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A modified version of the WhatsApp messaging app for Android has been trojanized to intercept text messages, serve malicious payloads, display full-screen ads, and sign up device owners for unwanted premium subscriptions without their knowledge. "The Trojan Triada snuck into one of these modified versions of the messenger called FMWhatsApp 16.80.0 together with the advertising software development kit (SDK)," researchers from Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky  said  in a technical write-up published Tuesday. "This is similar to  what happened with APKPure , where the only malicious code that was embedded in the app was a payload downloader." Modified versions of legitimate Android apps — a practice called Modding — are designed to perform functions not originally conceived or intended by the app developers. FMWhatsApp, billed as a custom build of WhatsApp, allows users to refashion the app with different themes, personalize icons, and hide features like last ...

A previously undisclosed "zero-click" exploit in Apple's iMessage was abused by Israeli surveillance vendor NSO Group to circumvent iOS security protections and target nine Bahraini activists. "The hacked activists included three members of Waad (a secular Bahraini political society), three members of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, two exiled Bahraini dissidents, and one member of Al Wefaq (a Shiite Bahraini political society)," researchers from University of Toronto's Citizen Lab  said  in a report published today, with four of the targets hacked by an actor it tracks as LULU and believed to be the government of Bahrain. Citizen Lab called the new exploit chain "FORCEDENTRY." It's also a zero-click exploit, meaning that it can be used to trigger an infection simply by sending a malicious message to the target, even without having to click a link or view the message in question. "As always, if NSO receives reliable information r...

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday took the wraps off four up-and-coming ransomware groups that could pose a serious threat to enterprises and critical infrastructure, as the ripple effect of a recent spurt in ransomware incidents show that attackers are growing more sophisticated and more profitable in extracting payouts from victims. "While the ransomware crisis appears poised to get worse before it gets better, the cast of cybercrime groups that cause the most damage is constantly changing," Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat intelligence team  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Groups sometimes go quiet when they've achieved so much notoriety that they become a priority for law enforcement. Others reboot their operations to make them more lucrative by revising their tactics, techniques and procedures, updating their software and launching marketing campaigns to recruit new affiliates." The development comes as ransomware attacks are g...

More than 38 million records from 47 different entities that rely on Microsoft's Power Apps portals platform were inadvertently left exposed online, bringing into sharp focus a "new vector of data exposure." "The types of data varied between portals, including personal information used for COVID-19 contact tracing, COVID-19 vaccination appointments, social security numbers for job applicants, employee IDs, and millions of names and email addresses," UpGuard Research team  said  in a disclosure made public on Monday. Governmental bodies like Indiana, Maryland, and New York City, and private companies such as American Airlines, Ford, J.B. Hunt, and Microsoft are said to have been impacted. Among the most sensitive information that was left in the open were 332,000 email addresses and employee IDs used by Microsoft's own global payroll services, as well as more than 85,000 records related to Business Tools Support and Mixed Reality portals. Power Apps  is ...

One of the great resources available to businesses today is the large ecosystem of value-added services and solutions. Especially in technology solutions, there is no end to the services of which organizations can avail themselves. In addition, if a business needs a particular solution or service they don't handle in-house, there is most likely a third-party vendor that can take care of that for them. It is highly beneficial for businesses today to access these large pools of third-party resources. However, there can be security challenges for companies using third-party vendors and their services despite the benefits. Let's look at navigating vendor risk management as IT professionals and see how businesses can accomplish this in a highly complex cybersecurity world. How can third-party vendors introduce cybersecurity risks? As mentioned, third-party vendors can be highly beneficial to organizations doing business today. They allow companies to avoid building out technolo...

ShinyHunters, a notorious cybercriminal underground group that's been on a data breach spree since last year, has been observed searching companies' GitHub repository source code for vulnerabilities that can be abused to stage larger scale attacks, an analysis of the hackers' modus operandi has revealed. "Primarily operating on Raid Forums, the collective's moniker and motivation can partly be derived from their avatar on social media and other forums: a shiny Umbreon Pokémon," Intel 471 researchers said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "As Pokémon players hunt and collect "shiny" characters in the game, ShinyHunters collects and resells user data." The revelation comes as the  average cost of a data breach  rose from $3.86 million to $4.24 million, making it the highest average cost in 17 years, with compromised credentials responsible for 20% of the breaches reported by over 500 organizations. Since rising to prominence in A...

Close to 14 million Linux-based systems are directly exposed to the Internet, making them a lucrative target for an array of real-world attacks that could result in the deployment of malicious web shells, coin miners, ransomware, and other trojans. That's according to an in-depth look at the Linux threat landscape published by U.S.-Japanese cybersecurity firm Trend Micro , detailing the top threats and vulnerabilities affecting the operating system in the first half of 2021, based on data amassed from honeypots, sensors, and anonymized telemetry. The company, which detected nearly 15 million malware events aimed at Linux-based cloud environments, found coin miners and ransomware to make up 54% of all malware, with web shells accounting for a 29% share. In addition, by dissecting over 50 million events reported from 100,000 unique Linux hosts during the same time period, the researchers found 15 different security weaknesses that are known to be actively exploited in the wild o...