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A new phishing technique called "file archiver in the browser" can be leveraged to "emulate" a file archiver software in a web browser when a victim visits a .ZIP domain. "With this phishing attack, you simulate a file archiver software (e.g., WinRAR) in the browser and use a .zip domain to make it appear more legitimate," security researcher mr.d0x  disclosed  last week. Threat actors, in a nutshell, could create a realistic-looking  phishing landing page  using HTML and CSS that mimics legitimate file archive software, and host it on a .zip domain, thus elevating  social engineering campaigns . In a potential attack scenario, a miscreant could resort to such trickery to redirect users to a credential harvesting page when a file "contained" within the fake ZIP archive is clicked. "Another interesting use case is listing a non-executable file and when the user clicks to initiate a download, it downloads an executable file," mr.d0x ...

The Python Package Index (PyPI) announced last week that every account that maintains a project on the official third-party software repository will be required to turn on two-factor authentication ( 2FA ) by the end of the year. "Between now and the end of the year, PyPI will begin gating access to certain site functionality based on 2FA usage," PyPI administrator Donald Stufft said. "In addition, we may begin selecting certain users or projects for early enforcement." The enforcement also includes  organization maintainers , but does not extend to every single user of the service. The goal is to neutralize the threats posed by account takeover attacks, which an attacker can leverage to distribute trojanized versions of popular packages to poison the software supply chain and deploy malware on a large scale. PyPI, like other open source repositories such as npm, has  witnessed  innumerable instances of malware and package impersonation. Earlier this month, F...

A new stealthy information stealer malware called Bandit Stealer has caught the attention of cybersecurity researchers for its ability to target numerous web browsers and cryptocurrency wallets.  "It has the potential to expand to other platforms as Bandit Stealer was developed using the Go programming language, possibly allowing cross-platform compatibility," Trend Micro  said  in a Friday report. The malware is currently focused on targeting Windows by using a legitimate command-line tool called  runas.exe  that allows users to run programs as another user with different permissions. The goal is to escalate privileges and execute itself with administrative access, thereby effectively bypassing security measures to harvest wide swathes of data. That said, Microsoft's access control mitigations to prevent unauthorized execution of the tool means an attempt to run the malware binary as an administrator requires providing the necessary credentials. "By usin...

A critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in the Open Authorization (OAuth) implementation of the application development framework Expo.io. The shortcoming, assigned the CVE identifier  CVE-2023-28131 , has a severity rating of 9.6 on the CVSS scoring system. API security firm Salt Labs  said  the issue rendered services using the framework susceptible to credential leakage, which could then be used to hijack accounts and siphon sensitive data. Under certain circumstances, a threat actor could have taken advantage of the flaw to perform arbitrary actions on behalf of a compromised user on various platforms such as Facebook, Google, or Twitter. Expo, similar to Electron, is an open source platform for developing universal native apps that run on Android, iOS, and the web. It's worth noting that for the attack to be successful, sites and applications using Expo should have configured the AuthSession Proxy setting for single sign-on (SSO) using a third-party...

A new security flaw has been disclosed in the Google Cloud Platform's (GCP) Cloud SQL service that could be potentially exploited to obtain access to confidential data. "The vulnerability could have enabled a malicious actor to escalate from a basic Cloud SQL user to a full-fledged sysadmin on a container, gaining access to internal GCP data like secrets, sensitive files, passwords, in addition to customer data," Israeli cloud security firm Dig  said . Cloud SQL  is a fully-managed solution to build MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server databases for cloud-based applications. The multi-stage attack chain identified by Dig, in a nutshell, leveraged a gap in the cloud platform's security layer associated with SQL Server to escalate the privileges of a user to that of an administrator role. The elevated permissions subsequently made it possible to abuse another critical misconfiguration to obtain system administrator rights and take full control of the database server....

Security researchers have detailed the inner workings of the commercial Android spyware called Predator, which is marketed by the Israeli company Intellexa (previously Cytrox). Predator was  first documented  by Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) in May 2022 as part of attacks leveraging five different zero-day flaws in the Chrome web browser and Android. The spyware, which is delivered by means of another loader component known as Alien, is equipped to record audio from phone calls and VoIP-based apps as well as gather contacts and messages, including from Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram. Its other functionalities allow it to hide applications and prevent applications from being executed upon rebooting the handset. "A deep dive into both spyware components indicates that Alien is more than just a loader for Predator and actively sets up the low-level capabilities needed for Predator to spy on its victims," Cisco Talos  said  in a technical report. Spyware lik...