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Microsoft has disclosed details of an evasive year-long social engineering campaign wherein the operators kept changing their obfuscation and encryption mechanisms every 37 days on average, including relying on Morse code, in an attempt to cover their tracks and surreptitiously harvest user credentials. The phishing attacks take the form of invoice-themed lures mimicking financial-related business transactions, with the emails containing an HTML file ("XLS.HTML"). The ultimate objective is to harvest usernames and passwords, which are subsequently used as an initial entry point for later infiltration attempts. Microsoft likened the attachment to a "jigsaw puzzle," noting that individual parts of the HTML file are designed to appear innocuous and slip past endpoint security software, only to reveal its true colors when these segments are decoded and assembled together. The company did not identify the hackers behind the operation. "This phishing campaign ex...

The U.S. is presently combating two pandemics--coronavirus and ransomware attacks. Both have partially shut down parts of the economy. However, in the case of cybersecurity, lax security measures allow hackers to have an easy way to rake in millions. It's pretty simple for hackers to gain financially, using malicious software to access and encrypt data and hold it hostage until the victim pays the ransom. Cyber attacks are more frequent now because it is effortless for hackers to execute them. Further, the payment methods are now friendlier to them. In addition, businesses are  willing to pay a ransom  because of the growing reliance on digital infrastructure, giving hackers more incentives to attempt more breaches.  Bolder cybercriminals A few years back, cybercriminals played psychological games before getting bank passwords and using their technical know-how to steal money from people's accounts. They are bolder now because it is easy for them to buy ransomware so...

Threat actors are actively carrying out opportunistic  scanning  and  exploitation  of Exchange servers using a new exploit chain leveraging a trio of flaws affecting on-premises installations, making them the latest set of bugs after ProxyLogon vulnerabilities were exploited en masse at the start of the year. The remote code execution flaws have been collectively dubbed "ProxyShell." At least 30,000 machines are affected by the vulnerabilities,  according  to a Shodan scan performed by Jan Kopriva of SANS Internet Storm Center. "Started to see in the wild exploit attempts against our honeypot infrastructure for the Exchange ProxyShell vulnerabilities," NCC Group's Richard Warren  tweeted , noting that one of the intrusions resulted in the deployment of a "C# aspx webshell in the /aspnet_client/ directory." Patched in early March 2021,  ProxyLogon  is the moniker for CVE-2021-26855, a server-side request forgery vulnerability in Exchange ...

Ransomware operators such as Magniber and Vice Society are actively exploiting vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler to compromise victims and spread laterally across a victim's network to deploy file-encrypting payloads on targeted systems. "Multiple, distinct threat actors view this vulnerability as attractive to use during their attacks and may indicate that this vulnerability will continue to see more widespread adoption and incorporation by various adversaries moving forward," Cisco Talos  said  in a report published Thursday, corroborating an  independent analysis  from CrowdStrike, which observed instances of Magniber ransomware infections targeting entities in South Korea. While Magniber ransomware was first spotted in late 2017 singling out victims in South Korea through malvertising campaigns, Vice Society is a new entrant that emerged on the ransomware landscape in mid-2021, primarily targeting public school districts and other educational instituti...

A nascent information-stealing malware sold and distributed on underground Russian underground forums has been written in Rust, signalling a new trend where threat actors are increasingly adopting  exotic programming languages  to bypass security protections, evade analysis, and hamper reverse engineering efforts. Dubbed " Ficker Stealer ," it's notable for being propagated via Trojanized web links and compromised websites, luring in victims to scam landing pages purportedly offering free downloads of  legitimate paid services  like Spotify Music, YouTube Premium, and other Microsoft Store applications. "Ficker is sold and distributed as Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS), via underground Russian online forums," BlackBerry's research and intelligence team said in a report published today. "Its creator, whose alias is @ficker, offers several paid packages, with different levels of subscription fees to use their malicious program." First seen in the wi...

Attackers are using many types of attacks to compromise business-critical data. These can include zero-day attacks, supply chain attacks, and others. However, one of the most common ways that hackers get into your environment is by compromising passwords. The password spraying attack is a special kind of password attack that can prove effective in compromising your environment. Let's look closer at the password spraying attack and how organizations can prevent it. Beware of compromised credentials Are compromised credentials dangerous to your environment? Yes! Compromised credentials allow an attacker to "walk in the front door" of your environment with legitimate credentials. They assume all the rights and permissions to systems, data, and resources the compromised account can access. The compromise of a privileged account is even worse. Privileged accounts are accounts that have high levels of access, such as an administrator user account. These types of accounts r...

Global IT consultancy giant Accenture has become the latest company to be hit by the LockBit ransomware gang, according to a post made by the operators on their dark web portal, likely filling a void left in the wake of DarkSide and REvil shutdown. "These people are beyond privacy and security. I really hope that their services are better than what I saw as an insider," read a message posted on the data leak website. Accenture  said  it has since restored the affected systems from backups. LockBit, like its now-defunct DarkSide and REvil counterparts, operates using a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, roping in other cybercriminals (aka affiliates) to carry out the intrusion using its platform, with the payments often divided between the criminal entity directing the attack and the core developers of the malware. The ransomware group emerged on the threat landscape in September 2019, and in June 2021 launched LockBit 2.0 along with an advertising campaign to recruit...