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Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two new attack techniques on certified PDF documents that could potentially enable an attacker to alter a document's visible content by displaying malicious content over the certified content without invalidating its signature. "The attack idea exploits the flexibility of PDF certification, which allows signing or adding annotations to certified documents under different permission levels,"  said  researchers from Ruhr-University Bochum, who have  systematically   analyzed  the security of the PDF specification over the years. The findings were presented at the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy ( IEEE S&P 2021 ) held this week. The two attacks — dubbed  Evil Annotation and Sneaky Signature attacks  — hinge on manipulating the PDF certification process by exploiting flaws in the specification that governs the implementation of digital signatures (aka approval signature) and its more flexible vari...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new backdoor program capable of stealing user login credentials, device information and executing arbitrary commands on Linux systems. The malware dropper has been dubbed " Facefish " by Qihoo 360 NETLAB team owing its capabilities to deliver different rootkits at different times and the use of  Blowfish  cipher to encrypt communications to the attacker-controlled server. "Facefish consists of 2 parts, Dropper and Rootkit, and its main function is determined by the Rootkit module, which works at the  Ring 3  layer and is loaded using the  LD_PRELOAD  feature to steal user login credentials by hooking ssh/sshd program related functions, and it also supports some backdoor functions," the researchers  said . The NETLAB research builds on a previous analysis  published  by Juniper Networks on April 26, which documented an attack chain targeting Control Web Panel (CWP, formerly CentOS Web Panel) to i...

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed that the threat actor behind the  SolarWinds supply chain hack  returned to the threat landscape to target government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations located across 24 countries, including the U.S. Some of the entities that were singled out include the U.S. Atlantic Council, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center (ANTAC), the EU DisinfoLab, and the Government of Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs. "This wave of attacks targeted approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations," Tom Burt, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for Customer Security and Trust,  said . "At least a quarter of the targeted organizations were involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work." Microsoft attributed the ongoing intrusions to the Russian threat actor it tracks as Nobeliu...

Cybersecurity researchers from FireEye unmasked additional tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by Chinese threat actors who were recently found abusing Pulse Secure VPN devices to drop malicious web shells and exfiltrate sensitive information from enterprise networks. FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence team, which is tracking the cyber espionage activity under two activity clusters UNC2630 and UNC2717,  said  the intrusions line up with key Chinese government priorities, adding "many compromised organizations operate in verticals and industries aligned with Beijing's strategic objectives outlined in China's recent  14th Five Year Plan ." On April 20, the cybersecurity firm  disclosed  12 different malware families, including STEADYPULSE and LOCKPICK, that have been designed with the express intent to infect Pulse Secure VPN appliances and put to use by at least two cyber espionage groups believed to be affiliated with the Chinese governmen...

Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday publicized the disruption of a "clever" malvertising network targeting AnyDesk that delivered a weaponized installer of the remote desktop software via rogue Google ads that appeared in the search engine results pages. The campaign, which is believed to have begun as early as April 21, 2021, involves a malicious file that masquerades as a setup executable for AnyDesk (AnyDeskSetup.exe), which, upon execution, downloads a PowerShell implant to amass and exfiltrate system information. "The script had some obfuscation and multiple functions that resembled an implant as well as a hardcoded domain (zoomstatistic[.]com) to 'POST' reconnaissance information such as user name, hostname, operating system, IP address and the current process name," researchers from Crowdstrike  said  in an analysis. AnyDesk's remote desktop access solution has been  downloaded  by more than 300 million users worldwide, according to the co...