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A 32-year-old Ukrainian national has been  sentenced to five years in prison  in the U.S. for the individual's criminal work as a "high-level hacker" in the financially motivated group FIN7. Denys Iarmak, who worked as a penetration tester for the cartel from November 2016 through November 2018, had been previously arrested in Bangkok, Thailand in November 2019, before being extradited to the U.S. in May 2020. In November 2021, Iarmak had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking. FIN7 has been attributed to a number of attacks that have led to the theft of more than 20 million customer card records from over 6,500 individual point-of-sale terminals at more than 3,600 separate business locations in the U.S, costing the victims $1 billion in losses. The criminal gang, also known as Carbanak Group and the Navigator Group, has a track record of hitting restaurant, gambling, and hospitality indu...

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed that it obtained a court order to take control of seven domains used by APT28, a state-sponsored group operated by Russia's military intelligence service, with the goal of neutralizing its attacks on Ukraine. "We have since re-directed these domains to a sinkhole controlled by Microsoft, enabling us to mitigate Strontium's current use of these domains and enable victim notifications," Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president of customer security and trust,  said . APT28, also known by the names Sofacy, Sednit, Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, Iron Twilight, and Strontium, is a  cyber espionage group  and an advanced persistent threat that's known to be active since 2009, striking media, governments, military, and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that often have a security focus. The tech giant noted that the sinkholed infrastructure was used by the threat actor to target Ukrainian institutions as well as gov...

A number of rogue Android apps that have been cumulatively installed from the official Google Play Store more than 50,000 times are being used to target banks and other financial entities. The rental banking trojan, dubbed  Octo , is said to be a rebrand of another Android malware called ExobotCompact, which, in turn, is a "lite" replacement for its Exobot predecessor, Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Exobot is also likely said to have paved the way for a separate descendant called Coper, that was initially  discovered  targeting Colombian users around July 2021, with newer infections targeting Android users in different European Countries. "Coper malware apps are modular in design and include a multi-stage infection method and many defensive tactics to survive removal attempts," Cybersecurity company Cyble  noted  in an analysis of the malware last month. Like other Android banking trojans, ...

A first-of-its-kind malware targeting Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Lambda serverless computing platform has been discovered in the wild. Dubbed "Denonia" after the name of the domain it communicates with, "the malware uses newer address resolution techniques for command and control traffic to evade typical detection measures and virtual network access controls," Cado Labs researcher Matt Muir  said . The  artifact  analyzed by the cybersecurity company was uploaded to the VirusTotal database on February 25, 2022, sporting the name "python" and packaged as a 64-bit  ELF  executable. However, the filename is a misnomer, as Denonia is programmed in Go and harbors a customized variant of the XMRig cryptocurrency mining software. That said, the mode of initial access is unknown, although it's suspected it may have involved the compromise of AWS Access and Secret Keys. Another notable feature of the malware is its use of DNS over HTTPS ( DoH ) for c...

A threat actor with affiliations to the cyber warfare division of Hamas has been linked to an "elaborate campaign" targeting high-profile Israeli individuals employed in sensitive defense, law enforcement, and emergency services organizations. "The campaign operators use sophisticated social engineering techniques, ultimately aimed to deliver previously undocumented backdoors for Windows and Android devices," cybersecurity company Cybereason  said  in a Wednesday report. "The goal behind the attack was to extract sensitive information from the victims' devices for espionage purposes." The monthslong intrusions, codenamed " Operation Bearded Barbie ," have been attributed to an Arabic-speaking and politically-motivated group called Arid Viper, which operates out of the Middle East and is also known by the monikers APT-C-23 and Desert Falcon. Most recently, the threat actor was  held responsible  for attacks aimed at Palestinian activists...