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A formerly unknown Chinese-speaking threat actor has been linked to a long-standing evasive operation aimed at South East Asian targets as far back as July 2020 to deploy a kernel-mode rootkit on compromised Windows systems. Attacks mounted by the hacking group, dubbed  GhostEmperor  by Kaspersky, are also said to have used a "sophisticated multi-stage malware framework" that allows for providing persistence and remote control over the targeted hosts. The Russian cybersecurity firm called the rootkit Demodex , with infections reported across several high-profile entities in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, in addition to outliers located in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. "[Demodex] is used to hide the user mode malware's artefacts from investigators and security solutions, while demonstrating an interesting undocumented loading scheme involving the kernel mode component of an open-source project named  Cheat Engine  to bypass the Windows Driver Sig...

In yet another indicator of how hacking groups are quick to capitalize on world events and improvise their attack campaigns for maximum impact, threat actors have been discovered impersonating Amnesty International to distribute malware that purports to be security software designed to safeguard against NSO Group's Pegasus surveillanceware.  "Adversaries have set up a phony website that looks like Amnesty International's — a human rights-focused non-governmental organization — and points to a promised antivirus tool to protect against the NSO Group's Pegasus tool," Cisco Talos researchers  said . "However, the download actually installs the little-known Sarwent malware." The countries most affected by the campaign include the U.K., the U.S., Russia, India, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Romania, and Colombia. While it's unclear as to how the victims are lured into visiting the fake Amnesty International website, the cybersecurity firm surmised the atta...

Google on Thursday pushed urgent security fixes for its Chrome browser, including a pair of new security weaknesses that the company said are being exploited in the wild, making them the fourth and fifth actively zero-days plugged this month alone. The issues, designated as  CVE-2021-37975 and CVE-2021-37976 , are part of a total of four patches, and concern a  use-after-free flaw  in V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine as well as an information leak in core. As is usually the case, the tech giant has refrained from sharing any additional details regarding how these zero-day vulnerabilities were used in attacks so as to allow a majority of users to be updated with the patches, but noted that it's aware that "exploits for CVE-2021-37975 and CVE-2021-37976 exist in the wild." An anonymous researcher has been credited with reporting CVE-2021-37975. The discovery of CVE-2021-37976, on the other hand, involves Clément Lecigne from Google Threat Analysis Group, who was al...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed an unpatched security vulnerability in the protocol used by Microsoft Azure Active Directory that potential adversaries could abuse to stage undetected brute-force attacks. "This flaw allows threat actors to perform single-factor brute-force attacks against Azure Active Directory ( Azure AD ) without generating sign-in events in the targeted organization's tenant," researchers from Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU)  said  in a report published on Wednesday. Azure Active Directory is Microsoft's enterprise cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution designed for single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication. It's also a core component of Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), with capabilities to provide authentication to other applications via OAuth. The weakness resides in the  Seamless Single Sign-On  feature that allows employees to automatically sign in when using their corporate devices that...

Professional developers want to embrace DevSecOps and write secure code, but their organizations need to support this seachange if they want that effort to grow. The cyber threat landscape is becoming more complex by the day. Attackers are constantly scanning networks for vulnerable applications, programs, cloud instances, and the latest flavor of the month is APIs, widely considered an easy win thanks to their often lax security controls. They are so persistent that new apps can sometimes be compromised and exploited within hours of deployment. The Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report makes it very clear that the threats leveled against businesses and organizations  are more dangerous  today than at any other point in history. It’s becoming very clear that the only way to truly fortify the software being created is to ensure that it’s built on secure code. In other words, the best way to stop the threat actor invasion is to deny them a foothold into your applica...