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Meta's WhatsApp has rolled out updates to its proxy feature, allowing more flexibility in the kind of content that can be shared in conversations. This includes the ability to send and receive images, voice notes, files, stickers and GIFs, WhatsApp told The Hacker News. The new features were  first reported  by BBC Persian. Some of the other improvements include streamlined steps to simplify the setup process as well as the introduction of shareable links to "share functioning/valid proxy addresses to their contacts for easy and automatic installation." Support for  proxy servers  was officially launched by the messaging service  earlier this January , thereby helping users circumvent government-imposed censorship and internet shutdowns and obtain indirect access to WhatsApp. The company has also made available a  reference implementation  for setting up a proxy server with ports 80, 443, or 5222 available and a domain name that points to the serv...

An active financially motivated campaign is targeting vulnerable SSH servers to covertly ensnare them into a proxy network. "This is an active campaign in which the attacker leverages SSH for remote access, running malicious scripts that stealthily enlist victim servers into a peer-to-peer (P2P) proxy network, such as Peer2Profit or Honeygain," Akamai researcher Allen West said in a Thursday report. Unlike cryptojacking, in which a compromised system's resources are used to illicitly mine cryptocurrency, proxyjacking offers the ability for threat actors to leverage the victim's unused bandwidth to clandestinely run different services as a P2P node. This offers two-fold benefits: It not only enables the attacker to monetize the extra bandwidth with a significantly reduced resource load that would be necessary to carry out cryptojacking, it also reduces the chances of discovery. "It is a stealthier alternative to cryptojacking and has serious implications th...

MITRE has released its annual list of the Top 25 "most dangerous software weaknesses" for the year 2023. "These weaknesses lead to serious vulnerabilities in software," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)  said . "An attacker can often exploit these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system, steal data, or prevent applications from working." The  list  is based on an  analysis  of public vulnerability data in the National Vulnerability Data ( NVD ) for root cause mappings to CWE weaknesses for the previous two years. A total of 43,996 CVE entries were examined and a score was attached to each of them based on prevalence and severity. Coming out top is Out-of-bounds Write, followed by Cross-site Scripting, SQL Injection, Use After Free, OS Command Injection, Improper Input Validation, Out-of-bounds Read, Path Traversal, Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), and Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type. Out-of...

The Iranian state-sponsored group dubbed MuddyWater has been attributed to a previously unseen command-and-control (C2) framework called  PhonyC2  that's been put to use by the actor since 2021. Evidence shows that the custom made, actively developed framework has been leveraged in the  February 2023 attack on Technion , an Israeli research institute, cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct said in a report shared with The Hacker News. What's more, additional links have been unearthed between the Python 3-based program and other attacks carried out by MuddyWater, including the  ongoing exploitation of PaperCut servers . "It is structurally and functionally similar to  MuddyC3 , a previous MuddyWater  custom C2 framework  that was written in Python 2," security researcher Simon Kenin said. "MuddyWater is continuously updating the PhonyC2 framework and changing TTPs to avoid detection." MuddyWater, also known as Mango Sandstorm (previously Mercury), is a ...

Cybersecurity researchers have shared the inner workings of an Android malware family called  Fluhorse . The malware "represents a significant shift as it incorporates the malicious components directly within the Flutter code," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Axelle Apvrille  said  in a report published last week. Fluhorse was  first documented  by Check Point in early May 2023, detailing its attacks on users located in East Asia through rogue apps masquerading as ETC and VPBank Neo, which are popular in Taiwan and Vietnam. The initial intrusion vector for the malware is phishing. The ultimate goal of the app is to steal credentials, credit card details, and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes received as SMS to a remote server under the control of the threat actors. The latest findings from Fortinet, which reverse-engineered a  Fluhorse sample  uploaded to VirusTotal on June 11, 2023, suggest that the malware has evolved, incorporating add...

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