvertently made public when publishing a bucket of open-source training data, Wiz said. It also included a disk backup of two former employees' workstations containing secrets, keys, passwords, and over 30,000 internal Teams messages. The repository, named " robust-models-transfer ," is no longer accessible. Prior to its takedown, it featured source code and machine learning models pertaining to a  2020 research paper   titled  "Do Adversarially Robust ImageNet Models Transfer Better?" "The exposure came as the result of an overly permissive  SAS token  – an Azure feature that allows users to share data in a manner that is both hard to track and hard to revoke," Wiz  said  in a report. The issue was reported to Microsoft on J...

New research has found that close to 12,000 internet-exposed Juniper firewall devices are vulnerable to a recently disclosed remote code execution flaw. VulnCheck, which  discovered  a new exploit for CVE-2023-36845, said it could be  exploited  by an "unauthenticated and remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on Juniper firewalls without creating a file on the system." CVE-2023-36845 refers to a  medium-severity flaw  in the J-Web component of Junos OS that could be weaponized by a threat actor to control certain, important environment variables. It was patched by Juniper Networks last month alongside CVE-2023-36844, CVE-2023-36846, and CVE-2023-36847 in an out-of-cycle update. A subsequent proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit devised by watchTowr combined CVE-2023-36846 and CVE-2023-36845 to upload a PHP file containing malicious shellcode and achieve code execution. The latest exploit, on the other hand, impacts older systems and can be written using ...