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Cybersecurity researchers have  disclosed  a series of attacks by a threat actor of Chinese origin that has targeted organizations in Russia and Hong Kong with malware — including a previously undocumented backdoor. Attributing the campaign to  Winnti  (or APT41), Positive Technologies dated the first attack to May 12, 2020, when the APT used LNK shortcuts to extract and run the malware payload. A second attack detected on May 30 used a malicious RAR archive file consisting of shortcuts to two bait PDF documents that purported to be a curriculum vitae and an IELTS certificate. The shortcuts themselves contain links to pages hosted on Zeplin, a legitimate collaboration tool for designers and developers that are used to fetch the final-stage malware that, in turn, includes a shellcode loader ("svchast.exe") and a backdoor called  Crosswalk  ("3t54dE3r.tmp"). Crosswalk, first documented by FireEye in 2017, is a bare-bones modular backdoor capable of carry...

Cybersecurity researchers took the wraps off an ongoing surveillance campaign directed against Colombian government institutions and private companies in the energy and metallurgical industries. In a report published by ESET on Tuesday, the Slovak internet security company said the attacks — dubbed " Operation Spalax " — began in 2020, with the modus operandi sharing some similarities to an APT group targeting the country since at least April 2018, but also different in other ways. The overlaps come in the form of phishing emails, which have similar topics and pretend to come from some of the same entities that were used in a February 2019 operation disclosed by  QiAnXin researchers , and subdomain names used for command-and-control (C2) servers. However, the two campaigns diverge in the attachments used for phishing emails, the remote access trojans (RATs) deployed, and the C2 infrastructure employed to fetch the malware dropped. The attack chain begins with the target...

Intel and Cybereason have partnered to build anti-ransomware defenses into the chipmaker's newly announced 11th generation Core  vPro  business-class processors. The hardware-based security enhancements are baked into Intel's vPro platform via its  Hardware Shield  and  Threat Detection Technology  (TDT), enabling profiling and detection of ransomware and other threats that have an impact on the CPU performance. "The joint solution represents the first instance where PC hardware plays a direct role in ransomware defenses to better protect enterprise endpoints from costly attacks," Cybereason  said . Exclusive to vPro, Intel Hardware Shield provides protections against firmware-level attacks targeting the  BIOS , thereby ensuring that the operating system (OS) runs on legitimate hardware as well as minimizing the risk of malicious code injection by locking down memory in the BIOS when the software is running to help prevent planted malware fro...

Ensuring the cybersecurity of your internal environment when you have a small security team is challenging. If you want to maintain the highest security level with a small team, your strategy has to be 'do more with less,' and with the right technology, you can leverage your team and protect your internal environment from breaches. The " buyer's guide for securing the internal environment with a small cybersecurity team ," includes a checklist of the most important things to consider when creating or re-evaluating the cybersecurity of your internal environment to ensure your team has it all covered.  The buyer's guide is designed to help you choose the solution that will ensure you get complete visibility, accurately detect and mitigate threats, and make the most of your existing resources and skills. There are three key aspects that stand out when looking for the best way to protect your internal environment with a small team—visibility, automation, and ea...

Europol on Tuesday said it shut down DarkMarket, the world's largest online marketplace for illicit goods, as part of an  international operation  involving Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA), and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of closure, DarkMarket is believed to have had 500,000 users and more than 2,400 vendors, with over 320,000 transactions resulting in the transfer of more than 4,650 bitcoin and 12,800 monero — a sum total of €140 million ($170 million). The illegal internet market specialized in the sales of drugs, counterfeit money, stolen or forged credit card information, anonymous SIM cards, and off-the-shelf malware. In addition, the months-long intelligence operation also resulted in the arrest of a 34-year-old Australian national near the German-Danish border over the weekend, who is alleged to be the mastermind behind DarkMarket. According to  The Guardian , DarkMarket ca...