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Though we are recovering from the worst pandemic, cyber threats have shown no sign of downshifting, and cybercriminals are still not short of malicious and advanced ways to achieve their goals.  The  Global Threat Landscape Report  indicates a drastic rise in sophisticated cyberattacks targeting digital infrastructures, organizations, and individuals in 2021. Threats can take different forms with the intent to commit fraud and damage businesses and people. Ransomware,  DDoS attacks , phishing, malware, and man-in-the-middle attacks represent the greatest threat to businesses today. When new threats emerge, attackers take advantage of them – however, most businesses are only aware of the current threats. Organizations struggle to address these threats due to their resource sophistication and their lack of understanding of evolving threat landscapes. For these reasons, organizations need visibility on the advanced threats especially targeting their infrastructure. ...

A state-sponsored threat actor allegedly affiliated with Iran has been linked to a series of targeted attacks aimed at internet service providers (ISPs) and telecommunication operators in Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia, as well as a ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) in Africa, new findings reveal. The intrusions, staged by a group tracked as Lyceum, are believed to have occurred between July and October 2021, researchers from Accenture Cyber Threat Intelligence (ACTI) group and Prevailion's Adversarial Counterintelligence Team (PACT) said in a technical report. The names of the victims were not disclosed. The latest revelations throw light on the web-based infrastructure used by Lyceum, over 20 of them, enabling the identification of "additional victims and provide further visibility into Lyceum's targeting methodology," the researchers  noted , adding "at least two of the identified compromises are assessed to be ongoing despite prior public discl...

A new zero-day vulnerability has been disclosed in Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect VPN that could be abused by an unauthenticated network-based attacker to execute arbitrary code on affected devices with root user privileges. Tracked as CVE-2021-3064 (CVSS score: 9.8), the security weakness impacts PAN-OS 8.1 versions earlier than PAN-OS 8.1.17. Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Randori has been credited with discovering and reporting the issue. "The vulnerability chain consists of a method for bypassing validations made by an external web server (HTTP smuggling) and a stack-based buffer overflow," Randori researchers  said . "Exploitation of the vulnerability chain has been proven and allows for remote code execution on both physical and virtual firewall products." However, in a troubling turn of events, the company said it used this exploit as part of its red team engagements for nearly 10 months before disclosing it to Palo Alto Networks in late Septem...

An ongoing mobile spyware campaign has been uncovered snooping on South Korean residents using a family of 23 malicious Android apps to siphon sensitive information and gain remote control of the devices. "With more than a thousand South Korean victims, the malicious group behind this invasive campaign has had access to all the data, communications, and services on their devices," Zimperium researcher Aazim Yaswant said. "The victims were broadcasting their private information to the malicious actors with zero indication that something was amiss." The Dallas-based mobile security company dubbed the campaign " PhoneSpy ." Zimperium did not attribute the spyware to a known threat actor. "The evidence surrounding PhoneSpy shows a familiar framework that has been passed around for years, updated by individuals and shared within private communities and back channels until assembled into what we see in this variation today," Richard Melick, the co...

As many as 13 security vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Nucleus TCP/IP stack, a software library now maintained by Siemens and used in three billion operational technology and IoT devices that could allow for remote code execution, denial-of-service (DoS), and information leak. Collectively called " NUCLEUS:13 ," successful attacks abusing the flaws can "result in devices going offline and having their logic hijacked," and "spread[ing] malware to wherever they communicate on the network," researchers from Forescout and Medigate said in a technical report published Tuesday, with one proof-of-concept (PoC) successfully  demonstrating  a scenario that could potentially disrupt medical care and critical processes. Siemens has since released  security updates  to remediate the weaknesses in Nucleus ReadyStart versions 3 (v2017.02.4 or later) and 4 (v4.1.1 or later). Primarily deployed in automotive, industrial, and medical applications, Nucleus ...

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed 14 critical vulnerabilities in the BusyBox Linux utility that could be exploited to result in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition and, in select cases, even lead to information leaks and remote code execution. The security weaknesses, tracked from CVE-2021-42373 through CVE-2021-42386, affect multiple versions of the tool ranging from 1.16-1.33.1, DevOps company JFrog and industrial cybersecurity company Claroty  said  in a joint report. Dubbed "the Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux,"  BusyBox  is a widely used software suite combining a variety of common Unix utilities or applets (e.g.,  cp ,  ls ,  grep ) into a single executable file that can run on Linux systems such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), human-machine interfaces (HMIs), and remote terminal units (RTUs). A quick list of the flaws and the applets they impact is below — man  - CVE-2021-42373 lzma/unlzma  - CVE-2021...

Microsoft has released security updates as part of its monthly  Patch Tuesday  release cycle to address 55 vulnerabilities across Windows, Azure, Visual Studio, Windows Hyper-V, and Office, including fixes for two actively exploited zero-day flaws in Excel and Exchange Server that could be abused to take control of an affected system. Of the 55 glitches, six are rated Critical and 49 are rated as Important in severity, with four others listed as publicly known at the time of release.  The most critical of the flaws are  CVE-2021-42321  (CVSS score: 8.8) and  CVE-2021-42292  (CVSS score: 7.8), each concerning a  post-authentication remote code execution flaw  in Microsoft Exchange Server and a security bypass vulnerability impacting Microsoft Excel versions 2013-2021 respectively. The Exchange Server issue is also one of the bugs that was demonstrated at the  Tianfu Cup  held in China last month. However, the Redmond-based tech g...