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

The proliferation of cybersecurity tools has created an illusion of security. Organizations often believe that by deploying a firewall, antivirus software, intrusion detection systems, identity threat detection and response , and other tools, they are adequately protected. However, this approach not only fails to address the fundamental issue of the attack surface but also introduces dangerous third-party risk to the mix. The world of cybersecurity is in a constant state of flux, with cybercriminals becoming increasingly sophisticated in their tactics. In response, organizations are investing heavily in cybersecurity tools, hoping to build an impenetrable fortress around their digital assets. However, the belief that adding "just one more cybersecurity tool" will magically fix your attack surface and enhance your protection is a dangerous misconception. The limitations of cybersecurity tools Cybersecurity tools, while essential, have inherent limitations. They are designe...

The Colombian insurance sector is the target of a threat actor tracked as Blind Eagle with the end goal of delivering a customized version of a known commodity remote access trojan (RAT) referred to as Quasar RAT since June 2024. "Attacks have originated with phishing emails impersonating the Colombian tax authority," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Gaetano Pellegrino said in a new analysis published last week. The advanced persistent threat (APT), also known as AguilaCiega, APT-C-36, and APT-Q-98, has a track record of focusing on organizations and individuals in South America, particularly related to the government and finance sectors in Colombia and Ecuador. The attack chains, as recently documented by Kaspersky, originate with phishing emails that entice recipients into clicking on malicious links that serve as the launchpad for the infection process. The links, either embedded within a PDF attachment or directly in the email body, point to ZIP archives hosted on ...

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Mustang Panda has been observed weaponizing Visual Studio Code software as part of espionage operations targeting government entities in Southeast Asia. "This threat actor used Visual Studio Code's embedded reverse shell feature to gain a foothold in target networks," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Tom Fakterman said in a report, describing it as a "relatively new technique" that was first demonstrated in September 2023 by Truvis Thornton. The campaign is assessed to be a continuation of a previously documented attack activity aimed at an unnamed Southeast Asian government entity in late September 2023. Mustang Panda , also known by the names BASIN, Bronze President, Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, Red Lich, and Stately Taurus, has been operational since 2012, routinely conducting cyber espionage campaigns targeting government and religious entities across Europe an...

While phishing and ransomware dominate headlines, another critical risk quietly persists across most enterprises: exposed Git repositories leaking sensitive data. A risk that silently creates shadow access into core systems Git is the backbone of modern software development, hosting millions of repositories and serving thousands of organizations worldwide. Yet, amid the daily hustle of shipping code, developers may inadvertently leave behind API keys, tokens, or passwords in configuration files and code files, effectively handing attackers the keys to the kingdom. This isn't just about poor hygiene; it's a systemic and growing supply chain risk. As cyber threats become more sophisticated, so do compliance requirements. Security frameworks like NIS2, SOC2, and ISO 27001 now demand proof that software delivery pipelines are hardened and third-party risk is controlled. The message is clear: securing your Git repositories is no longer optional, it's essential. Below, we look at the ris...

GenAI has become a table stakes tool for employees, due to the productivity gains and innovative capabilities it offers. Developers use it to write code, finance teams use it to analyze reports, and sales teams create customer emails and assets. Yet, these capabilities are exactly the ones that introduce serious security risks. Register to our upcoming webinar to learn how to prevent GenAI data leakage When employees input data into GenAI tools like ChatGPT, they often do not differentiate between sensitive and non-sensitive data. Research by LayerX indicates that one in three employees who use GenAI tools, also share sensitive information. This could include source code, internal financial numbers, business plans, IP, PII, customer data, and more. Security teams have been trying to address this data exfiltration risk ever since ChatGPT tumultuously entered our lives in November 2022. Yet, so far the common approach has been to either "allow all" or "block all", i.e allow the use ...

Designed to be more than a one-time assessment— Wing Security's SaaS Pulse provides organizations with actionable insights and continuous oversight into their SaaS security posture—and it's free! Introducing SaaS Pulse: Free Continuous SaaS Risk Management  Just like waiting for a medical issue to become critical before seeing a doctor, organizations can't afford to overlook the constantly evolving risks in their SaaS ecosystems. New SaaS apps, shifting permissions, and emerging threats mean risks are always in motion. SaaS Pulse makes it easy to treat SaaS risk management as an ongoing practice, not just an occasional check-up. Security teams instantly get a real-time security "health" score, prioritized risks, contextualized threat insights, and the organization's app inventory—without setups or integrations. SaaS is a Moving Target SaaS stacks don't stand still. Business critical apps can easily slip into a state of vulnerability (i.e. supply chain attacks, account takeo...

Progress Software has released security updates for a maximum-severity flaw in LoadMaster and Multi-Tenant (MT) hypervisor that could result in the execution of arbitrary operating system commands. Tracked as CVE-2024-7591 (CVSS score: 10.0), the vulnerability has been described as an improper input validation bug that results in OS command injection. "It is possible for unauthenticated, remote attackers who have access to the management interface of LoadMaster to issue a carefully crafted http request that will allow arbitrary system commands to be executed," the company said in an advisory last week. "This vulnerability has been closed by sanitizing request user input to mitigate arbitrary system commands execution." The flaw affects the following versions - LoadMaster (7.2.60.0 and all prior versions) Multi-Tenant Hypervisor (7.1.35.11 and all prior versions) Security researcher Florian Grunow has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw...

Android device users in South Korea have emerged as a target of a new mobile malware campaign that delivers a new type of threat dubbed SpyAgent . The malware "targets mnemonic keys by scanning for images on your device that might contain them," McAfee Labs researcher SangRyol Ryu said in an analysis, adding the targeting footprint has broadened in scope to include the U.K. The campaign makes use of bogus Android apps that are disguised as seemingly legitimate banking, government facilities, streaming, and utility apps in an attempt to trick users into installing them. As many as 280 fake applications have been detected since the start of the year. It all starts with SMS messages bearing booby-trapped links that urge users to download the apps in question in the form of APK files hosted on deceptive sites. Once installed, they are designed to request intrusive permissions to collect data from the devices. This includes contacts, SMS messages, photos, and other device i...

A previously undocumented threat actor with likely ties to Chinese-speaking groups has predominantly singled out drone manufacturers in Taiwan as part of a cyber attack campaign that commenced in 2024. Trend Micro is tracking the adversary under the moniker TIDRONE , stating the activity is espionage-driven given the focus on military-related industry chains. The exact initial access vector used to breach targets is presently unknown, with Trend Micro's analysis uncovering the deployment of custom malware such as CXCLNT and CLNTEND using remote desktop tools like UltraVNC. An interesting commonality observed across different victims is the presence of the same enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, raising the possibility of a supply chain attack. The attack chains subsequently go through three different stages that are designed to facilitate privilege escalation by means of a User Account Control ( UAC ) bypass, credential dumping, and defense evasion by disabling ant...

The U.S. government and a coalition of international partners have officially attributed a Russian hacking group tracked as Cadet Blizzard to the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 161st Specialist Training Center ( Unit 29155 ). "These cyber actors are responsible for computer network operations against global targets for the purposes of espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm since at least 2020," the agencies said . "Since early 2022, the primary focus of the cyber actors appears to be targeting and disrupting efforts to provide aid to Ukraine." Targets of the attacks have focused on critical infrastructure and key resource sectors, including the government services, financial services, transportation systems, energy, and healthcare sectors of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, the European Union, Central American, and Asian countries. The joint advisory, released last week as part of a coordinated exercise dubbed Operatio...

Threat actors affiliated with North Korea have been observed leveraging LinkedIn as a way to target developers as part of a fake job recruiting operation. These attacks employ coding tests as a common initial infection vector, Google-owned Mandiant said in a new report about threats faced by the Web3 sector. "After an initial chat conversation, the attacker sent a ZIP file that contained COVERTCATCH malware disguised as a Python coding challenge," researchers Robert Wallace, Blas Kojusner, and Joseph Dobson said . The malware functions as a launchpad to compromise the target's macOS system by downloading a second-stage payload that establishes persistence via Launch Agents and Launch Daemons. It's worth pointing out that this is one of many activity clusters – namely Operation Dream Job , Contagious Interview , and others – undertaken by North Korean hacking groups that make use of job-related decoys to infect targets with malware. Recruiting-themed lures have ...

Two men have been indicted in the U.S. for their alleged involvement in managing a dark web marketplace called WWH Club that specializes in the sale of sensitive personal and financial information. Alex Khodyrev, a 35-year-old Kazakhstan national, and Pavel Kublitskii, a 37-year-old Russian national, have been charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Khodyrev and Kublitskii, between 2014 and 2024, acted as the main administrators of WWH Club (wwh-club[.]ws) and various other sister sites – wwh-club[.]net, center-club[.]pw, opencard[.]pw, skynetzone[.]org – that functioned as dark web marketplaces, forums, and training centers to enable cybercrime. The indictment follows an investigation launched by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in July 2020 after determining that WWH Club's primary domain (www-club[.]ws]) resolved to an IP address belonging to DigitalOcean, allowing them to issue a federal search warrant to t...

SonicWall has revealed that a recently patched critical security flaw impacting SonicOS may have come under active exploitation, making it essential that users apply the patches as soon as possible. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-40766, carries a CVSS score of 9.3 out of a maximum of 10. "An improper access control vulnerability has been identified in the SonicWall SonicOS management access and SSLVPN, potentially leading to unauthorized resource access and in specific conditions, causing the firewall to crash," SonicWall said in an updated advisory. With the latest development, the company has revealed that CVE-2024-40766 also impacts the firewall's SSLVPN feature. The issue has been addressed in the below versions - SOHO (Gen 5 Firewalls) - 5.9.2.14-13o Gen 6 Firewalls - 6.5.2.8-2n (for SM9800, NSsp 12400, and NSsp 12800) and 6.5.4.15.116n (for other Gen 6 Firewall appliances) The network security vendor has since updated the bulletin to reflect the p...

A recently disclosed security flaw in OSGeo GeoServer GeoTools has been exploited as part of multiple campaigns to deliver cryptocurrency miners, botnet malware such as Condi and JenX, and a known backdoor called SideWalk. The security vulnerability is a critical remote code execution bug (CVE-2024-36401, CVSS score: 9.8) that could allow malicious actors to take over susceptible instances. In mid-July, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The Shadowserver Foundation said it detected exploitation attempts against its honeypot sensors starting July 9, 2024. According to Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, the flaw has been observed being used to deliver GOREVERSE, a reverse proxy server designed to establish a connection with a command-and-control (C2) server for post-exploitation activity. These attacks are said to target IT service providers in In...

Threat actors have long leveraged typosquatting as a means to trick unsuspecting users into visiting malicious websites or downloading booby-trapped software and packages. These attacks typically involve registering domains or packages with names slightly altered from their legitimate counterparts (e.g., goog1e.com vs. google.com). Adversaries targeting open-source repositories across platforms have relied on developers making typing errors to initiate software supply chain attacks through PyPI, npm, Maven Central, NuGet, RubyGems, and Crate. The latest findings from cloud security firm Orca show that even GitHub Actions , a continuous integration and continuous delivery ( CI/CD ) platform, is not immune from the threat. "If developers make a typo in their GitHub action that matches a typosquatter's action, applications could be made to run malicious code without the developer even realizing," security researcher Ofir Yakobi said in a report shared with The Ha...

The 2024 State of the vCISO Report continues Cynomi's tradition of examining the growing popularity of virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) services. According to the independent survey, the demand for these services is increasing, with both providers and clients reaping the rewards. The upward trend is set to continue, with even faster growth expected in the future. However, service providers looking to enter the vCISO market must address challenges like technological limitations and a lack of security and compliance expertise.  For more details on the state of vCISO, read Cynomi's comprehensive report. The State of the Virtual CISO Survey Report by Global Surveyz, an independent survey company, which was commissioned by Cynomi, provides a deep understanding of the vCISO opportunities and challenges facing MSPs and MSSPs today. The report shares insights from 200 security leaders in MSPs and MSSPs that provide cybersecurity strategic services or cybersecurity...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered yet another critical security flaw in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress that could allow unauthenticated users to take control of arbitrary accounts. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-44000 (CVSS score: 7.5), impacts versions before and including 6.4.1. It has been addressed in version 6.5.0.1.  "The plugin suffers from an unauthenticated account takeover vulnerability which allows any unauthenticated visitor to gain authentication access to any logged-in users and at worst can gain access to an Administrator level role after which malicious plugins could be uploaded and installed," Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad said . The discovery follows an extensive security analysis of the plugin, which previously led to the identification of a critical privilege escalation flaw ( CVE-2024-28000 , CVSS score: 9.8). LiteSpeed Cache is a popular caching plugin for the WordPress ecosystem with over 5 million active installat...

A new security flaw has been addressed in the Apache OFBiz open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that, if successfully exploited, could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution on Linux and Windows. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-45195 (CVSS score: 7.5), affects all versions of the software before 18.12.16. "An attacker with no valid credentials exploit missing view authorization checks in the web application to execute arbitrary code on the server," Rapid7 security researcher Ryan Emmons said in a new report. It's worth noting that CVE-2024-45195 is a bypass for a sequence of issues , CVE-2024-32113, CVE-2024-36104, and CVE-2024-38856, which were addressed by the project maintainers over the past few months. Both CVE-2024-32113 and CVE-2024-38856 have since come under active exploitation in the wild, with the former leveraged to deploy the Mirai botnet malware. Rapid7 said all three older shortcomings stem from the ...

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has broken his silence nearly two weeks after his arrest in France, stating the charges are misguided. "If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself," Durov said in a 600-word statement on his Telegram account. "Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third-parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach." Durov was charged late last month for enabling various forms of criminal activity on Telegram, including drug trafficking and money laundering, following a probe into an unnamed person's distribution of child sexual abuse material on the messaging service. He also highlighted the struggles to balance both privacy and security, noting that Telegram is ready to exit markets that aren't compatible with its mission to "protect our users in authoritarian regimes." Durov also blamed ...