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Threat actors with ties to North Korea have been observed publishing a set of malicious packages to the npm registry, indicating "coordinated and relentless" efforts to target developers with malware and steal cryptocurrency assets. The latest wave, which was observed between August 12 and 27, 2024, involved packages named temp-etherscan-api, ethersscan-api, telegram-con, helmet-validate, and qq-console. "Behaviors in this campaign lead us to believe that qq-console is attributable to the North Korean campaign known as 'Contagious Interview,'" software supply chain security firm Phylum said . Contagious Interview refers to an ongoing campaign that seeks to compromise software developers with information stealing malware as part of a purported job interview process that involves tricking them into downloading bogus npm packages or fake installers for video conferencing software such as MiroTalk hosted on decoy websites. The end goal of the attacks is to...

A comprehensive guide authored by Dean Parsons, SANS Certified Instructor and CEO / Principal Consultant of ICS Defense Force, emphasizes the growing need for specialized ICS security measures in the face of rising cyber threats. With a staggering 50% increase in ransomware attacks targeting industrial control systems (ICS) in 2023, the SANS Institute is taking decisive action by announcing the release of its essential new strategy guide, " ICS Is the Business: Why Securing ICS/OT Environments Is Business-Critical in 2024 ." Authored by Dean Parsons, CEO of ICS Defense Force and a SANS Certified Instructor, this guide offers a comprehensive analysis of the rapidly evolving threat landscape and provides critical steps that organizations must take to safeguard their operations and ensure public safety. As cyber threats grow in both frequency and sophistication, this guide is an indispensable resource for securing the vital systems that underpin our world. Key Insights from t...

Chinese-speaking users are the target of a "highly organized and sophisticated attack" campaign that is likely leveraging phishing emails to infect Windows systems with Cobalt Strike payloads. "The attackers managed to move laterally, establish persistence and remain undetected within the systems for more than two weeks," Securonix researchers Den Iuzvyk and Tim Peck said in a new report. The covert campaign, codenamed SLOW#TEMPEST and not attributed to any known threat actor, commences with malicious ZIP files that, when unpacked, activates the infection chain, leading to the deployment of the post-exploitation toolkit on compromised systems. Present with the ZIP archive is a Windows shortcut (LNK) file that disguises itself as a Microsoft Word file, "违规远程控制软件人员名单.docx.lnk," which roughly translates to "List of people who violated the remote control software regulations." "Given the language used in the lure files, it's likely th...

Threat actors are actively exploiting a now-patched, critical security flaw impacting the Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Confluence Server to conduct illicit cryptocurrency mining on susceptible instances. "The attacks involve threat actors that employ methods such as the deployment of shell scripts and XMRig miners, targeting of SSH endpoints, killing competing crypto mining processes, and maintaining persistence via cron jobs," Trend Micro researcher Abdelrahman Esmail said . The security vulnerability exploited is CVE-2023-22527 , a maximum severity bug in older versions of Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Confluence Server that could allow unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution. It was addressed by the Australian software company in mid-January 2024. Trend Micro said it observed a high number of exploitation attempts against the flaw between mid-June and end of July 2024 that leveraged it to drop the XMRig miner on unpatched hosts. At l...

A non-profit supporting Vietnamese human rights has been the target of a multi-year campaign designed to deliver a variety of malware on compromised hosts. Cybersecurity company Huntress attributed the activity to a threat cluster tracked as APT32, a Vietnamese-aligned hacking crew that's also known as APT-C-00, Canvas Cyclone (formerly Bismuth), Cobalt Kitty, and OceanLotus. The intrusion is believed to have been ongoing for at least four years. "This intrusion has a number of overlaps with known techniques used by the threat actor APT32/OceanLotus, and a known target demographic which aligns with APT32/OceanLotus targets," security researchers Jai Minton and Craig Sweeney said . OceanLotus , active since at least 2012, has a history of targeting company and government networks in East-Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, and Cambodia with the end goal of cyber espionage and intellectual property theft. Attack chains typically make use of...