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Threat actors are leveraging fake Google Meet web pages as part of an ongoing malware campaign dubbed ClickFix to deliver infostealers targeting Windows and macOS systems. "This tactic involves displaying fake error messages in web browsers to deceive users into copying and executing a given malicious PowerShell code, finally infecting their systems," French cybersecurity company Sekoia said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Variations of the ClickFix (aka ClearFake and OneDrive Pastejacking) campaign have been reported widely in recent months , with threat actors employing different lures to redirect users to bogus pages that aim to deploy malware by urging site visitors to run an encoded PowerShell code to address a supposed issue with displaying content in the web browser. These pages are known to masquerade as popular online services, including Facebook, Google Chrome, PDFSimpli, and reCAPTCHA, and now Google Meet as well as potentially Zoom - meet.googl...

Microsoft has disclosed details about a now-patched security flaw in Apple's Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) framework in macOS that has likely come under exploitation to get around a user's privacy preferences and access data. The shortcoming, codenamed HM Surf by the tech giant, is tracked as CVE-2024-44133 (CVSS score: 5.5). It was addressed by Apple as part of macOS Sequoia 15 by removing the vulnerable code. HM Surf "involves removing the TCC protection for the Safari browser directory and modifying a configuration file in the said directory to gain access to the user's data, including browsed pages, the device's camera, microphone, and location, without the user's consent," Jonathan Bar Or of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said . Microsoft said the new protections are limited to Apple's Safari browser, and that it's working with other major browser vendors to further explore the benefits of hardening local configuration file...

The Russian threat actor known as RomCom has been linked to a new wave of cyber attacks aimed at Ukrainian government agencies and unknown Polish entities since at least late 2023. The intrusions are characterized by the use of a variant of the RomCom RAT dubbed SingleCamper (aka SnipBot or RomCom 5.0), said Cisco Talos, which is monitoring the activity cluster under the moniker UAT-5647. "This version is loaded directly from the registry into memory and uses a loopback address to communicate with its loader," security researchers Dmytro Korzhevin, Asheer Malhotra, Vanja Svajcer, and Vitor Ventura noted . RomCom, also tracked as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, UAC-0180, UNC2596, and Void Rabisu, has engaged in multi-motivational operations such as ransomware, extortion, and targeted credential gathering since its emergence in 2022. It's been assessed that the operational tempo of their attacks has increased in recent months with an aim to set up long-term persisten...

Is Managing Customer Logins and Data Giving You Headaches? You're Not Alone! Today, we all expect super-fast, secure, and personalized online experiences. But let's be honest, we're also more careful about how our data is used. If something feels off, trust can vanish in an instant. Add to that the lightning-fast changes AI is bringing to everything from how we log in to spotting online fraud, and it's a whole new ball game! If you're dealing with logins, data privacy, bringing new users on board, or building digital trust, this webinar is for you . Join us for " Navigating Customer Identity in the AI Era ," where we'll dive into the Auth0 2025 Customer Identity Trends Report . We'll show you what's working, what's not, and how to tweak your strategy for the year ahead. In just one session, you'll get practical answers to real-world challenges like: How AI is changing what users expect – and where they're starting to push ba...

Cybersecurity researchers have gleaned additional insights into a nascent ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) called Cicada3301 after successfully gaining access to the group's affiliate panel on the dark web. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB said it contacted the threat actor behind the Cicada3301 persona on the RAMP cybercrime forum via the Tox messaging service after the latter put out an advertisement, calling for new partners into its affiliate program. "Within the dashboard of the Affiliates' panel of Cicada3301 ransomware group contained sections such as Dashboard, News, Companies, Chat Companies, Chat Support, Account, an FAQ section, and Log Out," researchers Nikolay Kichatov and Sharmine Low said in a new analysis published today. Cicada3301 first came to light in June 2024, with the cybersecurity community uncovering strong source code similarities with the now-defunct BlackCat ransomware group. The RaaS scheme is estimated to have compromised no less th...

As technology adoption has shifted to be employee-led, just in time, and from any location or device, IT and security teams have found themselves contending with an ever-sprawling SaaS attack surface, much of which is often unknown or unmanaged. This greatly increases the risk of identity-based threats, and according to a recent report from CrowdStrike, 80% of breaches today use compromised identities, including cloud and SaaS credentials. Given this reality, IT security leaders need practical and effective  SaaS security solutions  designed to discover and manage their expanding SaaS footprint. Here are 5 key ways Nudge Security can help. Close the visibility gap Knowing the full scope of SaaS apps in use is the foundation of a modern IT governance program. Without an understanding of your entire SaaS footprint, you cannot say with confidence where your corporate IP is stored (Did someone sync their desktop to Dropbox?), you cannot make assumptions about your customer da...

An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor with suspected ties to India has sprung forth with a flurry of attacks against high-profile entities and strategic infrastructures in the Middle East and Africa. The activity has been attributed to a group tracked as SideWinder , which is also known as APT-C-17, Baby Elephant, Hardcore Nationalist, Leafperforator, Rattlesnake, Razor Tiger, and T-APT-04. "The group may be perceived as a low-skilled actor due to the use of public exploits, malicious LNK files and scripts as infection vectors, and the use of public RATs, but their true capabilities only become apparent when you carefully examine the details of their operations," Kaspersky researchers Giampaolo Dedola and Vasily Berdnikov said . Targets of the attacks include government and military entities, logistics, infrastructure and telecommunications companies, financial institutions, universities, and oil trading companies located in Bangladesh, Djibouti, Jordan, Malaysia, the...

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged two Sudanese brothers with running a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet for hire that conducted a record 35,000 DDoS attacks in a single year, including those that targeted Microsoft's services in June 2023. The attacks, which were facilitated by Anonymous Sudan's "powerful DDoS tool," singled out critical infrastructure, corporate networks, and government agencies in the United States and around the world, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, have been charged with one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers. Ahmed Salah has also been charged with three counts of damaging protected computers. If convicted on all charges, Ahmed Salah faces a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison, while Alaa Salah faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. The DDoS tool is said to have been disabled in March 2024, the same...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the Kubernetes Image Builder that, if successfully exploited, could be abused to gain root access under certain circumstances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-9486 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been addressed in version 0.1.38. The project maintainers acknowledged Nicolai Rybnikar for discovering and reporting the vulnerability. "A security issue was discovered in the Kubernetes Image Builder where default credentials are enabled during the image build process," Red Hat's Joel Smith said in an alert. "Additionally, virtual machine images built using the Proxmox provider do not disable these default credentials, and nodes using the resulting images may be accessible via these default credentials. The credentials can be used to gain root access." That having said, Kubernetes clusters are only impacted by the flaw if their nodes use virtual machine (VM) images created via the Image Builder project with the Prox...

Threat actors are attempting to abuse the open-source EDRSilencer tool as part of efforts to tamper endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions and hide malicious activity. Trend Micro said it detected "threat actors attempting to integrate EDRSilencer in their attacks, repurposing it as a means of evading detection." EDRSilencer , inspired by the NightHawk FireBlock tool from MDSec, is designed to block outbound traffic of running EDR processes using the Windows Filtering Platform ( WFP ). It supports terminating various processes related to EDR products from Microsoft, Elastic, Trellix, Qualys, SentinelOne, Cybereason, Broadcom Carbon Black, Tanium, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Cisco, ESET, HarfangLab, and Trend Micro. By incorporating such legitimate red teaming tools into their arsenal, the goal is to render EDR software ineffective and make it a lot more challenging to identify and remove malware. "The WFP is a powerful framework built into Windows for ...

The FIDO Alliance said it's working to make passkeys and other credentials more easier to export across different providers and improve credential provider interoperability, as more than 12 billion online accounts become accessible with the passwordless sign-in method. To that end, the alliance said it has published a draft for a new set of specifications for secure credential exchange, following commitments among members of its Credential Provider Special Interest Group (SIG). This includes 1Password, Apple, Bitwarden, Dashlane, Enpass, Google, Microsoft, NordPass, Okta, Samsung, and SK Telecom. "Secure credential exchange is a focus for the FIDO Alliance because it can help further accelerate passkey adoption and enhance user experience," the FIDO Alliance said in a statement. "Sign-ins with passkeys reduce phishing and eliminate credential reuse while making sign-ins up to 75% faster, and 20% more successful than passwords or passwords plus a second facto...

AI from the attacker's perspective: See how cybercriminals are leveraging AI and exploiting its vulnerabilities to compromise systems, users, and even other AI applications Cybercriminals and AI: The Reality vs. Hype "AI will not replace humans in the near future. But humans who know how to use AI are going to replace those humans who don't know how to use AI," says Etay Maor, Chief Security Strategist at Cato Networks and founding member of Cato CTRL . "Similarly, attackers are also turning to AI to augment their own capabilities." Yet, there is a lot more hype than reality around AI's role in cybercrime. Headlines often sensationalize AI threats, with terms like "Chaos-GPT" and "Black Hat AI Tools," even claiming they seek to destroy humanity. However, these articles are more fear-inducing than descriptive of serious threats. For instance, when explored in underground forums, several of these so-called "AI cyber tools" were found to be nothing...

The North Korean threat actor known as ScarCruft has been linked to the zero-day exploitation of a now-patched security flaw in Windows to infect devices with malware known as RokRAT . The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-38178 (CVSS score: 7.5), a memory corruption bug in the Scripting Engine that could result in remote code execution when using the Edge browser in Internet Explorer Mode. It was patched by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for August 2024. However, successful exploitation requires an attacker to convince a user to click on a specially crafted URL in order to initiate the execution of malicious code. The AhnLab Security Intelligence Center (ASEC) and the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) of the Republic of Korea, which were credited with discovering and reporting the shortcoming, have assigned the activity cluster the name Operation Code on Toast. The organizations are tracking ScarCruft under the moniker TA-RedAnt, which was previously...

To defend your organization against cyber threats, you need a clear picture of the current threat landscape. This means constantly expanding your knowledge about new and ongoing threats. There are many techniques analysts can use to collect crucial cyber threat intelligence. Let's consider five that can greatly improve your threat investigations. Pivoting on С2 IP addresses to pinpoint malware IP addresses used by malware to communicate with its command and control (C2) servers are valuable indicators. They can help not only update your defenses, but also identify related infrastructure and tools belonging to threat actors.  This is done using the pivoting method, which lets analysts find additional context on the threat at hand with an existing indicator. To perform pivoting, analysts use various sources, including threat intelligence databases that store large volumes of fresh threat data and offer search capabilities. One useful tool is Threat Intelligence Lookup from AN...