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The Android malware tracked as BRATA has been updated with new features that grants it the ability to record keystrokes, track device locations, and even perform a factory reset in an apparent bid to cover up fraudulent wire transfers. The latest variants, detected late last year, are said to be distributed through a downloader to avoid being detected by security software, Italian cybersecurity firm Cleafy said in a  technical write-up . Targets include banks and financial institutions in the U.K., Poland, Italy, and Latin America. "What makes Android RAT so interesting for attackers is its capability to operate directly on the victim devices instead of using a new device," Cleafy researchers  noted  in December 2021. "By doing so, Threat Actors (TAs) can drastically reduce the possibility of being flagged 'as suspicious', since the device's fingerprinting is already known to the bank." First seen in the wild at the end of 2018 and short for "B...

A previously undocumented  malware packer  named DTPacker has been observed distributing multiple remote access trojans (RATs) and information stealers such as Agent Tesla, Ave Maria, AsyncRAT, and FormBook to plunder information and facilitate follow-on attacks. "The malware uses multiple obfuscation techniques to evade antivirus, sandboxing, and analysis," enterprise security company Proofpoint  said  in an analysis published Monday. "It is likely distributed on underground forums."  The .NET-based commodity malware has been associated with dozens of campaigns and multiple threat groups, both advanced persistent threat (APT) and cybercrime actors, since 2020, with the intrusions aimed at hundreds of customers across many sectors. Attack chains involving the packer rely on phishing emails as an initial infection vector. The messages contain a malicious document or a compressed executable attachment, which, when opened, deploys the packer to launch the malw...

I recently hopped on the  Lookout podcast  to talk about virtual private networks (VPNs) and how they've been extended beyond their original use case of connecting remote laptops to your corporate network. Even in this new world where people are using personal devices and cloud apps, VPN continues to be the go-to solution for remote access and cloud access. After my conversation with Hank Schless, I was inspired to put some additional thoughts about VPN on paper. When most organizations were forced to shift to remote work last year, they needed a quick-fix solution that would enable their remote employees to access work resources securely. For many, this solution came in the form of VPNs. However, VPNs were not designed for the bring your own device (BYOD) and cloud app use cases. While VPNs are able to provide remote access, it may come as a surprise that they fall short when it comes to security. This is because VPNs were built for when only a small portion of your workfo...

Misconfigurations in smart contracts are being exploited by scammers to create malicious cryptocurrency tokens with the goal of stealing funds from unsuspecting users. The instances of token fraud in the wild include hiding 99% fee functions and concealing backdoor routines, researchers from Check Point said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Smart contracts are  programs  stored on the blockchain that are automatically executed when predetermined conditions are met according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. They allow trusted transactions and agreements to be carried out between anonymous parties without the need for a central authority. By examining the  Solidity  source code used for implementing smart contracts, the Israeli cybersecurity company found instances of  hidden  and  hardcoded fees  that can't be changed, while allowing malicious actors to exert control over "who is allowed to sell." In another instance, a le...

Social engineering campaigns involving the deployment of the Emotet malware botnet have been observed using "unconventional" IP address formats for the first time in a bid to sidestep detection by security solutions. This involves the use of hexadecimal and octal representations of the IP address that, when processed by the underlying operating systems, get automatically converted "to the dotted decimal quad representation to initiate the request from the remote servers," Trend Micro's Threat Analyst, Ian Kenefick,  said  in a report Friday. The infection chains, as with previous Emotet-related attacks, aim to trick users into enabling document macros and automate malware execution. The document uses Excel 4.0 Macros, a feature that has been  repeatedly   abused  by malicious actors to deliver malware. Once enabled, the macro invokes a URL that's obfuscated with carets, with the host incorporating a hexadecimal representation of the IP address — "h...

The maintainers of the Rust programming language have released a security update for a high-severity vulnerability that could be abused by a malicious party to purge files and directories from a vulnerable system in an unauthorized manner. "An attacker could use this security issue to trick a privileged program into deleting files and directories the attacker couldn't otherwise access or delete," the Rust Security Response working group (WG)  said  in an  advisory  published on January 20, 2021. Rust 1.0.0 through Rust 1.58.0 is affected by this vulnerability. The flaw, which is tracked as  CVE-2022-21658  (CVSS score: 7.3), has been credited to security researcher Hans Kratz, with the team pushing out a fix in  Rust version 1.58.1  shipped last week. Specifically, the issue stems from an improperly implemented check to prevent recursive deletion of symbolic links (aka  symlinks ) in a standard library function named "std::fs::remove_dir...