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I'm sure you would agree that, in today's digital world, the majority of applications we work on require some type of credentials – to connect to a database with a username/password, to access computer programs via authorized tokens, or API keys to invoke services for authentication. Credentials, or sometimes just referred to as 'Secrets,' are pieces of user or system-level confidential information that ought to be carefully protected and accessible to legitimate users only. We all know how important it is to keep these assets secure to prevent account misuse and breaches.  A reality check: How often do you make proactive efforts to protect these assets? Rarely, I'd say.  Among the worst mistakes a developer can make when it comes to application security is to accidentally commit confidential information publicly on the Internet. Surprisingly, secrets and credentials are accidentally leaked more often than you might expect, and there are intelligent tools that s...

A financially motivated threat actor notorious for setting its sights on retail, hospitality, and entertainment industries has been observed deploying a completely new backdoor on infected systems, indicating the operators are continuously retooling their malware arsenal to avoid detection and stay under the radar. The previously undocumented malware has been dubbed " Sardonic " by Romanian cybersecurity technology company Bitdefender, which it encountered during a  forensic investigation  in the wake of an unsuccessful attack carried out by FIN8 aimed at an unnamed financial institution located in the U.S. Said to be under active development, "Sardonic backdoor is extremely potent and has a wide range of capabilities that help the threat actor leverage new malware on the fly without updating components," Bitdefender researchers Eduard Budaca and Victor Vrabie said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Since emerging on the scene in January 2016, FIN8 has ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed five previously unreported security vulnerabilities affecting B. Braun's Infusomat Space Large Volume Pump and SpaceStation that could be abused by malicious parties to tamper with medication doses without any prior authentication. McAfee, which discovered and reported the flaws to the German medical and pharmaceutical device company on January 11, 2021,  said  the "modification could appear as a device malfunction and be noticed only after a substantial amount of drug has been dispensed to a patient, since the infusion pump displays exactly what was prescribed, all while dispensing potentially lethal doses of medication." The issues have been addressed by B. Braun in SpaceCom L82 or later, Battery Pack SP with WiFi:L82 or later, and DataModule compactplus version A12 or later. Infusion pumps are medical devices used to deliver intravenous fluids, such as nutrients and medications, into a patient's body in controlled amoun...

A computer retail company based in the U.S. was the target of a previously undiscovered implant called SideWalk as part of a recent campaign undertaken by a Chinese advanced persistent threat group primarily known for singling out entities in East and Southeast Asia. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET attributed the malware to an advanced persistent threat it tracks under the moniker SparklingGoblin, an adversary believed to be connected to the Winnti umbrella group, noting its similarities to another backdoor dubbed  Crosswalk  that was put to use by the same threat actor in 2019. "SideWalk is a modular backdoor that can dynamically load additional modules sent from its C&C [command-and-control] server, makes use of Google Docs as a  dead drop resolver , and  Cloudflare workers  as a C&C server," ESET researchers Thibaut Passilly and Mathieu Tartare  said  in a report published Tuesday. "It can also properly handle communication behind a prox...

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...